Just like old times

Highlander in the woods, originally uploaded by CharlesFred.

This evening, we are having two friends from Groningen coming over to have dinner and spend the. Hans was part of a group of six of us who used to meet up every two months or so to have dinner with each other, the five of them, apart from me, having met each other in an Italian course in Groningen in 1987. Th efirst time they met for dinner was just after I arrived in Holland in Novmber 1987, when we met up for a Sinterklaasfeest and did 'surprises'and wrote poems. More of that maybe another day.

Anyway, we met up for quite a number of years, say, ten, until the group started falling apart. I'd always got on particularly well with Hans, so I phoned him a couple of months ago to see how things were with him and the result is that he and his partner Ottywill be arriving in acouple of hours time.

It has been fun thinkung about what to cook and then spending a whole day getting ready.

I was at the market this morning and got my hands on a lovvely selection of mushrooms and toadstools and these are the basis of a mushroom soup which is now cooking upstairs. Fred is cooking beef medaillons with morels (tiny but very expensive mushrooms), accompanied by potatoes and carrots with a beetroot salad. And I have already made the ginger log for desserts. Nice autumnal fare.

One of the things about our dinners was that we would often stay up very very late, like it almost seemd that it could not be deemed a successful evening if we went to bed before. We are now ten years older, so it will be intresting to see how late we make it this evening.

Hans and Otty will be going to South Africa in a couple fo weeks so we have lots to tell them about where to go and how to find the best wines. I seem to have enough leaflets here to fill a tourist information centre.

It is still lovely weather here and the doors have been open all day, back and front, quite warm, mostly cloudy but with the sun peaking through every now and then. Maybe we can even have pre-dinner drinks on the balconty, a full month after the start of autumn. Why does global warming seem to have such benign effects on us city dwellers?