Seeing as Chantelle was working this weekend once again, I pretty much had to entertain myself and this meant getting to grips with Just Cause, a game I trashed horribly after the first try out, but now grudgingly admit to finding it quite enjoyable and have so far clocked over 20 hours on it!
In any event, after having spent most of the weekend inside with the kittens, it was a relief to get an invite out of the house from Chantelle herself, who had been instructed to invite me over to Sunday’s big birthday bash at the guesthouse in celebration of Janine’s (Whammy and Louise’s daughter who is currently down from the States) 40th birthday.
The idea was to invite all the friends and family over and make a day out of making pizzas, making use of the large, rather unused pizza oven standing outside on the patio next to the bar. Of course, the rain that fell throughout the weekend was making everyone pretty nervous, but come lunch time the weather gods smiled upon us and the heavens cleared into what turned out to be an absolutely gorgeous day out in our part of the world.
By the time I arrived most of the guests were already there, sitting around in the sun with drinks in hand, but the number was almost half of what had originally been planned for, meaning that we had enough pizza ingredients to bake for an army! Chantelle and her staff had spent most of Saturday organizing everything, grating cheese, chopping ham, baking cake, the works, and the result was a table groaning under the weight of this veritable mountain of toppings.
Using prebaked bases straight from everyone’s favourite Italian restaurant down Gordon’s Bay beach road, Al Forna, one of the guests, Hoagie, drew the unenviable job of being master pizza baker and he was soon sweating behind the red hot oven (which had been burning since 09:00 the morning!) as he continuously shovelled pizzas in and then out for the clamouring masses behind him.
Of course, this was the perfect opportunity for me to create one of my masterpiece pizzas, just like in the old days back at California Pizza Kitchen, and pretty soon I had crafted my monstrous, load-bearing pizza topped with Salami, ham, bacon, red peppers, avocado, pineapple, roast meat, boerewors and of course tons of cheese.
Best damn pizza I’ve eaten in a long, long time! :)
With the drink flowing and the pizzas being chomped, the atmosphere was loud and fun and pretty soon it was time for Chantelle to pull her disappearing act and come back out again bearing one of her signature beer box chocolate cakes, complete with “Happy Birthday Nina” inscribed on the top and topped off with exactly 40 candles!
As always Chantelle’s cake was a big success and everyone from the kids to the adults thoroughly enjoyed it, though it was probably baby Zara that seemed to love it the most, judging by the amount of cake she managed to get smeared all over her face!
With the weather still looking better than perfect and the kids getting restless, the idea was popped that perhaps it was time to stroll down to the beach for a friendly game of rugby on the sand. Of course, with all the excited boys hanging around, us adults couldn’t exactly say no and we were soon embroiled in a action-packed, fun-filled full contact spectacle which saw the little guys trying to knock each others heads off (it was a bad day to be brothers) and the bigger guys trying to fend off heart attacks!
Everyone had tons of fun and I don’t know when last I’ve run about in the sand (honestly I thought I was going to die – no wonder we decided two-thirds of the way in that the big people were now to play in slow motion), but it was the perfect way to end off what had been a great afternoon.
After the game had ended and one of the kids had managed to dump Chantelle into the sand, everyone headed back up to the guesthouse for drinks and recovery, something us older (should I say bigger?) guys really needed by that stage! :)
Admittedly I was now wet, full of sand and still not breathing 100%, so I finished my drink, whispered goodbye and quietly sneaked back home where I patiently awaited Chantelle’s return from yet another hard(?) day’s work!
And who says working at a guesthouse isn’t all fun and games? ;)