The Art of the Rollover Holiday Lunch
How to eat in the summertime
Our friend Ammu came to stay with us for a week in late May, depriving Nairobi of her cocktail parties but providing us with the excuse to drink lots of Watermelon Spritzes.
We had a halcyon time.
Yes, we were hosting someone else’s holiday and that takes a little bit of extra work on the domestic front. But it was almost better than being on holiday ourselves, we agreed afterwards. We were all pretty sad when it was over.
Mostly, this was due to the company of an old friend. Shared histories, easy laughter, etc. But it was also to do with seeing our everyday life through fresh eyes. Yes can book in a week off work and call it a “staycation” and that might be less effort - but in these circs, one tends to get swamped with such things as guttering and weeding and existential torpor. Hosting provides much more overall uplift, if you do it well. We were keen to show Bristol in its best light and suddenly it seemed sunny and interesting. We made a series of daytrips too, to Hay-on-Wye; to Slad (more specifically to the amazing Woolpack Inn) to Batcombe (even more specifically the amazing Three Horseshoes); to the Newt in Somerset; and to Bath, too. Suddenly the diameter of “home” became 100 miles larger.
But it also felt like a holiday as it involved one of my favourite features of any holiday: the rollover lunch. This is a particular mode of lunching that is central to any memorable holiday - but which is hard to recreate under the usual conditions of work, children, Weltschmertz, etc.
You know what I’m talking about even if you think you don’t.
I mean those lunches you had in the French gîte or that villa in Crete or that ranch near Ojai with that great farmer’s market nearby. The rollover lunch is one of those meals that falls halfway between cooking and simply opening packets. It’s kind of mezze, kind of tapas, but it’s looser than that, almost a homebound picnic. At any rate - it’s a mode of pleasure-taking that seems to occur naturally when you’re on holiday (vacation) and it’s one of the main reasons I prefer self-catering to hotels.
