Let's Eat!

          Celebratory meals: I love them. Mind you, these days they are complicated as never before, what with the rise in popularity of non-meat diets and the seeming epidemic of allergic reactions to foodstuffs, not to mention the requirements of diverse religious cultures: from my omnivorous perspective, I can’t help but have sympathy for long-suffering caterers. Last week, I enjoyed three very different celebratory meals and got to compare the ways in which chefs cope.

          The first was at a local community centre, where the vibe was all about connecting neighbours and building social networks. The catering team, as well as serving up food for functions, does a lot of voluntary work, feeding homeless people. Their solution to satisfying a diversity of palates was to give us vegan food. I suppose, even within that range of edibles, there might be something that someone can’t eat – slimy aubergines, perhaps – but they got around that by offering a choice of main dishes. Their cheap-and-cheerful, canteen-style, bring-your-own-booze dinner set us all in a good mood and ready for the entertainment that followed – poetry, an informative talk and live music by a band severely depleted by Covid, but undaunted, nevertheless.

          Next up was my delayed birthday meal, ‘a deux’, at a favourite local restaurant. Here, the chef has devised a clever way of coping with picky diners. The fixed-price, “trust the chef” menu allows you to choose vegetarian, fish or meat for each of your individual courses and then see what turns up. And though you might make the same choices as your partner, you may not be presented with the same dish. At a stroke, the chef has toned down the stress of choosing and added a dash of excited anticipation to the evening, notwithstanding ‘trust’ being an essential ingredient.

          But my birthday euphoria was knocked into perspective a few days later by another of life’s landmark events: a funeral, that of 94-year-old Derrick, who was in good health until, suddenly, he wasn’t. The sadness of his death was mitigated by the fact that he suffered little in the process and so his passing was tearful rather than tragic, which was reflected in the affectionate, personal, non-religious ceremony preceding his cremation. Derrick was my brother-in-law’s dad, so I got to know and like him, over time, at family gatherings. Being, therefore, in a state of semi-detachment, I had the capacity during the ceremony to ponder certain things, such as the small number of future birthday meals I could reasonably expect to enjoy. I hope I don’t develop any allergies in the meantime.

          It was then I noticed a ladybird crawling up the leg of the chair in front of me. Sluggishly, as if just awakened by the winter sun, it reached the top of the backrest and paused to consider its options, one of which was to make its way into the coiffure of the chair’s occupant, one of Derrick’s granddaughters. I was thinking about how to avert an incident by somehow distracting the creature when, suddenly, it took flight and landed lightly on the granddaughter’s head. She hadn’t noticed but I felt compelled to act, leaned forward and whispered, “Don’t be alarmed, but there’s a bug on your hair. I’m going to knock it off.” She jumped. The bug flew onto my head whereupon my neighbour, who must have observed all this without letting on, adroitly scooped it from my hair and deposited it, gently, into the aisle. I’m not sure how many celebrants observed this mini-drama, but I like to think it was a sort of parable about how life goes on.

          Which it does. The third celebratory meal was at the wake in the pub, where a tasty buffet was laid on. It was a little meat-heavy (we were in deepest rural Lincolnshire, after all), but a buffet equals choice – unless you’re one of those who piles their plate high with a bit of everything. A wake is an uplifting conclusion to a funeral, giving everyone an opportunity to take heart in being alive. Still, it’s sad to think that one will never be present at one’s own, final celebratory meal.