Pages

Subscribe: Subscribe to me on YouTube

Saturday, October 08, 2011

Someone's been to a classy restaurant...

Restauranteur
And I don't mean Chloe. I've never been to Claridges, but I bet they don't give you free balloons.

Anyhoo, yesterday was my parents' Golden Wedding Anniversary, a major milestone in anyone's life, and one that Lisa and I are only likely to see if we head down the cryogenics route. As a thirteen-year-old, I remember buying them a small silver cross. Ten years ago, I bought my Mum a ruby necklace. And this year I let them hold Amelie's rabbit for ten minutes. It's the recession biting.

But the good news is that I'm always willing to eat in someone else's honour, so we took my parents out last night to the White Hart, a Beefeater Grill in the northern reaches of Hastings. They're generally more used to the Wish Tower in Eastbourne, so anything more upmarket than a Happy Eater and they tend to get giddy. Lisa and I had told them it would just be us and them, but needless to say we were lying through our teeth, and had arranged for Big Sis to drive up from Wiltshire, and my brother to come down from Essex. Frankly the number of e-mails that were exchanged trying to organise this thing would have been enough to crash the servers of a small country.

In addition, we've been working on a professionally printed photo book of their married life for what seems like an eternity. Sis stole my parents photo albums about nine months ago, Lisa started sorting through them in August, I started scanning them, Sis started arranging them, Amelie started laughing at them, Bro started deleting them, and after a few late nights and a lot of expense, the finished book finally arrived on Thursday.

It was all worth it though. The book is essentially a record of how they've gone from this...

Happy Couple
... to this...

Happier Couple
... in fifty years, without the use of Botox. Frankly the only face lifts they need are help getting their double chins off the table.

Anyhoo, with my brother's wife and daughter, my wife and daughter, and Big Sis's lack of success in the dating game, there were nine of us for dinner. And very nice it was too. All Beefeater meals now come with 'bottomless chips', which means you can stick two fingers up at Dr Atkins and induce another potato famine by eating as many as you like. Suffice it to say, I made good use of that offer. But then I didn't have a starter. Apart from the six we collectively shared.

Overall, it was a cultured evening of fine dining, good conversation, fun, laughter and music. Especially when DJ Amelie hit the decks...

The Amelie Beat
Admittedly there was a slight lull in the frivolity when the bill arrived, and I sat there for two minutes wondering if I could remortgage our council flat, but to my mind, any evening where you come away with a photo of yourself fondling your own man boobs, has to be considered a success...

Handy
I have no idea what I was doing there. I think the magnitude of the occasion got to me a bit, and I thought I was Barbara Windsor in Carry on Camping.

So I might have let the side down a bit, but fortunately my family know how to pose for a nice photo...

Eyes Wide Shut
We'll have that in a photo book in forty-nine years time.

3 comments:

Dave said...

Millstone/Milestone.  Odd how the close the two words are.

Big Sis' major problem, of course, is that she hasn't visited Norfolk recently.

Peter Chapman said...

Amelie is looking stupidly tall in the first photo. It must be the result of the late September/early October sunlight and daily watering.

Phil said...

That and the illegal growth hormones we're feeding her.