To lunch

The day has come. I await the arrival of my stepbrother & his wife. I’ve still not worked out what this meeting is about. It must be the best part of ten years since we last saw them. Is it just that now his mother has died he feels freer to socialise with us? Or is it something else? We’ll soon find out.

We’ve booked a table for lunch at the golf club. Everyone says the food there is great. Certainly the food we’ve had at various functions with a buffet has been rather ordinary-sounding, traditional English, but superbly produced. The warm beef has just melted in your mouth.

It seems this is the weekend of one of the biggest inter-golf club competitions in the area. The game is to be played away at Heysham. When we went to book the table on Thursday we were the first table to book. Most of the regulars were apparently going to play, or support the Morecambe players, at Heysham & so dine there. I hope there are a few more people at Morecambe today. It’s going to be a bit miserable being the only table in a huge empty room, especially if there is tension in our conversation, or the food proves disappointing.

At least the idea of dining at a golf club appealed to them. It is suitably aspirational, exclusive-sounding, for them. They were somewhat surprised to discover we were members. It was worth the membership fee just to hear their shocked approval.

I’m afraid to say, that much as I like them in many ways, we are a mystery to them. He has been a part of my life from childhood. Indeed Alan was the first boy my brother met at primary school. They went through the school system always in the class. As a result we were often at his place or he at ours. Chris, his wife, I’ve known longer than Alan has. She is the daughter of one of my primary school teachers. I got to know her in my late teens when I was still at secondary school. I could never say we were close friends but we rubbed along. At that age our few years’ difference in age was important. I must have seemed just a kid to her, just as she, by then already old enough to be working, seemed very adult to me.

I think we’re a bit of an oddity as far as they are concerned. They just don’t seem to know what to make of us. We’re just not sufficiently ambitious, aspirational, materialistic. As long as we’re together & we’re able to pay our bills, that is enough for us. We’re happy. We’ve never understood the drive for higher wages, higher social status. We are what we are & are content. The latest fashions pass us by without us aspiring for them. A 15 year old car, as our present one is, is fine by us provided it keeps running well without too many expensive repairs to keep it going. I admit, these days it is nice to be in a financial position to travel the world if we want, to have our garden professionally redesigned without worrying unduly about the cost, to no longer have to count every penny as we do our food shop as we did for many years, but those are just perks, very nice perks but perks nonetheless & we know it.

They have had a life of international travel. Alan has been an accountant for some big international companies, travelling regularly to the United States & Italy. Chris has helped run Manchester Council &, later, Wythenshawe Hospital, both huge institutions. Now Alan is a local councillor, Chris retired. They’re both highly successful people, high achievers. I am pleased for them. It is what they wanted & what they succeeded in getting. It just wasn’t what we wanted. It’s a life that suits/suited(?) them, not a lifestyle that even appealed to us, let alone would have suited us.

Anyhow, we’ll soon discover how things go, whether years of knowing each other will provide the magic gel of old that enables us to be friends. I hope so, otherwise we’re in for a very awkward meal ahead.