Trust me – you’re doing lunch all wrong

Poet and artist Frieda Hughes advises moving beyond busy diaries and rushed sandwiches, to return to the slow, languid pleasure of a lazy – lengthy – lunch

LUNCH AT THE CHELSEA ARTS CLUB

I almost missed it by most of a month, diary dates

Knotting in a confusion of emails as I focused on painting,

Coaxing the slow growth of a tree or a rock, a stone or a branch,

From the bleak aspect of each otherwise empty canvas.

I arrived early in the bar with its heart of a snooker table

That has propped up the floor since I first saw it sometime in 1984,

Blinking in the daylight of a long drive I found Chris Beetles

Illuminated in the garden, gazing up at the sky

In the wash of the sun, pale suit and prepared for summer;

For thirty-seven years he has watched my brushstrokes multiply.

Harriet Bridgeman had taken hours from her several million images

To feed us. Time slid beneath the dining room table

Like a stray dog waiting for titbits and attention

As we poured ourselves into the space of a lunchtime

With a bottle of Crozes Hermitage wine.

The mushroom souffles were Roger Dean islands,

Floating on pools of Vandyke brown,

Followed by boned guinea fowl blushing at its own sliced

Mouth-watering sacrifice like any plated-up Instagram diva,

I wished that I could slow the passing minutes down.