I went to a dinner party where seating was decided by a raffle – and I won

Poet and artist Frieda Hughes discovers the joy of being seated between ‘the best-looking man in the room’ and the ‘most interesting man in the room’...

SUNDAY LUNCH

The most interesting man in the room had already arrived

Despite the fact I was exactly on time plus five minutes.

He was deep in conversation with the only two others

So I skirted the group and separated the youngest

As if cutting a steer from the herd in the hope of an introduction,

Only to be joined by an elderly elegance whose knees required seating;

I stayed for her stories of Germany until suddenly,

The floodgates of folk in their mid-December finery

Swamped the floor. The most interesting man in the room

Was engulfed by the tide of greetings and pleasantries

As I was swept away by people I knew, and people they knew,

And others like me who’d been here before; familiar faces

On an annual pilgrimage to receive our hosts’ welcome

With a sense of coming home. Random seating was determined

By the picking of tickets; blue for boys, pink for girls.

The many tables were islands upon the hardened surface

Of the indoor swimming pool, each of us drawn to our shoreline

By the number we’d chosen. As luck would have it, I found mine

Between the best-looking man in the room

And the most interesting man in the room.