Entertaining at Home

Friday 2nd December 2016

I flung open my home twice for intimate dinners. Angus Willis recalled his visit to Japan. You know that all the houses there are made of paper. I suppose if you put a foot through the wall, you just get another piece and glue it on. I wish they’d do a TV prog on How to Run a Japanese House made of Paper. This is a real lack in the schedules and the Nation gasps for knowledge of paper-house life. Anyway, Angus was put up in such a house, with the parents of friends never met before – fully Japanese people, always bowing and not a word of English of course. A futon was rolled out in a paper room right next to theirs and Angus was put to bed, as these parents bowed their way out backwards. It might have been jet-lag or general strangeness but Angus wasn’t too sure where he was. His dreams were fitful. In one of them he appeared to be toilet-ing – and woke to find it wasn’t a dream. He’d wet the futon! What to do? What agony – in a country rigid with politeness, in a paper-house with the unknown Japanese hosts just a sheet of paper away. The last place ideal for wetting the bed surely. What of the paper? What if it got soaked? The entire paper residence could dissolve into an unattractive nitrogenous heap. Frantically Angus manoeuvred the futon to a balcony. The danger of waking the parents was intense. In the morning he had to engage in protracted bowing and foot work to restrain them from rolling up the futon as tradition requires.

The menu for this dinner was mandoline-cut fennel with orange, lamb with saffron and aubergine and dreary old apple purée. My mandoline work isn’t what it ought to have been and some guests found their slices too thick to eat.

The second dinner was attended by Robert Nevil. One might as well have invited a tank or Mik-47 to dinner. ‘I had chicken last night,’ he snapped, watching me struggle with Poulet au Fromage. ‘You went all the way to Ludlow to get this,’ he withered of my new antiques. ‘Why are there other guests?,’ he barked. ‘I won’t want them.’  ‘Why are you wearing pyjama bottoms?He meant my Topman check slacks. Genevieve Suzy arrived in that top that is somehow a solid slab of power. ‘Would you mind moving?’ she said to Robert Nevil, and he fell off his chair onto the floor. Later eight and a half bottles were found to have been consumed by seven guests. Genevieve said she wasn’t to be asked questions and she wasn’t warm enough. The menu was No first course, Poulet au Fromage, cheese course, some sort of French bread/cake borders apple thing (a bit boring, but at least self-made: my recipes all came from an old book, The Cuisine of the Rose). Robert Nevil threw his Poulet au Fromage thigh onto my plate in retaliation for me getting a bit of his breast off his. I hadn’t got any breast and wanted to test it for moistness. This was before Robert Nevil fell on the floor. Peter Wildwire, our old uni (as we must now call it) friend, also dining, explained that his youngest son has been suffering from a groin injury since August. This is the result of vigorous activity with an older Lesbian up the Holloway Road. Apparently a slightly different explanation is offered to his grandparents. Both his sons are fearfully sporty and fearfully injured – practically have to be pushed round in bath chairs.

 

Posted Sunday, December 4, 2016 under Adrian Edge day by day.

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