A calendar,not a clubhouse.
Why it exists
Oran empties out on a Saturday morning, and for a while we were part of the reason. Everybody had a group chat full of plans that never survived contact with an actual weekend.
So in April a few of us took a table at a coffee shop, brought board games, and stayed until it closed. Most of the people there had not met before that afternoon. That is the whole origin story, and it has not become more sophisticated since.
How a day goes
Something to do, and time to sit with it afterwards. Tennis, then everybody in the cafeteria for as long as it takes. A film, then an argument about it over coffee. A walk up Murdjadjo, then a very long lunch on the way back down.
Some are one continuous thing instead — three hours of drawing where the talking happens over the paper. What they have in common is that nobody is hurried out at the end.
Who turns up
People in their twenties and thirties, 23 of them at the last count, most of whom arrived knowing nobody at all.
They have almost nothing in common on paper, which turns out to be the whole point.
None of thisis a rule.
Nobody has ever been asked to leave anything. These are just the handful of things that turn out to make the difference between an afternoon people stay at and one they drift away from, and every one of them we learned by getting it wrong.
If you say you're coming, come.
And if you can't, just say so. Friday is better than Saturday, and somebody is often waiting for the spot. Telling us in advance costs you nothing at all — it is only confirming and then vanishing that we'd notice, and even then it takes twice before anything happens, and what happens is a conversation.
Nobody sits on their own.
If somebody is standing at the edge of the group looking at their drink, that is not their problem to solve. It is yours.
Everybody covers their own.
No pooling and no working out who had the extra coffee. You pay for what you had, and nobody is quietly subsidising anybody.
Talk to one person you arrived not knowing.
One is enough. It is most of why any of this works.
Full is notthe end of it.
A court is booked for a set number of people, so some things genuinely fill. When they do the waitlist is real, and it moves nearly every time, because plans change on a Friday.
The other kind — a picnic, a hillside, a table nobody counted — has no number on it at all. Nobody is ever turned away from one of those, so there is nothing to wait for.
You join the list, in order
Strictly whoever asked first. Not by how long you have been a member, and not by who replied fastest.
We check with everybody the day before
One message to everyone holding a spot. Anybody who can no longer come says so, and their spot opens.
We ring the first person on the list
An actual phone call. If you can come, the spot is yours. If you can't, no hard feelings — we come off the list and ring the next person.
Reasonablehesitations.
If none of these is yours, the number at the bottom of this page is a real one and somebody answers it.
Come to one thing before you decide anything.
Nearly everything is open to anyone. Joining only matters for the handful of evenings we keep off the calendar.
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