Day 5 - 5pm today

5pm is when the fun begins. 

Not that I don’t enjoy my work. I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t fun, but it’s hard, quite selfless work at times, and 5pm is when it’s all about me. A little psychological signal that it's time to switch off.

I usually leave work between 4 and 5pm, depending what I want to get done, but I leave at 4pm at least three days a week, if I’m brutally honest. Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, typically.

It’s only a 25 minute drive, so by 5pm I am definitely always home, and @superlative gets home about quarter past. Therefore:

5PM IS COCKTAIL HOUR.

He likes it (and me too actually), when he arrives home and I hand him a martini as he walks into the room. I have usually started dinner, so the music is on, the cocktails are made, and I am sipping away, chopping the fennel or grating the parmesan or whatever.

I don't drink to forget.
That's just a happy coincidence.

Our home is a little oasis of calm by the sea. People ask me about my home life, and the word I always go to is serene. It’s quiet and tasteful and pleasant and calm and sponsored by Absolut.

We have an untroubled life, and 5pm is when I really start to realise this, and appreciate how lucky we are. We’re like a modern day Margot and Jerry Leadbetter. Only we don’t drink tonic.

Of course, today being a bank holiday, we are off schedule somewhat.

Cocktail Hour started at 1.30.

I have never...

...had a cup of tea.

People don’t believe me, but it’s true.  I think they assume I just don’t like it and haven’t had one for years, but that isn’t it. I was MADE to try it once, in 1987, at my nan’s house. I took a sip and sort of pretended to drink it, but the smell really put me off, so I didn’t actually drink it.

It was under the flimsy pretext of “If you’ve never tried it, how do you know”, but I wasn’t an easy sell. 

You know if you don’t like things, don’t you? As children, we sometimes assume we don’t like things based on... well – not much. But as adults, we become more adventurous (usually) and if we don’t like things, it’s generally because we’ve tried it or have some other, very good reason for dismissing something.

But the tea thing?

PEOPLE JUST WILL NOT ACCEPT YOU DON’T LIKE TEA.

They are unprepared to believe that you’ve not tried it.

And they forget.  They forget that you don’t drink hot drinks, even despite the massive song and dance they make EVERY TIME THEY OFFER THEM. Or they acknowledge your non-tea drinking, but offer you one anyway, “in case you’ve changed your mind.”

Nothing wrong with that, obviously, but it is REALLY WEIRD when it’s happening to you.

Yes, hot drinks in general. I know, right?

How do you know you don’t like it if you’ve never tried it.

I don’t really drink hot drinks at all, though I have had a cup of hot chocolate in the last few years. I think I had one with Baileys in it or something, as long as it is made with half milk and half hot water so it’s... well, not hot.

I just don’t like hot drinks.

I like cold drinks. I like to feel refreshed. Hot drinks are just... it’s weird, okay?

Don’t get me started on my year in Canada. Meeting a Brit who
       a) didn’t like tea, and
       b) had never had it before was conceptually baffling in North America.

People actually doubted my UK credentials.

I’m surprised they let me through border control at all. I’m not sure I’d make it through US immigration in the current climate once they got wind of my inexplicable hot-drink perversions.