The hours after dinner are the ones the long table is really kept for. The table is cleared, the good chairs are taken, and the evening changes register. Someone plays something. Someone argues, mildly, about a thing that will not be settled. The fire is fed once more than is strictly necessary.
Little of it survives being described. The pleasures of a long evening are made of timing and company and a certain unwillingness to go to bed, none of which transfers to paper. This is why so little is recorded, and why what is recorded tends to be the small things: which record was played twice, who fell asleep in the library, what was still being discussed at two.
We keep to a few habits here as elsewhere. A last glass of something warm. No clocks in the room. And the understanding, never stated, that some evenings are better for not being repeated.