what does everybody actually do with the hours

Faintly embarrassing question and I am asking it seriously.

Second time we have done this. She was out from about seven, home just after one. I had the whole house to myself and about six hours to fill.

What I actually did was reorganise the airing cupboard. All of it. Sorted the sheets by size. Then I made a shepherd’s pie nobody had asked for, at ten o’clock at night, and ate about a third of it standing up.

I was not miserable. I want to be clear about that, because I know how the cupboard sounds. I was not sitting there in agony. I just could not settle to anything that took more than twenty minutes of attention, and by the end I had run out of small jobs.

The first time we did this I watched a film and remembered none of it.

So what do people do? Is there a version of this evening that is actually enjoyable, or is the honest answer that you find something dull to do and get through it? I would rather learn from other people than spend the next one on the kitchen drawers.

cinema. genuinely. something long and loud that i would not otherwise watch, in a building where the phone is off anyway. it removes the entire question of whether to check it

That is a better answer than anything I came up with. The bit I got wrong was staying in the house, I think.