Weather today is sunny and warm.

Last night was a jolly evening with Richard and Louise Corrie in the Harness Room at the Hurlingham Club. The Corrie trademark laugh was to the fore. I had a rib eye steak. Usually do when I eat there.

Richard is from a big clan, not quite as big as the Wilmot’s though. He is one of 5, rather than one of 7. Feeding and accommodating large numbers of offspring requires military style organization. Routines evolve to the point that chores are done automatically by family members without the need to ask them. The Corries’ Sunday lunch was a case in point. After a leisurely breakfast, with every conceivable newspaper on offer to read (remember Hugh was a libel lawyer for the Mirror Group), preparation for lunch began in earnest. The table was laid in the dining room, not the conservatory, where breakfast had been taken. The roast had been put in some time earlier. An assembly line around the island formed to work away at the vegetables and pudding preparation, usually a crumble. Louise was a firm fan of rhubarb crumble. At 1pm, we all sat down to a banquet, with claret usually.

The Wilmots also had their unique rituals, which in my experience were rigid. Breakfast was at 8.30am on the dot in the kitchen, apart from Christmas, when it was in the dining room. It was usually cold oats with milk and brown sugar and toast. The tea of choice was Lapsang Souchong, a particularly fragrant tea from China. At 11am there was Elevenses. This was a cup of instant coffee with a basic biscuit, maybe shortbread. Mutti and Pops worked on the Times Crossword. At 1pm precisely, lunch was served in the kitchen, unless it was a special occasion, when it was taken in the dining room. This was the main meal of the day. There was a first class butcher, Coldbreaths, in Seal, near Stone House, and they supplied the meat for the clan. On Sunday, this was a roast. On other days, it was their trademark sausages or Mutti made something called a groundnut stew. If the latter, there were little dishes of nuts, raisins and coconut to sprinkle on top. I don’t remember anything other than crumble being served, with fruit from the orchard (frozen off season) or choc-ices. After lunch, instant coffee was again served with one chocolate each, no more. You knew that was your quota.

At 4.20pm, tea was served in the drawing room, unless it was summer and served outdoors. A double decker tea trolley was wheeled in. This was religiously scones, cut into triangles, and made with whole meal flour. They were as hard as bricks. The spread was jam or marmite. There would also be a cake. At 7pm, a light supper was served again on a trolley in the drawing room. Mutti kept an ongoing soup pot on the AGA. She just boiled it up and kept adding to it. I wondered if it was ever finished and the pan was washed up. I am not sure. Celery and carrot sticks were placed vertically in glasses. Cheese and biscuits were also on offer.

As you can see, there were a lot of meals, of limited variety, to navigate. Because a lot of the veg and fruit were home grown, its fibre content produced digestive challenges for me, if you know what I mean.

The big bore, was that there was no dishwasher. Mutti and Pops believed that washing up produced community; i.e., you chatted during the process. It seemed to me that when everybody was in residence, that all we did was eating and washing up. But they were happy times.

Today I have a meeting for the next Older Person’s concert. We have the cellist Guy Johnston performing.