Dinner with friends

The other day we received our very first dinner invitation for… ooh… 16 months, due to bloody Covid

And what made it all the more pleasant was the fact that it was an invite to dine with two particularly good friends. The all pervading influence of the corona virus has meant that we have existed, isolated within our own little bubble for far too long. Not that I didn’t enjoy aspects of our imposed seclusion; but as with ice cream and pinot noir… you can have too much of a good-ish thing.

Dinner parties come in many shapes and sizes and we have attended a fairly varied selection of these in our time. One of the most bizarre dinner invitations came about as a result of my wife being in the same book club as the wife of the couple who had extended the invite. This was back in the eighties and my wife and I hadn’t been married very long. The dinner “summons” (For that’s what it resembled) stated that:

“You will arrive at 12 minutes to eight. Not 11 minutes to and not 13 minutes to, but 12 minutes to eight precisely.”

Enough to encourage me to stay home and feast on baked beans on toast. But no, my wife assured me that the book club lady was a very nice person. I would have added “A very nice – precise – person”. Apparently they were part of the Diplomatic Corps, so… presumably this sort of precision is common currency there.

Anyway, we showed up outside their imposing house in Lija at around 20 to eight. Then, because we were some minutes early, we sat in the car and played “I spy” for the eight minutes spare before we had to ring the front doorbell. When we did so, at precisely the time requested, it was immediately opened by a tall, balding figure who closely resembled your average English country house butler. He peered down his not inconsiderable nose at us and enquired: “Mr and Mrs?”

“Gatt.” Replied my wife… and left it at that. I was the custodian of the invitation, I fumbled for it in my jacket and handed it over. The butler… retainer… whatever, peered at it, swallowed hard, nodded once and stood aside to admit us. I dread to think what might have happened if I had forgotten to bring the bloody invitation. Banishment to Filfla or worse, I shouldn’t wonder.

Anyway the precise timing of our arrival together with the presence of “Jeeves” set the tone for an evening of high-camp one upmanship. The whole thing was so ridiculous I felt the overwhelming urge to collapse into a fit of giggles more than once. On one occasion I happened to nip into the downstairs WC to part company with a recycled gin and tonic when a voice from outside the room made me listen more closely.

Our hostess was addressing the English husband of another guest and asking if he would say grace before dinner. He replied that no, he wasn’t religious, so ask somebody else. The hostess demurred: “Oh Charles, you’ve lived among us for 30 years and yet you say you aren’t religious?” Without turning a hair “Charles” replied: “So what. By your reasoning, if I had lived on the island of Lesbos for the same period of time, would that make me a lesbian?” I was still giggling when I rejoined the other captives at pre-dinner drinks.