The Chas. K & M (if M he be) Dinner

I looked forward to Benedict Ambrose's attendance at his friends' annual "Charles King and Martyr" dinner with some trepidation. 

To explain Chas. K&M: some Anglicans, Scottish Episcopalians and Catholic converts have a soft spot in their hearts for Charles I,  executed on January 30, 1649. Naturally Charles really was a king, but these Anglicans and ex-Anglicans maintain that Charles was also a martyr because the Scots handed him over to the Roundheads after he refused to swear to establish Presbyterianism in England. 

In short, Charles was a martyr for the Anglican religion, or so his adherents hold. And since old-fashioned Scottish Piskies are themselves a marginalized group, long snubbed by Catholics, long suspected (or even harassed) by Presbyterians, and then betrayed by their own now-woke communion, is it any wonder than they (even if now mostly Catholics) gather annually to commemorate Good King Charles? 

It is also an excuse to drink themselves paralytic, and you couldn't pay me enough to go, even if women were invited. And since BA can't get very far without a walking stick, and because the last time he drank alone with men where there were stairs he fell down them, I was a tad concerned. BA's phone call from A&E is a trauma I revisit every time he tells me he's going to the pub. Fortunately, this is only once a month or so, and he never drinks more than two pints. 

However, that pub has no stairs, and his host's flat is at the top of a lot of them. Thus, I popped out of my office yesterday to tell BA not to fall down these stairs and to remind him of the scar over his left eyebrow.

"If you're going to hold that over me every time I go out, I'll... I'll... just have to take it," said BA. 

But he was so incensed by my suggestion that he inform his host that he might need help getting down the stairs that I gave up my plan of secretly emailing the host myself. However, BA had reserved his taxi home and trousered the £25 I handed him, so I hoped for the best and went back to editing articles about the sharp decline of Western Civilization. 

When I was done, BA was at the party and I discovered we had no oregano. We might not have had it for some time because--brace yourselves, Gordonites--BA does almost all the cooking and his recipe for spaghetti sauce is entirely unlike my mum's. Anyway, I made myself a halfway house of a spaghetti sauce, cooked some pasta and settled down to watch The Gay Divorcee on the BBC.

The Gay Divorcee was over and I was watching International Lindy Hop Championship videos on YouTube when I heard a commotion at the front door and a voice that was not BA's. I got up to investigate and found BA propped up against the vestibule wall by his host. The host was looking very well, I must say, and was wearing a sharp jacket. Never one to ignore male pulchritude, I complimented the host on his appearance. 

But he had apparently seen better days, as he had had to carry BA (and his stick) from the taxi, and two of our neighbours, coming home from the pub, had had to come to his assistance. BA, fizzing with happiness and wonder, told me that it had also taken three men to get him down the tenement stairs. 

I imagined the scene with great wifely smugness. 

"I'm not drunk," said BA cheerfully as I slowly lugged him from the minute vestibule to the loo. "I didn't drink more than anyone else, but when my taxi cab came, my legs wouldn't work. It was as if someone had turned off a switch."

"In fact you were literally paralytic," I said. "How much did you drink?"  

"Two gin-and-tonics, three glasses of wine with dinner, then two glasses of dessert wine, and three ports."

"That's ten drinks. I think that's a week's worth of the NHS recommendation all at once."

"But I was able to walk from the dining room to the sitting room! It was after the singing. It was as if someone had turned off a switch." 

Fortunately, this switch turned off only everything from his knees down, so eventually I was able to get him from the loo to his bed. It did cross my mind that it was a mercy that I go to the gym five times a week.  

"I am going to blog about this tomorrow," I warned him. 

Nevertheless, he provided me with a wealth of detail about the dinner and how much he had eaten (ah, steroids) and how amazing the trifle was (made from hot cross buns--a brilliant idea we must try) and how [So-and-So] had sung "The Vicar of Bray", including the new verses BA had penned for him. Already very satisfied with life (and amazed rather than frightened about the off-switch), he was very pleased that I wasn't cross. 

And I wasn't cross because the deal was that he could go to the party but not end up in A&E. Also, this is the first time in 15 years that BA has had to be carried to and from a taxi by his hard-drinking pals, so it had all the charm of novelty. Plus, the dysfunction of his knees wasn't just the booze, obviously.  

All's well that ends well, and this morning his knees are working again.