Partying...

Every few months a group of colleagues turned friends, who I worked with until two redundancies (3 years) ago, get together for a bring-and-share lunch to find out what we’ve all been up to. So in a brilliant blue and gold morning three of us met in Oxford and set off for Wantage. I was in charge of making sure our driver’s iPhone and her printed Google instructions said the same thing. (They didn’t. The iPhone won). We saw the tiny new office where the sole remaining member of staff works part time (before the collapse, eleven of us worked in an office in Oxford) and we stuffed ourselves silly on the over-abundance of food that is the hallmark of bring-and-share-meals.
 
By five I was back at home for a rapid turnaround. I’d been invited to the birthday party of a good friend of my son’s in a field outside Oxford. They met when they started middle school together 19 years ago. F was often at our house and was the unfussiest eater I’ve ever come across. He delighted in all food and often asked about it. He is now a chef and was cooking for everyone over an open fire and in an oven he’d made in the ground. When I accepted the invitation I didn’t know it was fancy dress, with families picking a theme, so over the last week my daughter has been gradually turning me into a pirate. I arrived in the field by motorbike (I’d hoped to be allowed to go as a biker but was over-ruled), found my son’s tent and metamorphosed into pirate. (One picture in extra. I’ll leave you to guess whether or not it’s me.) As we headed to the fire in the pink and deep blue dusk, a full moon was just appearing over the silhouetted trees and mist was rising from the river and spilling into the field.
 
When the food was ready, F spread it out on a large plastic sheet on the ground. No serving dishes and no utensils for serving or eating. F’s current interest is in ‘Neanderthal eating’ and we gathered round, picked up food with our fingers and ate. The Neanderthal experience was somewhat diminished by a ring of car headlights placed so we could see the plastic sheet on the ground. I tried to pretend that they were wolves circling but a car radio (for music) made that difficult. Some people had ‘cheated’ and brought paper plates. Plates meant people could help themselves to plenty of the choicest morsels and move away so others could then move in and take what they’d left. No plates meant people stayed near the food and the later arrivals couldn’t get such ready access. I wonder how our ancestors behaved.
 
The young people being creative was wondrous: not only costumes and good food cooked outdoors but the fifty or so present included guitarists, drummers, violinists, others with stranger instruments and the inevitable beatboxer as well as four fire-dancers.
 
F's parents had the good sense to get into their car around 11 and go home to their warm bed. Had I a car... So I sat at the fire to stay warm until midnight then slunk off through the cold night to a cold tent and wriggled my way into a cold sleeping bag in air that was too cold for sleeping. Around 4 in the morning…

But that's another day.