The return of indoor dining is a gentle sign that happier days could soon be with us
One Sunday last month, a group of us met for lunch in a friend’s garden. She had ordered in the most perfectly flaky sausage rolls (from Sally Clarke), and another friend had put together a fancy salad with asparagus, croutons and garlic flowers; someone else had made old-fashioned ice-cream sandwiches using ginger biscuits instead of wafers, each one of which he’d wrapped in greaseproof paper like a total pro. It was all delicious, but as we talked and drank (and drank) I kept thinking of Freda, the Blue Peter tortoise, waking up after her long winter hibernation in front of the cameras. Our gathering was a bit like that: an emergence that was slightly stumbling at first and then, as the hours ticked by, ever more assured. It was good to be together again. I sometimes think happiness may only be fully registered retrospectively. Not on this day, though. It rose inside me, warm and fierce, to the point where I almost forgot to have thirds.
But my God, it was cold. Ducking inside to use the loo, I looked at C’s collection of green-spined Virago paperbacks, wondering if Frost in May, Antonia White’s 1933 classic of convent school life, was among those on the shelf. Frost in bloody May. I’ve taken the recent cold snap – it might be over by the time you read this, but then again, it might not – as a personal insult, a meteorological crime against all that is civilised and hopeful.
Will I be able, in just a few hours’ time, to reveal a blanched ankle to my fellow diners without risk of chilblains?
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