Nutch glass, verdict, a question answered.

A while back, there was a conversation hereabouts concerning, to begin with, drinking wine out of mustard glasses, and then about a product called Nutch, which also came in glasses, but  the existence of which seemed either to have been lost in the mists of time, or was in fact a figment of the (often quite febrile) imagination of the reader concerned, since he was the only one, not just here but apparently within the whole breadth and scope of the googlable world, to have any recollection of it.  Happily, an anonymous commenter chipped in a short time later and said that they too remembered Nutch, and that they had a Nutch glass in the cupboard for years, and had stumbled upon that comment thread as the sole mention of it anywhere.  Having just read back over it, I am astonished that a curious idler actually read through the whole post and its comments as far as the bit about Nutch.  It's for unmissable moments like that I allow anonymous comments here, and I would like to shake that person by the hand, only I can't, even virtually, because they were anonymous.

Anyway, though Nutch may have gone the way of all bygone spreadable products (such as Fry's Chocolate Spread, which came in a waxed paper tub and which is sometimes reminisced fondly about here, or a gloopy kind of honey substitute called, I think, Sunny Spread), we are not averse to its present day and better-known equivalent Nutella, nor to collecting and using the glasses it comes in.  Nutch glasses, it was said, were so irredeemably ugly and horrible that not even water was any good in them, but the other day, I inadvertently placed a Nutella glass containing sparkling mineral water (something from the supermarket in a crackly plastic bottle, none of your fancy Badoit or St Pellegrino), in front of a lit violet-coloured candle, and thought to myself that even something so humble can be a thing of prettiness in the right lighting, so I took a photo of it, as I do.

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The sole, which was the real Dover thing, not any old lemon dab, was delicious.  The dopey fishmonger had skinned one side as requested, but on one of them the side he left on was the sharky black side, a faux pas than which he should have known better ( that's for people who write in with letters of complaint for about dangling prepositions, not that anyone does that here, you're all far too intelligent and polite).  Never mind, I had the other one he'd done properly.  The raspberry vinegar was lovely with it, in fact I liked it so much I splashed a bit more on, as it was very delicate.  A mixture of raspberry vinegar and lemon would have been better still, as would some real garden peas rather than the cucumber salad I made to go with it.  But it was a very fine meal indeed.

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Much earlier in the year, the 'Questions' call-and-response that Plutarch and I had been following over at the 'Compasses' blog, ground to a halt.  It ran out of steam for a time, stuff happened, one way and another we both felt somewhat blocked and at an impasse with it, I think, but it was not abandoned, only resting.  Now, hip-hip-hooray, Joe has revived and reignited it with a real cracker of a poem in answer to the question I left him with at the end of the last one: 'Where would you be if not in this place?'

'...A conversation never had.
But, in a fine rain, instead,
Among manicured trees, I hear,
Repeated, the same hollow note.'

Magic, worlds within worlds.   I think we're up for it again.