Speaking of parties, I was finally reading Julia Child’s My Life in France, and came across the following, the description of Roger Verge’s family gatherings in a tiny village, where there was nothing to do but cook and eat. I can only aspire:

Sundays were a day of real feasting chez Vergé, and all the generations of his family would gather. “My mother and aunt would rise early and spend the whole day cooking,” he said. “We’d start eating and drinking around ten o’clock Sunday morning, and we wouldn’t stop till about five.” At that point, the men would all troop out into the village, where they’d spend an hour or two in a café drinking aperitifs. The women washed up and began cooking dinner. “One of my uncles–he must have been seventy-five at the time–would get so drunk he’d fall on the floor. When the eating and drinking started up again, my aunt would take a pair of scissors and cut a vein in his ear. By the time he’d bled enough, he’d get up and join right in with the rest of us!” Those epic Sunday dinners would go till midnight.

Incidentally, I recently got bitten on the ear at a party. All I could think was, Will this sober me up?