Let's go to the drive-thru
Why it's time to start mooching around like we're teenagers still spending our babysitting money. Plus: I've accidentally discovered summer's viral dress.
This weekend I was busy getting sunburned in the outskirts of Manchester - embarrassing, yes, but social media reveals I was not alone. I’ve been staying at my parents’, contemplating how we will never end global warming when my dad’s generation is insisting the house is freezing to the point of putting on the heating in June but will not put on a jumper as “It’s summer.” It’s a battle that I will not win, but will continue to wage (turning down the heating dial every time I pass it, pointing out that the car dashboard shows it is hitting 25°C outside, sweating theatrically).
I spent a lot of time in a soft play. Honestly, given how sober so many people are these days, more hens should just take the party to a play centre once the children have gone home. No need for expensive reformer Pilates when you’ve just spent an hour climbing through a vast padded fortress of arches and slides, dodging giant spiked balls, spinning foam doors, and a built-in go-kart track. Yes, today’s kids will have to grow up with social media, collapsing ecosystems, and rising global uncertainty… but on the plus side the entertainment is vastly improved.
Still, good as that was, much of the fun of going home - I can’t shake the habit of calling it that- is just going back to do the same stuff I did as a teenager. There is little I love more than hopping in my sister’s front seat to pick up our overpriced smoothies on our way to the Trafford Centre to bag a new hoodie. (Oh, the lingering glamour that gaudy gilded palace still holds, ever since it opened to alarming rumours of pensioners being felled by all that slippery pink marble.) On the way home with the windows down: a McChicken Sandwich from the drive-thru McDonald’s. A peak Saturday, not much changed in its essentials from when I lived here two decades ago.
Maybe it’s because my tastes are, by many measures, basic AF. (Which has actually been very useful - working for a newspaper or magazine that wants a lot of people to read it, or writing books that you want people to read, you need to know what a lot of them actually like. Anyway, being basic is a feminist statement as
so persuasively explains). But maybe it’s also just because, like the soft play, it’s a novelty.Growing up, even into uni, we were all blithely oblivious of what a privilege it was to spend those vast tracts of time just hanging about - days on lawns, in libraries - with our friends. I remember one over-scheduled college pal bucking the trend, instead arranging to see the same rotation of people “for coffees every two weeks,” as his frenemy sniped. “Why would you bother?” Maybe the chap in question was just in training for adult life (although, two weeks!? Make it two months), when so much socialising involves pencilling in dates that might work for dinner with your friends, dropping £70 for one course and some hangover-inducing wine, and rinse and repeat.
Living in a big city, where it’s not always practical to trek across town to each other’s homes, it make sense. And gone are the days of afterwork drinks with no proper food (three packets of crisps, three bottles of wine, shared among three of us, was the memorable end to that little habit of our twenties). But now… I can’t be the only one feeling a little dinnered out. I’m not giving them up (to quote the great Dionne: “There goes your social life”) but have also dragged pals to dance classes and cajoled them out for walks, with, OK, limited delight on their part: next time I’m taking them to a soft play.
Since alternative activities don’t get around the booking aspect, I’ve meanwhile gone full-on executive decision-maker for a reunion I’m organising, presenting the date to everyone fully formed, with no other options, which seems to have... worked? TBC. But perhaps they’re as relieved as I am to dodge another poll of 20-plus people.
No wonder then, there’s something entirely relaxing about free-flowing formless days with your family and friends, where you don’t have to make a dinner reservation or hunt down tickets, that you only now tend to get when you “go home” or on a shared holidays. Or, perhaps, away for something like brings you all together, like a wedding.
P.S. On the hunt
I have been spending far too much time looking for a dress to wear to said wedding - the shops had pretty much nothing but make-up and athleisure - so it’s off to hunting down the best of the internet.
At a lot of places I’ve worked, there was a clearly drawn dividing line between Fashion and Features territory (perhaps fairly, the Fashion desks tended to be horrified at the thought that we’d weigh in on style matters - although Fashion often weighed in on Features, ho hum). But maybe there’s something to be said for recommendations from people with one or both feet firmly planted in the real world, free from PR swag and a Net a Porter discount (although, obviously: yes please).
Why else did I find myself pages deep into a Mumsnet fashion thread, browsing through their advice on what to wear to a woodland wedding, though there won’t be a twig in sight at the one I’m off to? People giving up their time to recommend things to strangers on the internet is a sign of all that’s right with the world - and if they add measurements and pictures to their reviews, then even better.
It’s also an unfailing rule of shopping that other people have very good taste: the best stuff is always sold out these days (from concert tickets to clothes, and yes, that’s often a deliberate strategy). Which is how I worked out that this navy polka dot Rixo dress (notably not in their weekend sale: another tell) will be everywhere this summer: in many ways it’s a perfect summer wedding guest dress, at spotted on Tanya Burr and singer Katherine Jenkins as well as tagged multiple times on the brand’s social media. Inevitably, it’s already gone in various sizes, but still available at House of Fraser (possibly because it’s styled horribly in their pictures, with matching white accessories that kill off the sunny boho vibe entirely) and also rentable at Hurr.
Alas, to me this screams English wedding, so not quite right for the one I am off to in heat where I would be ripping off that neck bow - and so the search continues. More as I have it. For now, ciao!
I am so glad I found this! Rent your dress! I do ;) or Reformation but its a bit spenny.
Another great read! look forward to the next one and hearing what dress you finally choose...