Let's Get Dinner
allow me to paint you a picture of the perfect summer evening
I want to open my own butter sachets, taken from a bread basket on a table-clothed table. I want to be a little adventurous and try a martini with my bucket of fries and lashings of ketchup. I want the silverware to feel a bit deliberately traditional and boring because it’s the least important thing on the table. And because I’ll be eating the fries with my hands anyway. I want there to be ambiance, laughter and plenty of conversation to eavesdrop on the next table over, but not enough time to listen because I’m deep in the flowing conversation with my own company. I want to feel completely and utterly okay with anyone speaking over me or cutting me off because we’re all just so passionate and consumed by this topic and the next. I want us to work out how to split the bill by scrawling on the napkins with whichever lip liner we fished out from the bottom of a bag where it had been swimming amongst coins and receipts. I want to hear about how your boyfriend totally forgot to read your mind the other day, and why your job is starting to feel a bit too corporate, and where we should escape to next to start our gallery-café-vintage-music-venue-flower-shop business venture together. I want to share secrets we weren’t meant to tell anyone, let alone a packed restaurant. I want to learn something new about everyone at the table despite knowing each other for as long as we have. And I want the sun to be just setting as we leave, heels clacking down the pavement in every direction as we part ways after a round of hugs.
We leave our table well loved. Plates painted in juices and sauces, crumbs and crusts. Crockery dirtied and politely placed. Apart from that one knife that ended up on the floor in the first twenty minutes of being seated. And for a moment as we sat at dinner our platonic chemistry had us wholeheartedly believing in soulmates. Soulmates we had found in each other at long last. Though we may frequent dates with potential lovers as the summer months melt into autumn, none will electrify our complexities like this event did.
Let’s get dinner. The table’s booked for 8. Don’t be (too) late.
“what’s everyone wearing to dinner tonight?”
This summer it’s jeans and heels. Bonus points for a wide turn up hem and a kitten-ish mule.
I’m a shoe girl. I have always been a shoe girl. Because my shoe size will always fit me. I had block-heeled sandals when I was single digit age, and a pair of my early school shoes were kind of wedges. I love shoes, and I really love heels. They’re a bit of a challenge. They slow me down and in return I get to notice more of the details in my surroundings. The raised edges of paving slabs; empty coffee cups abandoned on outdoor café tables; dry oblong shapes amidst dark tarmac where rain has fallen everywhere but under a previously parked car. If heels aren’t giving you this much opportunity for observation, slow down. You’ll risk twisting your ankle a lot less.
Jeans, and good denim, are near and dear to my heart. They’ve caused me so much heartache and yet they remain one of the things I own the most versions of. A close second to shoes probably. When I say jeans, I’m talking about the high quality stuff in good shapes that work for my body. No skinny jeans, no ripped knees and most definitely no jeggings. But if these things work for you then those can be your nearest and dearest. Denim is very personal. Sometimes it needs softening, sometimes it needs a bit more starch. Sometimes it’s for standing-only activity, sometimes you could sleep in the closeness of it. A good jean has so much power to make you look and feel good, you just have to find the stuff that works for you not that you have to work for. Sizing holds barely any meaning for me when it comes to jeans. I try sizes until something fits. And when it fits it’s like you were meant for each other. Soulmate denim for a soulmate summer maybe.
Jeans and heels at dinner is all I want this summer. And if the heel is sometimes a chic leather flip flop then so be it. Add an anklet and toe ring if you want to feel your most sexy, trust me. Or try a blue mens shirt with a few buttons left undone if you want to feel your most comfortable. This is a summer uniform to honour my ankle tattoo and my femininity, in a way that is purely for me. I want to be at dinners where I feel so fully myself this summer. And I want my fellow dinner soulmates to feel their best too. Sending my Substack out and throwing on my jeans&heels to clic-clac-and-skip my way to dinner with my friends is maybe the closest to the joy of Carrie Bradshaw that I’ll get. And I’m more than ok with that.
If you made it this far, ur kind of cool.
Lots of love.
See you soon for second helpings x