Mrs K: “Why?”
“Well, it’s a bargain!”
“That’s what KFC say about their buckets.”
“No, very good, but… a proper champagne bucket… they usually cost three or four times that. Majestic charge £10 just to hire one! Okay, champagne buckets are usually a bit heavier, and thicker, and the handles on this one are a bit… but still. A champagne bucket… it’d be really nice.”
“We don’t drink that much champagne. And I don’t think we’re about to start.”
“No, but we could use it for white wine as well.”
“You don’t drink that much white wine. You usually drink red.”
“Mmm, yes, but rosé, in the summer…”
“It’s the middle of winter.”
“…in the garden. Rosé wine, chilled in a bucket full of ice. Lovely.”
“We don’t have room in the freezer for a bucketful of ice. In fact, we don’t have enough ice trays to make a bucketful of ice. Actually, it would take you several days of filling and freezing and emptying and refilling our one ice tray to make a bucketful of ice, which we then wouldn’t have room for in the freezer.”
“Well, we could buy ice.”
“Buy ice?”
“Yes, ice cubes, in a bag. You can buy them. I’m sure it doesn’t cost much.”
“Go out and buy it, what, on the day? In fact, because we don’t have room in the freezer, on the hour, before it melts?”
“I think they deliver it. Maybe not just one bag. I don’t know. But…a champagne bucket…”
“Why don’t you just put the wine in the fridge? Because this way it will drip water all over the table and everywhere when you lift the bottle out.”
“Ah no, because you have a lovely crisp, heavy, white linen napkin, to wipe the bottle, and you drape it across the bucket to keep it all cold.”
“But you haven’t got a linen napkin. Are you going to buy that as well?”
“Well, the napkin is part of it, really. You’d want a napkin. But I suppose I could use a teatowel or something. And it’s lovely, because if you’re using a bucket then, when the wine’s finished, you can upend the bottle in the ice to show that it’s done.”
“Show who?”
“Well, in a restaurant, to show the waiter, so…”
“But this is at home, and you’ll know it’s finished, because you’ll have poured out the last of it. It’s ridiculous. We don’t live in a restaurant.”
(Thinks: More’s the pity…)
“And it’s a big thing to put on our dining table. The room it would take up. Don’t they put them in stands beside the table in restaurants? You’re not getting a stand as well, are you?
“Err…”
“And where would we keep it the rest of the time? It’s too big to keep in the kitchen. You can’t keep it in the kitchen.”
“I suppose it can’t be that well made for £10… It’s probably not a proper champagne bucket. I’d want a proper one. Look, they’ve misspelt ‘champagne’. ‘Champange’?”
“Come on.”
PK
Boringly utilitarian post. Those freezer blocks filled with gel that you use for picnics. They substitute for ice if you put your white wine/champers in a bucket topped up with cold cold water.
ReplyDeleteI meant to say cold water, but it has come out squared; and also more accurately.
ReplyDeleteYou've got a bucket, then ...
Delete