Own Goal
I like simple food. Fresh ingredients and not too much messing about. None of that duck-in-chocolate-sauce nonsense.
Expensive restaurants make me uneasy, because they really do make me think of the starving millions: and then I feel a hypocrite because the degrees of plenty are irrelevant. There's always lots of food in this house, even though some of it, the fruity and vegetably bits, is considered vile by at least one of the occupants.
In 1986 I found myself at the Poshest of the Posh meals, £80 a head, and that was a lot in 1986 (it's a lot now, if you ask me).
It was a weekend jolly from my husband Stephen's work and the idea was that all his colleagues played golf all weekend - but the exciting bit was that the people they were playing against were most of the team who won the 1966 World Cup. The whole thing was masterminded by Bobby Charlton ("Who's he?" asked Stephen, who knows as much about football as I do about Higgs Bosuns) and when I rang my father to tell him that the guest of honour was Sir Stanley Matthews he thought I was winding him up.
So, for football fans, fantastic - and even I was a bit impressed when Sir Geoff Hurst MBE asked me if I was enjoying it all (the true answer was, er, no, not really, but that's not what I said).
As it was 1986 and the country was governed by the Milk Snatcher, all the women without exception were wearing huge ball gowns in turquoise satin with vast bows. - Oh, yes, there was an exception actually - me - and I don't know what I was wearing but it was deeply wrong. Some slightly hippyish-looking skirty thing probably, with shoes that didn't match. I don't want to think about it.
And the food, to justify the expense and to impress us all, had been overcomplicated until you couldn't tell what it was. Hence I don't remember what most of it was, but I do remember dessert.
Dessert was a plate covered in pureed kiwi fruit with little lines drawn on it in white chocolate and a little ball of brown chocolate nestling in the middle - - I know! You have guessed! A football pitch! What a charming tribute, eh?
It tasted really horrible and I bet poor Sir Stanley Matthews had to eat something like it at every meal he ever went to.
Expensive restaurants make me uneasy, because they really do make me think of the starving millions: and then I feel a hypocrite because the degrees of plenty are irrelevant. There's always lots of food in this house, even though some of it, the fruity and vegetably bits, is considered vile by at least one of the occupants.
In 1986 I found myself at the Poshest of the Posh meals, £80 a head, and that was a lot in 1986 (it's a lot now, if you ask me).
It was a weekend jolly from my husband Stephen's work and the idea was that all his colleagues played golf all weekend - but the exciting bit was that the people they were playing against were most of the team who won the 1966 World Cup. The whole thing was masterminded by Bobby Charlton ("Who's he?" asked Stephen, who knows as much about football as I do about Higgs Bosuns) and when I rang my father to tell him that the guest of honour was Sir Stanley Matthews he thought I was winding him up.
So, for football fans, fantastic - and even I was a bit impressed when Sir Geoff Hurst MBE asked me if I was enjoying it all (the true answer was, er, no, not really, but that's not what I said).
As it was 1986 and the country was governed by the Milk Snatcher, all the women without exception were wearing huge ball gowns in turquoise satin with vast bows. - Oh, yes, there was an exception actually - me - and I don't know what I was wearing but it was deeply wrong. Some slightly hippyish-looking skirty thing probably, with shoes that didn't match. I don't want to think about it.
And the food, to justify the expense and to impress us all, had been overcomplicated until you couldn't tell what it was. Hence I don't remember what most of it was, but I do remember dessert.
Dessert was a plate covered in pureed kiwi fruit with little lines drawn on it in white chocolate and a little ball of brown chocolate nestling in the middle - - I know! You have guessed! A football pitch! What a charming tribute, eh?
It tasted really horrible and I bet poor Sir Stanley Matthews had to eat something like it at every meal he ever went to.
posted by Daphne at 5:29 pm
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