Fedora

A couple of months ago, I picked up my good friend L and we went to a modern pub/restaurant close to where she lives for dinner. It was one of those places where you go up to the bar counter to order your drinks and your food, and they deliver the food to you. Loads of them do it, but this place was slightly different. Usually they want you to pay for everything up front, but this place said they would give us the bill when we were finished. Except after a few drinks and a relaxing meal, we got up and left... without paying the bill.

I remembered about half way home, and phoned L to check whether she had paid it. She hadn't either so she went back the next day to pay it.

So I owed her a dinner. And for the embarrassment.

So I was delighted when L finally agreed to come out to see my place on Friday. We went to dinner at a lovely little continental restaurant in a sleepy village 15 minutes drive from my place. They served pumpkin soup appetisers in little fedora-shaped bowls. We ordered what turned out to be some of the finest, tenderest, most succulent medallions of lamb I have ever tasted, and a £33 bottle of wine that was among the cheaper on the wine list. It was a fabulous meal.

L and I chatted the way good friends do. We talked about friends and family, about triumph and tragedy, about dilemmas and bad choices, the past and the future. One of her friends had just that evening died from multiple organ failure. She had been ill for some time but it was still a tragedy. Our conversation was subdued, and when we got back to my place, neither of us felt like sleep. I opened another bottle of wine and we stayed up until well after one in the morning.

I don't know what either of us would do without each other right now.