Fifty Shades and Sunday Lunch

Every Sunday, I had lunch with my mother.

Even when an ocean lay between us, I would still join her. I would FaceTime my brother in England, where he and my mother would be settling down to lunch in her Rex Whistler dining room.

Every Sunday, wherever in the world I happened to be, the three of us found our way back to that table.

It is these tiny rituals, these seemingly insignificant habits that once anchored the week, that have now been swept away that are undoing me.

My mother and brother, and indeed my husband, David, are all readers. Big thinkers and deep readers. From childhood, my mother kept careful notes on the books she had read. Her curiosity never dimmed, even as she grew older.

Much to the surprise of many, the final book she was reading was not Fifty Shades of Grey.

She had already read that.

At the age of 97, she had moved on to the second volume, E. L. James’s Fifty Shades Darker.

An excerpt from it was read at her funeral. It was a bold decision by my brother and brilliantly delivered by my niece Angelica. The congregation smiled at the thought of my 97-year-old mother reading it as her final book.

But my brother had understood exactly what he was doing. He wanted to capture her spirit: her humour, her appetite for life and the fact that she never lost her thirst for knowledge or her curiosity about what everyone else was talking about.

I have been thinking quite a bit about books recently.

As I have mentioned, my own new book, Entertaining with a Side of Chaos, will be published by Rizzoli in September.

I have dedicated it to my five children, Wesley, Felix, Amory, Conrad and Domino, who can always be relied upon to provide the side of chaos.

I lead readers through dinners that spark debate by dessert, lazy lunches for two, late afternoon cocktails for two hundred, an English wedding, a Ukrainian christening, Bahamian Christmases and glimpses into other people’s clever corners. Along the way, I show how a few simple things, garden flowers, an improvised table and whatever is close at hand, can become something beautiful. And there are recipes too, none of them mine, all from our top banana, Claire.

Talking of recipes, I thought you might be amused by a note I found on my mother’s desk after she died:

Baked potato:

Oven on full.

One hour.

Prick.

Beside it was a carefully written list of what I assume she considered essential French words, although she spoke French fluently. Quite why one of them was harass, I cannot imagine. There was also a sweet list of family likes and dislikes from a while ago. It’s still no scallops for me.

Not long before she died, I asked my mother for a list of her favourite books, and in her increasingly weary hand, she carefully wrote down what came to mind. Interestingly, it did not include Fifty Shades Darker.

To learn more about my upcoming book or to place a preorder (means it arrives the second the book is released and of course supports the nervous author before publication ) click here.

And as always thank you for being here with me on Substack.