So it’s been and gone. The opening of the West Wing was yesterday. Lots of planning had taken place. The garden room doors were to be opened on the garden, tables with parasols where dotted around, portable gazebos were in place to keep the sun at bay. Everything was ready for an afternoon and evening in the garden. And what happens..... It rains.


This is England, what do you expect, heat wave one week cold and rainy the next. But not only did it rain it was undoubtedly the worst day of this summer, we couldn’t have picked a day this bad had we tried. Early Sunday morning sitting in the garden room watching the rain fall was a little depressing especially for Christine who had put a lot of work into a garden party. But plans had to be adjusted, it was definitely going to be an indoor do. Did it work? Of course, it was a good do. Excellent food and good friends, what more do you need.


Excellent food! Now that’s not something you hear from me too often when Christine prepares a meal. Nothing wrong with the cooking it’s just that we have, as you know, complete differences in what makes a good meal. Christine is all about healthy and I like, but don’t get very often, stodge. But what can I say the new all singing and dancing cooker came into its own with, of course some help from Christine.


Before the day, I had looked at the proposed menus for the buffet, there was salmon and ham along with various salads and one or two other things. So I was thinking down to the deli for some ham and a few tins of John West from Tescos and salads from M&S and that’s it. Didn’t seem too inspiring but it’s not my place to intervene in the cookery department so I get on with deciding how much booze we need.


When the buffet table is laid I wander in to see what’s on offer and am a little surprised to say the least. Tin of salmon, not on your life but a whole salmon filletted and baked in the new oven, stuffed with something and decorated with prawns. Brilliant. Ham from the deli? Certainly not! Freshly baked hams from the new oven, sliced off the bone. There's freshly baked turkey breast to say nothing of freshly baked bread and pasta salads. It’s hard to believe there are even a couple of home baked lasagnas, the oven has been working overtime, as well as Christine. There’s all sorts of Italian meats, pates and tucked away at the end of the table a large bowl of sausages - I assume they are for me. An absolute feast, obviously Christine and the oven are getting on together, I bet it’s not long now until the first scones arrive. I wait in anticipation.....


But as everyone knows, the most important part of any ‘do’ is the booze. Give everyone enough to drink and the day will go OK. So as usual the success of the day depends upon me. I need to get the quantities right and make sure that no one is waiting for drinks.
So I assess the quantity situation and make a last trip to Tescos to top up the stocks to make sure we don’t run out, and then I get Joe and Amber together to give them their final training session on how to top up drinks and serve nibbles. For this they are to receive a small additional payment on top of their pocket money. As it turns out Joe and Amber are joined by Amelia and do a sterling job, so well in fact that from a start at 2.00pm there were very few people left standing by around 9.00. The kids did a great job dishing out wine, beers even mixing gin and tonics, gin and oranges and even spritzers. I last saw them sitting on Joe’s bed counting their money which seemed to be a lot more than the miserly sum I had paid them. It appears most people thought I was a skinflint and gave them tips for keeping their glasses topped up. The kids were very happy.


As I said it was a great success, mainly down to me using all my project managment skills to estimate the required quanty of booze. It’s easy, get the black book and list the people coming and then put next to each person an amount of booze based on knowledge of what each person drinks then add a couple eaxtra and that’s it.


Did it work? Well maybe I over estimated here and there but it is better to be on the too much side than not enough, leaving us with a plentiful stock of wine and beer. I am also left with a lot of soft drinks, our friends obviously don't drink too many soft drinks even though it was a Sunday afternoon.


The alcohol won't be a problem though - Alex and Dave are still with us for another week.