Utterly Scrumptious Day!

Imagine our surprise, to open a stiff green envelope on Christmas Day and discover 'major Darling's' present was a trip to London to enjoy an extravagant lunch in an iconic location!

Well, this Saturday we set off with great anticipation for our lunch at the Savoy!  It was such a beautiful crisp sunny day, we walked over the bridge from Waterloo and strolled up to the venue, feeling very grand!

The hotel looks absolutely stunning after the fairly recent refurbishment and once we had taken a bit of time to absorb the atmosphere of this historic hotel, we made our way through to the Art Deco River restaurant, decorated in shades of cream, chrome and black.  Surprisingly it is not a very clear view of the river with trees in the way, so we were glad to sit further back in the middle of the restaurant where we could observe the 'theatre' of this luxury dining room.

 The numerous attentive members of staff, attractively dressed in an unusual sand coloured uniform, were ready to please our every request but not so keen as to be annoying.  Relaxing back with our chilled flute of champagne, the next task was to make a decision on what food to eat, it all sounded so appetising.  We were certainly not disappointed, all three courses were utterly scrumptious!  We were a bit predictable with our choice, both having a divine smoked trout and salmon starter with the very best warm crusty bread, followed by succulent white cod on a bed of citrus couscous.  My gingerbread parfait was heavenly and I was allowed a small taste of 'The Chief's' blackcurrant crumble and apple ice cream - as you have never seen it before! What a thoroughly indulgent way to spend a Saturday,  I could get used to it!

We decided to go on elsewhere for a coffee to take in a bit of the sunshine and I remembered seeing a cafe in Embankment Gardens.  I thought it would be fun to go from one extreme to another in the style of venue!  However, this little cafe was perfect, they even brought the coffee to our table and we sat outside on a little terrace looking out across the sun soaked Thames - couldn't be better!

It was a perfect winter's day to experience the sights of London, especially as the sun began to sink lower and the shadows lengthened.

Unfortunately, South West trains did not plan their engineering works to fit in with our memorable day.  We had planned to meet the girls in the evening for a drink on the South Bank to end off a lovely day, however we needed major Darling to give us lifts to and from another station as it was the only line open over the weekend.  Instead, we had to open a bottle of bubbly when we got home to say thank you for our perfect present!

Goodbye Santa!

Time for Santa to wave goodbye to the fairy and for a massive clear up to begin.  All the sparkling decorations are looking rather dusty, the holly and ivy is shrivelling and the needles of ‘Fraser’ our beautiful tree are beginning to scatter.  Twelfth Night is  upon us, so it is time to make a start on putting Christmas away for another year.

During the years when the children were small and there was never enough time to get everything done, the decorations were swiftly packed away and often didn’t survive until the following year, or else I forgot where I had put them!  I now have a better plan, first of all pack away in a cupboard, the dishes of lights and flowers, the mantelpiece decorations, the Santa models, nativity set and our beloved musical saxophone playing reindeer.  Then, leave the tree and all the delicate baubles and the twig display with the tiny wooden figures until another day.  There is always something that manages to escape detection and a few days later is suddenly noticed.  This year it was the extremely unusual fairy from my friend who always send me something beautiful from the Vienna Christmas market.

Removing the cards and decorations means that the dust which has been gathering for the last month is suddenly revealed.  Even worse than normal after the constant stream of party goers who have been enjoying the festive atmosphere with us.  The spring clean will be a good job for tomorrow when my new washing machine will be delivered, there is always something that breaks down over Christmas, last year it was the freezer.  This meant that the once worn clothes began to pile up over the edges of the washing basket until I made a discovery.  I worked out that the machine would work on the rinse cycle through to spin, so decided to pop in a good glug of fabric conditioner and freshen up all the ‘dirty’ clothes!  It worked a treat, much quicker than doing a full wash and no-one has noticed anything different, I might do that in future!

Moving the old washing machine out of the position it has enjoyed for at least the last ten years, revealed the usual array of unidentified wildlife and embarrassing dust.  Luckily I’ve got that job out of the way before the delivery men arrive, I’m sure they have seen it all before but you always think they go away and have a good gossip about the filthy housekeeping standards!

I am actually looking forward to my supermarket trip this week in the hope they have finally removed the ridiculous stacks of excessive ‘Christmas’ food which clutter the already narrow aisles. I’ve always moaned about those big trucks which fill up the aisles with staff doing the personal shopping for customers, often you can come across four or more in an aisle and have to negotiate through, feeling guilty interrupting the in depth conversations of the staff and pausing to let them make their choice from the shelves first.  They act as though they are shoppers, not staff.  However the task of steering my heavily laden pre-Christmas trolley was made even more difficult my the piles of ‘Festive Special’ lines which had been placed on the floor in front of the shelves!  Are they really expecting a full shelf load of mayonnaise to disappear in a day, so they have to heap at least twelve boxes of the stuff on the ground too?  Do they not have enough room in the store room?  If not, they should plan a bit better and not subject us shoppers who choose to do their shopping personally, and spend far more than internet shoppers due to impulse purchasing, with a bit more thought and consideration. 

Obviously this is a marketing ploy to make us think that they will soon be running out and it’s what everyone is buying, so I MUST buy it too? Thinking about it, I’m sure this must pose a fire hazard or health and safety issue?

I love the lights, frivolous trinkets, endless entertaining and time to catch up with family and old friends, but I do look forward to stuffing the last box in the attic, admiring a clean house and buying a lovely bunch of spring flowers to look forward to lighter brighter days ahead.