Dinner Parties

 If you are anything like me, you love a good dinner party. What could be better than sitting around a table, enjoying some especially lovely food, with some entrancing people--just having a good visit and a great conversation?

I have dear loved ones who are just so much fun to hang around with. Such good talks.

Meantime, since they are all far away from me, I can cook up some great dinner parties in my head.

This one is at the Keg in Abbotsford (a short drive away for me). I have remembered to wear my hearing aids, and turned them up, because restaurants tend to be noisy--on purpose, darn it. No wait! I can hear perfectly on this occasion! No horrid little hearing aids! I have ordered the filet mignon, and we are just waiting for our plates to arrive. I am on my second drink, because it is a fantasy and I am still enjoying a drink. Here is who I am with: Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, my darling imaginary romantic partner, and Barbara Frum.

Now here is another one. This one is at Ed’s Warehouse in Toronto, and yes, in my fantasy it is still open. Of course, we are all ordering the roast beef with all the trimmings. It is during some type of comedy festival in town, and with me at the table are Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Norm Macdonald, and Rex Murphy.

Now I am at Granville Island, in Vancouver, at some darling restaurant that does wonderful things with exotic mushrooms: With me are Eckhart Tolle, Mother Teresa, Tommy Douglas, and Peter Gzowski. Oh, think of the conversation. Mother Teresa speaks perfect English and is able to report that heaven was just an idea, after all. Tommy Douglas says that’s funny--heaven was the day Canada’s Medicare system came to be, July 1^st, 1968. Eckhart just beams seraphically, and Gzowski is fascinated and full of wonderful questions.

This one would be fabulous: We are in a sushi restaurant on Robson Street in Vancouver, the one where the little wooden boats go around, and you can just help yourself to any little plate with some dainty Japanese thing, when you see one that appeals to you. I am side by side with Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Donald Sutherland, and Barbara Walters, who is doing all the talking while the rest of us are still busy eating. But we will end up talking, for sure. No, that restaurant is no good, because it is no good being side by side, we need to be at a round table. So, ok—a Vancouver dim sum restaurant. Same idea: little plates of deliciousness, which they bring by and offer you a choice of until you are too full to eat another thing. And you can smile at everyone else, while they say just amazing things.

Then for the first of July: Mark Carney, Diane Fox Carney, Stephen Harper, Laureen (Teskey) Harper, Ian Hanomansing and Nancy Hanomansing (whom I actually know since she was a beloved colleague in the Vancouver family law bar—Nancy Trott, actually: Hi Nancy!). I will just sit and listen, for once. Oh, the high-flown ideas! I think we should be eating salmon and magically ending the meal with Saskatoon Berry pie with ice cream. The pie warmed up. No one wants to leave the table--it is so much fun. Each one besting the other. It will have to be in the evening, because Mark will have had to work in the morning. Probably the day off, for Ian and Nancy.

How about this. This one is at my house, because I live in a very big house in the English countryside, with servants, and my guests are all staying over for the weekend, and the weather is perfect—warm and sunny. We are all here at my big table, with the thick white linen cloth. Mussels in white wine sauce, to start. Joining me and my handsome, dreamed-up, highly intellectual partner are George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell, John Stewart Mills, and Rosemary Barton. Rosemary knows how to ask the penetrating question and manage the conversation if anyone is hogging it. And they will all be here overnight. In the morning we will all be here for breakfast. Every last one of us.

And finally, taking their turns to join us at the many round tables, at my law school class reunion--where everybody actually made it, even those darling ones who left for heaven prematurely--are Lord Denning and John Candy. It is a fabulous multi-course feast, paid for in full by the Law Society of Upper Canada, honouring us because we are the best law school class ever, in the entire history of the province, ever was and ever will be. It will be in Ottawa, and the weather will be lovely.