Hot Wine Adventures

by Walter Agnew Moore II, Roving Reporter
19 December 2001, The Saint-Leu Neighborhood Down by the Foggy Somme, Amiens, France

So you take a decent quality red-wine (they sell it cheap here), you drop a lemon-slice or a piece of apple in it, you get it really hot, and then stir in some cinnamon and brown sugar, and then you wait. That knock you hear at your front door is me. I am a Hot Wine addict, and I can home in on that stuff anywhere in the world. Luckily for me, they serve it all over town here in Amiens, Live Music Capitol of the Picard Nation.

It is God's Own Drink. If teetotalling Baptists have a problem with that, good. Hot Wine combines the warm comfort of coffee with the relaxation of an alcoholic drink, without getting you all bloated up, because you only drink a few ounces at a time. It is like taking a nice hot bath from the inside out. Warms the toes.

I'm at the end of the long bar in My Goodness Irish Pub, ignoring my Hot Wine for the moment because me and my Tunisian associates, Hassan and Maher, are trying like crazy to get this object about the size of a stick of TNT lit without Cousin Michael the bartender seeing it. We don't think he can, but Maher keeps hissing "Plus bas! Lower! He will see it!".

It is sparking, and you'd think Michael's Belfast-trained spidey-senses would be alerting him, but so far he isn't showing signs of suspicion. HA! I will have my vengeance! He and Crazy Eddy from Carlow will both see that no man mocks the Alabamese with impunity.

The night before, I walked in, and Eddy and Michael chose to amuse themselves by imitating me speaking with a George W. accent about how great Texas was. I told the Micks they didn't even have the state right, I was the Bama Boy, and that was all it took—it was throwing gasoline on the flames—as one they turned to each other and started a chromosone-deficient buck-dance to "Sweet Home Alabama".

Maher and Hassan and I have succeeded. We place the Object on the bar near Michael, who stares wide-eyed at his birthday present: a big Irish potato with candles flickering on it. While the bar sings, I toss a extra little potato to little Eddy, who snags it, thanks me, and puts it up over the bar, where it will probably still be 10 years from now.

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It is hard to tell at a glance which White people are Welsh and which are not, but one good way to find out is to be overheard, completely out of context, saying "...those thievin' Welsh". Things suddenly get exciting as a previously-unnoticed Welsh person standing behind me suddenly gets extremely interested in the conversation. I try to make peace by saying that I was actually talking about an English person, but I still get introduced to the rest of the crowd as "the Welsh-hater".

I disengage and go off to the other end of the bar to get a Hot Wine. Luckily, I still have my wallet.

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I am drinking Hot Wine as well when we get ready to play music Tuesday, good for the voice y'know. Marie brings her fiddle, and Renaud brings his guitar, and this little hippy girl whose name I forget plays with us some as well.

What you've got to do in France when you sing in English is to either sing some Beatles or Stones or mega-groups like that that everybody knows or else go with really simple sing-along lyrics. But it can be done. We get better as we warm up, and the people are smiling and getting into it. After a few songs, Renaud decides to sing a couple that they do in RIBO, the up-and-coming art-monster Amiens band. He has a really good voice, which you'd never know because in RIBO Laurent does most of the singing, and Laurent sounds like a more-talented version of Jim Morrison. Marie's got that violin flying high.

We take our last break, Renaud wants to get the drinks for a change. I say, no, Michael's been giving them to us free as long as we're playing.

"He is? We should have started sooner!"

Isabelle and Eddy are sitting on stools grinning goofily. Isabelle says, "I felt like I was back in Ireland!"

Eddy's all, "I know. I was thinkin the same thing to myself!"

I grin: "And it was an American and some French people who did it for you—"

"I know. Afookn Yank!" He shakes his head as he rearranges the stools.

Cousin Michael behind the bar seems fairly happy with the results. Good thing, because he's the manager. We had a decent little crowd. "A couple of songs, you guys really rocked, like that, that Russian-Spanish-sounding thing—"

"Bella Ciao?"

"Aye, that was it. And when Marie switched from mandolin to violin, it was very nice."

I take the hint: more rip-roaring sing-alongs, more violin.

Marie and Renaud are wanting to practice more together and do it again. Maybe Fred will bring his trumpet.

Isabelle asks us to play more. I remember an old saying:

Better to leave when they want you to stay, than to stay when they want you to leave.

And there are a hundred more stories: Little Ben the tortured drunk who stumbles around like a tormented care-bear. He was a Marsouin, a French Marine, and something is eating him. Always happy looking though. He adores little Laure, who looks like Brittney Speare's more intelligent, scratchy-voiced sister. She comes from an extremely wealthy background and is probably related to half the people who got their heads whacked off in the Revolution. Still, when we were all at Little Ben's playing charades, she did an honest day's work portraying my phrase: "I prefer monkeys to lawyers". Charades were Austrian Andi's idea, who had given up on getting Little Ben to play any Gainsbourg on the stereo. Little Ben was rocking out at max volume stripped down to jeans and down vest, playing air guitar in his own world while we his guests stared at each other. Andi says all Americans think that all Austrians live in the mountains, and it just isn't true. There, I have done my part to stop the ignorance.

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We were all over at Yannick's eating raclette, which is squares of cheese melted in tiny little frying pans and poured over potatoes and various kinds of meat. Big Olivier is amazed that everybody doesn't know the tradition of slapping girls when they first get their period. It's a Christian tradition, he says. Little Ben keeps walking into walls going down the street. It seems like we are forever crossing the park that is laced with canals down in the mist by the Somme. Ducks wake up and quack and swim away as we pass on the narrow walks, little packs of 20 or so ducks. Olivier screams abuse at the ducks in English. We all cross a long footbridge and fall into step CLOOMP CLOOMP CLOOMP as Little Ben bursts into an ominous marching song that they probably sang on the way to Verdun.

Later on, Laure sets everybody up with a meter of Despe (10 drinks on a tray) and a Hot Wine for me. She gets a Coke for Little Ben though. He sits there drinking his Coca-Cola out of a Pepsi glass, blearily turning his glass and straw every which way but never spilling a drop, hair sticking out like he combs it with hand-grenades, never complaining that he doesn't get alcohol, smiling at Laure with a sad, sweet smile.