Okay, it’s time for a friendly neighbourhood survey from the Messy Table. Let’s talk tables.
I have recently moved into a furnished flat and so have fallen heir, at least temporarily, to an extendable table. It’s a nice wooden one – a bit loved and bashed in places, but with a nice colour to it, and two large leaves that you can pull out to make more surface space available. It took a little sorting out, but we’ve developed a routine of extending one leaf for meals when it’s Spouse, the kids and me, two for extra guests. When it’s not meal time, the leaves are both left pushed in to save space in our narrow kitchen. That system seems to be working, though I feel a little like we’re living in an Ikea catalogue. I’ll need to light some candles and get some colourful guests to stop by.
But wiping it down every morning makes me think about tables in general, and I have been wondering about other people. Which is a nice thing to do while writing for other people, don’t you think?
So, tell me, how does it work at your home? What’s your table like?
Is it wooden? New? Hand-me-down and loved?
Do you have kids around your table? What was it like when you did?
Does your family eat at the table? Together or catch-as-catch-can? Are you a viewing and chewing family, keen to watch the tube while consuming your supper?
And what’s your ideal dinner table like?
I played this table game in the park a few years ago with another mum. Her kids are each exactly four months older than each of mine, and we shared a fondness for downtown park spaces, so we spent many afternoons pushing swings and chatting about anything that came to mind. She described her ideal table as one that she’d seen in a film once, but she couldn’t remember the name. That ideal table was outside, of course, and it was summer. There was a table cloth, and bread and wine, and a lot of people gathered around, sitting close it together like family, but – and this was important – they weren’t family. There was the hostess, her daughter and granddaughter, and then a collection of friends and neighbours of all ages, all close and familial, all looking like they belonged. That was an ideal table – where everyone was family.
(The film was Antonia’s Line – a favourites I stumbled across as a studentand then recommended one night to my mum when we were looking for something good to watch together. One of those humiliating intergenerational time, when you go all fiery red and silent, having forgotten some of the naughtier bits… But my mother laughed. Though whether at the film or at me, I am not quite sure.)
But what about you? What is your table like? What’s your ideal and what’s your reality?
Maybe it’s this one?
