Raisin' Raisins

[steepholm]

The English sparkling wine was very nice - and all the more so because it gave us an excuse to get out the hollow-stemmed glasses that were once my great-grandmother's. (They're quite old, but not valuable.) Many's the time I put a raisin in these glasses as a child, watching it collect bubbles in the wrinkles of its venerable skin, then float to the surface where they would burst on contact with the air, then sink again. It seemed a kind of perpetual motion - but the grown-ups were curiously reluctant to sacrifice their champagne to the cause of science.