The Orangeman cometh

"Remember that the Orangeman is coming between 10 and 12 to fit the alarm."

So read the sundry text messages and emails that I received since last Friday.

We'd invited church people to come round for the afternoon - some work in cafés and stuff, others are students and are at a loose end just now, so they were coming for lunch and discussion and games.

The Orangeman came at about 11, quickly surveyed the flat, concluded that only Batman could gain access via any of the windows. I was wearing my Batman t-shirt, but I told him I always use the door and sometimes even resort to the lift. 

So he installed a movement detector in the hall which takes a flash photograph of any uninvited intruder, then showed us how to dial in our codes and use our red and blue tags and to set and unset the alarm.

Meanwhile church folk started arriving. I'd found hobnobs in the shop and they met with general approval. The café people brought savoury flaky pastry rolls (roulés fueilletés) and cinnamon rolls (roulés à la canelle). I'd made a sort of fake gado gado - an Indonesian egg salad served with a peanut sauce. Mrs Davey was able to make occasional appearances. I'd intended to make ice-cream for affogato but had forgotten, but we had a colossal sweet melon, enough to feed a small village.

One of our number had met some charming Mormon elders so we talked about what are the distinguishing marks of the Christian and how to distinguish those excellent and kindly people who are not in fact Christians in any valid sense of the word. 

Then we played Farkle - a dice-rolling game with complicated scoring where the goal is to be the first to reach 10,000 points. I actually won this, despite the scorer omitting to record half my scores. We spiced up the game by attempting to count in Indonesian. Then folks played Settlers of Catan while I watched.

Then it was off with me to feed Catrin's rats.