Dinner Chez Nous plus Celebrity Autobiography

We have two friends who have been amazing to us since we arrived in New York. We were here for maybe two weeks when they took us out for dinner. They also invited us to their house in the Hamptons for the weekend. Amazing.

Embarrassingly, it took us around 10 months to get them over to ours for dinner. I had tried hard to make it a nice one, but was nervous, as M, the cool lady is totes a Foodie. Eek! Plus they go out for dinner a lot to super fancy restaurants. Double eek.

On the menu was crab gratin, southern shrimp tchefuncte and baklava. I had slaved and sweated. M arrived - glamourously - laden with fancy EVO and balsamic as a house gift (the box came in fancier packaging than the fanciest toiletries I've ever owned).

'Will Cheeky Chops (not his real name) be arriving soon?' I asked.

M: 'Oh yes. He called to say that he was just jumping in a cab.'

So I stuck the crab gratin into the oven.

About 12 minutes later, M received a call, 'Hello...?' She queries the unknown number. 'Oh, Cheeky Chops, it's you. Where are you?' Her voice changes... 'What happened...? I'm here, at the Boy and Billychica's apartment.'

He's not coming, I thought. But then her tone changes. It's bad.

Cheeky Chops had been hit by a bike right outside our building, as he ran across the road. He was confused and had no idea where M was. The New York City parking system is ridiculous. There are four lanes of cars on our avenue, which are banked by parked cars, and then right between the parked cars and the curb is the bike lane. Way-to-go city planners.

Cheeky Chops is still in hospital in the trauma unit, but should be fine. Apparently, as they were cutting the blood-soaked shirt off his body, his only comment was, 'Ohhhhhhhhh, I really like that shirt.' He is a Cheeky Chops; I hope he gets better soon.

As for the dinner, we've been eating a lot of seafood, and butter, sugar, honey, pastry and nuts these last few days.

In other news, the Boy went out to celebrate day 7 of his birthday. We went to Celebrity Autobiography. Imagine the Karate Kid reading excerpts from Arnold Schwarzenegger's autobiography in a bad French/Italian/Austrian accent or the man from Who's the Boss pretending to be Sylvester Stallone's autobiography. That's what happened last night. As the Boy said, the Karate Kid reading aloud the prologue to David Hasselhoff aka the Knightrider's book is bizarre. Two key figures from our childhood. How surreal is that?