When I was asked if I wanted to talk about having having a quiet night in it was against a backdrop of us actually being able to go out. Now none of us are allowed out and the world feels very different from how it did previously! How quickly things have changed in March 2020, huh? Staying in really is the new going out.
I have always been a bit of a home bird, the idea of spending all day on a Saturday getting ready for Saturday night, and then all day Sunday recovering from Saturday is behaviour I just don’t understand! Staying in on a Saturday night has always been my favourite way to spend the evening, preferably with some easy TV, a takeaway and a rather large gin.
I was approached by giffgaff and asked if I might like to share my ideas for a quiet night in and, well, it felt quite timely. Even Bob wanted in on the action. Or lack of it!
giffgaff wanted me to share with you that they offer a variety of refurbished phones should you be thinking about needing to buy a new one in the coming months. Money is going to be tight all round for many of us so this would be a good way to save a few quid if you need to replace a handset, or buy one for a family member. They’re all reset so any previous data is wiped, and they have been made to look as good as new. They even come with a 12 month warranty.
So that done, here’s my three ingredients for a cracking quiet night in
Food
Food has to be simple on a Saturday night so either proper “one dish” comfort food that can be eaten on your knee in front of the telly with just a fork or “bits”. Bits is what we have if we happen to have been out for lunch. A ram raid on the supermarket picnic foods (often on a special 3 things for a fiver type stuff) which is then laid out, Tapas style on the coffee table. Honestly you can keep your fancy restaurants if I can swap them for a load of those goodies.
TV
Needs to be simple because I don’t really want to have to think too much. Saturday night is NOT the time for documentaries or dramas with complicated plots. I want Ant and Dec and The Voice as they make me laugh or cheer because they are just good, simple, easy to watch stuff that is pure escapism. If we do watch a film then it needs to start at 6pm because, trust me, any later than that and I am asleep before the first murder / robbery / extra marital affair / kidnapping has taken place.
Drink
Mr B always cracks open a bottle of wine on a Saturday night and I will always have a gin. We try not to drink too much during the week but always do on a Saturday night. That feels especially important at the moment where it would be very tempting to have a drink every night of the week since we aren’t driving anywhere the following day. But that’s a very slippery slope so we tend to good on weekdays.
Board Games
If everybody is over for the evening then we will often get the board games out, put on some loud music and have a proper old school gaming session. Uno is our current favourite game because you can play with up to 10 players and if we are all here there are 7 of us!
I asked Mr B at this point what his favourite things for a quiet night in would be and he said:
- Drink that gets better as you drink it
- A takeaway so nobody has to cook
- Your new favourite film. You know the one you watch for the first time even though it is decades old, and then having done so declare it your new favourite film ever. Like people last week were doing after Rain Man was on BBC1.
This is a post written in collaboration with giffgaff.