Dinner With “The Back Knack Team”, 20 November 1992

I had for some time wanted to invite for dinner the folks who had helped put my back together again after my disc catastrophe in 1990. The advent of Janie (we were some three months in to our relationship by then), Janet Hill’s announcement that she and Mary were planning to return to Perth (Western Australia) and a convenient date when Janie was in any case going to be in town nearby come Friday dinner time, proved to be suitable triggers.

The back knack team, as in: “those who dined that evening with me and Janie”, were:

• Michael Durtnall – chiropractor extraordinaire;
• Claire Durtnall – Michael’s charming and lovely wife;
• Janet Hill – the first rate masseuse Michael suggested to me and with whom I had been working for a couple of years (more on that anon);
• Mary – Janet’s partner.

I took the day off work (I had bags of accumulated holiday some of which was reaching “use it or lose it proportions”) and probably cooked up a storm of Chinese food.

We didn’t take food porn photos in those days – we only rarely took “here we all are around the table” photos…

…so here is someone else’s food porn photo of wontons that look decidedly like my ones.

I think I probably did the “whole fish” thing and perhaps chicken with cashew nuts or similar. Possibly I did the cha chiang lettuce wrap dish too – I tended to do mine with minced veal or a mixture of pork and veal.

Stuff like that, it would have been.

Janie and I both remember a very convivial evening…

…as does Michael Durtnall, although he did admit that he couldn’t remember Janet and Mary being at my flat that evening.

Let’s see if we can track down Janet and retrieve her memories of the evening. She’ll probably also remember the very first time she massaged me (indeed the very first time I had been massaged) and her surprise, after my unhelpful reaction to just about everything she did, when I made a second appoitnment. I still have regular theraputic massage, Janet; thanks for taking the trouble to “break me in”.