Gastronomic Prostitution

‘Well, we’re not sure if tomorrow is actually going to be our last day,’ one of our house guests said to me this morning.
‘What, are you moving in?’ I shouted. ‘Are you nuts?’
‘Right. Okay. Right. Well, that’s…um…clear…,’ he said,  handing over email addresses of the eminent for one of my fat portfolio of jobs.
‘Yes, it is,’ I beamed, snatching the addresses, eagerly.
I mean, it’s not a sodding hotel, right? If it was, I thought, I’d have to be a whole lot nicer. I would also have bothered to make the hot chilli sauce and maybe a yoghurt one too for the kebabs we cooked in the pizza oven last night. I would perhaps have put a little sprig of lavender on their pillows, a bottle of fizzy water and glasses by their beds and, instead of putting my shades on and storming out to play tennis in the cricket-humming morning, I would have made coffee on the stove and brought steaming cinnamon buns through in a little basket.  These services would cost a fucking fortune.

Which reminds me of one of my favourite London stories. It’s not about living in Italy (mixed), my relationship with my husband (more mixed) or being nearly forty (shit), but I love telling it and it’s especially good for Russians, Lebanese or Egyptian people. So, someone I used to know had a dinner party. She invited all these guests and served a lavish feast with caviare and oysters and champagne and everyone was all delighted even though actually they had to wait half the night for the food and nobody had much to say to each other. The next day the hostess snuck up to all the attendees who showered her with praise and thanks. Then she handed them an itemised bill for the evening. Fifty quid a head. At least half of them were so shocked they paid.  The coffee houses of Hampstead were steaming with outrage all day.

If I tell this story to any of the above-mentioned groups they scream with astonishment and delight. Ideally, they want the perpetrator of this hideous crime against hospitality and, let’s face it, humanity to be English or, better, Jewish. This woman is neither, but somehow they pretend to themselves that she is both and probably retell it accordingly.  ‘So cold!’
‘So weird!’
‘So wrong!’
Whichever way you look at it, charging people when you invite them round is a huge breach of some silent protocol, some unspoken rule about what being a host is about. A bit like having sex with someone you already know and like and asking for money afterwards. And it’s not the same as a pot luck thing where everyone has to bring food, or meeting in a restaurant and splitting the bill. Having someone round to your house is an intimate thing, welcoming them into your life and, possibly, family in a way that is exclusive. After all, you try not to have people you hate round for dinner (not always possible, sure).  Charging them suggests that the privilege was theirs not yours - gastronomic prostitution.  It also suggests that your guests/clients are stupid johns.

Because people actually do pay you for dinner, of course. They invite you back for a totally free of charge dinner at their house. They bring wine and Fererro Rocher, After Eights and flowers. Well, wine anyway. The poor guests I turfed out on their ear today, forcing them to set off early for the Cinque Terre, Florence and other Tuscan hotspots (obviously our house is Tuscan hotspot numero uno), are taking us out for dinner tonight. I will be ordering Lobster and Zabaglione. The dog will have fusilli al ragu. And tomorrow, when I wave them off and go and strip the beds in the searing heat and shoo off the lizards and possibly scorpions, I will feel guilty about how I didn’t put lavender on the pillows or provide a home-cooked breakfast fit for a weary traveller who probably came all the way here from Stansted on some unspeakable airline. Or perhaps I will just wish I’d charged them two hundred quid like everyone else does. Come to think of it, going on the game doesn’t always seem totally out of the question either…..