darryl and i had planned on giving a dinner party on wednesday, but various complications arose and people's schedules are switched around and we suddenly find, on saturday evening, that our dinner party was happening the very next evening. darryl says he will have to do something extremely simple. no makeshift steaming of monkfish in ricecookers. "call it rustic," he assured me: spinach salad with thinly sliced figs, toasted walnuts and feta, seared foie de veau with sage-onion relish, and we'll buy breads and cheeses from formaggio's and you can bake your french lemon cake. i remind him of my retirement from the baking of cakes. but i'll get a fruity cake or tart out of formaggio's, i said. what kind of table setting do you want for this dinner of yours? the green tablecloth? flowers?

darryl: but your tableware is too bourgeois! it's a down-to-earth dinner! what about roughhewn stoneware plates?
me: between you and joanna, how un-bourgeois can anything be?
darryl: can you get rustic flowers?

alas, wild flowers are very expensive to get unless you go out into the woods and gather ye bluebells yourself. i did make up a bouquet like that for a dinner party once, so i know. tulips are inexpensive, i suggested, but darryl says they're not french. i can't get you lavender at short notice, i say crossly.

i will see what i can do about flowers.

more to come later.