A Weekend in London Between Two Work Weeks

02The one rule

Have something at a fixed time on Saturday. Not a plan for the day, not a list of things you might do. One thing with a time on it that you have to be somewhere for.

It works because it anchors everything else. A thing at two in the afternoon means you get up, you are out by one, and the morning has a point. A thing at seven in the evening means the whole day is a run up to something rather than a wait. An unstructured day with three vague intentions in it turns into a long walk, an expensive lunch on your own, and being back in the room by four.

03What to do with Saturday

Go somewhere that takes a train

You will not do this on a weeknight and it is the best use of a free Saturday. An hour out of London in almost any direction is a different country: the coast, the South Downs, a market town, a cathedral city. It costs a train ticket and it makes the weekend feel like something rather than like waiting for Monday. Book the outbound in the morning and decide the return when you are there.

Or do the one big thing properly

If you are staying in town, do the single thing you would genuinely be pleased to have done, and do it in the morning while it is quiet, rather than assembling a list of four and finishing none. A big museum at ten on a Saturday is a different experience from a big museum at two.

Markets are the best solo Saturday in this city

Food markets specifically, because eating alone in a market is completely unremarkable in a way that eating alone in a restaurant at eight is not. You stand up, you move, nobody has seated you at a table for one, and it is busy enough to feel like being among people without requiring you to talk to any of them. It is the least effortful social thing available.

Take the thing you do at home and do it here

Whatever it is. A swim, a long run, a record shop, a climbing wall, a match. The point is not novelty, it is continuity. Two months of doing none of the things that make you yourself is a lot of what actually wears people down on a long assignment.

04What to do with Sunday

Less. Sunday is for the boring recovery admin that makes the week work: laundry, a proper shop so the room has food in it, whatever you need to not be scrambling on Tuesday night. Doing it on Sunday morning is what stops it eating a weekday evening.

Then keep the afternoon slow and deliberately unplanned. A stayover weekend where both days are programmed leaves you starting Monday already tired, which defeats the point of not flying home.

One thing worth protecting: call home on Sunday, and give it a real slot rather than a tired ten minutes at the end. Sunday evening in a hotel room in a city where you know nobody is the flattest hour of the week and everybody underestimates it.

05The money question

Your employer may not pay for the weekend night, and if so, that is worth working out early rather than discovering it on the invoice. It is often still cheaper for them than two extra flights, which is an argument you are allowed to make in advance. What you should not do is stay, pay for it yourself, and then spend the weekend in the room being annoyed about it. If you are covering it, spend the weekend properly. If you are not, stay and use it.

06One option for the Saturday, or the Thursday before it

Since the advice is a fixed time rather than a good intention, here is one thing that has a time attached.

KF.Social runs tables of six in London on weeknight evenings, sitting at 19:00, and the London page lists the dates on sale with the night and the area for each. It is 15 pounds for the seat and you pay for your own food at the restaurant. There is no subscription, so it suits a trip rather than a life here.

Two honest notes. The sittings are weeknights, so the direct use of this for a stayover weekend is a table late in the week before, which is when the week ends for everyone else and when you are most likely to notice that you are not going anywhere. And it is a table of six rather than anything larger, which is the point: six is a size where the conversation stays one conversation.

The practical bits: booking closes six hours before the sitting, you are told the restaurant six hours before and who is at the table an hour before. If you cancel 72 hours or more ahead the 15 pounds goes back to your card, and inside 72 hours it does not come back.

07The thing to take from this

Two free days in a city most people pay to visit is genuinely a good hand. It only goes wrong in one specific way, which is waking up on Saturday with nothing in the diary and losing the day before noon. Put one thing at one time on Saturday, and the rest of the weekend organises itself around it.