Invite your guests into the lounge. Sucking Pinot Noir from the nozzle of your sports bottle, stand back as they admire your Babylon of trophies and medals. The guests will be driven to comment on your superior sporting career. Grab the bulge in your tennis shorts as they do this, nodding modestly. If a guest offers a compliment you find particularly affecting, grasp your hands over your head in the pose of celebrating champions.
Looking at your wristwatch, which is set to its stopwatch mode, you'll see that you have ten seconds left before the oven timer pings. Take another mighty swig from the sports nozzle before upending the bottle, squeezing out the remains of the cooling Pinot Noir over your wildly shaking head. Drop into the starting line position, balanced on your toes and knuckles. Focus you bastard, fill your lungs. And then there's the starting pistol of the oven's ping. Go ripping out of the room, legs pumping.
In the kitchen you'll have arranged the plates in a stack on the floor. Take a leap from the doorway, your face contorted in the agony of sports, hurling in a twisting position which clears the table and lands you squarely, spine down, on the stack of plates, destroying them all in a porcelain apocalypse.
Get up, get those hands up in the pose of the champions, the crowd cheering, and get jogging to the oven.
Take your warmed cricket bat from the oven and butter it. The freshly made bread rolls have been cooling on the counter. Put them in a bowl. Then speed walk back to the lounge, your buttocks squealing at the pressure.
Standing at a competitive distance from the guests, serve up the rolls with a brisk swing. Aim, naturally, for the mouth. The rolls will strike against the guests, crumbs exploding off their faces, your cricket bat applying its butter, and gradually the bowl will empty. But don't hang around jawing about the weather. Shadow box your way to the kitchen; it's time for the main course. What's the main course? Why, it's a new sports-cooking classic: potato cakes and living racing horse.
Ride the horse ferociously, sending potato cakes at the guests with a practised discus underarm. Reaching the centre of the room rear the horse, its hooves thrashing, and scream out anecdotes. Remember, no one likes tense silences at a dinner party. Also, because the potato cakes contain paprika and fresh chillies, remember to offer your guests glasses of iced water. If you can get the horse near enough, kick the jug of iced water in the general direction of the guests. Kick it sharply at the base, kick it like you mean it - the jug will launch off the table like a wet grenade. So the water doesn't land in the guests' glasses? No matter, you ass! They can always wring it out of their clothes. And this will be a cute, fun talking point whilst you and your anecdotes are out of the room tethering the steaming horse to the banisters and preparing dessert.
Of course the Sports Community don't eat desserts, so pump out a few hand-clap press-ups and then carefully place dark chocolate mints, one for each guest, under the brim of your towelling sweat band. The chocolate will start to melt against the powerful heat of your head, but these imperfections are the charm of home cooking. Use gymnastics to get to the fridge where a magnum of Pol Roger Champagne is chilled to excellence. Give it a good shake up, the cork straining, your arms throbbing with that sweet pain of exertion. Shake it up hard and long; you know what's coming next.
