Lunch out

We got to the meal yesterday. It was a mixed event as far as we were concerned. We do find it disorientating eating at, to us, the wrong time of day. Normally the most we will have is a snack, until 6pm or thereabouts. Eating at one takes a bit of getting used to. I can raise an appetite at most times of the day; the Fox is a different matter. By the times he'd had his soup, the idea of beef bouguignone, roast & new potatoes, broccoli & carrots, had little appeal. As for jam sponge & custard, that was about the last straw for him. I had had at least the wisdom to go for melon for starters & raspberry pavlova for dessert, both I suspect lighter options than his. As for the free bottle of wine, that was very nondescript. We both struggled through the one glass & felt no urge for a second!

The Fox also had difficulty hearing over the noise level. There were over 90 people there, all sat at tables of ten. It was difficult to hear what someone even a couple of seats away were saying, let alone those on the other side of the table. These days the Fox's hearing is not as sharp as it once was, so he had even greater difficulty.

I was somewhat surprised when Bas came over & asked me to keep a seat for him. He is a bit of an intellectual snob, a retired history teacher. I've never had any difficulty with him,. He used to regularly help me getting my manual wheelchair back into the car after services.

I was surprised to discover how nervous he'd been about coming to the meal. He doesn't often coming to church social events &, with being in the choir, he doesn't often have opportunity to meet many of the congregation. Despite being well established at the church long before we arrived here, he seemed to know fewer people than we did. Part of it is that he was widowed a couple of years ago after his wife had had a long illness, isolating him as her carer from much social life.

His own lack of small talk & impatience with fools doesn't help. We, nonetheless, had a wide ranging conversation on history, particularly the Reformation & Counter-Reformation, food, local restaurants, parish monies, local events, gardening & wildlife, Mr P the music teacher & Bas' former colleague, music. He was surprised to discover that the Fox recently bought "The Strange Death of Liberal England" by George Dangerfield, a book Bas is currently reading.

Whatever the deficiencies of the meal we did feel glad we had gone. The pleasure on the faces of John & Janet, the retiring vicar & his wife, when they saw we had made the effort was worth enduring any niggles & misgivings we may have felt.

But it's good to get back to normal. With food in the evening.