GATECRASH: Dining made crystal clear

Nettie Powell didn't let the fact that her husband Robert was away in New Zealand stop her from inviting an assortment of friends round to her home in Pewsey on a warm summer evening.

Her huge kitchen dining room is perfect for entertaining, and she had no difficulty in seating ten people at the large marble table.

Her dinner party was a mixture of marrieds and singles, all from the Pewsey neighbourhood.

Nettie's daughter Kate, 13, had helped with the preparations, but son William, 15 who, with Kate, attends Dauntsey's School, was away sailing on the school's yacht Jolie Brise on the Channel.

Also there to help if necessary was David Newton, Nettie's Man Friday, who can, and does, turn his hand to more or less anything from gardening and helping to maintain Nettie's holiday cottages to washing up and looking after Bear, the dog.

The beautiful flower arrangement on the table, and one of the puddings, was supplied by Laura Miller.

She arrived with table napkins dressed with cinnamon sticks garlanded with thyme. "Cinnamon is the herb of Aphrodite and is all about love, while thyme brings out the inner child, both perfect for a dinner party" she explained.

The flowers, too, had significance and included dill, which is the herb of kitchen magic and therefore ideal for welcoming guests. The lilies represented feminine power, which might sum up Nettie's talents for theatre direction, as well as masterminding dinner parties.

Laura is launching a business, Magical Earth, based on her beliefs. "If quartz can make a clock accurate, then why not use other crystals to improve wellbeing? And there are plenty of good reasons to garden according to the lunar cycle.

"I want to promote everything from candle making to hedgerow recipes that harness the energies of nature," she said.

Both Nettie and Kate are very involved with the theatre. Kate is hoping for a career on the stage, and Nettie runs the youth theatre for Pewsey Vale Amateur Dramatic Society (PVADS). When Nettie moved to Pewsey and joined PVADS, director Martin Clifton cast her in her first big role, and they have worked together on many productions. Martin, a caterer by profession, came to the party with his wife Marilyn, who had recently retired from a demanding job as director of travel for a big corporation. She is still doing some consultancy work, and is looking forward to having time for gardening and painting. So far she has resisted entreaties from Martin to turn her talents to PVADS.

Graham Thomson is one of Nettie's tenants in her rental cottages, and was also partly responsible for the food, as he is the proprietor of Pewsey's much admired delicatessen. After 25 years running restaurants in London he had had enough, but still had to work with food and wine. He wanted his children to be educated in the country, and be part of a community. He is a passionate believer in sourcing food locally so has quickly established strong links with many Wiltshire producers. He sells beef from near Devizes, goat's cheese from Salisbury and 'unbelievably fantastic' yoghurts from Hungerford, but also goes on buying trips to France very regularly.

Anthony Wells is more commonly known as Muttley. He claims to live on a building site in Milton Lilbourne, which is the family home he is renovating. A chartered engineer, Muttley works in stress engineering on aeroplanes at Boscombe Down as a proper job, but is also proprietor of a company supplying time capsules and has his own mobile discotheque.

His local claim to fame is a Wild Woods birthday party held on the farm each June, which involves spit roast lambs, a huge fire, and music. "130 people came this year, and 75 were still there for a full English breakfast the next morning". Kate reported that the event was really good fun.

The final two guests were computer software developer Paul Hughes and his wife Wendy who works at St Francis School in Pewsey. Paul met Nettie through working on Pewsey's Village Design Statement together, while Wendy is a regular competitor in curious competitions involved with Pewsey Carnival. "I'll do all sorts of strange things, but running through rivers and consuming alcohol usually seems to be involved." The Hughes were recovering from holding a birthday party for their younger son, Ryan, who had just turned seven. Ryan and his older brother Spencer, 9, go to the local primary school.

Laura's magic seemed to work very well, as conversation was fast, witty and very varied.

PVADS' next production of four one-act plays on October 27th - 29th was an early topic.

One play will be entered in the Swindon one act play festival. Last year the youth entry, directed by Nettie, swept the board for awards, so high standards have to be maintained. There is also an forthcoming pantomime, still to be chosen, that Martin will be directing.

Despite her faith in magic, Laura firmly ruled out crop circles being created by galactic forces. "Ninety per cent of crop circles are man made," she declared. "What about the other ten per cent?" someone asked. "They," Laura said, "are made by women."

"Mine would go horribly wrong," said Wendy.

Others were not so sure that all were the work of locals. Anthony had seen one where some stems were broken and flattened at ground level, while others were uniformly curved higher up the stems. Nettie put this down to use of a steam iron.

"But I'm not going to knock them," she said "they are very good for my holiday cottage business."

The food was much praised, although it was pointed out that David would eat anything, as he had on one occasion been shown a glow worm and immediately picked it up and ate it. "It was horrible," he said.

One of the holiday tenants at the time was a specialist in Chinese medicine, and apparently had been extolling the virtues of dried sea horse. David would have no problem consuming this, while Wendy would be unwilling, due to being vegetarian.

Still on the subject of food, the group had a serious discussion about bread, and the difference in cost between white sliced and the good stuff, and whether buying cheap was a false economy.

This lead on to a bit of teasing for Graham who was asked if he sold Spam in his shop. Indeed he did, he claimed. "Special Pewsey Arse Meat" is in fact what his name for a type of dried biltong that he stocks.

The group discussed what Nettie, Laura and Wendy should pick for a theme for this year's carnival four legged race - like a three legged one, but more difficult. Calendar Girls in 2004 had been a huge success.

"We were terribly slow, because we were collecting so much money for charity," explained Nettie. "We weren't naked, although my top was quite revealing. I think people paid us to keep our clothes on."

Off on another tangent, conversation dipped into women wondering if it would be better to be born a man.

"I am perfectly happy being a woman," said Laura, but she did then add that she had, of course, been a man in a previous life.

After dinner Laura's divining rods and pendulum were brought into play, supposedly to foretell whether Kate and Nettie would win any matches in a tennis tournament the next day.

"No" was the prediction, but in the event they got through to the semi finals.

If all answers are this inaccurate, it does not bode too well for Graham's love life, which the equipment indicated was heading for an exciting three months.

Most of the party retired at around 2.30am, with two stalwarts not turning in until dawn was rising at 5.30am.

The Menu

Starters were pats made of stilton and pear, and duck and peppercorns. These came from Everleigh Farm Shop and were served with mushrooms that Nettie filled with a stuffing "made up as I went along, with cous cous, herbs from the garden, and jalapeo cheese," she said.

The main course was pork, cooked with tomatoes, prunes and chilli. "It came from a huge book I bought at one of those bargain bookshops which does not even give the name of the author, but it is really good." This was served with brown rice, and a mixture of baby vegetables.

As well as the raspberry mousse with amaretto biscuits contributed by Laura there was a lemon cheesecake. "The recipe was given to me by the person who catered for my wedding, who became a friend," said Nettie.

Cheeses were, of course, from Thomson's and included fresh Rosary goat's cheese from Salisbury, Wigmore, a gloriously melting soft ewe's milk from Berkshire, Blacksticks Blue from Lancashire and a nice mature Keens cheddar.