I think I might soon drop the pretence altogether that I am ever going to have people round for lunch or dinner ever again.
It’s not the people I don’t like, it’s me. I can’t stand what happens to me before, during or after I host friends at my house. In advance of a rash dinner invitation for eight I am stupidly ambitious and impractical, forgetting all about how much I hate hosting, thinking whimsically about what flowers to have on the table and whether or not everyone will be able to reach the salt, rather than working out how much pasta counts as one portion and forgetting that some people think it’s rude to leave before midnight.
I want everything to be perfect, which is a bonkers way to be aged nearly 42, and so run myself ragged throwing things away and scrubbing the grouting between the floor tiles. I then open the door to a deliveryman holding a parcel of things I bought from Zarahome.com three days ago at 10pm while tooted on white wine. I open the box and gaze at the swirly patterns and mass-produced tat and think, “Oh God.” I suddenly remember that I have nowhere to store these items after they have been used.
Why am I not the sort of person who bangs down a lovely risotto for fifteen on top of the kids homework, turns on some Stevie Nicks, gets everyone high on, I don’t know, MDMA croutons?, forces some sort of dressing up game and is still having a heart-to-heart in my bare feet at dawn? Why don’t I love it?
Twenty minutes before everyone I arrives I have a sudden sugar and emotion crash and lie on my bed with the backs of my hands against my thudding eyelids. Once everyone has arrived and I have had precisely 1.3 drinks, I start to have fun and absolutely cannot be bothered to put the pie in and the fact that there was supposed to be a salad goes clean out of my mind. OR I put the pie in at 130C three hours ago and it is now rubble-dry and a fifth of its original size.
I am so consumed with anxiety about whether or not the food is edible I can barely speak. Once I’ve eaten, the thought of forcing pudding on everyone makes me feel ill and by now it is 9.30pm and I just want to go to bed. I feel very strongly like there is something I ought to be doing that I am not doing and I also want to shout “THIS IS WEIRD, ISN’T IT, THAT YOU’RE ALL HERE AND I MADE YOU DINNER. HA HA HA! ISN’T IT WEIRD?!”
If I’m lucky someone stands up at around 10pm and says, “Well, we’d best leave as Esther hates it when people hang around,” and I sheepishly nod and everyone gets up and goes to the pub together to snog e.g. Channing Tatum who is randomly in a Kentish Town pub that night and to talk about how uptight I am. OR if there is no-one there who knows about the please-leave-at-10pm thing I will still be at the table at 1am, feeling like the world’s biggest loser and wondering if it’s alright to say, “Sam still wakes up at 0730, you know.” When they finally leave I finish tidying up and then crawl up the stairs to be on my hands and knees. “Never again,” I whisper to my pillow. “Never, ever again.”
So forget it all! NEVER AGAIN! I am going to make do with planning ghost parties, merely browsing websites like Summerill and Bishop and Lulu and Nat and thinking to myself “Crab linguine makes a good starter” before absolutely not inviting anyone round.
One of the ABSOLUTE best dinners I ever went to was when our hosts ordered us all a Chinese from their local and we all ate it at a relaxed laughing pace, helping to load the dishwasher and put the Tupperware in the recycling afterwards. I even fed their cat for them. That's the only type of dinner thing I'll go to/host now- where no one feels the need to impress because it's fucking exhausting. You can only do it with your absolute best friends though. And definitely not with your parents/in laws. (Christ, NEVER the in laws.)
UPDATE: Last night I had a very close friend to stay for one night. Had very carefully planned dinner so no actual cooking required. STILL got pissed, forgot to turn supper on low, managed to burn two of the reheated constituent parts, reheated the last part after plating up, failed entirely to remove pudding from fridge (also supposed to go in oven). FFS.