My Jameson grandmother would never say “home James and don’t spare the horses” when I was at the wheel.
She was more likely to say, “Christopher, dear, the hedges are going past too fast, I think you should slow down.” I’d probably, recklessly, edged above 30 mph driving her to church on a straight stretch to Dunany in her Morris Minor 1000 after I’d negotiated the chicane at Togher.
The church on the estate at Dunany is small, but so was the congregation. In those days the Rector had to dash between churches in his benefice (Castlebellingham, Dunleer, Drumcar and Dunany) on Sunday mornings. Sometimes he was late. Admiral England (retd.) was ready to step in and take the Service. He had an ancient Prayer Book and we solemnly prayed for His Majesty The King. It was not clear which one. He also relished delivering a short, sharp sermon, no doubt disappointed he hadn’t been given time to prepare a longer one.
If it’s the Proms it’s the Polish Hearth Club for dinner. If it’s Opera Holland Park it’s Il Portico. “Spanning six decades and four generations, Il Portico has been cooking regional & wild food since it was first opened by Pino Chiavarini. Still managed to this day by the same family, James and Marianna draw heavily from their ancestors influence by providing simple, authentic Italian food from their home region of Emilia Romagna.”
The family have adapted their service to suit lockdown. James Chiavarini himself delivered my first order yesterday; pasta fagioli, homemade tagliatelle with pork belly ragu and organic venison stew. He includes cooking instructions and grated Parmesan. You don’t have to live in west London to enjoy his cooking. He uses DHL to deliver across the country. Home James and don’t spare the Parmesan!
Mambo Italiano indeed. And all due to spaghetti!
Dear Christopher – as the owner of a Morris Minor with a split windscreen I think you are exaggerating the engine size – it was 850 cc or something like that. Mine had trafficators (mechanical arms that stuck out) not indicators, leather upholstery, and a starting handle. You must have heard how I got my Morris Minor. There was a lady in the village who stopped driving at 80 and give me her car. My Ma thought that I should offer to pay for the unused road fund license. The response came “there is no need. I never tax the car under a labour government”.
I am sure that the Admiral’s prayers to HM The King will have brought to mind the Reverend Tendril’s sermon in “A Handful of Dust”:
“The vicar climbed, with some effort, into the pulpit. He was an elderly man who had served in India most of his life…He had a noble and sonorous voice and was reckoned the best preacher for many miles around.
His sermons had been composed in his more active days for delivery at the garrison’s chapel; he had done nothing to adapt them to the changed conditions of his ministry and they mostly concluded with some references to homes and dear ones far away. The villagers did not find this in any way surprising. Few of the things said in church seemed to have any particular reference to themselves. They enjoyed their vicar’s sermons very much and knew that when he began about their distant homes, it was time to be dusting their knees and feeling for their umbrellas.
‘…And so as we stand here bareheaded at this solemn hour of the week,’ he read, his powerful old voice swelling up for peroration, ‘let us remember our Gracious Queen Empress in whose service we are here, and pray that she may long be spared to send us at her bidding to do our duty in the uttermost parts of the earth; and let us think of our dear ones far away and the homes we have left in her name, and remember that though miles of barren continent and leagues of ocean divide us, we are never so near to them as on these Sunday mornings, united with them across dune and mountain in our loyalty to our sovereign and thanksgiving for her welfare..’”
I wonder if my maternal grandfather’s sermons took a similar line? He was Chaplain to the Bishop of Bombay before being put out to grass as a vicar in West Malling.