The fullest Friday of the year

The fullest Friday of the year in a Gulf family restaurant falls in May.

Everything is in the room's favour at once, and only now. The fasting month is well behind everyone and the appetite for going out has come back. The schools are still running, so the families are still in the country. The heat has arrived but it has not taken the terrace yet, and an hour outside in the evening is still worth having. Nobody has flown anywhere.

Two full turns at lunch. The private room gone by Wednesday. A waiting list on a night that has never needed one. The manager stands near the door and enjoys the sight of it.

Then, in the same fortnight, the summer plan gets written.

That is the part worth noticing. The busiest day of the year and the decision about the quietest three months arrive on the same desk in the same week, and the busiest day is the freshest number in the building. The rota is set from it. The stock order repeats on it. July's covers are written as a share of it. A second site's model quietly borrows it.

From next month the country starts to leave, and the same room on the same day of the week will do a fraction of this, and then less again.

None of that is a surprise to anybody who has worked a Gulf summer. It is a surprise to the plan, every year, because the plan was built in the one week when the evidence was at its most flattering.

A Friday in May is the ceiling of the year. The number is honest about the room. It says nothing at all about the month.