Monday 12 February 2007

'Never been twenty-one before'

David reached the age of 21 yesterday, and we had a little family get-together to celebrate the occasion.

We went to Zucchini’s for Sunday lunch. Zucchini’s has a fine array of Italian food, but we all went for the traditional roast beef dinner, made all the more attractive by being served as a buffet, with the words ‘Eat as much as you like’ on the menu.

Certain people, who had better remain nameless, had two huge platefuls and even had the cheek to ask for a clean plate.

It struck me that this was the first time in ages that all five of us were in one place at the same time.

Zucchini’s by the way gained a little notoriety when it was patronised by (Lord) Jeffrey Archer, minor politician and all-round dodgy character, when he was in the North Sea Camp open prison near Boston and allowed out to work at Lincoln’s Theatre Royal.

The age of majority has been eighteen for a long time, but the tradition of marking one’s twenty-first still seems pretty strong. I was amused, though, when David asked me why his grandmother had sent him a card with a large key on it. I thought it might be fun to embarrass him by singing ‘Twenty-one today . . . I’ve got the key of the door, etc.’ but thought better of it.

We rounded off the afternoon by adjourning to a nearby pub, where the beer is cheaper and we could watch the rugby, Ireland against France. Needless to say, we all became honorary Irishmen for the day.

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