Hygge for Valentine’s Day

Hygge is ordering food to be delivered to your house from the Chinese thirty seconds away. It is then realising you have made the order conservatively small because you are ashamed both the takeaway and the driver will know you were too lazy to walk thirty seconds.

Thirty seconds. You could do it.

So you order from a Chinese in Phibsborough instead.

And you order more because they know nothing about you. The slate is blank. No order history.

But you find you are caught between your order not quite being enough for two but being too much for one.

They will think it’s all for you. They can already see you. Sticking your hands blindly into a bag of prawn crackers as you eat alone in front of a low budget series about conmen. They can see you. With all your food. Nothing but the light of a Penneys candle illuminating the tub of curry sauce balancing on your A Line A Day journal. Your fingers are already greasy, you think, you may as well continue to eat with your hands. No need for airs and graces.

So you add a few things from the extras part of the menu to pad it out so it looks like enough food for two. For a happy couple, they’ll think. One happy person getting plates and forks as the other happy person asks from the couch what they would like. “I don’t mind, you decide”, they giggle. One of them puts a blanket on the radiator so they’ll be warm before the film starts. It’s a film where nobody dies. But there is an uplifting moral. Their house is clean. They keep their rice and pasta in kilner jars. They have a milk jug for their almond Alpro. They spiralize their vegetables and clean their oven with vinegar. They fit together so well.

You order Family Meal Deal 3 and pull the blanket fully over your face. When the doorbell rings you’ll shout, “I’ll get it!” so the driver can hear you.

Hygge is not for you.

Main Image via kowloonnc