Hospitality

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/hospitality/

More hermit than socialite, I can, nonetheless, offer great hospitality to those who visit my home.

Having rediscovered my love of cooking – and being an Earth Mother type anyway – it gives me great pleasure to feed my guests with sumptuous food, and ply them with plentiful drink. Once off the trough, I am a very good listener and have an excellent line in witty repartee too.

Since moving here, I have become far more spontaneous and willing to just let a social occasion have its head. If that involves listening to records, playing Mah Jongg or jamming with instruments (of which I have a fair few) so much the better. If a small noggin of something spirituous is required to lubricate the throat and liven the mood, I am all for that and usually have the odd bottle secreted away in a hidey-hole.

I suppose the truth is very simple: I love making people feel welcome, at home, warmed, relaxed and well-fed; it gives me real joy. For all that I am, by nature, shy and a bit of a loner, I like drawing others out and hearing their stories, their japes, their songs.

My strength is definitely not in the formal dinner party realm. Dreading such occasions myself, I cannot bear inflicting them upon my nearest and dearest. Artifice and networking do not suit me, though I can see their use in our world.

For years, I saw myself as a social failure with no skills in the hospitality line whatsoever. But, as in so many things, I was wrong! When it comes to informal gatherings of like-minded souls, I am in my element. If I do not have to conform to the tedious aristocratic conventions of place settings, forests of cutlery and gastronomic etiquette so rigid that all the pleasure leaps out of the nearest window, I can be happy as a clam, merry as a March Weasel, chirpy as a chaffinch.

If you are looking to make-friends-and-influence-people, I’m not the hostess for the job! If you want a damn good time, fine food and a raucous and bawdy laughter-filled occasion, that’s a very different kettle of prawns and right up my strasse!

The Lads on a Wine Tasting!

Post-Ritual Troughing!

Shadow of the Tor rehearsal, with food and wine!