101 Things #24 - Stomping those Grapes

Some of the activities that I am reviewing for my anti-bucket list 101 Things I Refuse To Do Before I Die are self-evidently rather hard or uncomfortable to attempt; some are pretty easy to do and it may therefore seem a bit churlish of me to single them out for rejection. An idea posited by Popsugar probably falls into the latter category, however the suggestion one should

Stomp on grapes to make wine  

is one I more than happy to roll up and drop in a bin marked "rubbish ideas".

I have already dismissed as ludicrous the idea of making my own wine so we need not examine any other part of the process than the one under discussion. And since we are obviously not considering stomping on our own grapes it follows that we must be asked to turn up somewhere else to do the deed.

There are no vineyards near to beautiful Ruislip but there are a growing number in southern and western England as the climate is becoming more favourable for viniculture. I have not heard that any of them encourage people to wander up, remove their shoes and socks, roll up their trousers and wade in. Nor does this practice appear particularly prevalent abroad where the grapes normally go into large vats to be pressed with maximum efficiency and hygiene. I don't know if loads of folk with purple-stained legs are regularly spotted in places near to where the correspondent at Popsugar lives, of course, but it's of no concern as I have no expectations of ever being there, and even if I am, will almost certainly not be there at grape-stomping time, and even if I am will not bother to do it.

According to Wikipedia the practice of crushing grapes with bare feet survives only as part of a recreational or cultural activity at festivals. It's a tourist thing, in fact. It doesn't matter if any wine is made because it's all done as part of people having fun. Trouble is, it's not much of a bucket-list item, is it - just going to a festival and joining a few drunks in a barrel of grapes? Would you really want to look back on that as they serve you tea in the Sunny Dene Retirement Home for Aged Over-Achievers and think "Yes, beating the crap out of that little bunch of grapes was definitely a real highlight of my life"? No, I don't think so. I don't want to damage my already damaged foot. I don't want to skid around in a puddle of grape juice. I'd rather sip a nice Shiraz knowing that a trudging of sweaty, veruka-ridden and fungally-infected feet has been nowhere near it.

-%-%-

You may have noticed that in the final sentence of the little diatribe above, I used the phrase "a trudging of feet". There is, it seems, no collective noun for feet. We have parliaments of owls, glarings of cats and murmurations of starlings but if you have a group of people and wish to refer to their lower extremities then you are stuck. Until now, because I have just invented the word trudging (and am in process of applying for a patent, so don't even think about nicking it, OK?) to do that very job.

Readers! If you have clever new words to describe groups of things for which there is no currently existing word, then why not send them in to us. The best will be showcased in a glittering awards ceremony and the winner will receive a splendid accolade in these very columns. Probably. If we think it's worth it.

A Befoggment of Terms and a Borefest of Conditions apply, naturally, but as one of them is that the T&C's must remain secret until revealed, we cannot tell you what they are. Sorry. [Apart from the secrecy one which has now been revealed: Ed]