KEY POINTS:
The long days of summer
This is outdoor living at its most luxurious and grown-up. The blue-and-white textiles - vintage linens, striped cottons, faded denims - have an unruffled masculine glamour, and an organic quality in this context of cloudless skies and rippling pool.
My friends have
a great laissez-faire attitude to entertaining in their holiday home. We spend the day as we please, lounging by the pool or setting off on expeditions. In the evening we sit down together for a lively supper, which one of us will have prepared. I love going to the local markets and picking up fresh vegetables and fish, or a pungent local cheese.
A fresh white linen shirt, shorts, and comfortable flip-flops are de rigueur for this supper. Formality in this case is only a means to keep things uncomplicated.
The first course of locally grown artichokes is already on the table. In this atmosphere, I like to have the first course placed on the table before guests are seated. The authority of the cook is dispensed with, cocktails can be finished at leisure, and there is no haste or pressure. My choice of glasses, plates, and table linen reflects this uncluttered haven: stripes, checks, little ornamentation. All is clean, pure, and beautiful.
Outdoor living
Pleasantly languishing in the heat of Provence, I had arranged to cook lunch for some Parisian friends who were also staying in the region. The day before, they rang to say, rather awkwardly, that one of their mothers had arrived and would it be possible to include her in the party.
Now I had met this mother on a previous occasion in Paris. She is a rather grand woman who does not speak English on principle and, no matter how hot it was, would think of wearing nothing less than an elegant suit and shoes. I had liked her, however, and immediately abandoned my plans for a shorts-and-flip-flops lunch, followed by lounging by the pool.
I decided instead on a lunch in two parts on the cool veranda. Before dessert, we would move from the table to four sofas, where puddings and mint tea would be served and the afternoon could be spent in animated conversation.
In deference to the elegance and age of my eldest guest, I set a formal but pretty table in blue and pink. Tiny orchids adorned each place setting and a pot of beautiful pink hydrangeas was my centrepiece. The theme was floral but in a finely decorative, rather than overblown cottagey way.
Delicious puddings were served in delicate crystal with slender stems, and mint tea in blue-and-white fine china.
At five my guests left, politely thanking us for a charming afternoon. Freed of the constraints of being amusing in French, we raced off to the beach.
* William Yeoward on Entertaining by William Yeoward