"I'm in with the in crowd, I go where the in crowd go"....

The (what has become) annual Rita-fest – a mega-relaxed pre-Christmas eating, chatting and catching-up date – occurred the other night, squeezed into everyone’s hectic social calendar by the skin of its teeth!

This date, more and more, has come to epitomize, to me (and I’m pretty sure, to the others present too) a small snatch of ‘time out’ from the frenzied hithering and thithering that today’s pre-Christmas weeks seem to demand.

Thanks to my Nellie and ever-generous son-in-law Mr Nellie, we hold this annual event at their magnificent house, which contains the state-of-the-art kitchen facilities required for some of the past meals we have created on this night. The Nellie family always spend a week away at their shack prior to Christmas, so it falls to poor Rita to housesit, and find a few friends to share this occasion with!

This year, we weren’t so well organized, and there was more of a fast-food focus with the food, but we still managed to chow down extremely well

on a pre-ordered (and collected en route) sushi platter from Mr Ding at the Japanese place in Liverpool St, $82 worth of fresh prawns from Mures, flathead BBQ’ed individually in foil parcels, kebabs and salad, then a gorgeous fruit tart for afters, along with Jill’s magnificent secret-recipe chocolate, fig and cream cake which we all want the recipe for!

The best thing about this meal is the emphasis on food, friendship and fun, and the utter lack of pretension involved. If invited, you can come along secure in the knowledge that you can dress as you like and that absolutely no one is going to judge you on your appearance. You can be as politically incorrect as you want – and in this day and age, you can’t presume that people know you well enough to know you’re joking if you make any kind of remark which could be perceived by someone present as discriminatory. In those circumstances, it’s hard to be truly ‘you’.

Not for one moment should you assume either, that politically incorrect jokes or conversation occurred at all, because that definitely didn’t happen. All present were/are intelligent, empathetic members of the community, who all work in jobs which involve a tremendous amount of intensive counselling and advising around the huge social issues and problems we, as a society, currently have. They all deal daily with the after-effects of accidents of birth and situation, and to them, this aspect of life is no laughing matter. However, we are all allowed to relax and have fun with friends, and that’s what this meal is about.

This year’s event was tinged with sadness as we all acknowledged the absence of our wonderful friend Monica, who has traditionally provided us with the pavlova component of our annual meal. Monica has unstintlingly participated in these meals, slaving over the 2 pavlovas she always made in the traditional way of the older country cooks in years gone by. I did pay tribute to her here on this blog about a month ago when she died, but I’m sure we all felt the distinct absence of Mon on Tuesday night. If I’d been braver, I would have insisted we all raise our glasses to Mon, but I knew with certainty that her death is still way too raw to do this as yet.

But – writing is different, so, Mon - here’s cheers to you. I hope wherever you are, you’re resting easier now, and not plagued by pain.