Wining and Dining

Dinner in my family is an interesting affair. It starts with mother dearest ripping my eyes away from the TV and instructing me to set the dining room table. Now, that’s generally an easy task, except we have FOUR METER’s worth dining room table (handmade sleeper wood and far more amazing than any table you will ever see).

After grumbling for ten minutes about not being able to watch the end of my series (or whatever I may have been watching) and about how horrible my mom is and how much I hate dinner times at the table, I finally start setting the table; side plates, silver wear and some strange looking placemats that we started using a couple years ago that still freak me out. Which is my left again?

When I eventually make my way into the kitchen to find out what spices I need to set out on the table I IMMIDIATELY retract all statements previously made as the waft of home cooked sheep tails and pap filters through the air. My stomach does a little dance for joy and before I know it I’m standing at the pot hoping for a little taster.

Mom is NOT impressed. I guess she overheard me then. Oops.

Now, this is make-or-break time. If I don’t get back into her good books in the next five minutes I may be going hungry tonight.

Suddenly I’m all kinds of useful; helping with serving-dishes, pouring more wine, making sure her chilli powder is on the table. I must say, mom has worked me out, if you want me to do ANYTHING give me food as an incentive.

Finally the food is on the table, the warm plates have been sworn at after being taken out of the AGA without oven-gloves and the family is seated except mom. Teddy-bear (my step dad, but another story for another day) is at the head of the table, on his right is an open chair and next to that sits Sissa and on his left is me and then Sharky.

We all sit there in deathly quiet waiting for mom to join us. Each of us eagerly waiting to attack the meal but knowing that if we do decide to start eating before mom gets here… Well, let’s not go into too much detail.

Eventually, one of us will feverishly call out, “Mom?”

“Yes, yes. I’m coming. Don’t rush me damnit.”

Now, you may be thinking that our family is ever so prim and proper for sitting at the dining table for dinner time and setting the table and all, but it is at this point where our manners stop. As mom’s bum hits the chair the three of us simultaneously launch ourselves at the food while my sister looks around the table longingly for something resembling a vegetable and mom just watches in awe as a meal that took her three hours to prepare is demolished in five minutes.

The lack of a proper dinner conversation goes completely unnoticed. The vulgarities strewn across the table are met by laughter and outrage and all the while, mom sits waiting for an inch of intelligence which never comes and so she resorts to finding the bottom of her wine glass. Needless to say my step dad has mastered the art of ensuring that her wine glass is NEVER empty.

Dinner time in our house is madness on a normal night, but every now and again a neighbour from down the road joins us and then all hell breaks loose.

Prinsloo is an Afrikaans guy, in his early thirties, originally from some backwards town near an even more backwards Hoedspruit who moved to the area a couple years ago (why anyone would move to Carolina is beyond me, but apparently some people do it willingly). He met my parents through some random event in town to do with sheep or fire fighting or some other boring farm topic and they hit it of relatively well, however I only met him on Christmas Eve last year.

We usually have our big Christmas do up on Christmas Eve so that we can do the quiet family thing on Christmas Day (not that we do ‘quiet’ in my family). Farmers from around the area were invited and mom cooked a heavenly meal. Heather and I set the table, Nicky pretended to be important and the clown that I call my step dad was in charge of drinks (whoever decided that was a good idea should be shot, multiple times).

Well, needless to say, things got very festive and pretty soon my mom was hiding her head in shame as we all shouted obscenities at each other from across the table. Mind you, you have to be quite loud to be able to get a word in, especially across a four meter long table. It came to my attention that this stranger managed to fit in at our table pretty well, which is rather unusual…

Until he started talking about his ‘rock’.

The conversation had turned to the stone kraals in our area which are a hot topic at the moment and he wished to contribute to the conversation by talking about an interesting rock on his farm. Unfortunately he never got further than “I have a huge, shiny rock standing on my farm…”

The alcohol induced giggles continued for at least an hour after that as our minds came to every sexual connotation we could possibly find while he tried desperately to get out of the hole he had just dug for himself.

Needless to say, I thought we’d never see him again.

But it seems, that in a town such as ours, people with whom you can truly get along with are hard to find and difficult to keep. And so, as he carries on coming back for more, we gladly open up another bottle of red (or white, or whiskey, or mampoer or whatever else we can find) and enjoy ourselves.

Life really is too short to miss out on good times, with good people, laughter, wine and good food.