Wanted · London · Service and duty
I cook on a Tuesday, I clean the kitchen, and then I leave
- Wants
- a standing arrangement with a clear end time
- Experience
- Five years, three arrangements, all of them at a kitchen counter.
- Around
- north of the river, London
The arrangement I want is very specific and I have run it three times, so I know it works. I arrive at a set hour with the shopping already done. I cook. I serve. I clear everything, wash up, put away and leave the kitchen better than I found it. Then I go home. I do not stay to eat and I am not asked to.
Forty, north of the river, five years in. Two of those arrangements ran about eighteen months and one lasted three years and ended when she moved. In none of them did anything else ever happen and in none of them did anybody feel short changed.
What I get out of it, since people always ask: the whole of it is the standard. Somebody who knows what she likes and says when it is wrong. Somebody who is particular about how the drawer is stacked. I am not a good enough cook to be interesting, and I have got much better over five years because three women have told me the truth about my food.
What I want now is the same again on any weekday evening. I will learn a household's preferences and I keep notes.
I do not want to eat with anybody. I do not want to be in the room afterwards. And I do not want anybody paying for the shopping, which has been offered every single time and which I have declined every single time, because that is where this stops being what it is.
Where this one puts you on the route
Offering to be useful is a commitment measured in hours a week, not in enthusiasm. These three run from what that costs to what the first meeting looks like.
- 01 What a dynamic actually involves, shape by shape
- 02 The venue types that work, with honest odds
- 05 The first meeting, and why protocol stays at home
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