The only time we used to use a table cloth was either at Christmas or when the family came to visit for a special weekend. Normally it was Sunday lunch off a medium blue lump of laminate that dad installed on all the tables in our cafe/take away/Deli. On the special occasions the shop would be closed and a few of these blue laminates were bonded together in a caterpillar which received a glistening white sheet of table cloth. Thick heavy set linen that inevitably would be soiled by spilt gravy or a custard spatter or a dropped piece of meat.

In it’s pure form it was adorned with serving plates as big as battle ships, with serving spoons and forks that sat out like gun emplacements. Stacks of dinner plates would come hot from the oven, mum waddling in with them in a tea towel, each placed at your spot. The smell of roasted chicken or thinly sliced beef or tangy Pork would fill the air, but also the nauseous smell of vegetables. I think I had a campaign going from about age five to avoid them all, and especially brussel sprouts they seemed to epitomise the whole ‘vegetables are bad’ thing for me – I actually gagged at the table once when forced to devour a brussel. Peas I could come at and the occasional carrot. In fact between age ten and seventeen I only ever ate vegetables at those Sunday roasts… how weird is that!.

At the family gatherings the scrapings of knifes and forks on plates echoed through the air conditioned hum of the shop, just below the lazy fan that swung in a steady arc in the sometimes 35 degree heat. Conversations would be caught up and sliced in the blades – I don’t think I ever said a word except ‘may I get down from the table’. Shy, very shy, two foot tall shy I was then. But having had my fill of the roast beef and the crumble and custard from an apple crumble pudding I couldn’t wait to get away from it, all that chat, so I could get on with something really useful like building a model aircraft, or rearranging my stamps…