[Bêthberry]

Oh, you, Fordim Hedgethistle! Just when I am most confusticated and bebothered with real life dinner parties you suggest one here! However, as I am want to celebrate all the twelve days of Christmas, up to and including the Orthodox calendar celebration, I think I am but merely fashionably late. (Oh, do I use that line too often?) So, for this time, I shall not call fie and indigestion upon our gracious host, Fordim. Or is he more like an Innkeeper here, overseeing many various guests and parties?

Well I recall this particular parlour game, although I tended a bit mischievously to mix the likes of Laurence Sterne and Henry Fielding with, say, Ann Radcliffe and Jane Austen, or Mary Wollstonecraft and Elizabeth Browning. I thank you for your gracious invitation to myself, Fordim, and promise in a later party to include you in a manner more fitting for your interests. For now, here is my first party:

A dark and dingy cellar deep in the back streets of Dale, long before the Desolation of Smaug. Conspirators meet, perhaps with an aim of mounting eventually an expedition to The Shire in hopes of purloining needed aid against the Were-Worm. Oil lanterns light the scene half-heartedly and a small stone fireplace casts some heat. Walls are black with soot and smoke lingers in the air. This will likely prove an uproarious repast and so don?t expect impeccable manners, for hysterical furore oft generates energetic rumpus. It?s that kind of party for that kind of age. Needless to say, no elves.

The daughter of Tom and Goldberry sits quietly opposite Squatter of Amon Rùdh, who generously gesticulates his many points, especially when they are contested by Kuruharan, who sits to Bethberry's right and equally pontificates his own queries and questions. Both of these Downer dwarves, however, are often silenced by the argumentative scrappings of those paragons of domestic bliss, Aulë and Yavanna, who sit across from each other, one to Bethberry's left and the other to Squatter's right. A smug look of satisfaction can be seen to cross his face whenever the couple become particularly cantankerous. Who's afraid of the Valar wolves?

Beside Aulë sits Dis, that most mysterious of dwarven kind, whose reaction to the rough and tumble of the discourse could well cement the future fate of females of her kind. Beside Yavanna sits Bullroarer Baggins, a mighty giant of his kind and well able to hold his own against this fractious fellowship.

We are lucky to have with us more peacemakers than just the Bombadil daughter. Estelyn sits at the left of Squatter, knowing him perhaps the best of all the present company and able to punctuate his wit with cryptic observations of her own. It is from this meal and this cabal that she learns so ably how to egg both Squatter and Kuruharan on in the REB stakes.

Beorn sits opposite Bullroarer while the legendary burrahobbit rounds out the table with the requisite corrections of all errors in thought and legendarium which might proceed from the clash of opinion. Sometimes, just sometimes now mind you, he wishes Obloquy were present.

And of what shall the conspirators partake? Well, a secret meeting cannot be picky about its victuals or potables. Plain faire it shall be. Fowl pie of some sort and blood sausage. Fish chowder. Neeps and greens and carrots. Heavy, dark rye bread or eight grain, served with butter and gooseberry jam. Poached eggs on beds of spinach and mushrooms. Steamed puddings and raspberry tarts. There shall be porter and dark ale to drink, mead and cider for those wishing something sweeter. And some time towards the end of the affair, coffee, if they are not interrupted and forced to see their plans come together as they fight off yet another incursion of Smaug. You might say they are my ?A dinner team.?