Dinner With The Woolly Worms

As happens to us all with the passage of time, the Woolly Worms are getting longer in the tooth. I would like to say that with age comes wisdom, but this is not universally true.

- Andrew Levy

In the case of the Worms, it seems as if it brings a less active form of irresponsibility and irreverence – that, and a highly diminished ability to consume the fruit of the vine or the juice of the barley. This is not to say that the enjoyment of the above has in any way lessened, but there is a much sharper sense of distinction between enjoyment and too much enjoyment. Nevertheless both the spirit and the spirits are still willing, albeit that the eyesight, the spinal columns and the joints are somewhat weaker. It seems to me that the capacity for enjoyment does not decrease with age, rather that the pace of the activity slows down and becomes less frenetic.

It is some time since we embarked on a collective outing, of the kind that we call an exotic retrout (which simply means a fishing retreat but one outside our borders), so it was with this in mind that the Bard duly summoned the Worms to a collective dinner to enjoy fine food, and drink (in moderation), to reminisce about old times and heroic catches, and to consider the possible nature and venue for a future outing. Being a man of great culinary flair and an oenologist of no mean abilities, the Bard arranged a menu and paired wines fit for kings, and a venue second to none – in the wine cellar of a private club in the Johannesburg suburbs, in fact, very appropriately, near a river. We all sat around a large refectory table, on benches, like monks of old, surrounded by racks of the finest wines from all around the world, and basked in the warm glow of amity.