The Times - UK (2022-05-02)

the times | Monday May 2 2022 5

times2

park life still has mass appeal. Indeed,

there is only one thing that has gone

as I expected: people are desperate to

travel abroad. The number of

scheduled flights has recovered to

89 per cent of 2019 levels in April,

according to a Financial Times analysis

of data from Cirium, a consultancy.

“After 24 months of crisis

management, passengers are suddenly

coming back so quickly that the

industry does not know what to do

with them,” the newspaper reported

last week. And I’m among the hordes.

I started saying no to most book

events at the start of 2022, after an

intense pandemic year of repeating

myself. Unless, that is, foreign travel

is attached to the invitation. An

offer to speak in Vienna to a group of

eight, or possibly even six, readers? I

was there like a shot. A vague

invitation to speak at two events in

Norway over five days? Catch me in

Lillehammer in June. A glance at

my diary reveals further commitments

in New York City, my to-do list

reveals research trips to India, Nigeria,

Sri Lanka and Hong Kong, and I seem

to have promised my partner that

we’re going to Miami, Berlin and

I

t’s strange how few predictions

about post-pandemic life have

been fulfilled. In the middle of it,

I was convinced dinner parties

would come back with a bang,

the population having tired of their

own food and company. But I sense

trepidation on this front. The

pandemic seems to have solidified

some people’s introversion; or perhaps,

with Covid still with us, people are

being selective about when they go

out; or perhaps people aren’t inviting

me to much.

I also thought, after so many

months of it being the only thing we

could do, that the local park would

decline in popularity as a leisure

venue. But judging from the number

of people pummelling the footpaths in

London’s parks, smoking weed on

benches and copulating in the bushes,

I’ve rejoined the

Stansted jet set

Sathnam Sanghera

Istanbul before the year ends.

No one is more surprised by

the development than me. I

once left a job because foreign

travel was going to be a large

part of it. I seem to have

complained in print that “staying

at home is so much more

preferable to getting sick in

some disease-ridden part of the

world”, that “travel brochures

always paint an unrealistic

picture of what it will be like: the

sky is never quite as blue, the

rooms are never quite as clean”

and “people on Instagram too

often confuse travelling with

having a personality”.

But the pandemic taught me

that we need travel to appreciate

home: if you never go away, you

lose sense of what is great about

your life. Just as being away from

the people you love makes the

heart grow fonder, leaving home

makes you appreciate why you

choose to live where and how

you do. In short, we need to go

away just so we can enjoy coming

back. I’ll see you on the 7.15am train

to Stansted.

dearly loved friends so the company

(and the story) made up for it.

There may be some reading this

who, while I was taking up eating,

resolved instead to do a marathon.

Well, let me say that my dining run

hasn’t been without challenges. Do

you remember when, around 2010,

it became fashionable for restaurants

to boast that they didn’t take

bookings, which made eating out an

impenetrable nightmare for anyone

with responsibilities like, I don’t know,

a babysitter or a train to catch? A

similar paradigm shift has occurred:

bookings are very much back, but not

as you or I know them.

Gone are the days of phoning up;

now everything is done via app. This

sounds straightforward, but actually

isn’t. For one thing, there isn’t one app

that everyone has agreed on, so you

end up opening endless accounts with

different ones — Resy, OpenTable,

SevenRooms etc. For another, making

a reservation in London increasingly

resembles a competitive sport: securing

a table at, say, Brutto, the “traditional

Tuscan trattoria” opened by the Polpo

founder Russell Norman, seems to

involve waiting online as bookings

go live for your chosen date —

at 9.30am, 14 days prior — and

pouncing before anyone else. I’ve still

not managed it, though for a while I

set up half a dozen alerts for when

cancellations at this and other “hit

list” destinations became available. I

turned them off after my phone had

a seizure at work.

In spite of this, so far I’m

overachieving, surpassing my

monthly target. You see, once I’d got

the restaurant bug I couldn’t stop.

After two years of my own cooking,

eating in an alien room, surrounded

by people wearing outfits of which

tracksuit bottoms comprise no part

feels headily glamorous. Before, I

took it for granted. Now a quiet

night in is a wasted one.

meat and fish are cooked on an open-

fire grill. Its more established sister,

Brat, is often hailed as one of London’s

best and I’d long hankered after a trip.

It was bliss: we got dressed up, ate

seafood and cheesecake and drank

cocktails — though not as many as the

man sitting next to us, who fell off his

chair before his main course arrived.

By the time we got home it was

January; I fell asleep smug in the

knowledge that this was a new year’s

resolution I might actually keep.

And so it has proved. In the weeks

since, I’ve been for Indian in

Amersham, Argentinian in Soho and

sushi in Shoreditch. I’ve gone high —

literally, chomping crab linguine on a

bar stool at Lina Stores, as well as

metaphorically, with a pre-birthday

tasting menu at Shabour in Paris. And

I’ve gone low: pizza; a pub lunch; fried

chicken. I’ve even eaten on a boat —

the lovely Caravel, on Regent’s Canal.

So far there has only been one truly

terrible meal (the place described itself

as a “concept”, its menu “designed by

celebrity chefs”) but I was with two

I

have never gone in for new year’s

resolutions, September being

my preferred season of self-

improvement. But as the dog days

of December limped along, I began

to feel a little frantic. After so much

tedium, how to ensure that 2022 was

something better? Not a fractional

improvement, like summer 2021 v

summer 2020, but properly, wholly,

entirely of a different order — 2019

levels of better. Pre-pandemic,

pre-pingdemic levels of better.

Around the same time, I noticed

something strange. On social media, I

kept seeing photos of friends and

acquaintances in places I’d never

heard of, new haunts with unfamiliar

names. Hang on, I thought, I used to

be that person, out and about, doing

stuff. Now everything seemed to

have moved on, and I’d missed it.

When did this happen? In the five-

minute interval between Delta and

Omicron? Was this the “vibe shift” I

keep reading about? Whatever, I

wanted in. I wanted my old self back.

And that’s how it was decided: 2022

would be my year of going out. Or

rather, since I’m no good at drinking

on an empty stomach, eating out.

The rules were simple: one

restaurant a month, minimum. No

repeat visits. Breakfast and brunch

wouldn’t count — it had to be more

substantial, but it certainly didn’t have

to be fancy. If it meant eating beans on

toast for the rest of the month, so be it.

I started immediately, nabbing a

last-minute spot on New Year’s Eve

for me and my husband at Brat x

Climpson’s Arch, a pop-up turned

permanent fixture in a factory, where

I’ll eat anywhere

(except at home)

Alice-Azania Jarvis

Because, as much as I love both of

my children, there is a part of me that

will always need a dancefloor, however

infrequently I make it there. A part

that requires synths and the

communal waving of hands — and

yes, a few beers along the way too.

I might sigh wistfully at memories of

the old me turning in as the sun came

up, but I’ve seen enough dawns in

recent years while shushing milk-

drowsy bundles. These days a lie-in

counts as getting up at 9am rather

than 7am. There’s a saying that if you

want something done, ask a working

mum. It turns out we are just as

efficient at partying as well.

Harriet Walker at

Peckham Festival

living our 2019 lives again

Sathnam Sanghera

Alice-Azania Jarvis