Saturday, September 3

True to my word, I went for a cycle ride this morning and left my iPad at home charging. No pokemon hunting for me this weekend. I left in the sunshine and cycled into the clouds. I made it back before the rain turned professional.

We did the usual Saturday house-cleaning in the afternoon while we watched the rain start. At 17:40 we put our rain capes on and cycled to Naa’s apartment. She will cook dinner for us as a birthday present for Irma and she warned us earlier that she planned on serving wine. Irma decided that we couldn’t turn up declaring that we wanted water, and that therefore we wouldn’t drive. An unexpected downpour didn’t change that.

When we arrived at Naa’s the table had been laid and aromas of well-cooked food filled the air. We changed out of our rain capes and wet trousers into the clothes we had carried in plastic bags on our bikes. Each place contains cutlery, crockery and a menu. It looks very nice indeed. When Naa serves the soup it has the swirls and leaves that mark it out as fine dining, and seconds later it becomes clear that it tastes very nice indeed too. Each course will prove better than the previous one, and Irma will declare the made-from.scratch tiramasu a triumph. I will agree.

We will leave at about 20:40 because Naa will expect Roosa to turn up sometime around nine. The rain outside will have turned into a genuine downpour and we will cycle home in extraordinary weather. To our surprise we will like it. Something about getting home soaked, drying off, changing clothes, and sitting down refreshed will make the whole evening feel like an adventure.

We will watch three episodes of Dinner Date for no reason at all except that someone has decided to broadcast it. The second episode, a “special celebrity edition”, will feature someone called Johnny Swish or Tommy Swish who interviews people on the British version of I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Of Of Here. I will notice that all the contestants pretend they do not know about the camera, except for Mister Swish, who turned and talked into it from time to time when he made a joke or expressed a reaction. This subtly but increasingly obviously changed the entire nature of the programme. It shifted from a rather stiff reality show to become an improvised comedy show and shared joke.

I don’t mean to suggest that it became “better”, whatever that means in this context, but only that it switched genres in a way that interested me.