Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe

We had a mass family gathering yesterday in Greenwich Park to celebrate my brother's birthday. People turned up from far and wide, bearing everything from 10 cigarettes to a gazebo and mosaic table. I drank a lot of white wine, which I don't even like, and did the usual catalogue of faux-pas: offering a vegetarian cousin a rainbow-coloured selection of juicy chicken nibbles, trying to outdo my second cousin once removed's very nice wife's budgie stories, planting about 100 cherry trees under a sycamore by not popping the stones into a carrier bag, and so on. I'm sure there are more awful items to come as the hangover works itself off; my only consolation is that my brother is even worse than me when it comes to angst from remembering things said when under the influence, and he will be curled up on the floor writhing about in remorse today, thinking about all the things he thinks he said, and exaggerating them beyond belief in order to torture himself. I must phone him- roaring with laughter at his woe is a very good pick-me-up!