On reimagining the joy of dinner parties

A small handful of events and thoughts came together for me early this week. As a result, I have found myself trawling my memory bank and remembering the pleasure of the dinner party. In no particular order, those events and thoughts were, the publication of obituaries to Jim Haynes; the 2021 Burns Night; reading an excellent article about touch and mental health by Eleanor Morgan and my weekly peer through the metaphorical window to the FT’s fantasy dinner party.

Haynes was an extraordinary man. He made a life in Edinburgh and Paris after arriving with the USAF and founded the Traverse Theatre. He was very involved in folk and drama and organised the two ‘Wet Dream Film Festivals’ in 1970/71, in Amsterdam. The obituaries cover his counter-culture contributions and his peripatetic life. If you do not recognise his name – enjoy the read. He did settle, though, and made Paris his home and earned a fresh reputation – this time as the father and godfather of social networking.

Pre-internet Haynes was convinced of the merits of human connectivity. Talk to a stranger. Whilst teaching Media Studies and Sexual Politics at the University of Paris, he made it his habit to have an open house style dinner party every Sunday. He led the way in connecting strangers, long before we outsourced it all to Silicon Valley.

As a BBC tribute noted “Absolutely anyone was welcome to come for an informal dinner, all you had to do was phone or email and he would add your name to the list. No questions asked. Just put a donation in an envelope when you arrive. There would be a buzz in the air, as people of various nationalities – locals, immigrants, travellers – milled around the small, open-plan space. A pot of hearty food bubbled on the hob and servings would be dished out on to a trestle table, so you could help yourself and continue to mingle.”

In Morgan’s piece about touch and the therapeutic benefit of a hug I was thinking about how my own life as a London singleton, but also that of many of my friends, has been affected by lockdown. Social connectivity is important. It is the antidote to the polarisation that is created and manipulated by unscrupulous social and political leaders. It gets harder to hate someone with whom you have shared ten minutes conversation, heard their story and exchanged a handshake or a hug.

But why did I think particularly, of a dinner party? After all, they tend to be fairly modest in scale and can have a slightly snobbish class tone about them. In Steve McQueen’s recently shown brilliant series of ‘Small Axe’ films, the partying is bigger and embraces the notion of the open door and meeting strangers. Perhaps I should be thinking more about larger gatherings. But the intimacy is part of the joy. At a large party, it is possible to not really get to know anyone. At a dinner party, it is quite difficult to avoid an interaction with anyone. And I think I like that. Maybe it is just that if we are going to have another ‘Roaring Twenties’ decadent party period, I know mine will be of the more subdued style, befitting a man uncomfortably aware how much closer he is to his sixties than to when he turned fifty.

Obviously, it is easy to be wistful now, but dinner parties are special events. Friendships are forged, romances are started, relationships are developed and intimate life events get shared as the alcohol flows. I love the greetings – invariably an embrace, a proper hug. I love the conversation, often quite shallow as the guests decide what is right for the company and then increasingly deeper dives into particular issues or themes. I love how the genders usually split pre-food, perhaps a kind of social confidence-build, but also giving some space to the boy-girl table plan. Loving the food goes without saying, although the best dinner parties are about the company.

The wines are important. I am quite an oenophile and in my pretentious youth I went on tasting courses and built a half-decent cellar. I became focused on wine and food pairing. I am not sure, these days, that it made a difference to the guests’ enjoyment, but I liked making the effort. When I am the guest, though, I am often as impressed by the volume of the wines and the generosity of the host, as I am by the refinement of the vintages and the pairings.

So, as I thought about Haynes, and about social occasions and touch, I was preparing for a Burns Night without company. There are few occasions in my calendar that demand company and hearty food and free flowing alcohol quite like a Burns Night. 2021 was rather different. It did allow me, though to slip back in time to previous years. Whilst my family was growing up I tended to avoid formal Burns Night occasions. As I am a Burns but not a Scot, my wife and I started to host a southerner’s ‘alternative Burns Night’ with our local friends. The Selkirk Grace and Ode to a Haggis were recited and everyone was dressed in tartans. One especially fine year a friend had revealed that he played the bagpipes and so he piped in the haggis in our north Essex home.

I thought about some of the other memorable dinner parties that I have enjoyed. I maintain that the company is what one recalls, more than the food and the wine. I remember being invited to a small west London flat for one evening and being sat next to an attractive blonde woman. She became my eldest’s godmother and has been one of my loveliest and most important friendships over the last thirty-plus years.

When I first started work most of my peers were older than me, as they were graduates and I was an A level school leaver. I was impressed by their alcohol consumption, their smoking, their wit and their yuppie appetite for hard work and success. One, who became my best friend, had spent a year in France as part of his degree. He hosted great parties. His cooking had great panache. I could not conceive how one could cook such tasty food without needing a cookbook to follow. But the French-living inspiration and plenty of garlic meant his was an example I wanted to follow. I later spent a brief period as his lodger. It cost me just an occasional turn as sous-chef and one case of wine. The best value accommodation London has ever given.

Sometimes it is not new people that one gets to know but new foods. I went to a dinner party hosted by the parents of a girl in my eldest’s prep school class. It was a very generous thought to bring some of the parents together. Amongst the vegetables that were served was okra, commonly known as lady’s fingers, in England. New to me. Fortunately, I liked it, but I was totally absorbed by what the right etiquette would be if I did not like it.

I have broad tastes in food, for which I am thankful, but one thing I cannot abide is parsnips – a legacy of being force-fed one school lunchtime, I think. I recall going to one dinner party of newish school parents and being served cream of parsnip soup. Valiantly I finished it. Unfortunately, I did so well my hostess insisted I had a second bowl. I am sure I missed out on an evening of good conversation as I was focusing all my mental energy on making sure I would not throw up.

I had the good fortune, or perhaps it was wisdom, to marry a woman who is a superb cook. We hosted a number of dinners in our homes, but she surprised me on my 40^th. I was shepherded off to the golf course by a friend so that children, wife and some friends transformed our home, so that the drawing room could accommodate three rows of tables, whilst she produced an incredible meal for tens of guests. We drank Yquem with the fois gras and with our pudding. I think we had lamb with a red burgundy for the main course, but it is a bit of a blur. What I do recall is the intense pleasure of sharing food and conversation with so many good friends. Of evenings or times that I would like to replicate in my life, that ranks high.

Some dinner parties start uneasily and end up feeling like the relationship has moved from colleague or acquaintance to friendship in just a couple of hours. One of my team at my last employer hosted a dinner party after I had successfully recruited someone to join us. The three couples chatted easily, helped because his wife has a business and a degree in Art History. The man I had recruited to our sales team was a linguist and a deep thinker on all issues political, economic and social. He was also keenly aware of his Jewish heritage and faith came up conversationally, as did lots of witticisms. The evening was to welcome him and for my host to have me, as his boss, in a social environment. It could have been quite stilted, but I recall conversation flowing around the table easily and very much enjoying it, helped by the host’s great generosity with the wine selection.

Another dinner party was hosted by a boss of mine who had recruited me to join his managerial team. Once again it could have been quite a strained occasion as work environment hierarchies are often difficult to drop outside of the office. We got on, but where we had things in common, such as football, we had differences. (I have always found it challenging to converse with a Gooner!). What I recall from this evening was him and his wife being exceptionally generous, but also that he cooked. It was an opportunity to reveal the ‘real him’, the man outside the office suit, and that takes some doing. Opening up one’s home, one’s marriage and oneself is a huge act of trust and a show of a potential vulnerability. I think about that whenever I am being treated to dinner in someone’s home.

We knew one couple when I lived out in the sticks, who had moved even further out to south Suffolk and bought an amazing pile of a property. They were putting it through a remarkable and expensive rebuild and transformation. Let’s call them the ‘D’s’. In their previous home, we had enjoyed great and noisy dinner parties. Being further out meant, I think, their need to entertain, to be surrounded by friends, was sharpened. When I look back at dinner parties that were memorable, I often find myself in their beautifully refurbished dining room, having emerged from a rebuilt and stocked cellar and having the most fabulous evenings.

Another I remember was a New Year’s Eve Murder Mystery dinner party. We were expected to have read up on our characters and to come ‘in role’ and suitably attired to convey the character we were in. I invariably say I don’t like fancy dress or acting, yet I have enjoyed every party that has required some character transformation. This brings me to some closing thoughts as I start to imagine dinner parties I will have in future. The FT publishes a ‘Fantasy Dinner Party’ description and guest list selected by one of its writers each week. I find myself enjoying this imaginary dining as much as I love their long running ‘real’ series of “Lunch with the FT” interviews. It is a classic ‘dinner party game’ really. Just like picking one’s Desert Island Discs – it can provide hours of contentious debate and amused reaction.

I am going to close with a description of my guest list. My aim is noisy conversation and a willingness to engage with what we need to all enjoy our lives better in C21. I like opinionated women to share my food and wine with, and so I want Margaret Thatcher to opine about “no such thing as society” and get her to debate it with James Baldwin, the most eloquent of guests and Martin Luther King, the most resolute. My love is people. What makes them tick? Why do we respond as we do? Psychology and psychoanalysis. Consequently, I want an actor to explain about adopting character and a novelist to explain how one designs it. I admire so many actors, but I choose Kristen Scott Thomas, the subject of a long standing crush.

Designing characters is a toss-up between Tolstoy and Dickens and I have gone home-grown because I want to ask about the east London he knew, compared with the same postcodes today, where I live. To complete I think we need someone who understood that life is multi-streamed, that we have many interests, not just a work role, what he called a ‘hinterland’. He is Dennis Healey, a man whose piano-playing on a Parkinson episode and whose books completely transformed my understanding of a man, when I had seen him as just a ‘failed’ Chancellor supporting ‘failed left wing politics’ and begging the IMF on our country’s behalf. I came to see him as an internationalist, a brilliant musician and of course, quite a war hero. It was a good lesson – we do not have to share opinions with people to be able to admire them. He can play us some music at the end of the conversations. Perhaps I will share the report of the dinner soon.

Old fashioned or new fashioned, dinner parties are a joy and I look forward to hosting some and being invited to others, once we tame the virus.

On Simple Pleasures

Are there any greater pleasures than freshly squeezed orange juice consumed near where the organs are grown?

Free men must live simple lives and have simple pleasures – William Morris

August has been a month of rest for me. In my investment banking career, it was the time when the majority took their annual leave, which had recently become regulation-determined, as a forced fortnight absence. I tended to prefer to be part of the skeleton staff in these periods, to take my rest at other times in the year, often to build my energy or restore it for the annual remuneration or review rounds. Now that my focus is on studying and training my calendar has changed.

As September starts I share with many that sense of newness, freshness and energy. I know many people who regard this as more of a new beginning than the start of the calendar year. They tend to make their resolutions now, and in many cases, seem better at keeping them than the January crowd. As the nights start to draw in, reflections are considered and plans are made or revised. Fresh beginnings coincide with a new academic year, which is why most of my September resolution friends associate this month with newness.

One of the things that rested in August, for me, was my face. I went unshaven for most of the month. Yesterday I took myself off to the barber in Cable Street and had a proper clean up. Even before I succumbed to the pleasure of hot towels, I was in reflective mood. A leisurely shave and haircut, other than taking me back to watching “Barber Shop Chronicles” last month, helped my thoughts meander, and my reflections gain significance.

It is a particularly delicious sensation, at least to me, to have a sharp clean blade, expertly handled, worked across one’s face. The coldness of the steel after the warmth of the towels and the fragrance of the soaps, combine to make one’s sensations particularly acute. The physical sensation is pleasant, but something about the silent concentration of the barber and the prone position one is in, work to allow one’s mind to roam, not unalike the psychoanalyst’s couch.

Simple pleasures are the last healthy refuge in a complex world – Wilde

I started to think about how much I was enjoying what is a very simple pleasure, and one that is little changed by fashion or technology. As I lay back and relished the sensation, I thought more about the many simple pleasures that had come my way in the past month. As I did, I wondered whether my sense of appreciation is heightened, or whether it was just the consequence of my age, or perhaps it demonstrated some wisdom. I spent some of my August in Europe, traveling by train and ferry. Whilst I was away I remember being struck by a couple of simple pleasures on a day in Barcelona.

The goal to which the Pleasure Principle impels us – of becoming happy – is not attainable; yet we may not – nay, cannot – give up the efforts to come nearer to realisation of it by some means or other – Freud

Simple pleasures are small peaks of pleasurable experience. They are not to be confused with any satisfaction of Freud’s Pleasure Principle. The Pleasure Principle is about satisfying the driving force of the id. About satisfying the primal urges of thirst, hunger, and anger. The id is the most animalistic part of one’s persona. The Pleasure Principle is the requirement for immediate gratification of one’s most basic wants and urges, and when these are not met it results in anxiety and tension. Maturity sees the ego control the anti-social elements of satisfying the id, employing what Freud described as the Reality Principle.

I place flowers in the very first rank of simple pleasures; and I have no very good opinion of the hard, worldly people who take no delight in them. – Mary Mitford

Simple pleasures are not like that. They are incidental and especially satisfying because they are not driven by an urge, but merely enhance whatever one is doing, or thinking, at that time. Mary Mitford’s observations about flowers are charming, but looking at flowers is not a primal urge. My first Barcelona simple pleasure was freshly squeezed orange juice. I am not a great consumer of fruit juices, but I think there are few greater pleasures than freshly squeezed oranges, when one is in a location close to where the oranges are grown. Only ice-cold water after a tough gym session, or at the courtside after a tough tennis or squash match, has such a heady and exceptional sensation. I am including the finest wines, cognacs, and whiskies that I have drunk. As I thought about this and felt the coolness of the after shave applied to my clean face, I realised I had had several instances of simple pleasures over the past few weeks.

On my first Barcelona morning, after I had had a coffee and croissant looking at boats and water at Port Vell, I walked back to my hotel. As I stood at a pedestrian crossing I was joined by a guy in lycra on his very smart looking bike. He had a sort of bandana thing protecting his pate from the sun, but I could see most of his face and I judged that he may be around 70. His body was lean and toned and tanned and he soon pushed off and quickly built up a decent speed. I thought about him and about the whole ‘health is wealth’ mantra. Taking care of one’s physical health and enjoying it are simple pleasures. I realised that he was so fit that his face may have misled me and he was probably even older than seventy. He did make me appreciate the good health I have enjoyed in my first fifty-five years despite long hours, the miseries of commuting and an alcohol consumption that is above what doctors would describe as a ‘recommended intake’.

Good wet shave. Orange juice. Ice cold drinking water. Health. I thought about what else August had taught me. One was the simple pleasure of browsing. I am as bad as the next man, probably worse, in exhibiting my impatience and in my inability to smell any coffees or roses, but to plough on in a rush to get to my next appointment, or complete my next task. One of the things about taking the Eurostar to Europe is that one is forced to take time because of the instructions to be at St Pancras hours before the train and then to be told that one cannot board until the queue for the earlier trains is absorbed. Fortunately, there is Foyles branch on the concourse. I can think of few greater pleasures than perusing book shelves in the knowledge that time is not an issue.

Books are obviously one of life’s simple pleasures. The need for books can hardly be said to be satisfying the id, but try to imagine a world without books. How maddening and depressing would that be? Amongst my holiday reading was Diane Evans’s “Ordinary People.” There is majesty and anguish in how she paints the pictures of relationship changes amongst two couples. When one couple tries to restore some magic to their relationship on a date night, the husband just cannot understand where the love he once had returned to him by his wife, has gone, and that it may never return. It is brilliantly written. I would imagine over 80% of couples have those ‘does he/she love me, and did he/she ever love me?’ moments.

…simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing. – Jerome K Jerome

On the subject of relationships: Family is a simple pleasure. Obviously family can be the root of any number of strains and stresses too, but it is a love that is so profound that it is rarely well described. When I returned to the UK I had a day in the sun at the Kent coast with my youngest and her boyfriend. Their company, and seeing the affection they have for each other is a great pleasure for a dad. Combined with sea air, pebble beaches, shell fish stalls and ice cream parlours, I realised I was being overloaded with gifts. Time with one’s children is truly special. I am about to get quite intimately involved with other people’s children through an Infant Observation programme as part of my training. To be accepted into someone’s home at such an important, intimate and private time is a privilege as well as a pleasure.

There is little that gives children greater pleasure than when a grown-up lets himself down to their level, renounces his oppressive superiority and plays with them as an equal – Freud.

Shortly after my beach trip, my parents moved home after about forty years in the previous address. I drove to the new address and helped them unpack boxes, whilst the removals firm did most of the hard work. At the end of the day, glasses charged with some very acceptable grape juice, my mother’s smile and thanks and farewell hug, filled me up with happiness. I did not feel that I had done much during the day, but being appreciated by people you love is a simple pleasure, and also a very deep and affecting pleasure. What we had done, as well as getting some light tasks completed, was to share something – in this case, time.

I realise that sharing is one of life’s greatest, simple pleasures. Last week I watched the film ‘Inna Da Yard’ about Jamaica, its music and its musicians. As the musicians come together to record there is a scene of them sharing a meal. It is simple; mainly rice and fish, and one can almost inhale the flavours when sat in the cinema. Sharing food, which is near impossible to do without sharing conversation, is one of those simple pleasures that I have come to value as highly as anything. Food preparation, for people you care about, and then its consumption touches us in all sorts of positive and beneficial ways.

I joined a group of my fellow Birkbeck students at the weekend for a meal in the West End. I had been invited by a friend, but the remaining eight guests were new to me. It was a very international gathering with a couple of tri-lingual guests and mainly bi-lingual guests. My linguistic ineptitude, which I had been very conscious of in Europe earlier in the month became apparent once more. But what struck me was the breadth of ages, skills and upbringings around the table. This was less about food and more about sharing experiences. And it was joyous.

I recently gave lunch to a friend of mine. I met her during my Playwriting Course at the National Theatre. We have reached a point of sharing writing ideas and persuading each other to persevere. I thought about the sharing in our exchanges. I think she is extraordinarily gifted. I love reading her scenes, and that she thinks I am equipped to advise her on improvements. I read them and feel that they rarely need anything, whereas she kindly reads my words and gently edits them and asks good question about the characters’ motivations. This is a really pleasant form of artistic sharing and extremely generous. What we are sharing is advice, although my impression is she needs little. Therefore, the sharing exchange is unbalanced. She is being more generous than me, and accepting someone else’s generosity is a very great, and simple pleasure.

As I walked home from my haircut and shave I thought about the pleasure of walking. At the weekend I had walked from Wapping to Bloomsbury and back, to attend a lecture at my university. The sun had been out and I had walked along loving and admiring London’s landmarks, The Tower, The Monument, Mansion House, St Paul’s and then cutting down Grays Inn Road and across to Russell Square. As I walked I listened to a podcast, an FT interview with George The Poet. Housing Project to Cambridge, rapping to Royal Wedding, he has had some journey. I loved how I could share in his wordsmith skills as I did something as simply pleasurable as walk through my beautiful city. Great journalism, great broadcasting, great conversation and I knew my mind had been broadened.

I did not intent this blog piece to sound smug, and I fear it may be starting to do so, but I do think August was important to me for reminding me about simple pleasures. I have pursued and enjoyed some quite materialistic goals in the past and this has been a good and reflective period for me. As I get ready for resuming both my studies and my training, I am excited about seeing many of my student friends and acquaintances, just as returning to school will be exciting many children. In my schooldays, I resented the learning experience, and could not wait to leave education. Now I think that learning may be the greatest, simple pleasure. It can be done at leisure and there is never a time when one does not stop learning.

Identifying and enjoying simple pleasures may be something to do with the current trends in Mindfulness, but it may simply be what happens to a man when he hits his mid-50’s and finally thinks about the pace of his life and acquires a little wisdom. Whatever it is. I hope everyone is getting something out of some simple pleasure today and in the coming weeks and months.