Damian Thompson’s recent recollection in these pages of British cleric Brian Brindley’s 70th birthday blow-out was as much a cautionary tale as an epicurean homage. Once you’ve passed 65 it’s reasonable to assume that every meal you have with older friends might be the last time you see them, and reading about the inter-course demise of Canon Brindley reminded me of my own last birthday – which I also celebrated in my London club. Unfortunately, since record-breaking July temperatures had suspended many local train services, only one of the half dozen people I’d invited made it. Most Speccie readers will be familiar with Peter Ackroyd CBE, the acclaimed novelist and biographer. My Peter Ackroyd MBE was Chairman of the International Campaign for Wool, in which capacity he was a passionate advocate of Australian merino and as such my client and latterly my friend.

So I was delighted to see, when he walked into the dining room, that he had lost a lot of weight since our last meeting. He attributed this to joining a gym and dramatically curbing his fine wine consumption, and since I hardly drink at all now, the lunch we had was somewhat shorter than the ones we used to enjoy on advertising shoots in Paris and Milan. But it was very enjoyable, so I was sorry when he looked at his watch and told me that he had to leave or he would miss the Kings Cross train that would take him home to Yorkshire. The following day I flew to a Greek island where I had limited connectivity, and it was only after arriving back in Sydney that I learnt that my friend Peter had collapsed and died after stepping off that London train. If we had worked our way through a couple of bottles of the club’s excellent chablis, he would certainly have missed it.

I’d like to say that nobody has died during any Australian lunch I’ve attended, but it wouldn’t be technically true. Many years ago I was lucky – or, as it turned out unlucky  – enough to be invited to a lunch at which a friend proposed to relaunch herself into society after her husband had run off with his secretary. To fill the gap this had left in her life she had already acquired a dog, a large Briard puppy, which barked excitedly as each guest arrived and had the run of the large open plan house thereafter. She’d chosen this particular weekend for the lunch, she told us, because it was the first one which her six-year-old son would be spending with her ex and his new partner. This being the 1990s, everybody, with one notable exception, was slightly drunk by the time the main course was served, and conversation and laughter had reached peak volume when the doorbell rang, and we all turned to see, staring in at us through the floor-to-ceiling windows either side of the front door, the absent child, who it transpired had sobbed uncontrollably since being picked up the previous evening and had prevailed upon his father to bring him home. When his mother opened the door the child flew into her arms shouting, ‘Why don’t you and daddy love each other anymore?’ before bolting up the stairs. As she ran after him, we all turned to glare at the dastardly dad, still standing awkwardly in the threshold and clearly wondering if, since he knew us all, he should offer some small talk. But a young female guest pre-empted this by getting up very suddenly and running towards the door which led to the downstairs toilet, followed a moment later, by her concerned husband.

The miscreant father very wisely chose this moment to slink guiltily away up the drive, and somebody closed the front door, and for a couple of minutes the room was plunged into a horrified silence punctuated only by a child wailing piteously in an upstairs bedroom, a mother trying to console him, and the sound of the rest of us sloshing chardonnay into our glasses and gulping it as if was a race. But then something even more unpleasant began to fill the room, and it was quickly discovered that the dog, perhaps picking up on all the human distress, had emptied its bowels onto several parts of the carpet. Even after all the doors and windows had been opened it was clear to most of us that the afternoon was probably beyond saving, but as if to remove all doubt, the worried husband now returned from the downstairs toilet and announced that he and his wife wouldn’t be staying for dessert as she’d just had a miscarriage. Perhaps she, too, should have had a glass of wine.