Don't Drink and Fry!

New Zealand is a drinking culture, which is hardly surprising when you consider just how much wine is produced here. Even so, we're constantly surprised by the level of drinking. On St Patrick's Day, we stood outside the central library at 5pm and watched a very drunk student stagger past us down the street at an angle that defied physics. Dressed in green, and squinting into the sun, he stumbled around like a cowboy in an old Western movie who'd taken a slug to the gut. The entire town was drunk.

In fact, there's someone here at the university whose responsibilities include hosing the vomit from outside the Medical School every Monday morning. Imagine what it looked like the morning after St Patrick's Day! It looked like it had been raining pizzas! Deep-pan, too. If aliens visited Dunedin, their report would conclude that St Patrick's Day celebrations involve regurgitating on street corners.

So many people go home after a night at the pub, cook themselves a midnight snack, fall asleep, and then die in house fires that there's a new safety campaign on TV. It has the slogan: Don't drink and fry.

In the central Otago valley, just an hour or so west of Dunedin, grape vines grow in ordered rows all over the hillsides. Order from disorder. Some of the world's best pinot noirs are made there. This long Easter weekend, Emeline and I are planning to drive there (in our new {to us} car) to sample some of them (because we can't afford to buy a bottle). Last night we got into the spirit (hah!) of things by attending our first wine appreciation class, offered through the university. At the start of the class, the instructor (hilarious, red-nosed man) made us stand and repeat an oath, which gave thanks to Bacchus, god of wine, and included promises never to drink from plastic and to attend as many wine frenzies as possible. It was a blast. It was a frenzy. Here's a photo I took of Emeline after the class. (ck)