It was a disturbing email – shook me to the core, it did. “Would you both come to dinner on August 12?” Innocuous, you might think. But dig deeper.
Check that date on the calendar. See the horror? Yes. It was a Monday.
A dinner party on a . Now I know they’re a little whacky up there on Exmoor – indeed, they say for every five miles you travel further onto the moor you go back 10 years. There are people there who live without electricity, there are pubs with nothing but a single ale on tap.
But a dinner party on a weeknight, and at the very dawn of the week? Yes, it’s August, , but surely we shouldn’t mess with the very core of our schedule. In a slight tweak to the song by Craig David: Mondays and Tuesdays are for staying home and watching telly, Wednesdays are for non-alcoholic excursions (cinema, pottery club, build-your-own-deckchair Zoom class), you can have some cheeky drinks on a Thursday, dinner parties are for Fridays, but don’t go to bed too late, Sundays are for big family lunches and Sunday night is an absolute booze-free zone and the Antiques Roadshow. How difficult is that? Then along comes the Monday night dinner party invite and we’re scrabbling around looking for excuses, just as James Bond seeks arms when the enemy surrounds his house.
I’m English, don’t mess with my routine. Routine is what grounds me, centres me, settles me; is around which I can then build purpose. It’s one of the reasons one feels anxious as a holiday approaches.
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