The most enjoyable entertainment for many a day took place on 25 October to raise funds for the Village Hall Extension. Peter Gardiner, and other literary villagers, performed an evening of poetry dedicated to Memorable Meals. As the title implies, this was no coffee-and-biscuits evening: Jessie West insisted that the performance should chime with a slap-up supper, with the readings interspersed between courses.
She produced — in her inimitable way — a delicious three-course menu for 50 people: olives, piquant peppers and breaded mushrooms for hors d’oeuvre; Ox tongue, Ham, Salami Sausage, Chicken Elizabeth, Caesar salad, French beans and hot Rosemary potatoes as Main course, and Heavenly pumpkin pie with cream (made by Maggie Maytham) for Dessert.
Peter kicked off with an Invitation to Supper by Ben Jonson, adapted to include pumpkin pie. Charmian Whitmell read Virginia Woolf’s Sole and Partridge, then became the Dormouse in Lewis Carroll’s Mad Hatter’s Tea Party with Geoff Summers and Hilary and Simon Powell.
Geoff read a puke-making Jerome K. Jerome sketch on the contents of an Irish Stew (Alfresco). Later with alarming gusto he performed a prose item called Rat, from Dan Mannix’ Memoirs of a Sword Swallower. With tremendous verve Malcolm Wright read Lawrence Durrell’s story about an ambassador who swallowed a moth at an Embassy Dinner. Hilary Powell — in ankle-length velvet overcoat and feather boa — read Hilaire Belloc’s Little Bits of String.
Then Geoff narrated Damon Runyon’s short story about a piece of Pumpkin Pie and Peter performed a rousing finale with Louis Simpson’s Chocolates — accompanied by a box of Thornton’s mints.
Sarah Tenant-Flowers provided background music, including The Vegetables by the Beach Boys, in which they scrunched carrots and Cab Calloway’s Everybody Eats When They Come to My House. Carol Hall hung a set of school pictures on The Art of Dining around the walls. £477 was made through the sale of tickets and a Raffle, run by Celia Summers.
C.H.