Private dining

In ye olden days of the last century, our kitchen was tiny. Our sitting room therefore doubled up as a dining room whenever friends came for dinner. This all changed in 1999 when we took out the functionless bricked-up staircase in the middle of our flat to treble the size of our kitchen. (The stairs had previously joined our flat to the one upstairs when the two floors formed a single dwelling.) 

This evening I relived the 1990s when I hosted a table for five in the sitting room at our (not a) Christmas (drinks) party. With me were Tony, Elly, Susie, and Paddy. The other seven - Mr hazelh, Jon, David, Liz, Mike, Caitlin, and Bruce - were seated at the kitchen table just through the door in my photograph. 

Normally we would have set up this second table in the hall. We changed this plan this morning when we discovered that our central heating was tripping the electricity - eek! Dining in the hall would have been a rather chilly prospect without radiators (although not as chilly as our Christmas Eve dinner in 2020). 

We were fortunate in securing a call from a gas man this afternoon. He couldn't find a fault so the heating went back on, and all was fine. By this time we had decided that sitting room dining was actually a very good idea, so kept to the new plan. It all worked really well. We all had a fabulous time, with the last guests staying until well after 1:00am. 

Earlier in the day we had hysterics with Jackie when she made her regular Thursday visit. Last week she had expressed interest in genealogical research, so Mr hazelh offered to find details of her family from the usual online sources. This morning we laid out a red towel carpet in readiness for her arrival. This was to mark that we now believe that she is a direct descendant of Scottish royalty. (We know that many, many members of the population could claim this. However in Jackie's case the line (if accurate) is very obvious, and she had no idea of this at all.) I also 'crowned' Jackie with a plastic tiara as soon as she came into the hall. The three of us laughed and laughed, and it took quite some time before any of us got on with the cleaning!

My only 'proper' outing of the day was to return (1) a pair of jeans to the Bethany shop (Mr hazelh's legs are either fat or too muscular) and (2) a book to the library.

Exercise today: 55 minutes on the exercise bike (until the central heating came on and tripped the electricity, including the television); walking (15,628 steps).