The Persian Rug

Today we've been over to the north shore as we were invited to a barbeque at one of the consultants' homes.

When we lived down south and Darren worked in Swindon and Portsmouth we were always invited to dinner at the consultant's house, whichever consultant he was under at the time. Invariably this meant dinner in some hard-to-find country village with no street lighting and some enormous house approached via a sweeping gravel drive, and by this point I'd be exclaiming "flaming nora it's really posh" and we'd be minding our Ps and Qs while the consultant's wife served drinks in the sitting room.

On one occasion we were met by an aptly-named Dr Waddle, resplendent in a crimson smoking jacket; his wife warming her arse on the hostess trolley in the kitchen. On another I suffered an entire evening of a consultant who insisted on being called Doctor Hemmings throughout the meal, though once this rule had been pointed out to me, I was so indignant about it I deliberatley didn't address him as anything all evening.

Dr Hemmings lived in a converted barn in Cirencester with an oak-beamed ceiling and a lovely Persian rug he'd bought on some swanky foreign holiday, but when I asked his wife about it she came over all high-and-mighty and not realising I was from the north-west, started going on about how she was really very posh because she was from Cheshire. Closer questioning (and letting on to the fact I was also from Cheshire) revealed she'd started life as a staff nurse in Northwich, which she insisted used to be very nice back in those days; one of the worst examples of new money I've ever met.

Anyway, when we moved up north, these dinner parties came to an abrupt end and we came to the conclusion they just didn't do it up north, which was a shame because really they were very entertaining (and I'd spent ages learning how one ought to behave at them). So being invited to Keith's house today was the first time in ages we've eaten at the consultant's house and it was a whole different ball game from those snobby evenings down south.

For a start, this is Australia and these are real Australians, which means an abundance of facial hair, more than one or two moustaches and not a smoking jacket in sight. Secondly, in place of the hostess trolley it was a large gas barbeque next to the swimming pool, the sort of barbeque they actually build into brick in the corner of the verrandah, the sort I drool over in Bent's Garden Centre thinking how it would be worth buying one if ever we got enough summer weather to justify the expense.

And there was no soup course or napkin or faffing about with three dfferent knives, it was all good hunks of lamb and marinated chicken thighs and minted potatoes and afterwards an enormous chocolate cake I was quite enjoying until I spotted the box and realised it was from the same chain of shops that got Ella's birthday cake wrong (who still haven't responded to my letter of complaint and neither have their head office). After that, obviously, it tasted pretty bad, though it took a second slice to confirm this.

Anyway, as the medic's wife, I've worked out that it's my role to attend to the children and Darren's role to stand around talking about anaesthetic gases in some sort of funny code. To be honest, most of his colleagues look like astronomy graduates and I don't think I could make intelligent conversation with them if I tried (and I did try today, but only because I noticed that one of them had a Cornish sounding surname. Turned out I was right because his ancestors were indeed Cornish, though I subsequently learnt more about the history of the Cornish tin mining industry than I really wanted to know).

Ella refused her afternoon sleep and though she started off well, eventually behaved like a thug. The consultant's wife was pleasant enough but I could see by the look on her face (and the cream carpets in the sitting room) that she'd probably prefer Ella to eat outside and as it was a bit chilly on the verrandah and everyone else was inside (with the door closed), thank god we had our coats. Her own kids are virtually grown up and she doesn't like crumbs on the floor because it's poisonous for the dog.

She also had a persian rug but I decided not to ask her about it. And I'm sure I saw her warming her arse on the barbeque.