Wine flights, Porto and the E-Street Band

This week has struck a good balance between social life and getting things done at home. On Monday night I stayed over at my sister's house, which is close to my former workplace, to meet up with a friend on Monday evening and with another on Tuesday lunchtime. It was great to catch up with their news. I managed to combine a good and testing walk uphill on the way there for lunch on Tuesday and a more relaxing downhill on the way back. My sister and I went out for a meal and a couple of drinks on Tuesday evening, including my first experience of a wine flight in a local wine bar - 3 x 50ml glasses of wines of my choice from the extensive menu. I chose 3 whites - a Macon, a Picpoul from the Languedoc region of France and a Coleridge Hill from the Three Choirboys Vineyard in Gloucestershire - three white wines of character and individuality and all very different.

From Wednesday I put my back into cleaning and decluttering the house, gritting my teeth and throwing away or recycling items that are no longer useful. This goes against the grain, as I can always envisage a situation when the day after I get rid of something it suddenly becomes a most necessary and valued item. For example, I put an old alarm clock we haven't used for years and wasn't working into the bin and my husband saw it there and asked why it was going out, as we "used to take it on holiday with us." I asked him if he wanted me to go and buy a battery for it so we could take it to Porto with us next week and he said no point as we have phones. It's not easy to throw away your history, no matter how irrelevant in practical terms it may now be.

Talking of Porto, we are getting ready for our 4 day trip next week. This is somewhere we've been interested in visiting for many years and when we found we had Airmiles we needed to use or we'd lose them, and we realised we had enough Airmails to fund flights and 3 nights b&b in Porto it seemed silly not to go. It feels a bit like collecting a set as we've visited lots of vineyards in France and here in England; we've been to Cognac and the Armagnac region of France and tried the local nectar and we went to Jerez for the sherry tasting. Where next, perhaps Madeira?

The week has ended on a really high note with the news that the Boss, Bruce Springstreen, is bringing his highly acclaimed "The River" tour to four venues in the UK in May/June. Tickets go on sale on Thursday when I'm away but luckily my friend is on the case and hopefully we'll get tickets for Wembley in June. That is definitely something to look forward to and I hope to see him for what will be my 8th time and could be the last. Bruce is now 66 and some of his E-Street Band members are older, so nothing can be taken for granted. What's amazing is how they just keep getting better and seem to defy the march of time.