Colm Tóibín: ‘Dinner parties are just people arguing about things they know nothing about’
How do famous names spend their precious downtime? In our weekly My Saturday column, celebrities reveal their weekend virtues and vices. This week: Colm Tóibín
9am
Two hours of writing without eating, washing or analysing emails. I don’t do coffee either, the machine is too much trouble. This time can be fruitful. With my new book, Long Island [Picador], I was having trouble with the last section. I got up one Saturday and it was a gift of a day when I realised I was on the road towards the end.
11am
The aim is not to get involved in domestic activity. The New York Times is delivered and I eat granola and yoghurt with my view of the Hudson River. I live on the Upper West Side near Columbia, where I teach the spring semester, while my partner Hedi stays in our house in LA.
12pm
I walk down Broadway to Silver Moon, one of the best bread shops in New York, where I see people I know and they call me Professor. There’s very little of the anonymity you’re meant to have in New York. The general rule is say hi and keep going. I stop by an old-fashioned chocolate shop called Mondel – where Katharine Hepburn frequented – for a slab of sugar-free white chocolate with almonds, which I feel must be good for me.
1pm
Quiche from the bakery for lunch. I’d like to heat it up so I’ll press some buttons on the microwave to see if anything happens, but generally it doesn’t.
2pm
When I go into class on Monday, I have to have read the book we’re studying, so there’s nothing I’m forgetting, and I’m not just blathering on about some theory. I read commentary and critical stuff about Ulysses and make an infinite amount of notes.
4pm
Every Saturday, religiously, I take whatever shirts I need for the week to the Bon French laundry. It’s tremendous. We talk about things and they sort out buttons that have fallen off and deliver them back to me.
6pm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is open on Saturday evening and no one knows, so there are rooms with Vermeers that you have to yourself. It’s changing though, it’s become a place where people on their first Tinder date meet, so you have awkward young people walking around. I watch the guy trying not to say ‘I could do that myself’ about the Mondrians and trying to appreciate the paintings, not mansplain them. That’s fun to watch, though I’ve watched it long enough and now wish they would go somewhere else.
9pm
The main thing is to keep out of restaurants. I’ve taken the view that this business of eating with other people is a waste of time and energy. I’ve given up alcohol, and dinner parties are people drinking and having arguments about things they know nothing about. I just think ‘Why am I not at home?’ I’ve discovered DoorDash [US food delivery app]. I have it on my computer and you press a button and all the menus in New York appear. There’s a Chinese place two blocks away with great dumplings.
10pm
I don’t have a television because there’s something insubstantial about the way news is presented, plus they repeat the same programmes all evening. So I listen to music, a beautiful Telemann viola concerto or Bach cantatas.
1am
If I’m on the sofa reading, I fall asleep and, the older I get, the richer and deeper that sleep is, even though it’s only five minutes. I don’t sleep well when I go to bed though.
