As one of the biggest days in my life nears I’ve been thinking a lot about Mom. How I’ll address and remember her, how I’ll honour her in a way that is appropriate to her, which will likely be a joke at her expense, a chink of glasses, and a tear in the corner of my eye. It has been ten years since she passed. Ten long years, and it only took nine of them for Dad to get a girlfriend. She’d be proud of me, I think, and she’d love Sophie. A woman who shares many of her attributes. Intensely loyal and giving. Animal obsessed. Slightly scatty. Willing to do anything for those that she loves.

I know that Mom would love her because she is the best judge of character I’ve ever known. You only have to look at my friends that she liked, all still in my life, each a part of the backbone of my friendships. Nathan, Alasdair, Trung, Ryder, and Alex. The ones she came to the door to speak to when they picked me up. The ones she always told me to not be stubborn with. The ones she said would always be there. And she was right, even if the tides have pulled us closer and further away at times, they are all still a huge part of my life. They’ll be the ones I pull closest when I’m drunk and dancing to Madonna, reminding them of what Donna Carlo said.

I’m at Mellows with Alex. I’ve known him since I was eighteen when he was my boss at my first job. He calls me Dish because of how I looked then and not because of how much I eat now, and you can blame him for my hip hop obsession given he loaned me a copy of Q-Tips debut album. He suggests Mellows for our Christmas catch-up so that his partner can meet Sophie for the first time. He’s been several times before and is going to show me the ropes. We all meet in the bar, order some cocktails, and head to the table whilst John Holt hums in the background.

It’s just mains as we’ve been warned about the portion sizes, which doesn’t bode well for me given I’ve ordered an XL size. In truth I’m not blown away by the jerk chicken guy that lacks the intensity of smokey heat that the best versions have. Parts of the chicken are lovely, other parts have dried out and aren’t fun to eat. It comes with jerk prawns that are much better than the chicken, some good plantain, really good rice and peas, a little salad, some jerk sauce, and mac’n’cheese better than any we had in Barbados. It’s a lot to eat and so it should be for £30.

I would have been more than happy with either of the other mains. Alex’s curried goat is the one I’ll be going back for. Deep in colour and flavour, properly thickened with marrow, and with meat that collapses from the bone, it’s absolutely superb. Like, I’ve told people about it since levels of superb. Same with Sophie’s bowl of ackee and callaloo, more subtle in spice than anything else we eat, but so incredibly tasty for what amounts to two of your five-a-day. The bill for the four of us is £150 and Alex pays it before we have the chance to get to that discussion. Mom was right, he is one of the good ones.

8/10