Dinner Time

Saturday 11th September

Day 143

Six fresh trout, stuffed with spikey rosemary and lemon slices are smouldering in a tray in the oven. On the shelf below a pan of roast potatoes, meltingly crisp, are nearly cooked. The last of our green beans and swiss chard are steaming on the stove. A mustardy, lemony, olive oil dressing, thick with my sister’s flat leaf parsley waits on the table to be drizzled over it all. Oh yes, and a bowl of roasted red peppers and aubergines too.

Soon we will come and sit at the table, where a fat candle in the middle is throwing it’s flame on crystal wine glasses, and the vase of sweetpeas, just picked by my husband will mingle with the aroma of dinner.

I think of how much of a meal is about getting the timing right. And about how time flies away but stands still too. Tonight my cousin sits at our table. Although he is a grandpa now, to me he’ll always be my playmate under the hot African skies where our families grew up together.