Walking up through the Stink Street medieval arch with a bag of shopping, I spotted Michael between the oleander branches seated in front of his ancient cottage having a drink. Stink Street is so called because it is just without the old town walls and in medieval times pigs were kept there. At this time of year it’s not easy to walk up Stink Street after midday without one or other of the cottagers inviting you to join them for a glass. And it was just after six and I deserved one.
Stink Street runs uphill steeply and has only recently been dressed with its first layer of tarmac. Michael’s little front terrace nestles close by to the road. I joined him at his shaded round table and placed on it the bottle of Aspras rosé I’d bought in the village shop as an impulse buy ten minutes previously. Aspras is local wine connoisseurs’ favourite tipple and I had been surprised to see it there on a shelf in its champagne-shaped bottle, the pinkness within delicate as the dawn, and priced at only €8. As a former chairman of the village wine-tasting club, Michael eyed the bottle speculatively for a second or two before offering me a glass of what he was drinking.
‘Right,’ he said, reaching for an old bottle containing an opaque brown liquid, the composition of which was impossible to guess at, and passing me a flat-bottomed Duralex tumbler, which is what everyone around here sucks their wine out of. ‘I want you to taste this and tell me what’s in it.’
Michael is always giving you something mysterious to drink and asking you to guess what’s in it. Often it’s something from the 1950s or ’60s, bought from the massive car-boot sale held every Sunday down on the coast of which he is a big fan.
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