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Monthly arts and media column

Pampering chefs

A couple of weeks ago I was invited to a Pampered Chef cooking show by one of the mums at my son’s school. I thought it would be an excellent chance to get to know some of the other mums, so off I went, determined to spend absolutely no more than a tenner.

The evening was run by a very experienced ‘consultant’ who was able to multitask extremely efficiently as she showed us the products, gave us fireproof reasons for buying £40 knives and cooked up a clever-but-simple delicious chicken and broccoli ring. I developed a variety of skills while I was there. The skill of saying ‘I don’t need that’, the skill of saying ‘Well, maybe that would be quite useful’, and then the skill of handing over my card details at the end of the evening.

Hosting a show

The host from that evening said a couple of days later at the school gate that she was thinking of starting up business as a consultant herself. She needed to book six shows as a start up and asked if I’d host one for her to help get her going. I’ve been looking for something that I could invite lots of people to but which would be nicely relaxing and non-threatening. I was really strongly against inviting people to my house just to spend money, so I made sure that it was OK to tell them that they didn’t need to bring their purses and we arranged the evening so that we would have lots of chat time over drinks and nibbles.

I wasn’t prepared for how popular the idea of coming to an evening like this would be. I was a bit disorganised and on the Monday before the show on the Wednesday, I quickly texted ten friends and contacts who I thought could cope with it. My previous experience of inviting people to things, mainly to Christian events, has been to get a load of polite No’s, some tentative Yes’s and the inevitable 11th-hour cancellations. This was a totally different experience. Nine had replied by the end of the day — or I had bumped into them — and most had said yes. In the end, eight of them came. Bearing in mind that all of these were mums with small children, some with late bedtimes, in the middle of the week, coming out at 48 hours notice, I was utterly amazed at the take-up.

What women enjoy

The evening was really fun and most people arrived a bit early which gave us more chat time before having to actually concentrate. During the show itself, I really appreciated the way that Tracy didn’t dominate the proceedings, letting us chat a little at times while she organised herself for the next bit. Her timing was great, giving us a chance to finish the evening by eating the food and chatting more before it got too late. For the actual ‘Right, now do you want to buy something?’ bit, she withdrew to another room and people could go and pay her, but she didn’t make a big deal of it.

I think that I have learnt many interesting things through this experience, not least about what us women enjoy most. We love getting out for the evening, being made to feel welcome with a drink and little bits to eat and we love not being put on the spot. As a Christian, I want to make the most of knowing these things, because it will help me as I go on to chat with them about what it means to follow Jesus. It also helps me to live out the way in which I set my heart ‘on things above, not on earthly things’.

In fact there are massive benefits to our relationship building through hosting an evening like this. As we all know, inviting a group of friends and neighbours into our homes and creating a bit of community is a great thing, as is getting them meeting our other friends and family and to be generous in our hospitality. It is an easy invite that puts little social pressure on people and that breaks the ice easily. Perhaps this is because, as a guest or a host, you do not feel that you need to make sparkling conversation all night. My proviso is that you strongly encourage people to leave their purses at home!

Friends in our homes

Outside the Direct Selling Business idea, I think we can all be encouraged to keep on inviting our friends and people we don’t know so well into our homes. They love going out and they love being looked after! We may not have the opportunity to hold out the word of truth to our friends at a cooking show, but it may well happen as a result of one.

Eleanor Margesson