La question à Dinner

Why the 11^th of the 11^th of the 11^th? Well, I'd be lying if there wasn't a geeky reason behind it. Not only is it a very easy to remember date (and I’m terrible at remembering dates), but the idea sort of came from Scott who got married on 10-10-10, which as it turns out can be considered binary for 42 (anyone who knows what Towel Day is would understand the significance there). What amused me about 11-11-11 is that it's binary for the ASCII character for the question mark symbol, and in octal it's 77 which is A's birth-year (yes, I'm an old-fashioned programmer and still use octal).

We have started a tradition of heading to London every year for a few days, centred around November 11^th, for a few days of relaxation and shopping (a contradiction, I suppose), so it was certain that the engagement would be in London. After months of procrastination, I started searching for a restaurant. This is more of a challenge than I thought, since the restaurant shouldn't be too snobby (i.e. uptight dress code), should be high class British food (but not too “gamey”), centrally located and easy to get to on the tube, and preferably with a kitchen table. It needed to be a bit romantic, and have some atmosphere. I started hunting down restaurants, and after about a month I had narrowed the list down to a small few.

A loves to cook, and we've both been fascinated by Heston Blumenthal, but The Fat Duck was a little difficult to get to from London without a car. Plan B: Heston's opened a restaurant in the Mandarin Oriental creatively titled called “Dinner by Heston Blumenthal”. They do traditional British food with a bit of Heston's flair, which sounded about right, particularly because Heston has a reputation for having “dressed-down” dining at The Fat Duck in favour of comfort.

Trying to book a table was a problem. The restaurant is so popular; it's very difficult to get a reservation. To make life difficult, booking too far in advance is not allowed.

Once reservations were allowed for November, I jumped in there on the first day, only to find that the regular dinner service was already fully booked. Oddly though — to me anyway — they did offer a 10:30pm service too, and some limited spaces were still available. Eating dinner so late would be annoying, but for something like this it's better than lunch, so I caved in and booked it as fast as possible. I later realised I could probably take advantage of this…

I made preparations with A for our trip to London, booking a hotel and our Eurostar tickets, and remained tight-lipped. Despite my best efforts — possibly due to my insistence on getting this all booked well ahead of time this year — A clearly knew something was up and kept asking what was so special about London this time around, twisting the question into every conceivable form.

November came, and it was time to start to plan out the day a little. Just a little, though, as I don't like planning city trips too much. I realised that while The Fat Duck might have a relaxed dress code, any restaurant in the Mandarin Oriental might not. This meant that I needed to give up some information about what's going to happen, otherwise A would be wondering why I'm packing a shirt and trousers, and she would be too casually dressed for the likes of this place.

I thought I'd let her continue to try to probe a little more until a few days before we left, and eventually told her that she would need to bring something dressy. I refused to tell her anything else, especially because my paranoia was telling me that she already knew — surely she's already spotted the confirmation email sitting in my inbox when looking over my shoulder at the computer.

We share our calendars on Google, and apparently setting an event as private actually means that Google will show other users the calendar entry, just not its content. By now, A had noticed this suspicious looking calendar entry for the evening of the 11^th, and the questions were coming thick and fast. I had to concede that we might be going out to dinner, but again tried to remain tight lipped.

We arrived in London at about 10am on the 10^th, and after checking into the hotel the day played out as it usually does for a trip to London, with a bit of shopping, and the inevitable trip to a Pret for their turkey, stuffing and cranberry sandwich. We wound up heading to Brick Lane for a curry in the evening (nothing special), and I started to think A had forgotten about the plans for the following evening. Of course she hadn't, and the strategic questioning started with the preamble of “I'm really excited about tomorrow night!”

Really? I'm shitting myself.

I was still shitting myself the following morning — no fault of the Dahl — but we ventured out for another day exploring the city, this time to investigate Old Spitalfields Market, and to visit our favourite Cornish pasty place at Covent Garden (it had closed down — what a shame). Knowing that we were going to have a late dinner, we somehow came to the conclusion that a late lunch would be in order, and wound up eating at a deserted Ultimate Burger. It seemed weird to me considering where we would find ourselves several hours later, but I suppose walking around London tends to make you peckish.

With time to kill, A thought it would be nice to go to the Cinema. I hate cinemas, but we proceeded to the Odeon at Marble Arch in order to pay far more than we were willing to enjoy their broken toilets, sticky floors, bum-numbing seats, and the obligatory 45 minutes of advertising prior to the film. We settled on watching In Time, a typical example of a modern science fiction film with a great premise but writers who don't know how to finish a screenplay. The film is based around the concept of time as a currency, and anyone who isn't the wealthy elite didn't particularly have much time left… to live.

Somehow this resonated with me, considering the clock was ticking to get back to the hotel at the top-end of Tottenham Court Road, get changed, and head over to the restaurant. Every time they would look at their arms to check their “balance” it would stress me out, especially considering the film started late, and we were still subjected to the full dose of advertising. It took three hours to see a film of 109 minutes. Knowing A was perfectly fine to just “rock up” at the restaurant, I had other plans and wanted to be sure we were there in time for the reservation.

As I lost all empathy for Will, I realised I hadn't really planned how I would go about proposing to A. I hadn't even thought about what would happen if she didn't say “yes.” So much for planning this out.

What do I say?

Do I do some sort of corny traditional spiel?
C'mon, like eleven-eleven-eleven isn't corny enough‽

Do I go with something casual?
“So, you wanna get hitched?” — No.

Do I do something unusual?
No time to prepare anything — Crap!

Do I just improvise something on the spot?
Yeah, maybe that'll work.

As self-doubt sets in, Will and what's-her-face (the rich slut) are running off into the sunset having given away all of their time to everyone else in the ghetto because the police couldn't catch them because they don't have radios or mobile phones or any way of communicating between themselves in the future for some ridiculous unfathomable reason but that's ok because only the rich can live long lives and breed and the gene pool will shrink and they'll all die out from severe birth defects — something like that, anyway — … Right! Back to the hotel!

Subconsciously the movie must have made me even more stressed about time because I felt really up against it. We returned to the hotel by just after 10pm, and after quickly following the three S's we were both puffed up and ready to go. We wound up way ahead of schedule, standing across the road opposite the hotel chain-smoking — each of us with different reasons. A didn't initially see the connection between Knightsbridge, the Mandarin Oriental, and any particular restaurant, but she quickly worked it out while I was trying to work out how to get into the damn place. A tip for others: You go up the main stairs. Then you take some more stairs. A few more stairs later, over some manky carpet, around a poorly signed manky dark corner to the left, and through a dimly lit bar filled with manky snobs; you will eventually find yourself in the restaurant.

We were still early, but we were able to be seated, so we got comfortable, started looking over the menu, and chatting with the staff.

As we ate our starter (I couldn't resist and had Meat Fruit), I was discretely watching A's watch. Sometimes I had to shift around a little bit in my seat to do so “discretely” but I was determined to make something out of only being able to book for the 10:30pm service. Our starters were done, and it looked like it was around 11:10pm…

I gulped some wine… Err, wrong glass; Try again.

I gulped some water, softly cleared my throat, and proceeded with the ingenious plan of improvising.

“I had an ulterior motive for bringing you here,” I started to fart out, clearly not having a clue what I'm talking about, “Umm, you know how we've been talking about having kids and stuff lately,” Wait — Kids? Hold on, go back a step. What the hell am I talking about?

“You're pregnant‽” A interjects.

“Err, what?” Great, what was I doing? Oh yeah. “No, err—”

The sommelier interrupts, and A asks for a second glass of the same wine she had with her starter, perhaps in anticipation of something she's suspected since she walked in the door.

“So,” A started, “you were telling me you're pregnant, and…?”

I'm now thrown off by this; it was naïve of me to think that improvising this would have worked (you have to be prepared for heckles), but I'm not sure it would have been any better had it been prepared.

“Well, err, so… Do you want to get married?” I asked, forgetting that I had already scratched that ditty off the list.

“What? Yes! But…” What? But? No buts‽ What? “… but I think we should take our time…”

Phew - I'm not the only one with no idea how perform this social ritual!

Now would have been the time to present a ring, or perhaps while blurting out my prefabricated line, but I had none to speak of. I didn't have one intentionally because I figured A would prefer to find one she likes herself, but it did feel like there was a hole there that needed filling. Thank you Hollywood for your clichés.

In hindsight, I don't know what I was worried about — I love A, and she loves me, and we've been very comfortable and relaxed with each other for such a time now that there really wasn't much to be worried about.

The conversation continued normally after that, with us quietly beaming grins across the table at each other, and the food was delicious. We wound up back at the hotel after 2am, but it would be a few more hours before I would get to sleep…

If you're interested in reading the (simpler) other side of the story, have a look at what A wrote on her equally neglected blog.