My diary says this dinner at mine was on 19th, Janie’s says 18th.
For sure I took the day off work Friday 18th, but that might have been as much to do with the NewsRevue Smoker the evening before than anything to do with the dinner party.
Janie has written a recipe for some healthy fish salad where Saturday 19th should be in her diary, but I am sure that has nothing to do with my dinner party.
Perhaps she served such healthy, salady stuff later in the weekend to neutralise the ill effects of my lavish meal on the Friday…or was it the Saturday…night.
My diary is suitably vague as to the guests:
Dan+
Dan will be Daniel Scordel. I’m not sure whetehr Daniel and Maz were still an item then – perhaps not given the term “Dan+”.
No idea who else might have been there. Andrea possibly. No more than five or maximum six at my place for a meal.
We went for dinner at Victor & Kim’s place. Kim & Micky were also there. DJ might have been there too that night but I have a feeling it was just the six of us.
Victor’s second wife was named Kim, which caused some confusion with his daughter Kim when, on occasions, someone mentioned “Kim” without a fair bit of context.
Janie’s solution was to add the suffix “the chickidoo” when referring to Victor’s Kim, while omiting said suffix when referring to her old school pal Kim. Clever stuff.
Anyway, I seem to recall a very enjoyable evening on that occasion. Good food, good wine, good chat.
What else might one wish for from such an evening?
Janie had a former colleague and friend named Michelle. Janie called her “Pussycat Michelle”.
We visited Michelle and her partner Joe for lunch in Amersham for lunch on this Sunday.
I recall little about the lunch, other than some good food (Michelle’s French background was telling) and a little bit of whacky backy from Joe after lunch.
They were good company, those two, but it always seemed difficult to fix up times to see them, so there were few (if any) repeats. Certainly we only made the one visit there.
My diary says that I played bridge with my gang at Tessa’s place on the Thursday evening. That would have been Tessa, Andrea and Maz.
Janie’s diary says that Phillie & family were arriving that day and that they were having dinner “at mum’s” that Thursday evening from 6.00 and that I would be coming over 12.30.
I think I had a key by then. Or this might have been the occasion that resulted in me having a key.
Anyway, Janie’s diary says that we all went for a meal at North China on the Friday evening. This is the gathering of Pauline, Phillie, Tony, Charlie, Janie and me, all around a Chinese restaurant table, that i recall so well from our early time together. I think we only ever did that as a group of six the once.
The diaries are very light on what we did. Possibly we didn’t do much.
To some extent Phillie, Tony & Charlie were probably using Sandall Close as a base to do other stuff.
Where the heck did everyone sleep at Sandall Close?
Anyway, we were all still talking to each other come the Tuesday, as the diary says we six (including Pauline) had a dinner party at Sandall Close on the Tuesday evening.
Janie and I both worked that day too.
I think the family stayed on with Janie until the Wednesday afternoon.
It was a quirky, rather corny film with some excellent actors in it.
I am pretty sure we ate and stayed at mine, not least because Janie treated one of her Saudi princess clients in town on Saturday moirning before we went off to Bristol. I don’t suppose they discussed Leon The Pig Farmer.
My diary is not at all forthcoming about the details of this weekend. All I wrote for the Friday evening and then Saturday were a couple of very short words:
PIG.
Hils.
Then some arrows and stuff across the Sunday, implying that we stayed in Bristol, Janie also had a symbolic line through Sunday.
With no other information about where we stayed, I’m guessing this is the one and only time that we stayed at Janie’s sister Hil and Chris Boswell’s house, in the conservatory, on their Z bed. (Sounds like a Cluedo accusation).
Memory suggests that we ate a very good meal with some good wine. Were “entertained” by the boys squabbling with each other and then tried our best to sleep on the Z bed.
I’m pretty sure this was the evening that I cooked a chinese meal at my flat for Kim, Micky & Janie, only to discover that Kim’s at that time seemingly liberal vegetarian attitudes…
…she was veggie but didn’t at that time go on about it to others…
…had limits.
One of those limits was the sight of a whole animal; in this case a fish.
One of my specialities in those days was to steam a whole fish with ginger, spring onion, using a fair slurp of saki in the steaming water and a dash of soy sauce and coriander to garnish.
Yum.
So after serving starters; probably my signature won ton soup for most of us and something well-chosen and veggie for Kim…
…I’d have probably put quite a lot of thought into the veggie options for Kim that evening…
…I then served the mains including my piece de resistance, the fish.
All hell broke loose. Kim felt sick. Kim couldn’t believe that we could eat that. Kim was upset.
Janie, who knew Kim really well was surprised at that reaction…
…but then realised that she had never served anything that looked quite so “original form animal” as a whole fish. Somehow big prawns didn’t seem to have the same effect.
Anyway, i/we never did that again when Kim was coming round.
Neither Janie nor I recall a great deal about this particular evening. I think it was the only time I went to DJ’s place in Steeles Mews for dinner and I think there were a fair few of us there.
I can see from the diaries that Janie and I had arranged to stay at my place for the weekend, not least because we had theatre at the Nationalthe next day:
It was not dustopian because of the food. Oh boy, the food was terrific. Janie’s Friday diary reads…
…collect ossobuco & Langues de chat biscuits & mascarpone [from La Pasena]
Osso Bucco – picture by Stu Spivack via Wikimedia Commons
It was the company that made the evening dystopian.
Rita is one of Janie’s colleagues – even 25+ years later Janie still refers work to Rita when appropriate.
Now don’t get me wrong, I liked Rita. Rita is absolutely fine.
The problem at that time was that Rita was with a chap named Tony and Tony liked far right politics of the most venal kind. Rita and Tony as an item didn’t stand the test of time for all that long beyond this dystopian evening…
…nor indeed did Tony make it very deep into middle age. Stonk in the brain or something of that ilk. It isn’t ONLY the good who die young.
But the Rita and Tony partnership had, by then, lasted long enough to produce young Mark who was 10-12 years old. By all accounts, Mark has subsequently settled down but at that time he was a fully paid up member of the Tony-Loony-Tunes-Yoof and not averse to doling out a bit of lip.
None of the Mark and Tony shenanigans went down very well with me and Micky. I don’t think it went down too well with Rita either when the extent of the mismatch inevitably spilled over into the evening.
I seem to recall Kim subsequently finding it all rather amusing; she rather thrives on conflict in a funny way. Not to say that she found it acceptable; just that she preferred to laugh it off afterwards while Micky and I sought solace in incredulity.
We’d got to the stage, by the end of 1992, that most of our getting togethers didn’t get specific mention as “Jane” or “Ian” in our respective diaries.
Yet this particular weekend, 5th to 7th February, is marked in Janie’s diary:
Ian over for weekend…
…and marked in mine…
Jane [with an arrow and a line through the weekend]
The significance of this, I think, is that we had not, untilt hat point or slightly beyond that point, considered spending the whole weekend together as a given. In fact, with Janie still taking a fair bit of weekend work and with me spending some weekend time writing the book with Michael etc, we rarely spent several days together.
Clearly we blocked this one out to spend the whole weekend together.
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