do it yourself
a square
Strangers already cross it. What it is short of is a reason to stop.
A square is not short of people, it is short of a reason to stay. Somebody walking through will not join a dinner — but they will pick up a bat, watch a pot they can see into, or take a job if one is offered. So the food is not the event. It is what keeps the people who stopped there for another two hours, and what gives them something to do together while they work out who each other are.
what it takes
- chalk, for writing the invitation on the ground people already walk on
- a game that needs two strangers: bats, a ball, and any flat thing to play on
- a table long enough that nobody sits at the end of it on their own
- one borrowed pot, bigger than you need
- bowls and spoons that do not match, so none of it looks like catering
- bin bags: one for the litter you clear first, one for what is left over to give away
Borrowed beats bought, every time, and nothing on this list has to match anything else on it. Half of it is not cooking equipment: the chalk, the game, the one light and the spare seat are what turn a place into an evening.
what to do
- Go a week before, at the hour you mean to do it, and watch where people walk. That line is where you set up — not where the photograph would be nicer.
- Start by clearing the place up. Nobody asks somebody picking up litter what their permission is, and half an hour of it turns you from a stranger into a neighbour.
- Chalk the way in. Arrows along the path and the plainest possible words: good food this way, come here.
- Put the game out before the food. It is easier to pick up a bat than to accept a plate, and a game is a conversation nobody has to start.
- Cook where it can be watched. An open pot in the middle beats anything behind a stall.
- Make the meal need more than one person: portions that only add up to a dinner when two or three of them are put together do more for a square than any amount of goodwill.
- Give jobs away as fast as they appear — stirring, carrying, keeping score. Somebody with a task stays an hour longer than a guest.
- Eat at the table with whoever turned up. A cook who eats standing up is staff, and staff makes everybody else a customer.
- Leave it cleaner than you found it and come back in a fortnight. The second time is when people bring their own pots.
and then
Send us a photograph of the people, not of the food. That is the whole ask — no forms, no affiliation, nothing to join. If you want a hand first, the handbook is the long version of this, and asking us costs nothing.
This page is meant to be passed on. Its address is www.promenoodology.com/do-it-yourself/a-square.