With a little help from our friends

When the cheese cake hit the fan big time on Friday morning, Matthew, Malcolm and Debbie swooped in, capes flapping in the breeze, to rescue us.

All was well, all was planned; Renee and Malcolm had devoted much of Thursday to producing a delicious feast of dhal, two types of curry (chicken and veg), salad, raita and poppadoms.  Then Friday and I arrived with calamity tucked into our back pockets!  I am known for being extremely organised and uncontrollably clumsy in equal measure, merely one of many ridiculous contradictions that is me, I like to think the two things balance each other out, sort of.  Anyway, it would seem that I left my organised self sleeping on Friday morning and a Mr Bean-esque persona took her place; bumbling, disorientated and disorganised, not exactly the kind of person you want in the kitchen!

I forgot scales, ingredients and failed to notice limes which were cunningly hidden in plain sight, so I had to interrupt the Taylor’s breakfast time, sorry Renee.  Whilst Malcolm calmly and expertly finished and perfected his culinary masterpiece, I flapped and flailed, but somehow eventually produced a subayon which tasted great, but lacked at little in the presentation department.  It was only as half past nine approached that I realised that we were going to be one down; our key player Jenai could not make it today.  We were about to trial our new ordering system – how could this be happening?  My head started to spin, I thought I might pass out and sent a call up to the heavens for sanity and back up. 

That was when the phone rang.   The heavens delivered Debbie to us as guest waitress for the day.  Matthew helped me set up and made a delicious fruit salad before disappearing of to climb something in the rainy Peak District and it all worked swimmingly.  Perhaps the catastrophe was all in my head!  We saw many smiling and enthusiastic new faces alongside our faithful, fantastic familiar ones and sold out of curry before I could even dip a poppadum in the sauce.  Our fabulous friends even stayed and helped with the clearing up.  Thank you Debbie and Malcolm for services above and beyond the call of duty, we owe your family.  I hope we didn’t out you off ever helping us again.

So my quotation might have been a little predictable, but at 9.30am the brilliant outcome of the day could not have been.  I had given in to panic, but nothing played out as I had expected.  Shame on my lack of faith.  Fear not future customers, I have duly chagrined myself, banished Mr Bean and, moreover, Jenai is back for Friday, so please come and join us for a lunch this Friday.  Please.