I have a huge amount of work to do, so of course the right thing to do was to suggest that the Gentleman Friend, who was planning to go out to dinner with a friend for the latter’s birthday, instead invite him over and I would make dinner for them. So he did, and instead […]
Into the city
We went into Soho for a lunch to celebrate a birthday, at Xu, a Taiwanese restaurant. Quite nice, not great, though hobbled by one of our party being vegetarian on one hand, and the current London focus on meaty specialities on the other. The Gentleman Friend’s gammy knee gammed up rather badly (after nearly three […]
Hot day in town
Yesterday was Saturday and I began the morning with a trip to the West Hampstead farmer’s market, there to get bread, ravioli and whatever else looked good. I forgot both bread and ravioli and instead returned with a broad selection of berries, vegetables and yoghurts. One punnet of raspberries in a virtuously recyclable cardboard container […]
Burger and squid
I went out to dinner with the relative plus one, as well as her old friend who lives in London and is an academic. The old friend has recently moved to a university I was once employed at, so we shared some gossip about members of her department-to-be. We met at Bobo Social, which is […]
Steak and marrow
We went last night to Hawksmoor. The steaks were excellent as ever, and I ordered some roasted bone marrow to top mine, but the service was surprisingly poor. The bone marrow arrived long after the steak, one dining companion’s medium raw steak was medium or more, and generally it was hard to catch an eye […]
City stroll
We met friends from Malaysia at the Quality Chop House, an old favourite, for lunch. They were doing Sunday lunch, which was very good (despite my disinterest in Sunday lunch) but not quite as spectacular as I remember it. Whether this is because of Sunday lunch or that it has gone down in quality, I […]
Guests
The guests have arrived – a young relative and her boyfriend. She works for a well known international body and he is a journalist. They went out for brunch with friends today and returned late for dinner and rather wobblier than I like – I find it a bit undignified, but can never quite disentangle […]
Gift of the gab
We have arrived at the Carrig House Hotel, a countryside hotel of the type they do particularly well across the British Isles, it seems: an old converted mansion in a beautiful spot (here, on the shore of a lake in County Kerry), with wallpaper and old baths, supremely comfortable beds but two taps instead of […]
Troubling weekend
Well, troubling is not quite the right word. It was a bit restless, I think I’m now close enough to the move to be both overwhelmed by what needs to be done and it’s still too early to take any action on it. Today I was very restless indeed. First we met the Woodland Creature […]
Morning mee
Another breakfast excursion today, this time to Pudu, one of the old Chinese parts of town known for especially delicious Chinese food. It’s about a 40 minute walk but I decided to take the trundling old monorail to Imbi and walk 10 minutes from there. It was around 9 on a Sunday so very quiet […]