All Systems Go For Our Perfection Dinner Tomorrow

I'm so glad that we are retired or tomorrow night's party to celebrate Josephine's Perfection (last episode of current series tonight BBC2 4.30pm) would have been impossible. We've had two people around for dinner plenty of times and we've had ten at the table before (although on that occasion we hired a chef). But this is the first time that we'll be cooking for that many ourselves and it's taken a hell of a lot of organising. Yesterday was spent shopping, today has been spent getting the house clean and tidy, the table set, selecting the best episodes of the show to watch  and printing some prize entries for our guests. Tomorrow we'll be cooking and preparing the food (apart from the dessert which we've ordered from a local patisserie). It's a good job that the diet is over as the lady on the cheese counter at Waitrose was a brilliant salesperson and, every time she suggested that we try a taste of a different one we ended up buying a piece.

And talking of diets, David, the owner of our local news agents the Bon Ton, asked me if I was getting better when I went to pay for the papers this morning. "Better?" I asked. "Yes" he says "I noticed your face looking thinner and thinner and thought you were ill". And to think that people go on diets to make themselves look better (not me I hasten to add).

One thing that we didn't take into account when choosing the date and time for our do was the day's sporting fixtures. With two passionate rugby fans and an Everton season ticket holder on the guest list, we've pretty well cocked up their day's sport for them with our 5pm start. It will have to be good now.

As the door closes on this series of Perfection another one opens and, next Friday, son Paul's creation A League Of Their Own returns to Sky1HD and Sky1 at 9.30pm. We won't be having a party to celebrate this one as we've already had a League party but we will be going down to Elstree on Wednesday for the filming of one of the episodes. It will probably be our last visit to a recording of A League Of Their Own as Paul is starting with the BBC in just over two weeks.


When we've finished watching Perfection tomorrow we might have time for some party tricks. I think I'll get everyone to have a try at this. Marion has just popped out for some distilled water.