Date Night!

I've been married for almost 4 years - I met my husband while travelling through South East Asia. We then spent almost 3 months on the road together 24/7 in 'Mantracker' like conditions hiking through the lower Himalayas and then enduring the heat and misogyny of central India, which harsh as it was I wouldn't exchange for 2 weeks in Ibiza ever.

We've come to the conclusion that this kind of 'together' counts as 2 years of courtship under normal circumstances. In other words, we've been together long enough that the idea of a date is a little absurd. Except that after all this time and a child to boot (love her dearly as we do from DNA to split ends) dates don't happen very often. Certainly, they are never spontaneous and you do have to be strategic in the planning but that doesn't stop me from getting excited.

In the past, the pressure to have fun has weighed heavy and petty bickering would ensure but we know better now. Life is just too short to waste date night on arguments that we can do any other day of the week. We have also agreed that any conversations we have on date night must be firmly rooted in fact not opinion unless one has been elicited and then it's a free for all. Well, we've both learnt to be very strict with this policy and it works.

Getting back to the date, it has to fulfil 2 purposes: One - it must be fun for both of us and two - has to be something or somewhere new. I hate U-turns and I find repetition monotonous. In life I prefer to change paths and explore new avenues rather than turn back. I'm a bit like a male driver in this sense. So this weekend I've drawn up a list of venues around downtown Toronto used by the organizers of Canadian Music Week, which I was researching for a feature and we'll pick one or two places to catch some live music. Top of the list at the moment is the Gladstone Hotel whose reputation has travelled somewhat and my husband has to go to the bar on Queen St. W run by an ex roadie for The Stones - he HAS to go or he will die. I also have my eye on a couple of smaller, kookie venues but we'll start big and see where that goes.

I've heard the Library Bar at the Royal Fairmont is a good place to start out with a little tipple and a big change from the usual, plus since it's opposite Union Station (we'll be coming in by train) it makes utter sense we begin as we mean to go on.

I'm still working on where to have the meal. I only have one rule on this - it absolutely positively cannot be part of a chain and this choice I will leave to spontaneity as we meander around our favourite parts of T.O. Please feel free to make suggestions folks!

All this talk of travel and food and whatnot - I've started preparing from scratch paper masala dosas like the ones we ate in India...it's a right malarky but it's not boring and that's my first rule of law.