I was hoping our party would dine at La Colombe but instead the La's got mixed up and we landed at La Perla. I should have guessed that having John French (who I think has a comedy-writing career ahead of him), the acerbically witty Grant Pierrus who even manages to make light of a damaging car accident and Craig Dummett who appears deadpan before dropping his laughing bomb, would not be appropriate company in my delicate state.

I had resolved not to tell them about the procedure - but felt I had to explain why I wouldn't even touch a drop of alcohol, using the antibiotics I was taking as the reason. One thing led to another and while Frans was waiting to take our order, I said I'd had hemorrhoids surgically removed.

Although the "very minor" procedure as surgeon Anthony Jackson put it occurred on Tuesday, and this was Saturday, I was still in tremendous discomfort and even the slightest giggle exacerbated the pain. I ordered the rocket salad with caramelized nuts, parmesan and cranberries to start and kingklip wrapped in Parma ham with saffron and currant sauce to follow. Everyone else also had rocket salads - John's with pear and gorgonzola, Craig's with roasted tomatoes and I forget what was in Grant's. Craig, at his abstemious best, ordered the grilled tuna while Grant and John had the one pasta dish that I had drooled over - penne with cream gorgonzola sauce.

I couldn't manage to deflect the conversation away from my backside and found myself sharing much more than I intended. Like, for example, how clever I now thought womenfolk to be - what with managing sanitary towels so easily. I had already used a packet to absorb the post-op oozing before I realized that there were sticky sections to help keep them in place. The table roared when I confessed that I'd used the pad the wrong way up - and the discomfort of having to peel the adhesive off my very sensitive rear. John was firing one-liners about me finally having my wings; no longer having to wax my hair there and other things too offensive to even repeat here. The others were intrigued by the table under the charcoal-girls painting which Stuart Chiat seemed to command. Although I didn't know the other people, I recognized many of them from Giovanni's with two - one pudgy and the other short and lithe like a soccer player, who I think may be restaurateurs. 

Another table also had our gaggle agog, which I identified only later as the Zulik/Keren clan, when I saw their name on the Jag outside. A woman to my left looked disturbingly like Morticia Addams while Dagmar Schumacher - she with the A+ guest list, was dining with chums from La Couronne (or La Provance) who was celebrating a birthday.

The tables' laughter was making me laugh too - the more I tried to stifle the giggle, the more my arse seared, feeling the wound pried open by each inhalation and subsequent tensing to stifle the laugh. It reminded me of my regular fear during my ablution of the pain that would follow a chilli-rich night out which had lead to the op in the first place. 

Jung talks about synchronicity as a tool to understand coincidences. At my table were two patients of Anthony Smith's, I was a patient of Anthony Jackson's (both of whom were in my class at Herzlia Stuart Chiat was ahead of us), I was sitting at Chris Barnard's once favorite restaurant - well, certainly he, and the pics that Don McKenzie took of him and his coterie secured La Perla's place in the firmament - I had just had surgery at the Chris Barnard hospital and I was feeling the pain in the arse that so many people had suggested I often provided. I’m still trying to find the meaning in this.