Being the one who does not drink or eat much any more

What I would say to somebody dreading a big meal is that it will almost certainly be less noticed than you fear.

Ambrose, answering your question directly rather than going round the houses.

The business dinner was the last thing I got comfortable with, and what solved it was simply doing three of them.

No advice, just company. Here if it helps.

Somebody in this circle said the meal is not a test, and I repeated that to myself in a car park before a work dinner and it worked.

What I got wrong was over-explaining. The more I said, the more interested people became. A short answer ends it.

Starters as a main is the whole of my strategy and it has never once been remarked upon in about forty restaurants.

Coming back to what Otti wrote further up, because it is the bit I keep thinking about.

I do not owe anybody an explanation and it took me a year to be able to say that at a table rather than only in my head.

What I found is that the waiter is the least of the problem. The people I am with are the ones who notice.

This is why I read the boring weeks. Thank you for the boring weeks.

A waiter once quietly boxed the rest of mine without being asked and said nothing at all, and I have never forgotten it.

My strategy is to order what I actually want and eat what I actually want and let the rest go, which took practice.

My experience is that this got easier in month eight and has been unremarkable since. It is genuinely a phase for most people.

Something practical: I look at the menu before I go, always, because deciding at a table with eight people is where I get it wrong.

What helped was having one sentence ready. Mine is that I am not very hungry today, and nobody has ever pursued it.

I found weddings hardest of all. A set menu, a long evening, and eleven people at a table who all know each other.