A tale of two sabrings

If you spend a fair amount of time drinking wine (guilty) it is a fact of life that at some point you will end up attempting to sabre a bottle of sparkling wine. This will usually take place after you’ve already worked your way through a couple of bottles of wine (guilty) which is exactly the time that you shouldn’t really be attempting something like this.

Duck!

Anyway, let’s set the scene. It’s a bizarrely beautiful Spring day and I have headed to Hampshire to visit my cousins. We are celebrating. Firstly, one of my cousins has had a hot tub installed in his garden. Awesome.

Secondly, I became an Uncle for the first and second time that week (two separate sisters giving birth to two separate, but equally marvellous babies). Double awesome.

My cousin (who’s in the army, which is his excuse for why he does so many ridiculous things; I’m not so I don’t have that excuse for my ridiculous antics) declared that having just come back from a posting in Nepal* that we should be sabring some bottles of bubbly in honour of the new additions to the family. “Capital!” I exclaimed (because I speak like someone from the Famous Five). To make things even better he got out his Kukri that was a wedding gift given to him by his troop. Being the suave, sophisticated type he gave us a flawless demonstration and then gave a bottle to me to have a go on. I tried to play it cool and make it look like I knew what I was doing…

Against all the odds, I was pretty successful – as this video attests.

We then proceeded to work our way through these bottles and continue to wet the babies’ proverbial heads. A little while later we found another bottle of bubbles. We handed this to the most manly of all of our group, Dave. Dave is a man who simply exudes ruggedness from every pore of his body. His beard is a thing of wonder; rumour has it that there is a nest of small birds living in there somewhere.

Surely he couldn’t cock this up?

Oh. Bad luck Dave.

* My cousin had a tremendous time in Kathmandu and found the people over there incredibly generous and accommodating. The recent events of the earthquake have been heartbreaking to witness. If any of this has caused you to smile in any way, why not drop a quick donation to the Disasters Emergency Committee – every pound/dollar/euro will go some way to helping those who need our help the most.