I love the spectacular freezing, dark winter months in the countryside. They're underrated. March and April can mope on forever if it's cold and wet, but in the deep midwinter, nothing is as cosy as a roaring fire, a houseful of people and a table groaning with food.
I think what I'm saying is, I love dinner parties. I like throwing them and going to them. In fact I like everything about them. The gentle formality and comfort of an evening spent in someone's home with hot food and warm company. It doesn't get any better.
No one ever says, 'We're having a dinner party' any more. The words have become unmentionable and invoke an unwelcome sense of duty and stiffness - the boss coming, airs and graces and coffee percolators. But it's a warm and generous thing to invite people into one's home and wheel out the wedding china. I wonder if the dreaded dinner party is about to make a full-on comeback.
In cities there are all sorts of ways of getting to know people, and it's easy to avoid those that you'd rather have nothing to do with. Country living is more insular and perhaps that's why it's only since we moved to the country that I have discovered the joys of dinner-party culture.
Dinner parties divide broadly into two categories: whoppers and whisperers. Both have their merits for hosts and guests. The full-on whopper is obviously harder to organise, but gives the hosts an opportunity to invite people they would like to get to know better and guests can get properly hammered and let their hair down in a way they perhaps wouldn't in a cosier setting.
Six is probably the perfect number for dinner though, for everyone involved. It's a good balance of new interest and intimacy. Provided the guests, the most important ingredient of dinner at home, are going to like each other, it's the perfect way to introduce people. Relationships on the cocktail-party level seem more and more tedious as I get older, but over the course of an entire evening there is enough time to start to get to know someone properly.
If you give yourself enough time, these more intimate soirées can be a real joy to shop and prepare for. Compared with the cost of picking up the tab for dinner for six in a restaurant, you can go relatively bananas at the shops and still be quids in. Some people hire a chef for the evening, which adds glamour and is still cheaper than buying dinner out, but as long as the cheese is good and there's some chocolates, there's nothing to worry about. You don't have to be ambitious with the food, dress the table with seasonal flowers and have the latest candle burning in the bog, although sometimes that's nice; but it's far more important that the hosts are relaxed rather than worrying about soufflés rising or sauces splitting. I think a nicely cheesed-up beans on toast would be a perfectly acceptable entrée these days. I think Marmite on the ancillary slices and good dollops of mayonnaise with a few tomatoes on top of the melted cheese is the way to go. Even a takeaway delivered to the door is pretty sexy.
I think that's the thing that's changed. Having people round for dinner used to be about trying to impress them. Now it's about trying to make them feel comfortable and where better to do that than at home. London has some of the world's best restaurants, but I'd rather go to someone's house for dinner than eat in any of them. Sometimes you can smoke, too.
