Today was Visiting Day.
If you are not up to date with this diary, I will explain that my parents and some long-unseen relatives were coming to visit. I have been anxious about this, and wanted quite badly to impress them with my catering abilities but had not been expecting any startling success due to being too frequently distracted and disorganised. However, I am very pleased to be able to report that due to some miraculously unexpected cooking outcomes and a great deal of alcohol, the day has had a triumphantly joyful conclusion, and we have had an ace time.
Rather regrettably, I am writing at the far end of the visiting day. I have eaten an enormous dinner washed down with champagne and rather a lot of an excellent Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon and then some brandy to round it all off in case anybody wasn’t drunk enough, and am a bit concerned that my literary abilities may be a bit diminished and rambling, but hope that you will bear with me despite my slightly fuddled style, because I have had a splendid, splendid time and am dying to tell you about it.
It has been a very busy day. After the school run this morning there was tidying up and lemon cake-baking, and then Ritalin Boy turned up. By then I was ready for a restorative cup of coffee (three spoons) with Ritalin Boy’s Other Grandma, who did not seem at all sorry to part company with him, actually she practically bounded off down the path shouting: “Free! Free!”
Ritalin Boy went into my bedroom and hid everything that had been on the top of the dressing table. I have found some of my things since, down the back of the loo and in similar places, but the whereabouts of my jewellery box is a mystery and will probably have to wait until he turns up next time so I hope nothing very smart happens in the meantime.
Mark took pity on me after about an hour, and took him and the dog off to the farm to replenish the firewood and put his gearbox in his workshop and borrow some chairs from his sister. Regular readers will know that this is a frequent difficulty whenever we have more than two people visiting. His sister is of the opinion that we ought to buy some more chairs of our own, but we haven’t, because we don’t have any money and it is so very convenient just to keep borrowing hers.
My friend Elspeth turned up for a passing chat then, as your friends do when you are too busy to stop and talk to them: and we had a restorative cup of coffee (three spoons) and I made the shepherd’s pie whilst we talked, which was lovely, because it is ace to have company whilst you are doing things, except I kept forgetting things because I was happily talking and not thinking about what I was doing, and we almost had shepherd’s pie with no onions or garlic which would probably have been rubbish, so it was very fortunate that I remembered at the last minute.
I boiled potatoes and mashed them up with cream and butter, and then I fried mince and bacon and added tomatoes and cream and red wine and then stirred in lots of vegetables and the forgotten onions, and put it all in the oven tray with a layer of crushed brazil nuts and another layer of grated cheese and then the potatoes on the top.
Then I made smoked salmon mousse, of which I was enormously proud because I have never made it before, and had just got lots of ideas from the Internet. Some people said add lemon, and some said add garlic, and some people said add Worcester sauce: so I chucked them all in and added all the herbs I could think of out of the garden, and actually it was ace, and I made little pies out of it with wild smoked salmon which I really like because it is dry and strongly flavoured, and in the end it turned out brilliantly well which was a huge relief.
After Elspeth had gone I organised desserts and got all the salad ready to be chopped, and then Number One Son-In-Law turned up for a restorative cup of coffee (three spoons) and to collect Ritalin Boy and the cats, and I can tell you I have never been so very pleased to see a car heading off into the distance with Ritalin Boy and the smelly cats all inside it. We hoovered and laid the table and tidied up and had a shower and made ourselves look respectable, and by the time our relatives got here you would hardly know that we were scruffy degenerates in our spare time, because we had a beautifully laid table and a splendid dinner, and a lovely tidy house.
I couldn’t eat anything much at all, on account of having got myself far too worried about all of it, so I just drank twice as much as everybody else and thought that all the food tasted like sawdust, but fortunately nobody else did: but the nice thing about being a bit drunk and a lot relieved was that I relaxed hugely and laughed a lot and enjoyed myself very much: and then everybody else did too, and by the end of the night we were absolutely bursting full of very lovely food, and tipsy on good wine, and happy with pleasant thoughts and good conversation.
It wasn’t until after everybody had sleepily rolled off home that I recollected that I am supposed to keep a diary and Mark offered to wash up so that nobody would get up tomorrow morning and look for this page and wonder if I had died or something. I haven’t died, but I have drunk a very great deal, and am mellow and contented and pleased with life.
If you were hoping for wit and astute observation I suppose the thing to do is come back another day.
