‘Are you Mrs Adlard?’ I enquired of the lady who had greeted us and who seemed to be in charge. ‘No,’ she replied, ‘she’s upstairs feeding the baby.’ Moments later a wiry, feverish, Woody Allen figure with gold-rimmed spectacles emerged from the kitchen to bid a brief welcome to his guests before shuffling briskly back to his stoves. At the end of the evening, Mrs Adlard did appear. Fresh-faced, pinkcheeked and smiling, she sat down at our table looking a million dollars in a warm woolly dressing-gown with a pair of fluffy bedroom slippers on her feet. After 15 minutes her husband joined us, similarly shod. He was looking more relaxed now, the tension which had seared his brow earlier dissolved into relief and an air of modest satisfaction. It had been a good evening and the benign eccentricity of the scene had made the occasion one of the most memorable that my wife and I could recall. We had dined on fare worthy of the Connaught, Adlard’s culinary alma mater, but in circumstances more akin to a family gathering around the kitchen table.
