My recent two-month spell of dodgy health, now thankfully subsided to the extent it's no longer intrusive, has focused my mind beautifully. I'm happy to have quite a humdrum daily life and very little going on in the evenings. That's absolutely fine by me -- a roaring fire in the stove, a cup of tea, my laptop or my knitting, OH next to me on the sofa plus some stylish subtitled European tv series on BBC4 or Tatort on German telly, that's really all I need in winter.
However, I'd like such pleasant boredom to at least sometimes be punctuated by a special occasion, however spuriously anchored to a specific reason. But OH is even less invested in creating these: if I left our non-family-related travel and social life up to him, we'd never do anything more adventurous than take the scenic route back from the North Norfolk coast. And because that is the case and always has been since we've been together, I feel even more justified in blowing our discretionary cash on special events before he takes it and sinks it into some DIY item from B&Q. I'm not a dictator: I spot an occasion, usually a concert, and always pay for the tickets with my own card. OH then gets first dibs on the second ticket. So far he's said yes two out of three times because I suspect that while he's naturally quite risk-averse and would prefer not spend any money on events for fear that they end up not being good value, he dislikes the idea even more that I might just book something and go off with friends and have a good time without him. He'd rather be the friend, and so I almost always get him exactly where I want him: coming with me.
So this year, I've committed us to a Who concert and the Roger Waters--"The Wall" gig, and I will be damned if I don't manage to secure four-star accommodation on concert night for under £60 per room. I explained my philosophy to OH: I can still remember all the concerts and sports events I went to. I could always afford them and never went into debt for them, and what I always remember is how brilliant a time I had. Crucially, I cannot for the life of me remember how much they cost at the time or what I had to forgo to be able to afford them. For me that's the clincher. You remember the event, not its cost, even 20-25 years afterwards. So of course you'll book the event.
But special occasions, even self-consciously posh ones, don't have to break the bank if you're canny. Right now, a good friend is going through a low-energy phase. She is so house-proud, far more than me, and loves interior design but her darling cats are elderly and are currently doing what mine were doing last year in protest at winter -- peeing, pooing and hairballing all over the house in some demented attention-seeking attempt and this is making her even more depressed. God knows how she copes with her emotions: last year, I could have happily given one of ours a poo-and-pee aromatherapy facial and then force the remaining one to sit in front of their stinking partner-in-crime and remember NOT to pee OR poo IN the house EVER again.
My friend now needs some perspective and some beauty back in her life so we're taking a day off soon and remove ourselves to London. I've been scouting around the dealfinder pages this morning and have put together a proper Living Like Kings (or, in our case, Queens) package, starting with a posh champagne lunch (Laurent-Perrier, no less) at a ritzy restaurant-bar high above London in one of the skyscrapers of the City (£16 per head incl the champagne and food), moving onto free window shopping at Heal's, Liberty and Conran and then to the sampling of deli counters of Selfridge's, Fortnum & Mason's and possibly Harrods, and finishing with a three-course meal in a trendy Shoreditch bar incl. wine for £12.50 a head before getting our train back home. This is shaping up very nicely already.
On Valentine's Day, I'm aiming to take OH out for a meal at a nice little Italian place in town, and two weeks later, I've secured us another gourmet dinner for two for £10 a head in the teaching restaurant we tried recently. This time, a young chef is preparing his four-course signature menu, and we get to taste it. Feeling very lucky.
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