Every so often I get surprised by the old-fashionedness of this place — which is, I guess, a polite way of saying retrograde conservatism. At the Mickey Creek golf course in Vinton last night for Jen’s staff Xmas party, where the staff deliberately and carefully served the women first (five men out of 22 — to be expected when there are elementary school teachers about). This might be less of a problem if they were a little quicker about it, but the women were getting dessert before the men had finished eating.

I grumbled to myself that if they made a point of serving Protestants first, or anglophones first, there would be a hue and cry across at least some parts of the county. I remembered that in 19th-century French farm households women ate after the men, and ate standing — and I thought that this was no different. But I suspect that if I were to fulminate publicly about this, people would wonder what the big deal was, exactly.