The last supper

I mentioned that January had been quite cool. Well, that was putting  the commentator's curse on it! Today was exceptionally humid and uncomfortable and early in the morning I could see the first signs of thunderclouds to the north. Robert has enjoyed the heat of his last day in Cape Town for who knows how long - London is expecting unusually low temperatures this weekend of -14 degrees! For his last dinner at home, he wanted his mother's famous peppered steak, and who am I to disappoint him? Off we went to the local butcher - an excellent fellow who will never sell you meat that has not matured sufficiently, and unfortunately the only piece available was fillet at R156 for the piece. He Who Can Fix Anything came home early because he knows I get twitchy when no-one turns up in time for steak - the sauce reaches a point of no return and cannot be reheated.

In view of the heat in the kitchen, he decided that we would do the steak in a pan on a fire - as if the air wasn't hot enough already, he wanted to stand in front of a blazing fire! But once again, who am I to disappoint him, and so Robert made the fire and I prepared everything and carried it downstairs. By now, the sky was filled with iron-grey clouds of that particular darkness that heralds an electrical storm. Suddenly a huge flash of lightning burst from the clouds right overhead, followed almost instantaneously by ground-shaking thunder, sending little Susie scuttling inside and under cupboard to await a comforting dose of rescue remedy. A few minutes later, large drops fell from the sky, plopping into the pan where the sauce was coming to the boil, necessitating the extraction of the garden umbrella from the shed. I held it over the fire while cooking proceeded and by the time the sauce had thickened, the rain had passed and the sun was peeking out from behind puffy cotton wool clouds.

The steak was worth every cent, melt-in-the-mouth without being borderline decomposing (if that isn't enough to encourage vegetarianism, I'll be a monkey's uncle) and Robert pronounced himself completely satisfied with his last home meal. A glass of champagne was had to celebrate his launch into a new and exciting life, and the sun sank into the sea, casting a magnificent cerise glow onto the clouds, shot through with the last golden rays, a fitting farewell from the Fairest Cape.