196. ...soup is, in some ways, a MacGuffin.

(Soup Club)

Apr 02, 2025

When the weather turned chilly toward the end of last year I added a 90 capsule tub of vitamin D to my morning routine and it’s nearly empty.

I was sat reading on Sunday morning when the cat feeder released Juno’s breakfast. The light seemed odd. Dawn wasn't where it should be. Looking at my watch I saw 7am. An hour late? The clocks had gone forward! We made it! Winter is over for another year.

Last Tuesday, a week ago yesterday, we closed this season of Soup Club, as we did the one before, wearing hats. Calum brought spares and I had a couple tucked away just in case anyone missed the memo. We supped soup hatted.

For new readers Soup Club is a weekly open door lunch at my gaff. I make soup and anyone who’d like to is welcome round for a bowlful.

Wolfgang asked if there was a philosophy behind the varied melange of hats. I wasn’t sure. We wore hats this year because we wore hats last year. I can’t remember what motivated the addition of a dress-up element to the Season 2 finale. Maybe we wear hats to mark the transition of the seasons - winter to spring. Cast off the woolen beanies, break out the sun bonnets. I told him we’re wearing hats because our minds provide the connections and conversations that make Soup Club special and (obviously) hats are to minds what bowls are to soup.

We shared a smirk at the nonsense. I like Wolfgang. I've made lots of new friends by opening my doors and making lunch.

This has been the third winter of Soup Club. I sent out the first invite in October 2022. I think it’s a thing now. When the dark months roll in, on the first Tuesday after the clocks go back, I start making soup. I have a huge Soup Reactor (Ninja 15-in-1) that holds seven and a half litres. Some quick arithmetic tells me that, based on 250ml servings, I make around 540 bowls of soup each winter. Maths is not a strong suit so if you're arithmetically inclined you could check that for me.

I think I’ve made about 40 different soups...

One thought behind Soup Club was that I’d teach myself how to be less nervous about socialising and hosting. I’d get re-comfy with having people round to my place after lockdown. Perhaps most importantly, I’d learn to welcome guests without a drink in my hand. I’d never really socialised sober. I didn’t know if I’d know how. I can go to pubs and clubs and events where people are drinking with some degree of confidence now, but back in 2022, still feeling new to sobriety, I was avoiding alcohol venues entirely.

My social life had become hillwalking, coffee shops, and chance encounters with friends and neighbours on Portobello Promenade or beach as I walked home from the gym. As summer wound down, I could feel the connection opportunities slipping. I was scared of the approaching winter darkness. A Scottish winter can be pretty grim and I'm no stranger to S.A.D.

Soup Club became a teacher and a salve. A training ground and a mental gym for rehabilitating my sense of social ease. My ability to be around people without alcohol as a lubricant.

I think TV chefs and cooking programmes have wobbled our will to dinner party by tipping in a generous helping of High Expectations and Performance Anxiety. Maybe it’s just me. I’d certainly got to the point where I felt I’d have to make something approaching Michelin-star complexity if I were to invite friends round. And so I didn't. But the sharing is more important than what’s shared. Tasty and simple is absolutely OK. Okay is okay. It’s the chat and connection that matters. So: soup.

It doesn’t get simpler than soup. Vegetables, water, seasoning. You can get flashy with obscure ingredients as much as you like, but it’s not at all necessary.

The soup is, in some ways, a MacGuffin. A plot device. Just there to drive the narrative forward but ultimately unimportant. The real reason people show up is connection. And so it doesn’t really matter if the soup’s crap. Or so I thought.

And then Graeme said he really likes having one day a week where he doesn’t have to make lunch. That the soup is a real draw.

The pressure!

I’m not a chef. Not even a cook. I vaguely consult a recipe, then mostly freestyle it, riffing with whatever else might seem like a good idea during The Tastings. If the soup is tasty, it’s not really by design. I take it as read that if I put tasty things in a pot and add water, the result is likely to be tasty.

I can see that Soup Club helps other people, too. All the things it does for me, it does for the people who come along. And probably other things I don’t even know about.

The closing Soup Club Session (Season Three Finale!) was attended by 18 Soup Clubbers. It could easily have been more; quite a few regulars were missing. Our WhatsApp group has 52 members now.

It's never the same crowd week to week. Conversation wavers and wanders between the intellectually complex and the silly kookie. Puns are a popular side dish.

Soup Clubbers are remote workers, retirees, parents and home makers, freelancers with time on their hands. People I’ve known most of my life and people I’m meeting for the first time. People I got talking to at the gym or the climbing wall. Friends bring friends. Or pass on the very broad invite. I don’t ever know who’s going to show up.

I do sometimes worry that someone will come and make it weird. What if some asshole turns up and starts getting aggro? I think the asshole/daytime soup fan venn diagram contains a very narrow sliver of crossover. It’s possible though, right?

I find Soup Club exhausting. Good exhausting. Mostly. Like the tiredness after a long walk in the hills, a surf, a blast down a mountain bike trail, or a session at the climbing wall. When everyone leaves - bang on 14:00 and NO EXCEPTIONS - I tidy up quickly and take a chunk of quiet time on the couch before the boy gets home from school. I feel wrung out.

There are a lot of personalities and competing needs in any gathering. It can be chaotic. I hear a little of every conversation all at once, and the room can be very buzzy, bursty, and bright. There’s lots of laughter. The cat does her rounds from lap to lap and I’m on high alert for bread theft. She loves a sourdough and wouldn’t be above putting her face in an unguarded soup bowl. Some people don’t like a cat.

The part of me that worries people are having a bad time, or that the soup is being choked down out of politeness, gets quieter with each season. I get more confident in a wee crowd.

I get compliments and comments about how good a thing this is. I’m uncomfortable with the “well dones”. There’s part of me that sees it as penance. I have been a selfish, egotistical, and self-obsessed man. Doing this helps me assure myself that I’m better. Or at least trying to be.

But still uncomfortable.

Soup Club is entirely self-serving. If I wasn’t getting something from it, I wouldn’t do it. That seems self-evident and human. I had needs and wants; I wanted to be better at socialising, I wanted a regular measure of connection to keep me from SAD-spiralling in the mirk of a Scottish winter. There’s the growth and learning element.

Lindsay said it’s “courageous”. I can see that it takes a bit of hutzpah, I’m not blind to that and I don’t want to play it down. It can take a force of will. I start to feel notes of Tuesday anxiety on the preceding Sunday - but courageous feels a bit much.

Still, I recognise that it's unusual to throw open your doors and invite people in. Especially when many of those people are people you don't know. People who might think you’re one of those self serving egotistical, narcissistic, pricks who trick innocents into coming round to their gaff so they can show off about having a Ninja 15 in 1 Soup Reactor.

Breathe.

Stop.

To invite a little discomfort in every week.

To see the discomfort become pleasure, laughter, growth. Love.

I’ve gotten a lot from Soup Club. I’ll throw down a dinner party at the drop (or adornment) of a hat. I'm becoming souper comfortable with opening my doors. I’m looking for more doors to open. I dish out invites like I dish out 250ml ladles of soup. Swish, scoop, pour, repeat. No bother to me. I’m peaceful when the conversation pauses. Content to sit back and enjoy the quiet. I can be at ease with the buzz and the bluster. I don’t mind at all when there’s little clashs of character. It’s all good. This is life and I’m in it.

I get a weekly dose of vibrant humanity all the way through winter.

I mark the start of the darkest season with a fortifying gathering, a connective show of strength. We meet around my increasingly too-small dining table as if to say: “We’re here for each other. We’ll bring some hugs and love and mirth and light to the dark months.”

We ended Season Three of Soup Club bathed in sunlight. The soup, the laughter, the gathering had warmed us enough that Sarah slid open the window. Spring had arrived and there wasn’t a drop of soup left.

Soup Club is done for now. Back after the clocks change in October. Season Four commences Tuesday 28th of October 2025. See you then. BYOBread.

I am immensely grateful to all the people who come along to join me for lunch on a winter Tuesday. Whether you’ve been a regular Soup Clubber or a one off visitor you have my deep gratitude. You’ve brought some sunshine into my heart and home.

It’s ok if you’ve just gagged on that, happens to me all the time. Take a napkin to your chin, compose yourself. Breathe.

Ok good.

Might it be nice to share this post with friends in your neighbourhood who might like to start their own Soup Club? I’d like that. I like that idea that people make their own and that there might be other Soup Clubs all around the world. Maybe we could ALL be soup clubbers. My table isn’t big enough to have everyone round here.

I’m always looking for interesting Soups. There’s a lot to be learned about people and cultures from the soup the sup. I think every country of the world has a soup they call their own.

Perhaps you might like to share a recipe…

The Variable Frequency Lambie

Discussion about this post