The Dinner Party

It was bucketing down with rain as we huddled under our umbrellas but fortunately out hosts’ home was only five minutes’ walk away.  Ian and Lynn live in a big house and their spacious lounge was warm and inviting with a real log fire burning away.  Paul and I were relieved to see the other guests were all friends that we had recently made in the village and the evening soon became merry with lots of easy banter.  We were a party of ten in total.

Lynn is one of those rare ladies that actually enjoy cooking and entertaining guests.  She is a talented cook and the food was delicious – we had a quiche starter, fillet of beef wrapped in prosciutto for main and an orange sponge dessert with custard. Ian was an attentive host and kept our glasses topped up throughout the evening.

Perhaps it was the abundance of rich food and wine, or the warm atmosphere of the dining room, but towards the end of the evening I started to feel slightly unwell.  I excused myself and went to the bathroom and ran my hands under some cold water to cool down.  Feeling slightly revived I returned to the dining room but within minutes I felt faint again.  I left the table and headed into the adjoining conservatory, collapsed into a chair and completely blacked out. 

Several minutes later I eventually regained consciousness with Maureen, a retired A&E nurse, and Paul standing over me.  Without warning I started being sick and Maureen reacted incredibly quickly and grabbed an empty decorative fruit bowl which worked wonderfully well.  I recovered quickly and, as the evening had seemed to have come to a natural end, we made our farewells and headed home.  I was feeling absolutely mortified.

This morning we received a message from my daughter in Australia.  “How was the dinner party?”  Paul replied, “Hell of a party, mum threw up in the fruit bowl.”