Eating Out and Other Such Dreams

Alex went out last weekend, with a freind and freinds of said freind. He goes out with this crowd a couple of times a year. They go into London (as most of them live in and around the capitol)and have a meal and go out for a drink afterwards. Most of the people are single thirty somethings with a large income and no dependants, so usually, despite living in one of the most expensive cities in the world, they have a fair bit of cash to flash about.

So, what usually happens when they go out for a meal is this - Alex is very frugal with his spending. He may have only one or two alcoholic drinks, and will order from the cheaper end of the menu, and depending on whether he is particularly skint or not he would miss out starters and deserts. Everyone else will be ordering lots of booze, bottles of wine, starters, deserts, and spending loads of cash, then there would be food left over. At the end of the meal the bill would be split equally between everyone, which obviously makes Alex cross, as he is then paying for someone elses food, which we can ill afford to do. Nobody plans ahead and decides before hand that this is what they will all do, it just evolves into this when they have all had a bit too much to drink and can't be bothered to work it all out. Fair enough if you know you've had loads to eat and drink and you know that it would come to a fair bit, but when you have especially been careful because you know you don't have much money, then it is particularly irksome.

This time however, was different. Before hand, Alex didn't seem to want to go, and when I pressed him about it, it turned out that he was reluctant to go because of what usually happened on other occasions. He was supposed to leave home at four p.m. and eventually left around two hours later. I told him that if splitting the bill was what they all normally did then he shouldn't worry about what he had, and instead of choosing what he could afford, he should just choose what he wanted to eat, as it didn't seem to make much of a difference anyway.

As it turned out, everyone seemed to be slightly less frivolous anyway. Possibly to do with the credit crunch, but who can tell? Starters and desserts where ordered but no food was leftover, it seemed that less 'extras' where purchased as part of everyone's meals. Alcohol too seemed to be consumed in less quantity. Even though they where celebrating someones birthday, everyone just shared bottles of wine, instead of buying lots of shorts.

Between seven people the bill with alcohol and tip came to £25 each. A rather reasonable amount of money to spend at a restaurant, but still almost half a weeks worth of food for my family. Not something that we can afford to do on any kind of regular occurance.