This Is Not A
BLOG!
Date: 13/12/19
Cherish The Important Things
As indicated here, it was off this afternoon to the Pant Yr Ochain for the team's Christmas meal.
George Melly apparently once said that a sign of growing old was when you stopped doing things for the first time, and started doing things for - one assumes - the last time. If it's not necessarily advancing age which creates such a scenario, then the aperçu can be made manifest by any situation where imminent closure is assured.
The 'imminent closure' in this case being literally the truth as, in about six months' time, there will be no team to dine with.
I'm sure that this was in the subconscious of all of us as we had a most convivial and amusing afternoon, along with superb food. My own choices were:
- Parnsip and apple soup; I hadn't originally intended having a starter, but in the end I thought, "Why the hell not?"
- Grilled seabass fillets with potato and shallot terrine, chervil (which I've just had to look up to find out what it was I ate) and lemon cream sauce; the fish was done just about perfectly, with the skin crisp without being carbonised, as it tends to be when I pan-fry salmon at home
- Dark chocolate, cranberry and orange roulade with orange sorbet; I nearly failed at this point, but managed manfully to finish
Sitting there, taking it all in (I am a camera; certainly a better one than the one on my phone, which blurs everything because I don't have steady hands), I pondered that this is what really matters; the relationships we have, the friendships we establish. These are the things which connect us, which ground us, which support us. In the face of gloom, disillusionment and despair, these are the things which hold us close.
So thanks to Julie (still The Boss!), Myra, Clare (aka Lady G-force; those Audi TTs pack a fair old thrutch), Kev, Sharon, Helen, Siân, Nikki and Andrea for a final sumptuous occasion (and with a shout out to Margaret, who couldn't make it from the mountain fastnesses of Montgomeryshire). We've come a long way together.
(Oh, and apparently something happened yesterday which I might write about shortly, if I can create a more meaningful response to it than a howl of despair).
