..shaped. Firstly came the issue of who should be invited. The number of elders has not changed; in fact it has sadly decreased by one since last year, but the number of children and grandchildren has grown, if not exponentially, at least arithmetically. We are unique amongst the group in only having the one daughter and she and her best friend are counted as elders, not because they are both lawyers but, more probably, because I get the seafood. Two other married children of another set of elders are included because they are both somehow more mature and also the offspring of the occupier of the particular campsite where we all congregate.
Firstly, and most grievously, the newly widowed single objected to the fact that none of his children were invited and that therefore he would feel more alone than he wanted to be in his still-existent grief. With the usual skill of beach-going Australians this was handled with such delicacy and tact that he went home to have Easter by himself.
Then things really went downhill. Two people got influenza and were confined to bed. Another couple decided that they didn’t eat calamari, octopus or squid and would bring their own food. Strangely calamari, octopus or squid were not part of the recipe.
However, my wife declared that if anchovies were part of the ingredients she for one would not eat any. So much for the recipe and our harmonious domestic relations.
But the almost fatal blow came when somehow a decision was reached, in the face of every weather forecast predicting that the weather would change for the worse in the late afternoon, to move the event from lunchtime to evening. Perhaps we all were led astray by the clear skies and large bone-crushing surf?
At the appointed time for us to assemble the change arrived with gale force winds and intermittent heavy rain sweeping horizontally across the camping ground. Rain ran across the ground 15cms deep carrying small children and cars away. Undeterred we harnessed our resources. Tarpaulins were gathered, stretched, lashed and pegged out by a team whose experience had earned them the soubriquet of Big Top Constructions.
We gathered with our ‘nothing over twenty dollar’ vintage wine collection, only to have the eldest of the party immediately hustled off with the first signs of hypothermia or dementia. The party was diminishing in number quickly, but the hardy were not to be deterred and sparkling wine bottles were uncorked only to see the liquid miss the glasses as the wind blew the wine out horizontally in a stream into the darkening storm.
After a rushed course of canapés the main course was delivered to the shivering throng for rushed consumption as they held the shelter’s sides and roof down so that they wouldn’t emulate the passengers of the Titanic and be lost at sea. In fact it was probably more like sailing around the Horn in a windjammer with icy winds and sails being blown out. The noise was deafening and the conditions like those experienced by an underpaid merchant sailor of the nineteenth century.
In summary: a good time was had by all. We won’t do it this way ever again.