Midsummer was a scream. First luncheon with mama & papa, cured salmon, fresh potatoes from the kitchen garden, beer & a few schnapps, surrounded by absolutely crazy setting of peonies, lilies & roses. Then my mountain-bike took me thirty kilometres east, to the sea & a supper in a quiet family setting with the Schmitzes - I’d been promised at least initially. However, it turned out to be only half the truth, as always with the Schmitzes: the family setting had expanded to some thirty people, a liberal idea of a family indeed, not to mention the contcept of ‘quiet’. I was put up in the Harry Schein suite, in the boat house, with an interior all in teak from the mid sixties, dropped my clothes, jumped into the delightfully refreshing water & then joined two great old lady-friends, Tamara Oxenstierna & Jessica Clayton, launching as they were on the terrace, just in time for a Polish speciality: Bison-vodka mixed with cloudy apple juice, which made me think of a very wet soirée at the Polish Embassy on Great Portland Street what seems to be ages ago. The ladies refreshed themselves, powdered their noses & we went to the stables were supper was supposed to commence at 1900hr sharp. It did not. Lovely Chablis dimmed our glasses though. Sam the hunky DJ & a great friend of Sandra Schmitz Jansen & Elinor Schmitz, had already let loose his tunes & the disco begun & the music was so good, that it was even suggested that we should skip the supper, just have some strawberries & dance all night instead. Hélène Schmitz’s brother Micki Schmitz came & made a lovely salad, with plenty of vegs adorned with fresh asparagus, asparagus that I & the two mentioned ladies finished, not leaving many for the others. I might have had a slice of cucumber too. Little by little the gloriously refurbished barn was filled with lovely friendly people & and a disgustingly drooling dog off an unknown origin (someone said giant Labrador whatever that is) & we were finally seated in an adjoining chamber. I had the hostess to the table & prepared a vulgar speech, but since there were children present, ready to pick up a much too grown up vocabulary & forward it at kindergarten & school in a bourgeois polite milieu, I went for a limerick instead, a limerick I was once told by a cab driver: ‘There was a Vicar in Leads/who liked to chew off foreskin with his teeth/not for joy/nor to please/only because he was fond of the taste of cheese.’ It’s a just unbeatable party-trick to tell it. Some herring was quickly consumed, we got munchy meat from the grill, a grill mastered by August Ericson, then the eighteen century dinner table dissapeared out on the lawn & the chairs chucked into a bedchamber & the dance could really start & o’boy did it not. Grandfather Rolf Schmitz turned up with his friends & at the ripe age of 86, he danced the limbo below the very low hanging crystal chandelier, just as everyone else, albeit with his head bent forward rather than backwards. I did the jitter-bug with Rolf’s companion Inger & a raunchy tight session with Micki, reminding me of the good old days at Orange when it still was housed at Brixton Academy & we all danced topless with classified substances in our brains. Micki’s got fantastic firm thighs, btw, which must come from all the tennis he plays with his chums. At two thirty something I had a last Bison-vodka nightcap & lolled down to the boat house, but I think the young bright people continued the party in the sauna until the wee hours.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 09:54:24 +0000
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