Friends, not a third, and now here is the actual post

We are looking for friends and not a third. Said once, at the top, and we are not going to spend the rest of this defending it, because every couple who has ever written anything anywhere has had to lead with that sentence and it makes for extremely dull reading.

So. Thirty nine and forty one, the west end, together eleven years, rope for eight of them. She ties and I do not, which has never been in question for either of us. We work opposite shifts, we see less of each other than we would like, and the thing we most want from other people is regularity rather than excitement.

What we actually want is a standing dinner. Once a month, the same weekend, at ours or at yours, with two or three people we come to know properly over a couple of years. We are both slightly past the stage of meeting new people constantly, and we have noticed that everything social in this city is built for people who are not.

We are boring company in the best sense. We cook, we ask questions, we remember what you told us last time. Neither of us wants to expand any part of our own arrangement and neither of us considers other people's arrangements our business. If you are two people who would like a fixed point in the month, write to us and say so.