Synopsis
Book by Konig Rita
Extrait
Playing Hostess
Inviting people to your home is really the very best thing. Whether they are dropping in for a drink or two or coming to stay for a long weekend or a week, there can be nothing better -- except perhaps that feeling you get when you have entertained them so successfully that they are asking when they can come again before they have even left.
This chapter is about how to be around your friends in your home when you are entertaining, parts of which are really easy and parts of which are really hard. Among the latter, I would include coming out with your prerecorded "Oh, that old thing, don't even think about it, it couldn't matter less. Just let me clear away those shards of Murano glass so you don't cut yourself." This follows the smashing of your absolutely favorite piece of frightfully expensive glass by some clot in your house and you would secretly be delighted if she did cut herself on it. It is also about not panicking when the oven blows up and there are eigh-teen hungry faces looking at you and it is 10:30 at night.
It does leave you wondering why on earth you would ever want to put yourself through playing hostess. But you really do, because having your friends around your kitchen table is one of the best things in life. Try to remembe: they are not the enemy, they are your friends. By entertaining, you live in your house to the full. It creates an atmosphere the likes of which nothing else can, and it allows you to hang out with your friends in your own environment. Inviting people to eat at your table is the ultimate way to seal a friendship, as offering people food and drink when they come to your door is one of the most basic customs of hospitality. I don't offer every Jehovah's Witness and door-to-door salesman who rings my bell a glass of wine and a snack, but I do love the idea that my door is always open. If you follow this route you are rewarded in the end because somebody really interesting will cross your threshold that you would never normally have met, or two people may easily meet and fall in love in your house -- and be engaged the following week! That happened here once after someone called and asked if he could bring a friend. Your guests won't always be fabulous, though -- you will have to feed a few freeloaders before you find a cracker.
The perfect hostess (urrrrrrgh)
Okay, so she sounds like hell, but that is actually Margot from the Good Neighbors, who I love, but for her ridiculousness. She is not a perfect hostess because she is too filled with affectations through her own insecurities and so makes everyone around her feel on edge. To my mind, the perfect hostess makes everything seem like it is a total breeze (but does scream when she burns herself on the oven door), is delighted that the house is full of people, nothing is a bother, she remembers to have a laugh, remains your friend, doesn't turn into some extraordinary form of Stepford woman -- and is quite laissez-faire about her guests. There are all sorts of different occasions for practicing one's hostessly duties. Here are my favorites.
Tuesday night dinner
Tuesday night is reason enough to have people over: there is nothing on TV, you are neither at the beginning of the week nor even in the middle. It is quite simply the dullest day. Ship in the entertainment, invite friends over and don't worry too much about how many you ask -- people always flake out at the last minute.
For this sort of dinner I would probably invite one person who will set the date and from then on I will ricochet around town inviting anyone I fancy. I will also go through my e-mail list and have a good look for anyone I haven't seen for a while and would like to have over. Whacking out a few e-mails is fun, it ensures contact and means you don't have to have a conversation. Then on the Tuesday, you call the people that you mentioned it to to check they are coming. At this point I have to declare my trump card, which is that I have a wonderful Italian friend living in London who loves cooking decent pasta. I have been known to plant him in my kitchen with all the ingredients that he requested.
You can't be too haphazard without a backup plan, but even if you don't have one specifically, it will always be fine as long as the people you invite are fun. So: pasta, salad, plenty of wine and some chocolate cake and coffee for pudding. When you overinvite you have to be prepared for some people to sit at the table and others to sit on the sofa. This works best when most people know each other. It is really scary going to a house when you don't recognize many people and you have to pluck up the courage to go and sit next to someone you don't really know. You also don't necessarily have the opportunity to go and sit next to someone you have never met before unless someone organizes it, or you are very forthcoming.
More organized or formal dinners
There are times when you do want to be more Duchess of Windsor in your approach to entertaining and less Château Chaos. I keep meaning to do this but never quite get around to it. Don't ever be afraid of asking new people and keeping it to a number that fits around the table. When you want to do this, you just have to work out carefully who else you are going to ask.
I have found the most entertaining and successful groups are when you get a bunch of people where everyone knows someone but no one knows everyone; it keeps them on their toes and it is more interesting. But you can't just put totally random groups round a table and be surprised when you get hideous silences. It is also a lot of pressure to put yourself under: juggling people, conversation and food all at one time is quite something.
You will know you have got the mix right when any of your guests makes friends with another at your house. Never get jealous or annoyed -- rejoice in your genius hostessing skills.
Weekend lunches
The luxury of lunches at the weekend is that they can go on for hours and hours, because you never have to be anywhere in the afternoon, or even the next day, the way you do when you are at dinner midweek. The thing that I love about these lunches are sofas and newspapers combined with a very good Bloody Mary -- think about actually mixing Bloody Shames (no vodka!) and then adding the vodka to taste. Everyone can really hang out and relax, and it is the time that I find I do, too, much more than when I am panicking about getting dinner ready.
For lunch I think you can have things that are heavier to eat and so easier to prepare than at dinner. Shepherd's pie, lasagne or osso bucco are all delicious, but your heart sinks at the idea of eating this sort of thing at night (my heart sinks anytime I am expected to eat stew), which means that everyone is also more likely to get excited by the idea of dessert, too. Let the afternoon ramble on, and then you can either end up at the movies or go for a long walk.
I feel it is very important that walkers are met with a good tea when they get back. Inevitably they will have been rained on and are likely to return home soaked to the bone. So they want to walk in the house and be met with a very large teapot and hot buttered crumpets, which means that somebody has to forfeit the walk to provide this essential end-of-the-day ritual. I usually find myself sacrificing the walk to do this. It is hard at first, but as the first drops of rain start beating against the window, I generally get over it. It is worth remembering just how good it is walking back into the house for tea in order to get you out of the house and on that walk in the first place. I hate the idea of going for a walk until I am on one, and then it is lovely -- as long as it is on the flat it is the perfect time to catch up on the gossip with a friend, uninterrupted by the whining of a mobile telephone or the chattering of a small child.
The perfect week
SUNDAY: Cinema or cozy plate of spaghetti with a friend. Some people hate doing things on a Sunday night and like to stay home and psych themselves up for the week. Personally, I still have a going-back-to-school hangover about Sunday nights and can't understand why you would want to add to the horror of it by doing that.
MONDAY: TV supper. This can either be alone or with someone else. If you are alone, this is made a lot better by preparing something delicious for yourself. I find it very easy to slump on the sofa and not move again until I crawl into bed (very unsatisfactory). If you get something delicious for supper, you suddenly find you have a structure to your evening. Come home, have a lovely hot bath, get into your nightie, light some scented candles and a fire (if you have one), work out what the television has in store for you (which will be depressing, so get a video), cook your dinner and these evenings become a joy rather than totally scary -- which is how I always viewed them before.
TUESDAY: Definitely time to get some people over. Tuesday is really the dreariest of nights. Why is it that anything you might like to watch on TV is always on a good going-out night? Wednesday, Thursday, Friday is when they broadcast all their best shows. Don't they know this is when there is other stuff going on and we don't have to rely on the television for entertainment? Keep this easy, just a couple of friends.
WEDNESDAY: If you are a half-full (as opposed to half-empty) sort of person, this is definitely the eve of the weekend. It is when people start to get out of their batten-down-the-hatches mode and poke their noses out for some action. This is an excellent night to entertain. Whereas on a Tuesday night you would probably want to keep it slightly lower key, on a Wednesday you can be slightly more relaxed about numbers and have more people. If you invite people on this night, you will find they think of it much more as a dinner party than coming around for supper.
THURSDAY: This is the night to have a party if you are thinking of having one. People are pretty relaxed about staying up late and still being able to scrape themselves through Friday in the office. It is better than a Friday because you lose quite a few who might be going away for the weekend.
FRIDAY: Friday night is most definitely the going-out night. Don't do anything at home, get your glad rags on, go and celebrate the end of the week with a couple of martinis in a glamorous hotel bar with friends, and see what happens.
SATURDAY: Well, you want to be out this night, so give yourself a rest! But Saturday lunch is a real treat as you can spend all afternoon sitting around gossiping with a girlfriend or boyfriend. Saturday lunch does not have the group mentality that a Sunday lunch has, although lunch parties are lovely on a Saturday as they seem to make the weekend last longer.
SUNDAY: Sunday lunch with a whole pile of friends, newspapers and Bloody Marys has got to be the best thing ever, hasn't it?
HAVING THE HOSTESS BLUES
There are three moments when you get the hostess blues: before, during or after a dinner, lunch or party. Generally, I get them after a party and before a dinner. The predinner ones aren't so much blues as chucking pans at the wall in fury. I have begun to realize that people are extraordinarily unreliable. I have often joked that one should always overinvite so you are left with the right number of people once half of them have blown you off and that you should never go to buy the food until 7 P.M. To call at 7 P.M. to decline an invitation is just laziness on the part of the guest, and I am now issuing cancellation times with my invitations: please blow off before 11 A.M. on the day you are expected. I also have a list on the fridge of those people who have canceled on me at the last minute and why. Obviously, this happens only among a rather spoiled group who have far too many lovely things to do. For most people, it is a treat to be invited to eat at a friend's house, and as a hostess it is important to create an air of excitement around your invitations to prevent this from happening.
Declaring disasters
When it all goes wrong in the middle of a dinner party, DO NOT cry. I do believe in declaring disasters but always with a smile. I had some people to dinner in the summer and I was at a loss for what to cook. Frankly, I was getting sick of roast chicken and I don't know how to cook anything else. So, while I was having a nervous breakdown in the middle of the largest supermarket in London (where I couldn't find anything), I had this brainstorm. I would just make a delicious huge salad. Perfect -- at least until my friend Toby (who has an awful lot in common with Homer Simpson when it comes to both food and morals) arrived, looked at it and asked where dinner was. I told him that was it. "But where is the meat?" "In the salad," I told him. "And what about the potatoes?" "They are in there, Toby."
A much nicer friend, Abe, saved the evening by going out to get a pizza once the salad had been inhaled and there were still a lot of hungry faces around the table. But the weird thing about people, particularly the English, is that they love disasters. I think that is why we are really so good at home during a war. Bunker spirit and all that is something that we do well, so try your best not to worry when it all goes slightly off track. But it is imperative that you do do something about it, as it is only a real disaster when you think that if you ignore the problem, no one else will notice it either.
Sometimes it is a good idea just to take some time out. Get into the kitchen and start doing something therapeutic, like the dishes. I often find myself doing this at dinners (only my own), sometimes because there are no more chairs around the table, but often because I find that I cannot cope with the level of noise any longer and am just in need of a breather.
If you do this, you sometimes find that somebody will follow you, someone who may also need time out. It is really the perfect thing, as you have a chance to chat one-on-one with one of your friends and prepare the next course quite calmly. If you are about to go on to coffee, having a chat in the kitchen first enables you to be completely relaxed in the way you deal with those people who would like to go back to sitting on a sofa and to leave those who would like to stay sitting in the dining room. You don't have to suddenly stand up and tell everyone to move. I really disapprove of this, and such behavior gives me mid-party crisis as a guest; too much ordering around just isn't very relaxing. Of course it comes like a gift from God when you are being stultified by some stiff, but generally I hate it.
And never take the women through and leave the men to drink port and smoke cigars in the dining room -- it is pretentious and silly. The thing that I object to most about this is that if you are somewhere where this happens, the men inevitably are quite dull (otherwise they wouldn't be doing it) and so you go through and they talk utter arrogant nonsense, tilting back on their chairs and guffawing among a cloud of cigar smoke. The girls sit around and start having an uproarious time gossiping, and then the men come in and interrupt when they feel like it. Urrrgh -- it makes me insane with irritation.
HAVING PEOPLE TO STAY
I still get rather excited about waking up in the morning and there being friends around. I know that it is quite childish, because it really is a hangover from whispering all night with a friend on a folding bed.
A beautiful guest bedroom and having friends popping in and out has got to be one of the great pleasures of life. There are things you can d...
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