8 August: the whisper on the street about wine.

Have you seen (or heard about) those strange YouTube videos where people whisper stuff about mundane daily events like baking / shaving / wrapping presents and lots of other stuff whilst people (who need to get out more) listen to it on headphones to get a strange tingling sensation of belonging or love or whatever they call it? They’re called ASMR videos. I don’t know what it stands for – Amazingly Sad Moronic Reenactments? Who knows. Who cares.

But –

Here’s a link to a really freaky 28 minute video of someone whispering about cutting hair which – if it happened in real life at a barbers – would freak you the fuck out and would indeed leave you with a tingling feeling – the tingling feeling that has evolved over thousands of years to give you the heads up that you’re alone in a hair salon with someone who is quite probably a serial killer. And has scissors. And a comb. And has you strapped in a chair. This tingle is not natures way of making you relax; this tingle is nature’s way of saying: Get the fuck out of there you’re about to be killed.

Well anyway, what’s all that longer than usual preamble got to do with getting pissed? So, as I wrote what follows – and was originally written as the intro – it struck me that if it was whispered in some husky tones over headphones it would sound like a ASMR video and millions of sad stay at home types would sit and listen to it on YouTube, I’d get a piece on the BBC news site about wine being the new black being the new Fab Four, women would tingle (again), the ads would come piling in and I’d retire to Paris to record Eiffel Tower soundscapes and be stinking rich and happy. But instead it’ll be read by four people on WordPress and Jamie The Satanist (my other regular reader) will tell me that “you’re fucking bonkers, you” whilst writing runic curses on scraps of paper at the desk when I next get to work. (Except he won’t because he’s in Cornwall exploring a witchcraft museum.)

Oh well. But imagine it as a ASMR thing anyway, just so that it’s ‘different.’ This is what you’ll need – you need  some wine, you need a glass, you need someone who can whisper and you need a Beatles album.

And read:

“Imagine that it’s 8th August but it’s 1969. Oh and that you happen to be in London with a bottle of nice wine, you’ve got some time to kill and you fancy watching some history been made. You could simply head to Abbey Road and wait around for a bit keeping an eye out for a long haired hippie in a white suit, a denim clad chanting disciple of someone with a sari, a guy who forgot his shoes and Ringo Star who fancied himself as a drummer. Maybe sit in a bus shelter and wait a bit, they’ll be along shortly because because this is the day that photographer Iain Macmillan took the famous Beatles Abbey Road photo. Can you feel the wind? The faint after buzz of acid?”

(This site now has a theme tune. It’s HERE. Click it and read. It adds a majesty to the crap I write.)

And this, even without someone whispering in the corner or some inexplicable tingle, is surely reason enough to put on a Beatles song and drink wine until you feel all psychedelic. (It you want to really embrace the vibe you can click for a live webcam feed of the crossing and pretend to be whichever one of the fab four you feel closest to. Whisper “Sgt Pepper” over and over again to up the ante. )

Life is good. (It’s even better with vino.)

And a quote: “Pour out the wine without restraint or stay, pour not by cups but by the bellyful, pour out to all that wull. ” Edmund Spenser.