Well, in my dreams, he is!

I’ve been tagged by English Mum in Ireland for a rather interesting meme.  I get to invite any eight people I want to dinner!

Now, like EM, I’m going to have to say that my first guest will be my dearly beloved Other Half. Firstly because he is dearly beloved, and secondly because he’d be very interested to meet my second guest - the lovely Johnny Depp.  And thirdly, because if I don’t include him he’ll kill me be very hurt.

Now, since I have Johnny Depp seated dead opposite me where I can see him to drool properly, I’ll need to invite Mariella Frostrup too.  No, Johnny doesn’t have a thing about Mariella (not that I know of) but OH does - at least, he has a thing about her voice, and he likes intelligent women - so if I seat her next to OH, she’ll keep him nicely occupied pouring her honeyed tones into his shell-like ear, while I talk to my other guest.

Er .. guests.

Hmm.  The rules say I have to have eight people, so I need a few more … let me think.  Oh, I know someone!  But first I have to tell you a little story.

Back in 1985, I was a very tired young mother with a four year old, and a new baby who was a very happy little soul just so long as he was being carried or cuddled.  So each evening, OH used to take Son No. 1 up for his bath and put him to bed while I sat on the sofa with Son No. 2 and nursed him till he fell asleep.  And so it was that I discovered American Football, and Walter Payton, because one of the programmes that would come on while I was pinned to the sofa by a combination of a demanding baby and mind-boggling fatigue was the Channel Four American Football game of the week.  I’d watch the little figures on the screen milling about and falling over and it was chaos.  But I thought I’d try to get to grips with the game and over the weeks of that first season, I gradually sorted out the rules and the teams and the personalities.  Now, 1985 was a very good year for the Chicago Bears, so they were featured quite often, and their star running back was Walter Payton. Even to me, he stood out as a stunningly good player, and he was a joy to watch.  By the time he hung up his boots, he’d racked up some amazing numbers and held several records, and was loved by team-mates and fans alike.  He seemed to be such a nice guy.  So nice, in fact, that his nickname was ‘Sweetness’.  Only a few years after retiring, he died of a rare liver disease … I’d been hoping he’d get a coaching job somewhere or even buy into ownership of a team, which was something he’d wanted to do, but it was not to be - he didn’t even make it to 46 years old. So, I’d like to have him as one of my guests so I can tell him how pissed I am that he died. *Sigh*

John Cusack.  Another very decorative and extremely talented actor, who has made some great movies.  He seems to make similar choices to Johnny Depp, going for the quirky, the strange, and the unusual … but he’ll put in time on the pot-boilers too, to finance the stuff he really wants to do.  One of my favourite Cusack movies is Grosse Pointe Blank, another is Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.  I’ve watched most of them, and there’s only one I regret, and that’s 1408.  It would have been fine, if only I hadn’t picked up the director’s cut by mistake.  As it is, I can’t tell you when I’ll be ready to stay in a hotel room again - maybe never.  I might have to put in a complaint about that, too.

So … who to choose next?   I think it has to be Judi Dench.  I admire her so much. She has a quick wit, a dry sense of humour, and despite her status as a Dame of the realm and a great actress, she seems very unassuming and sweet.  And she loves Billy Connolly - didn’t they do well together in Mrs Brown?  And who could forget her performance as ‘M’ in the Bond movies?  Oh, and the TV series ‘A Fine Romance’ would have been very ordinary without her, for sure.  Anyway, she is also very fond of Johnny Depp, having starred with him in Chocolat as the redoubtable Armande Voisin, and he is fond of her too, and that’s one of the things one needs to bear in mind when planning dinner parties, isn’t it?  Will the guests get along?

Let’s see: Me, OH, Johnny Depp, John Cusack, Walter Payton, Mariella Frostrup and Dame Judi Dench.  A well balanced table would need one more woman …  but it’s my fantasy dinner party and I can do what I like, so fuck it, I’m going to choose Leonard Cohen.  He can bring his guitar and sing to us.

Leonard Cohen has been a  hot topic among bloggers and friends just lately for some reason, and I’ve been reminded how much I love his music.  I dug out the CDs we have and played those, then I bought myself a new compilation album which included some tracks I’d never heard and I’m really enjoying it.   He always considered himself a poet first and a singer second, but he has a hypnotic voice and his songs are the kind which stay with you for a long time.  I always tell people I don’t much like poetry, but I love Leonard Cohen, so maybe I just like my poetry sung to me instead of recited.  Listen to the tragically lyrical Closing Time or the enigmatic Sisters of Mercy and tell me that’s not poetry.

So, there you are.  If you’d like to have a go at this one, here are the rules:

Pick 8 people you’d like to invite to dinner, dead or alive or re-animated/resurrected.
Say why
Link your answers back to the lovely Lottie
Give credit to the person who tagged you
Tag three others

I’m tagging Mr Nighttime, I’d Rather Be Blogging, and YellowSwordfish.  Tee hee.

Oh - and that pic up there? That’s me and No. 2 son doing the demanding baby and mind-boggling fatigue routine early in 1986.  I might even have been watching the Bears at the time that was taken.

Last night we took the family out to dinner to celebrate Son No. 1’s birthday.  We thought we’d go somewhere nice, and booked a table at The Falcon Inn at Fotheringhay, where Mary, Queen of Scots was beheaded.  No, no, she wasn’t beheaded in the restaurant, don’t be silly!  She was beheaded at Fotheringhay castle, long since razed to the ground and the stone used for village houses and outbuildings - it’s more or less just a bump in the ground these days.  I think her son did it … must have been pissed about something, I guess.

Anyway, we went to The Falcon for dinner, and very nice it was too, even if they didn’t have OH’s favourite whiskey and honey ice cream on the menu anymore.  The waitress took his little tantrum in good part and didn’t pour wine down his shirt or anything.  We suggested he might order vanilla ice cream, a shot of whiskey and a spoonful of honey, but he decided he’d rather sulk and ordered the Sticky Toffee Pudding instead.

But before that, while we were waiting for the dessert menu to arrive, I looked across the table and noticed that OH had lined up three carrot tops at the side of his plate, in front of the stringy part of the braised spring onions.

Me: You left your carrot tops!

OH: Mmm.

Me: You can eat those, you know.

OH: You can?

Me: Yes!  They’re baby carrots - you can eat all of them!

OH: But ..

Me: *Waits*

OH: But … they’re so ugly!

Well, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen.  If you take people to smart restaurants where they arrange food prettily on the plate with demi-glazes and jus and compôtes of this, that and the other, and heaven knows what else they’ve invented that we never used to eat,  sooner or later they get above themselves and won’t eat food that isn’t pretty.

And eventually it gets so bad that they even arrange their leftovers neatly!

Perhaps he was trying to impress the chef?

Whatever.  I think it’ll be the local ‘wooden spoon’ pub restaurant for us next time.  I think they trim their carrots there, and don’t bother with the fancy gravy.

Last year our local church decided to hold a September Harvest Fair on the church green.   We strolled along with the dogs to add our support to this new venture and to see what was doing, and it was quite fun - there were second hand books, there were homegrown veggies, there were plants and bric-a-brac and hand-crafted cards … and there were a few trade stalls selling honey, home-made fudge, and hot food.

Now, one of the hot food vendors was a local butcher, who with great business sense, had set up a barbecue and was selling his own produce - including venison burgers.  Sadly, we’d just eaten our midday meal, but the dogs’ eyes were nearly popping out of their heads and I was afraid they might actually choke on their own drool, so we bought a burger without onions and fed it to them.  And, needless to say, they enjoyed the experience immensely.

Today was this year’s Harvest Fair and once again, we decided to go along and take the dogs with us.  Almost as soon as we left the house, the dogs’ noses tilted upward and their pace quickened.  For once, they didn’t complain about heading into the village instead of over the fields.  They followed their noses right along the road, round the corner and behind the church, hardly bothering to stop and pee.  Did they remember?  I don’t know, but they don’t smell venison cooking that often!

So the dogs got their burger, and I’m willing to bet that next year they will know for sure that ‘Harvest Fair’ means ‘venison’.

It was a good afternoon - there was a display of vintage farm machinery and classic cars, and there was live music with a collection for the local Sue Ryder home, and a lot of village people were out there spending money and enjoying the sunshine.

People began drifting away from the festivities.  Among them, there was a family group.  There was a little girl of about three years old, her mother, three men, and her grandmother, who looked to be somewhere in her seventies.  Suddenly, the little girl broke away and started running along the pavement.  Her mother called out for her to stop, and her grandmother - who happened to be nearest - began to run after her, looking precarious in her smart shoes.   Little girl’s face lit up and she picked up the pace.  Granny started to fall behind, but ran gamely on.  Mum yelled again, and Little Girl ran faster, beaming from ear to ear.  Little Girl disappeared round the bend and Granny tottered after her - and Mum decided perhaps she should start running too.  Oh, well … better late than never!

But the interesting thing was that the three men in the group - none of whom could have been much past thirty-five - didn’t even bother to stop chatting, let alone give chase! I’d guess that any one of those trainer-clad guys could have caught that Little Girl without breaking a sweat, but instead they let poor Granny get her first cardio work-out in years!

Ah, well.  We mustn’t be too hard on them.  They were probably just too full of venison burger.

We went shopping for a few essentials today.

Strolling past the cereals aisle I asked OH if there was anything we needed.

OH: I don’t think so … I think we have enough cornflakes to last over the weekend.

Me: You sure?

OH: Yeah, we have enough.  They’ve gone a bit soft, that’s all.

Me: Well, pop them in the oven for a bit!

OH: Nnngehh.  I don’t want to do that.

Me: Why not?

OH: They’ll go hard.

Me: No, they won’t!  Not if you don’t leave them in too long!

*Three second silence*

OH:  Anyway … the box might catch fire.

You know, I’m convinced people come to Sainsbury’s at the same time as us just for the entertainment value.  They always seem to bring their kids, too - keeps them amused I guess.

It would explain why the damn place is always heaving when we get there.