Bon Appetit...

Backblip

Well there’s absolutely no point in recalling anything that happened before 6.30pm today as it all pails into insignificance compared to events after 6.30pm.

My dinner date was DL, a friend from school days, who I don’t get to see very often as he lives down south and has a very glamorous (but ultimately very demanding job) that sees him in California one week, Hong Kong the next and just about everywhere else in between. It’s Paris next week so I am extra pleased that he managed to squeeze me in for a brief but very memorable catch up.

We go back a long way, him and me. His grandparents and parents grew up in the same village as my grandmother and mum and I was brought up there too. He was raised in a nearby town as his parents moved there when they got married but he was a frequent visitor to my village to visit both his sets of grandparents.

We both went to the same secondary school and when we were 13, he plucked up the courage to ask me out and we agreed to meet at the local youth club (held in a Primary School) one wintery March night in 1980.

He tried very hard, but failed, to impress me by nicking sweets from the Youth Club Tuck Shop and although the extra fruit salads and penny caramels were viewed as brownie point earners by him, the inevitable, teeth bumping, awkward snog at the bus stop (not helped by the fact I was a head and neck taller than him) led us to concluding we would be better as friends than boyfriend and girlfriend.

Oh and the incident where he cracked a raw egg on my head in the school playground a part of a dare, confirmed the wisdom of that decision.

We lost touch after 1982 and our lives went in very different directions. He headed to London, married the gorgeous A (another local lass who he’s still married to today) and moved abroad. Then out of the blue he tracked me down almost 15 years ago and we’ve kept in touch since. He’s like the brother I never had and we blether like a pair of old fish wives. I think we both get great pleasure and comfort from our shared childhood experiences and the fact we both remember and love people long forgotten by everyone else so we get to reminisce and re- tell stories that no one else would really be interested in.

When we meet up (this is only the second time in 5 years we’ve actually managed to meet) he always takes me somewhere nice to eat, either for lunch or dinner. Well this time he excelled himself! Oh how I wish I could have taken photos in the restaurant but that is definitely not the done thing! A photo of the web page will have to do.

The food was absolutely amazing, the service was warm, welcoming and very friendly, not at all formal or stuffy. I had an absolutely brilliant night and the best of it was, the food tasted so delicious, I didn’t want to waste a crumb of it so my boobs were spared the indignity of being my napkin.

And it was lovely to note that despite the years that have passed and the uber posh surroundings we found ourselves in, we didn’t have to scratch far below the surface to find the immature teenagers that still live within us.

Thanks again D. So great to see you. Hope you manage to squeeze in a visit to D and me in September when you’re up for the Ryder Cup.