It has just turned noon and I am thinking it's a little early to be contemplating lunch, especially on a Sunday. Usually at this time, I'm picking bits of bacon bagel from my teeth and making a mental note to sew up the fly on my pyjamas before next answering the door. But here we are, sitting in a sitting room that isn't our own and awaiting the arrival of vodkas and tonic. Alcoholic drinks! At noon! It's all very Richard Burton.
Actually, it's more Enid Blyton, because Mallory Court reminds The Theatrical of Malory Towers. He read all the Malory Towers tomes as a boy and scoffs when I suggest they are girls' books. What rot, he says, in an appropriately Blyton style: they might be set in a girls' boarding school, be concerned with midnight feasts in flameproof nighties and feature girls named Bill, but they are not girls' books. Anyway, he says, Auntie Charlotte tried to ban the family from reading Blyton's twee guff because it portrayed a vision of England to which they'd never have access. "But look at us now!" he says, delighted at our current position in a gorgeous, ivy-clad country house, complete with rose garden and some rather ugly conference facilities. "This is the life," he beams, like a lighthouse.
And that was before we even got to lunch. Lunch was odd. The starters were very chichi, as if someone had been left unsupervised with miniature jelly moulds and an array of food colourings. His ballotine of salmon with roast scallop (just the one) and gazpachio (sic) looked like an abstract painting rendered in seafood. Which isn't to say it didn't taste nice - it was delicious; it just looked a little busy. Like Zandra Rhodes' brooch drawer.
Since I don't believe in foie gras, the ham hock and foie gras terrine was out of bounds. And since it's way too old lady to order soup in a restaurant, the leek and potato soup was also a no-no. That left crab ravioli and red mullet or honey-roasted duck confit salad. Here, my unshakeable belief that crabs are reinforced swimming spiders and so shouldn't be put near one's mouth was, well, shaken. Mainly because it's wrong to eat ducks. Not for the same reason it's wrong to eat pigeons (they're dirty birdies, even if the ones you get in restaurants are not plucked off grimy streets), but because ducks seem like nice birds and, despite often living in stagnant water, mostly look clean. So the ravioli it had to be, and it was very tasty.
After the froufrou frills of our first courses, the mains were much more straightforward and English - none more so than his roast sirloin of beef with Yorkshire pudding ("Perfect," which is high praise, as his Ma makes the best Yorkshire pud in the world) and a medley of vegetables. Are vegetables melodic? I suppose you could make a xylophone out of carrot batons.
My gigolette of farm chicken was disappointing in comparison, though I got my own back with dessert, a gratin of Mallory garden fruits that glimmered like gems. He said that his cannelloni of blackcurrant with a soup of berries was a triumph, reminding him of when he used to ask for "warm Ribena in the blue cup with the curly straw". Such childhood memories can't be trumped, so I let him have his victory. He'd already sacrificed so much, leaving the house and Radio 2 at Sunday lunchtime.
After we'd taken tea in the glorious garden and before we sungalong with Lulu in the car (again on Radio 2; worryingly, I appear to have turned 45), we decided that Mallory Court is quite the retreat from real life. With its old-fashioned charm - formal French waiters, the word "luncheon" on the menu, the dining families seething with loathing for parents who have lived too long or children who have disappointed - it's like a holiday in days of yore. Or at least 1958. Somewhere in the bowels of the building, there may even be girls named Bill.
