F is for fire lighters, friends and fathers

When I started blogging I wasn't sure where it would take me, how long I would stick at it and how often I'd have something that I thought was interesting enough to write about. A year on I realise that I really enjoy some quiet time reflecting on what's happening in and around our lives. Jotting my thoughts and observations down in a blog has proved to be a good way of keeping our memories and of sharing news with friends, family and a few random strangers who (according to the blog stats) dip into my meanderings. As for wondering if I would have things to write about......I had obviously never lived in Africa.

This week is a great example. Nothing particular planned. Kids are back at school after half term and have final hockey matches of the term, homework and already looking forward to the Easter holidays in their minds. I have work to get on with and the traffic to re-acclimatise to after a week of election fuelled empty streets. The rains are on their way - a few weeks earlier than last year which may avoid milk and butter shortages and any last minute post election hot tempers. So a pretty normal week. And with Tim away I thought it the perfect time to catch up with some of my good female friends here (and ensure at least one evening of adult company). Nothing fancy, just some simple food, plenty of wine and good company with a mix of people I know through school playground, work, meeting on holiday, friends of friends etc.

It was all going really well. I'd planned the food, accepted very generous offers by a couple of people to sort puddings, commissioned the shopping and food preparation (some bits of my life are just soooo simple here), put the wine in the fridge, got the kids off to school and gone to work. I didn't really worry that there wasn't any power when I got home and that it had been off all day - our fridge is pretty insulated and stuff stays cold for a while and the power is often off in the day whilst Kenya power do something that looks lethal with electric cables along the roads near us. And its generally back on by about 530 when the guys pack up.

Anyway, all I had to do was make a white sauce, put the constituent parts of my friend Pat's entirely reliable moussaka recipe together, mix a salad, steam a few veg and we'd be there. So I placed candles and torches around the garden to look pretty, set a fire ready to light outside, sat down and did homework with Matthew, chatted to Jamie and watched Katie cut paper into tiny bits. By about 630, with increasingly hungry and grumpy kids and no sign of power I was a little less relaxed. The kids fished out more candles and spread them round the house for me to light. I changed my plan for a starter to guacamole (fresh from the tree in our garden) and crackers and decided that now was the time to find out quite how impressive my dad's old, huge, American gas BBQ is.





By the time people turned up just before 8 I was rummaging for a clean shirt that didn't smell of smoke with a head torch, had the boys in their pj's (and element as no hot water meant no showers) helping our guard on the gate and Katie trying to read by candlelight. My friends were a little perplexed by my choice of very low lighting but quickly took the lack of power in their stride. The apple pie arrived warm from the oven and we popped it into my Wonderbagto keep it that way. I opened lots of wine (most still chilled) and kept my fingers crossed.



It was a really fun evening, with some great friends - when we came inside to eat all 3 kids complained and asked us to keep the noise down (I'm recording that for future use). And I know that with this group of people it would have been like that whatever food I had served up. I also know that if my dad were still around he would have been thrilled to discover that you can of course bake moussaka on a BBQ, even if it has a certain smokey flavour and cleaning the dishes afterwards requires some pretty major effort (if not, on this occasion, by me).

Anne