My friends Geoff and Rachel met online. They were once anonymous people with names which existed in blogosphere only. Then one brave person within their blog community arranged a drinks night at a pub after work and that’s how they met. They eloped a few months later to Las Vegas and married, as you do. It’s a 21st century romance and they are a great couple. Geoff is a fiendishly good cook, who takes his food very, very seriously; Rachel is a hostess with élan and a wonderfully effortless way of including everyone and together they excel at Sunday Lunch.
The lovely thing about Sunday lunch is that it’s so unrestricted by schedules, deadlines, bedtimes, meetings, or the double-booking that so often besets a Saturday night. Once embarked upon, there is no rush. The invitation had said ‘from 12pm’ – we eventually started eating at 3. In the middle was the gentle ebb and flow of conversation, of shared wine, of laughter, of to-ing and fro-ing from the kitchen and the BBQ as first Geoff, and then his Mum, his sister, Rachel and myself took it in turns to stand in the kitchen with him and prepare various parts of the meal that we had contributed. What followed was a meal of rare roasted rib-eye of beef, some small perfectly risen and crispy Yorkshire puddings, roasted potatoes and parsnips, a huge pot of ratatouille, some good tasty gravy, and two beautifully made desserts. We ate in leisurely fashion, stopping between courses, allowing the conversation to pass all around us, solving the problems of the world.
As a British ex-pat I feel very proud of the Sunday lunch so beloved of my childhood. It was a one of the great touchstones of our family life, a solid marker in a busy week, one of the great communal rituals that defined the family’s relationship with their friends and loved ones. We lost this tradition once we moved to Australia – the climate doesn’t always suit a roast dinner during the middle of the day and my mother, not the most imaginative of cooks, simply elected to move Sunday lunch to Sunday dinner instead, where for the next three decades, you could visit her on a Sunday evening for a roast with the lot whenever you wanted.
Whiling away the hours in the afternoon sun, I got to thinking about the generosity of sharing a lunch with friends, family and loved ones. There’s a special gift in getting the right mix of guests to the table – you want conviviality, conversation, community, rather than silence or awkward pauses, or worse still a formal atmosphere that makes one Sit Up Straight in your chair. This is not the time or place to show off your skills by creating 10 course meals and tweaking everything down to the last detail: This is the best of informal occasions. Rather than being precious, accept the offer of some help, or a contribution to the table. Share the love and pass the gravy, and for goodness’ sakes, don’t worry about the time.
Thanks to my lovely friends, I have been inspired. It’s not even December but already I have a New Year’s Resolution – in 2010, once a month, I’m going to host a Sunday Lunch. I’m already putting together menus and the guests who would enjoy them. But mostly I’m looking forward to solving the problems of my world.