I’ve never worked so closely with volume. The guests at dinner parties I’ve hosted have either been too few in number or too picky in tastebuds. In the beautiful covid fever dream that was my 7-person household living experience, we had more dietary requirements than diners. We always made it work with elaborate side-dishes, edited versions of the main meal on smaller plates, trimmings, garnishes or other appetising accompaniments.  

Thank goodness for my wonderful helping hands. Washing dishes, asking for instructions, chopping up feta and mixing salad, kneading dough and whipping frozen icing. We accomplished a whole lot more than I thought we would.

Between meals we visited a gorgeous 18^th century lake-front house. We walked to small piers, and up and down the same steep lane for post-meal exercise in the crisp cold. We watched Gilmore Girls while I worked on my Christmas crochet jumper. We played inherited card games on the square table. We struggled with the daily wordle and new yorker crosswords, along with a new favourite I’ve just been introduced to: actorle.com. We marvelled at one another’s niche fonts of knowledge and celebrated the success they brought to our puzzling. We led and attended yoga sessions in the warm patches of sun in the little hill to the right of the house. We jogged to the nearest church and back listening to Evermore. We watched the Long Pond Studio Sessions on the spackled wall, as I continued to figure out the intricacies of my crochet sleeve in the light of the fire, and an extra lamp we had to bring downstairs. We slept under old blankets and woke up to a foggy view of the rows of yellow houses on the opposite side of the lake, and to bottomless conversation sprinkled with the sound of our next-door neighbours Nigel and Paul. Their two bells sounded at perfect moments of the day, and we could hear them bray when we drove up to the street, trotting down to greet us with wide eyes and knocking hooves.