Can I just come over?

At some point, I began needing three weeks’ notice to see people whose front doors I used to walk through without knocking.

A friend asks when I’m free. I check my calendar, offer two evenings, and wait while he checks his. One of us is away. The other has a birthday dinner. We settle on a Thursday next month and book somewhere halfway between us. I find it strange that seeing someone I like now requires the same preparation as getting my teeth cleaned.

I miss the sort of evening nobody thought to arrange.

I used to turn up at friends’ houses with no particular contribution to make. Sometimes they were cooking. Sometimes they were watching something terrible on television. I’d sit on a kitchen stool, ask what was going on, eat whatever was offered and probably stay too long. There was no point at which the evening was supposed to become interesting. If someone needed to put a wash on, they put a wash on. I was just there.

I’m not entirely sure when I stopped doing that. There wasn’t a final night. People moved. I moved. Jobs became more demanding. Partners arrived, then children. A friend who once had a spare sofa now has a baby monitor beside the kettle. Some flats barely have room for the people paying rent in them. Getting across a city after work can take longer than the visit itself.

And, to be fair, a person turning up unannounced is not always a charming reminder of simpler times. Sometimes it’s just a person at the door when you’re in your pants.

I don’t think the answer is to pretend responsibilities aren’t real. A lot of the freedom I remember from my twenties existed because there wasn’t much to organise. I had fewer claims on my time. I could afford to waste an evening. I probably remember the good ones more vividly than the nights when everyone was skint, tired or annoying.

Still, I think something gets lost when every meeting has to become an occasion.

I often start with the activity. Shall we go for dinner? Try that new place? Get tickets for something? The activity gives the invitation a shape and makes it easier to send. “Do you fancy coming round and sitting in my kitchen while I make an unremarkable dinner?” is a harder sell on paper. It sounds almost suspiciously like I’m asking for help.

Restaurants give an evening a purpose. There’s a reservation, a menu, something to discuss, a bill that tells us it’s time to leave. I love a good restaurant. I love a special occasion. But I sometimes wonder whether I’m using them to make time with friends feel worthwhile when the worthwhile part was having the time in the first place.

There’s also the pressure of catching up. When I see someone every few months, I arrive with updates. Work, relationships, where I’ve been, what I’m doing next. He has his updates. We take turns delivering them over two hours and a bottle of wine. It can feel less like being in someone’s life than being briefed on it.

The people I see regularly know less of my polished news and more of the small, fairly useless details. They know what irritated me on Tuesday. They’ve seen me change my mind before I worked out how to explain it. They know when I’m quiet because I’m tired rather than upset. I don’t need to provide the previous three episodes before telling them what happened today.

I used to think closeness came mainly from memorable experiences. Trips, birthdays, nights out that ended somewhere unexpected. Those things count. But when I think about the people I feel most at ease with, much of what comes back is ordinary. Standing around while someone makes tea. Going to the shop together because we’ve run out of milk. Sitting on opposite ends of a sofa, both on our phones, occasionally showing each other something stupid.

Nothing to photograph, which may be part of the appeal.

The uncomfortable part is that I can’t blame my calendar for all of this. I’ve declined invitations because I was tired, then spent the evening looking at my phone. I’ve suggested a drink in a fortnight instead of saying someone could come over now. I’ve made the same calculation I’m complaining about: if I have only one free evening, shouldn’t I do something with it?

Perhaps what I actually miss isn’t spontaneity. It’s permission. The kind of friendship where a visit doesn’t require a clean flat, a decent bottle of wine or an interesting version of myself. Where I can say, “I’m not doing much,” and that doesn’t mean “don’t come.”

That thought sits awkwardly alongside something I’ve been building.

ADDERLEY began with organised dinners. I chose rooms, arranged tables and brought together people who might otherwise never have met. I still believe in that. Sometimes a deliberate invitation is exactly what gets a friendship started. It would be dishonest to dismiss the effort now that I’ve seen what it can do.

But I don’t want the best thing we create to be another occasion people need to plan their month around.

I keep imagining a place someone stops at on the way home from an excellent dinner elsewhere. The food they’ve just eaten may have been better. The room may have been more beautiful. They stop in anyway. They know someone will probably be there. They can have one drink, or none, and stay for a while.

It’s a difficult thing to build deliberately, this feeling of not needing a reason. A booking system can fill a room on Friday. It can’t make someone feel comfortable dropping in on a wet Wednesday with nothing much to say.

I think about the houses I liked going to when I was younger. I remember very little about what we did in them.

I remember knowing I could come over.