Dinner dates

A few days ago, some friends invited us to visit them one evening. We sat with them for several hours, drinking and eating light snacks. As time passed, my stomach began rumbling and I wondered when we were going to eat dinner. This reminded me of an evening many years ago when I lived in Kent (UK).

Some Americans invited me to dinner. To reach them, I had to drive through the countryside for two hours. When I arrived at about 7 pm, I was offered a sandwich. I refused this, muttering that I would wait for dinner.

Another guest arrived. We sat talking and the time passed pleasurably. However, there was no mention of dinner or any food at all during the rest of the evening. At 10 pm, I began my two hour return journey without having eaten. As I drove home, it dawned on me that the sandwich I had been offered was actually the only evening meal that my hosts were planning to serve.

When I reached home at midnight, starving, I prepared a hasty snack.

On reflection, on the recent occasion, we had visited our friends assuming that we would have a pre-dinner drink before going out to dinner. In reality, they had only invited us for a drink; they had not mentioned dinner.

Moral: don’t assume anything!

Photo of shaami kebabs

1 thought on “Dinner dates

  1. This made me smile 🙂 I have never gone visiting in the expectation of a meal and not got one, but it reminded me of a time when I was in my teens and an elderly neighbour invited our family for ‘cheese and biscuits’ one evening in the run up to Christmas. We skipped dinner to leave room for all the cheese we expected to eat, only to find that what she was serving was ‘cheesy biscuits’, i.e. a bowl of those mini cheese-flavoured snacks in the shape of playing card suits!

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