Dartington Crystal and Kale

Yesterday, I went for lunch at big sister’s house. Our house is screaming for mercy under the sheer weight and amount of bodies we are squeezing into it at any one time (it’s lucky face time friends don’t take up any space, real friends are a logistical nightmare: can I have a real friend to sleepover please Mum. Yes dear, of course, if they don’t mind sleeping on your sister’s head). Conversely, big sister lives in a big house, situated on a gated road. I arrived at the gate in my old and very tired Previa, which is also screaming for mercy – cracked windscreen, only one of the sliding doors in operation (we carry a large screwdriver for situations when friends don’t know and we forget to tell them about the door), air con broken and oh the mess, so I don’t really blame the gate for not wanting to let me in. It’s on a slope. I put the handbrake on. The car slides back. Add it to the list! I have a problem – I need to get out of the car to access the intercom so that big sister can let me in. I sit and contemplate how refugees must feel at border crossings.

I ring big sister on my shiny new phone – the one thing that feels dependable right now. Big sister comes flying out of her driveway, brandishing the buzzer, looking rather harassed and wearing, what seemed to be strange attire for lunch. She apologises for her appearance: Pilates, maintenance man, shower, undressed, she gabbles. I wondered whether she is having an affair with the maintenance man.

I notice a large juicer on the granite top, filled with something green. Kale, she tells me proudly and lettuce, sweetened with lemon juice. But lemon juice isn’t sweet, I point out. Defensively, she whips out her January edition of Good Housekeeping, and apple, she points at the recipe victoriously. Oh god, is that massacred kermit frog concoction in that blender my lunch, I ask. No, she said, I had an accident – my glass broke, but I drank it anyway. She showed me the glass with a hole in the side. A Dartington crystal glass, she said incredulously. But, she continued, I knew that you or maintenance man would find me if I swallowed a piece. Maintenance man, I correct her, because I would have been stuck on the other side of the gate – the side that doesn’t drink smoothies from crystal glasses.