The Befouled Weakly News
28 December 2008 Good morning on this day after the day after the day after Christmas. We hope that your festivities were every bit as enjoyable and satisfying as ours.
The dinner was a huge success, everyone felt replete with Christmas cheer and the final guests finally left about half past one, well past my bedtime! On Monday evening we were obliged to celebrate someone’s birthday, a celebration which was conducted with style, dignity and aplomb. Again, I wrote last time about our plans for an outing to Stratford for dinner and a visit to the theatre which we duly achieved. Our friends Sue and Stuart from Brighton and Dave and Sue Walton joined Ms Playchute and me along with Nick and Lucy for a pre-theatre meal at The Vintner in Stratford and thence on to see the production of a play entitled Don John at the temporary accommodation of the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Courtyard Theatre, while the main theatre is being refurbished. The Courtyard is a quite intimate theatre, much like The Swan for those of you who may have attended a performance there with us (that certainly includes Mom and Dad as well as Sallie and Rod). And, like the last production we saw in The Swan (with Sallie and Rod), the play was “interesting” or, in other words, not very good. The Guardian’s review (which we hadn’t read before so were able to come to much the same conclusion ourselves without outside influences) sums it up fairly well:
Actually, I think that review may be a bit too generous. To be fair, the music was indeed quite good and there were a considerable number of visual and cultural “jokes” about Britain in the 1970s. But, in the end, we were all left wondering what it was all about? Tuesday provided a welcome opportunity to recover to some extent before the arrival of Nick and Lucy on Christmas Eve. Pen had decided that the meat-eaters amongst us would enjoy a barbequed butterflied leg of lamb so yours truly was once again consigned to the great outdoors to supervise its incineration. Actually, I have to confess, even though I do say so myself, this particular leg of lamb was barbequed to a state approaching perfection. I had soaked it in a red wine, rosemary and garlic marinade all day and then blasted it for five minutes on each side at the beginning before roasting it gently for a further twenty minutes on the barbeque. The result was deliciously flavoursome, just bordering on pink in the middle. Nick grilled himself a sea bass which he coated with a pesto, capers and breadcrumb rub and the feast was rounded out with left-over Amy potatoes, roasted carrots and spinach. A very, very decent bottle of Margaux complimented an exceedingly excellent feast.
On Christmas morning we were astounded to discover that Father Christmas had arrived and, as well as delivering some unexpected and thoroughly undeserved presents, he also must have done the mammoth washing up from the dinner the night before! Nick and Lucy seemed to be just finishing off the task when Pen and I emerged – in Penny’s case this provoked a sense of remorse that her guests had undertaken such an activity while in my case it prompted delighted satisfaction at my excellent timing. Adam rang from China at about 9.00 and we all then “Google-talked” with him for about half an hour while Nick prepared scrambled eggs with smoked salmon, spring onions, capers and cream cheese for breakfast. After this delicious little repast, we shared a collection of Christmas gifts before Nick and Lucy left to spend Christmas Day with her father and brother. In the early afternoon we took Molly for a leisurely stroll around the reservoir before finally settling down to some afternoon television, a phone call to the gathering at Chez Stragnanza in Hanover and eventually our own Christmas dinner, a repetition of Nick’s sea bass of the night before. And so, after a day off, we came to Saturday when Penelope had determined that Jeremy & Liz with their children, spouses and partners should join us along with Michael, Emma and their 19 month old Jacob for another gut-busting feast replete with wine, humour and splendid spirits. Penelope produced Basque Chicken which was sensational, as usual and Jacob provided hours of entertainment – twenty times more amusing and a fraction of the cost of the latest DVD. Wind him up and watch him go. All in all, an excellent couple of days! Hope that yours was every bit as outstanding. And finally, a bit of seasonal amusement can be found here. (You may get a couple of error or "security" messages as you access this depending on your Internet browser settings. Just ignore them and enjoy.) Love to you all, Greg We invited some old friends to help celebrate my 40th birthday. My husband went out to buy a gift, and he saw some cute little music boxes. A blue one was playing "Happy Birthday to You." Thinking they were all the same, he picked up a red one and asked the clerk to have it gift-wrapped. When we sat down to dinner, he gave it to me, asked me to open it and— surprise—out came the tune to "The old gray mare, she ain't what she used to be." From Dad. I originally heard it as a mink coat but other than that, all the details are the same. An older, white haired man walked into a jewellery store one Friday evening with a beautiful young woman at his side. He told the jeweller he was looking for a special ring for his girlfriend. The old man said, 'No, I'd like to see something more special.' At that, the jeweller went to his special stock and brought another ring over. 'Here's a stunning ring at only $40,000,' the jeweller said. The young lady's eyes sparkled and her whole body trembled with excitement. The old man seeing this said, 'We'll take it.' The jeweller asked how payment would be made and the old man stated, 'By check. I know you need to make sure my check is good, so I'll write it now and you can call the bank Monday to verify the funds, and I'll pick the ring up Monday afternoon,' he said. Monday morning, the jeweller phoned the old man. ‘You swindler. There's no money in that account.' 'I know,' said the old man, 'But let me tell you about my weekend!' Finally, although this advice comes too late for us to implement it for Christmas, there may still be some occasions over the next few days where you may find it useful. 1. Avoid carrot sticks. Anyone who puts carrots on a holiday buffet table knows nothing of the Christmas spirit. In fact, if you see carrots, leave immediately. Go next door, where they're serving rum balls. 2. Drink as much eggnog as you can. And quickly. It's rare. You cannot find it any other time of year but now. So drink up! Who cares that it has 10,000 calories in every sip? It's not as if you're going to turn into an eggnog-oholic or something. It's a treat. Enjoy it. Have one for me. Have two. It's later than you think. It's Christmas! 3. If something comes with gravy, use it. That's the whole point of gravy. Gravy does not stand alone. Pour it on. Make a volcano out of your mashed potatoes. Fill it with gravy. Eat the volcano. Repeat. 4. As for mashed potatoes, always ask if they're made with skim milk or whole milk. If it's skim, pass. Why bother? It's like buying a sports car with an automatic transmission. 5. Do not have a snack before going to a party in an effort to control your eating. The whole point of going to a Christmas party is to eat other people's food for free. Lots of it. Hello? 6. Under no circumstances should you exercise between now and New Year's. You can do that in January when you have nothing else to do. This is the time for long naps, which you'll need after circling the buffet table while carrying a 10-pound plate of food and that vat of eggnog. 7. If you come across something really good at a buffet table, like frosted Christmas cookies in the shape and size of Santa, position yourself near them and don't budge. Have as many as you can before becoming the center of attention. They're like a beautiful pair of shoes. If you leave them behind, you're never going to see them again. 8. Same for pies. Apple, Pumpkin, Mincemeat. Have a slice of each. Or if you don't like mincemeat, have two apples and one pumpkin. Always have three. When else do you get to have more than one dessert? Labor Day? 9. Did someone mention fruitcake? Granted, it's loaded with the mandatory celebratory calories, but avoid it at all costs. I mean, have some standards. 10. One final tip: If you don't feel terrible when you leave the party or get up from the table, you haven't been paying attention. Re-read tips; start over, but hurry: January is just around the corner.
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We’ve enjoyed an action packed week which commenced last Sunday with Ms Playchute’s Seasonably Social Soiree which was a huge success. You will remember that this originally started out as a compact gathering of two couples we “owed” for dinner along with another couple who we probably “owe” but since we don’t see them too often we couldn’t really be sure. However, soon after those invitations had been extended and accepted, Penelope was contacted by another friend with whom she used to teach but who now lives largely in France. Well, clearly, there’s an opportunity to add them to the guest list and, since they won’t know any of the others, we’ll need to invite another couple of folks who they would know. So, that’s how we got to dinner for eleven and a fine banquet it was too. I think I wrote last time that Ms Playchute had decided to employ Sandy’s strategy of barbequing at all times of the year so I was employed in burning the salmon with pesto in the pitch darkness (thank goodness for the BBQ light Sandy and Pam very kindly sent me a year or more ago) which was charred to perfection. This was accompanied by the mandatory Amy potatoes and finished off with lemon soufflés, only one of which ended up on the dining room floor instead of on the intended recipient’s plate. Fortunately, the hot lemon filling did not scald the recipient’s back and equally fortunately Penelope had heeded the advice of all decent chefs when preparing for a banquet – prepare an extra!
After dinner I was subjected to a conspiracy which apparently had been going on all evening – whilst I was outside supervising the BBQ, Nick and Penny moved the round table from the “library” into the lounge and it was announced that we were to play some board games, one of my least favourite activities. Still, by this time I had no choice so we enjoyed a game of Cranium which seemed to take about eight hours to complete due to the utter inability of any member of either team having the knowledge or wisdom to be able to answer more than one question in twenty. In the end, Lucy and I proved victorious largely due to her ability to hum the tune of “Uptown Girl” and our mutual talent of spelling words backwards, aloud without the use of pen and paper. Although we didn’t make it to midnight, we finally crawled into bed as the church bells were ringing to fetch the faithful to the midnight service, again well past my bedtime.