Though it might seem cheeky to review one’s brother-in-law’s paella, I give it five stars. Lyndsay and John host a giant paella party every summer, and this year it coincided with the 30th birthday of their twins, Charlie and Hannah, on Sunday, 31 July.
On Friday, therefore, Uncle Roy and I locked up the boat, headed off from Thames & Kennet marina and checked in at The Arrow Mill for the weekend (reviewed in my 13 July blog). We’d had car trouble again with the new Renault Twingo, but our incredibly generous marina neighbours, Kenny and Heather, lent us their Volvo convertible for the trip.
On the back terrace of Lynt and John’s house – a house that has seen some spectacular parties in its time – four generations celebrated the twins’ birthday together: from Roy’s mum, Leila (93), to a fast-growing brood of great-grandchildren whose names I will not list here, for fear of leaving out a name and offending its parent forever.
Six steps to the perfect paella
Paella is John’s party trick. (For this annual bash, anyway; he has different tricks up his sleeve for other occasions, including deeply mournful and occasionally pitchy renditions of Leonard Cohen dirges).
What a splendid meal – not a shred of green in sight! Later, once the gorgeous birthday girls had blown out their candles and we’d eaten as much of their cake as they’d part with, Mervyn and his taxi took Roy and me back to the hotel. The hard core, apparently, were up till 2am, by then having done a full 12-hour party shift.
