Guess Who’s NOT Coming To Dinner: Remembering the Pandemic Lockdown

Nine Imaginary Settings and One Reality Check

Remember the bad old days of the Pandemic Lockdown, back in 2020? Of course you do. Who could forget them - though we might want to. Back then, when we couldn’t have anybody to dinner, for fear it might be the last meal for all at table, I - probably like most - retreated into imagination out of desperation. Just to fill the time, and to fill the void left by NOT having those candlelight suppers Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced Bouquet, s'il vous plaît - remember her? Of course you do. Who could forget her?!) taught us were so essential to civilized life, I set the table for a series of imaginary gatherings of imaginary guests for afternoons and evenings of imaginary frivolities during those anything but frivolous days. If it had been a French play, it might well have been titled The Madman of Mandell Street.

Now that those days have passed, and we can be real people together at our tables again, I thought it might be time for a look back at those settings, put together when imagination and hope seemed to be about all we had to keep us going.

This is sounding a little weighty, which I think the setting themselves were not. And so here they are: Nine Imaginary table settings, and one reality check, in remembrance of a pandemic (mostly, we hope) past.

PS: Some of you may remember these from Facebook, but it’s been a while, so maybe you’ll enjoy seeing them again.

Imaginary Setting No 1 - Down Mexico Way

Imaginary Setting No 2 - Blue and White Luncheon

Imaginary Setting No 3 - Pink Magnolia Supper

Imaginary Setting No 4 - Tea With the Queens

Imaginary Setting No 5 - Success Is a Midnight Supper in New York (with Andy Warhol)

Imaginary Setting No 6 - Far East

Imaginary Setting No 7 - Wine Tasting, with Ruth Laird (For those who don’t know, Laird was a mid-century Houston ceramicist with great talent and imagination herself.)

Imaginary Setting No 8 - À la recherche de la France perdue (with Marcel Proust)

Imaginary Setting No 9 - LA MADONNE A LA SPAGHET, a spaghetti supper with Emma Richardson Cherry

Imaginary Setting No 10 – GUESS WHO’S NOT COMING TO DINNER: A reality check for the way it actually was.