An Introduction.
Another year and another season of cheer have gone by. Campbell Brothers' wines, a red and a white, have been procured, produced, and bottled (by Ralph's valiant efforts), and the resultant product distributed and gurgled. It has hopefully contributed to some of that seasonal cheer as well.
I would like to say a little bit regarding the stories, at least the parts that I write. I gear the stories to my bestest brother and friend, Ralph, and to my bestest friend Sid (who is like a brother to me, and who has made an appearance in the 'Ring' story too this year). They are the ones for whom the stories are actually written. I like to make them laugh.
There's actually quite a bit of stuff in this year's two stories that are elements particular to Ralph and I. Here's an example: In the earliest incarnation of the blog I think I mentioned something about sitting in a basement under a bare bulb and bottling the wine and laughing. That actually happened. The telling of it has resurfaced in one of the stories. And it's the same with other things from our individual or shared experiences, or from things that we've talked about, so you end up with references to things like clearing brush, septic tanks, arc welders, and chainsaws. Oh and there's wine, to be sure (or at least, sometimes, something else alcoholic, but usually wine), usually made by us, and usually patently potent. And chili too.
And I am sure there are many things mentioned that are shared with Sid, like his library in this instance.
The stories that were written to go along with this year's wine offerings were huge things, at least by our standards. Each story became something like 17 printed pages long, each. They were so long in fact that we felt that we couldn't afford to make print outs of them and hand them around with the wine, as we've done for so many years now. The stories just kept on growing longer and longer. If that's a fault then it is mine (mea culpa) but I swear that the characters involved in them just wouldn't shut up, they all demanded space. That's my excuse and I'm sticking by it.
So we had these long stories and puzzled a while on what to do with them, how to package them up for distribution. What we did, instead of printing them out, was to make 'pdf' files of the labels and the stories, and burn everything out to disc. Actually I put 'html' versions on the discs as well so that any computer's browser could access them. Then we put Campbell Brothers Winery stickers on the discs and handed them out. Finito. Right?
Unfortunately I found out recently that not all computers could read the discs I burned out even though I put the files in formats that should have been accessible by both machines. They were created and burned out on my iMac and it seems that some Window's machines just won't see the files. What a crock of, well, smelly stuff (don't get me started), but it became one of the reasons why I wanted to make the effort early in the new year to get the new stories onto the blog where, if you have the internet, you should be able to access them (didn't I just finish saying something similar about the files themselves?).
So I hope you enjoy the stories.
Oh, I almost forgot to add, as a bonus bonus on the discs I threw in the Sherlock Holmes story as well (which already appears earlier in this blog and is called 'The Case of the Speckled Tongue').
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