Loaves and fishes..

..shaped.
Firstly came the issue of who should be invited. The number of elders has not
changed; in fact it has sadly decreased by one since last year, but the number
of children and grandchildren has grown, if not exponentially, at least arithmetically.
We are unique amongst the group in only having the one daughter and she and
her best friend are counted as elders, not because they are both lawyers but,
more probably, because I get the seafood. Two other married children of another
set of elders are included because they are both somehow more mature and also
the offspring of the occupier of the particular campsite where we all congregate.

Firstly, and most grievously, the newly widowed single objected to the fact
that none of his children were invited and that therefore he would feel more
alone than he wanted to be in his still-existent grief. With the usual skill
of beach-going Australians this was handled with such delicacy and tact that
he went home to have Easter by himself.
Then things really went downhill. Two people got influenza and were confined
to bed. Another couple decided that they didn’t eat calamari, octopus
or squid and would bring their own food. Strangely calamari, octopus or squid
were not part of the recipe.
However, my wife declared that if anchovies were part of the ingredients she
for one would not eat any. So much for the recipe and our harmonious domestic
relations.
But the almost fatal blow came when somehow a decision was reached, in the face
of every weather forecast predicting that the weather would change for the worse
in the late afternoon, to move the event from lunchtime to evening. Perhaps
we all were led astray by the clear skies and large bone-crushing surf?
At the appointed time for us to assemble the change arrived with gale force
winds and intermittent heavy rain sweeping horizontally across the camping ground.
Rain ran across the ground 15cms deep carrying small children and cars away.
Undeterred we harnessed our resources. Tarpaulins were gathered, stretched,
lashed and pegged out by a team whose experience had earned them the soubriquet
of Big Top Constructions.
We gathered with our ‘nothing over twenty dollar’ vintage wine collection,
only to have the eldest of the party immediately hustled off with the first
signs of hypothermia or dementia. The party was diminishing in number quickly,
but the hardy were not to be deterred and sparkling wine bottles were uncorked
only to see the liquid miss the glasses as the wind blew the wine out horizontally
in a stream into the darkening storm.
After a rushed course of canapés the main course was delivered to the
shivering throng for rushed consumption as they held the shelter’s sides
and roof down so that they wouldn’t emulate the passengers of the Titanic
and be lost at sea. In fact it was probably more like sailing around the Horn
in a windjammer with icy winds and sails being blown out. The noise was deafening
and the conditions like those experienced by an underpaid merchant sailor of
the nineteenth century.
In summary: a good time was had by all. We won’t do it this way ever again.