Dancing at a Home Party with an English Family by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

  

Dancing at a Home Party with an English Family by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

After our hostess made the trifle, the wife of another one of my husband’s colleague’s arrived with her little boys. 

The boys played with Florence and called her “baby doll.”  The women drank cuppas of tea, and  I supervised; Florence was small and real and not a doll despite running around and pushing the boys on the floor.

I was discovering that baking was an English woman’s great asset.  We ate a beautiful apple-spice cake that the other woman guest made at home before visiting.  I knew that walnuts in banana muffins were what vegetarians considered to be a hidden protein and thought baking was a tremendous skill to acquire one day.

After tea, our hostess began to chop vegetables as we talked.  I volunteered to help, but our hostess would hear none of it.

At 4 pm, another set of sons arrived home from school, they changed out of their uniforms and played a little with Florence before going at each other to play mock-rugby.

Florence rejoined the ladies where we could feed her biscuits and juice.  The men arrived around 6 pm and dinner began.

We ate the crudités with the hummus and taramosalata.  Our hostess ordered Indian “take-away curries, masalas, and saags.”  “Take-away” means “take-out.”  I loved my British English lessons.

The wines I selected at Tesco went well with the spicy Indian food – a Sauvignon Blanc from the Touraine and a Soave from the Veneto.  I also bought a Chianti like everyone did in the 1990s, but it was not right with the food.

We put on some Rolling Stones, David Bowie, the Bee Gees, and Elvis Presley music and danced.  I danced with the kids in a circle and Laurent was teaching “The French Rock” moves imitating Travolta to the English women. 

The guys came over to dance with Florence, the boys and me in a circle.  The kids conked out, and the adults kept dancing until the windows steamed up.

We opened up the windows for air at 3 am and finished eating the spicy, Indian saags, masalas, and curries.

Laurent and I went home laughing and wanted to come back and visit Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and Northern England one day.

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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