The young musicians concert went off very well in the end. The chairman was worried in advance: ticket sales were slow, was the programme the right length, would we be able to find a piano accompanist, how many tickets would we sell on the door and how much food should we do? In the event the hall was virtually full, there were no last minute drop-outs among the musicians, and we had only slightly too much food. The audience seemed to enjoy themselves, even those who were not related to the performers.
My main contribution was a tray of egg sandwiches. I am a rank amateur in the matter of bulk sandwiches, but nipped out once I'd finished potting this year's tulip bulbs and bought a loaf of bread and the smallest jar of mayonnaise they had in Budgens (which was still twice as large as I wanted) with no very clear idea of how many sandwiches the loaf would make, or how many I was supposed to take.
I wasn't too sure how many eggs I'd need either, but put two on to cook while I chopped the domed ends off the bread before buttering it, so that I could feed them to the chickens. When I peeled the eggs, though, I found the yolks were still soft, which would have been lovely if I'd wanted them in a salad but was no good for making sandwich filling. I hopefully put them in a dish in the Aga to see if they would finish cooking, but all that happened after ten minutes was that the whites began to go rubbery while the yolks remained obstinately soft. I thought I could not take rubbery egg sandwiches to the young musician's concert, so ate the first lot of eggs myself at lunchtime while putting a second lot on to cook.
I asked the Systems Administrator's advice on whether the sandwiches would be the right size if I cut them into four, given that it was a small loaf, and was about to cut them into squares when the SA became unexpectedly authoritative about the superiority of triangles. I never had the SA down as a sandwich guru, but he must have been watching cookery programmes. Two eggs turn out to be the right number to use for a small sliced loaf, but don't make enough sandwiches to cover the butler's tray I initially thought I'd use, and I had to start again with a fresh sheet of greaseproof paper and another smaller tray. By now time was ticking on, and I began to wonder how long it could possibly take to make one tray of sandwiches.
They were all eaten. By the time I found my tray at the end of the tea it was underneath a pile of plates waiting to be washed up, and empty. That was a relief. Having to take sandwiches home and put them in the food recycling would have been dispiriting after all that effort, and I disapprove of food waste. In fact, I had to eat several extra miniature scones to help save the chairman from such a fate. I only made sandwiches because that's what she asked me to do, otherwise flapjacks would have been a safer bet. I wouldn't mind eating flapjack that had spent a couple of hours sitting on a plate in the village hall, but left over sandwiches are no use to anybody.
It is a small world. I discovered that one of my fellow committee members used to teach the guitar to Ramon Goose who I saw at the Colchester Mercury in the summer, while his wife's cello teacher was also the one of the cellists on Eleanor Rigby.
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