Please click the photo above to play the daily videoFriday came round with that particular lightness Fridays have, even before they’ve earned it. The weekend was close enough to see, and for once it looked entirely uncluttered.
That’s rarer than it should be. Weekends lately have had a habit of filling up in advance: a talk to give here, a meeting to attend there, slides to finish the night before. This time there’s nothing. No talks planned, no programme to follow, no lectern waiting anywhere. Just time with Mak, which is the best kind of plan precisely because it barely counts as one.
There’s something about having your mother in the house that changes its rhythm. The place feels fuller and a little more lived-in. Conversations happen in the gaps of the day rather than at appointed times, over a cup of tea or in passing in the kitchen. Nothing about it needs organising. That’s the whole appeal.
The working day, of course, had its own ideas about letting me get to any of that. It finished rather late, the way Fridays sometimes do, as if the week were collecting a few last debts before it closed. You think you’re nearly done, and then there’s one more thing, and then another, and the light outside has changed without your noticing. A late Friday finish is a peculiar kind of test of patience. The weekend is right there, and you’re standing at the door, not quite allowed through yet.
But eventually I was, and the evening made up for the delay.
Dinner was home cooking. Not a restaurant, no queue, no menu to deliberate over, just food made in our own kitchen and eaten at our own table. After a week of rushed lunches and a business dinner, it was exactly the right meal. Home cooking has a way of slowing everyone down. Nobody’s watching the time or waiting for the bill. The plates stay on the table a while after they’re empty because nobody is in a hurry to get up.
There’s a quiet happiness in an evening like that, the kind that doesn’t need to announce itself. Just the warmth of the kitchen, the familiar flavours, and the sense that the house is full in the best possible way.
And beyond it, the weekend, stretching out with nothing on the calendar but family. No speeches to rehearse, no early starts I’ve chosen for myself. I don’t remember the last time I looked forward to a weekend for what wasn’t in it.
The week is done, and it was a long one, in places. But it’s ending well: late, admittedly, but at home, well fed, and with two whole days of doing very little in good company ahead.
That will do nicely.