Robert Mitchum scares me. Watched Night of the Hunter last night. Scarey.

Lent is still dragging along. I am trying to use it as an opportunity of stock up the wine rack. I have another eight bottles to go (seven if you include the bottle of white that is chilling/freezing out the back door). I think my wine buying/ownership is slowly getting out of hand.

It all started with my first wine rack. It held 12 bottles and was rarely ever completely full. But it did mean I never liked letting it settle below four bottles. Then I gave that rack away, moved to another continent and strangely enough bought a new rack at Ikea (Like you weren't expecting that) which held 18 to 21 bottles. And that was good. However, it meant my palms starting itching around the one case mark. Then I was given another rack. A really attractive metal one. It holds a good 24 bottles. And I kept the Ikea rack. And I now keep the wine segregated by colour (is that morally objectible?). My need to horde wine grows stronger and stronger. I feel so much happier when I have bottles of the stuff. When on the odd occasion the wine over flows and stands up on the buffet. Ideally, I liked to own between 70-120 bottles or so I tell myself. In a proper cellar and I would keep them for years before finding they are perfect to drink and then throwing a party.

But I know if I did have a cellar (which proper secret passages if we are fulfilling my Scooby-Doo fantasies), it wouldn't stop at 120 bottles. Next thing I know, I'd be like Andrew Lloyd Weber selling thousands of bottles because I would suddenly realise I couldn't drink it all in my lifetime.

I did want to buy the blessing a good bottle of wine to cellar ever year and then give it to her at her twenty-first birthday. The H didn't like the idea. Instead, I must admit it is all for me and well, I still don't own enough bottles of wine. Not nearly enough. And we have drunk all the nice French stuff too.

Makes me feel some sympathy for Imelda Marcos.