Where has the week gone! I have crossed the border into 69 territory, the family gave me a fabulous genuine Indian Kadai Fire Pit and BBQ which will give lasting pleasure and the lockdown rules have been tempered somewhat. The car parks in the local Forestry England woods have been re-opened and the great unwashed have returned to enjoy the sprawling outdoors. The lunacy of closing them in the first place is clear for all to see; hundreds can gather there without any danger of passing within yards of anyone else and the efficacious nature of the exercise far outweighs whatever infinitesimal chance there is of contracting COVID. It was amusing to witness on opening day though, how the cars were neatly lined up at least two metres apart. Thank heavens Ford and BMW are familiar with the rules.
Whilst cogitating upon the vanity of human wishes this morning some rather good questions occurred to me for dinner table amusement, should we ever return to the aforementioned place of dining. Question 1: Assuming lockdown continues for a considerable period of time, who is the one person in the world that you would choose to get out and spend time with? Question 2: Assuming lockdown continues for a considerable period of time, who is the one person in the world that you would choose to get and spend time with, that you would be happy to admit to in front of your partner?! Question 3: Assuming lockdown continues etc etc, who is the one person in the world that you would choose to remain barricaded in for, to avoid any chance of meeting?
It would be totally unworthy of me to go public with my answer to any of those, added to which I would undoubtedly offend more than one person. Suffice to say, I suspect that those involved in the answers to questions one and two will probably know and there are no doubt any number of people who might think they qualify for question three.
During my thirty odd years of travelling the world and dining out with my colleagues from television, we have had innumerable lively and often quite heated debates, inevitably fuelled by a glass or three of generally fairly average and overpriced wine. One of the most memorable evenings though was in the Middle East when I posed this question, that demanded a totally honest response from each person in turn. Question: “How do you perceive yourself and how do you think others perceive you?” As you may imagine it produced some very interesting answers! An even more illuminating one, although not everyone was prepared to answer this, was: “How many skeletons do you have in the cupboard and what are they?!”. Most people were remarkably honest which made for some lurid and highly entertaining conversation. I suspect everyone was hoping that the rest were sufficiently drunk that they wouldn’t remember in the morning! One of our number quite genuinely felt he didn’t have any skeletons. He’s either a helluva good liar or very boring.
Tomorrow is the 50th birthday of an old friend of mine who definitely qualifies as one of my many skeletons. Her wife’s brother is the father of her child. It’s a tangled web……
ADayInTheStrifeOf 