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.

Does Grand Marnier go off?

Am I the only woman who hates going to the hairdresser? 

Today it was time for my pre-Christmas trip to tidy up the frizz and cover up the grey.  As usual a gale was blowing outside and by the time I walked back to the car, the torrential rain greeted me like horizontal spears straight into my face.  I didn’t really care as I never plan to go out after a hair appointment, I always feel utterly shattered after sitting doing nothing but absorbing all the latest gossip from Hello and OK magazines and having to smile sweetly as the latest junior stabs me with her fingernail, whilst trying to give that relaxing massage.  Then there is something about having my hair fiddled with for hours and finally blow dried, that makes me just want to close my eyes.  It is a necessary endurance, I like the colour they manage to create and the style they cut, but I can achieve a much better look when I do the blow drying at home.

No time to sit and relax when I get home, the Christmas cake has been marinating for the last three days so it’s about time I whipped up the rest of the ingredients and put the little beauty in the oven.

Yes, I know it is very late to make the cake, but my trusty Good Housekeeping recipe has never let me down and it is the only Christmas cake ever to be finished in this house. There will be such a wonderful aroma throughout the house in a couple of hours,  that really will start the Christmas mood.  

I do hope I have done the right thing though, do liqueurs have a sell by date?  I intended to add a few slugs of Cointreau to the fruit mix and discovered that a ‘little mouse’ in the house must have developed a taste for it!  However, sitting next to the near empty Cointreau was a very old bottle of Grand Marnier.  Oh how I used to love a drop of this, I had forgotten we still had this delightful nectar, so tried a tiny sip. Yum! That was great, so the fruit has been enjoying a good soak for a few days and I’m sure it doesn’t go off.

Little Darlings!

They never grow up!  Or maybe we just don’t want to let them?

1^st December arrived and the eager faces were so relieved to see their chocolate Advent Calendars lying on the breakfast table. The traditional fabric calendar had been mounted in its usual place in the kitchen, with the little pockets of numbered stockings ready to offer tasty sweet treats for the next month!  Yes I know they are young adults, but it is a tradition and they love it, so do I!

It doesn’t stop there they still have their elaborate embroidered stockings, heirlooms I hope, which have to be hung by the fireplace on Christmas Eve to receive the annual supply of special extravagant toiletries to keep them fragrant for the next year!

Finally it actually feels like it is really December and we can be thinking of these things.  Only last week I sat out in the sun with a coffee, next to summer flowers which are clinging on despite the lack of daylight hours, being buzzed by enormous confused bees, whilst I made my lists for all the Christmas preparations.  It somehow didn’t feel quite right.  

No need to worry now, the chill wind sending shoppers scurrying, makes sense of the pretty Christmas trees on every street corner and the twinkling lights across the streets. Freezing days have arrived, the coats and gloves are out and I am sticking to my theory of a bad winter looming due to the trees being laden down with berries, being the country-girl that I am at heart!

Didn’t we have a lovely day!

The day we went to Worthing!  

Smug is the word that first comes to mind.  We took a risk having heard the dire weather forecast for a fog drenched November Sunday, and jumped into the car and headed south through dense fog.  All the way we were rather sceptical of ‘The Chief’s’ promise that he was convinced the weather would be brighter on the other side of the South Downs.

To his relief, as we cautiously approached the top of the hill still shrouded in thick fog, we were suddenly blinded by the intense sun  through the remaining sheet of fog, then it was blue sky all the way to the beach!  

It was like stepping into a different country and we had a fabulous day, walking along the promenade amongst happy smiling faces, to the great little Café des Artistes on Worthing seafront (www.coastworthing.co.uk)

There was a free table at the front of the decking, right on the beach and there we enjoyed a delicious  light lunch in the glorious sunshine, so warm we had to take our coats off! 

It was just such a shame that ‘Mini Darling’ decided she had too much work to catch up with and wasn’t able to come with us.  We didn’t really want to send her a photo of this utterly contrasting climate to the one she was suffering at home, where she couldn’t even see the end of the garden!

It's hereditary!

Quietly watching the remembrance service at the Albert Hall, the RAF began their descent into the arena and as soon as I heard their rousing music, I had the overwhelming urge to jump up and begin marching erectly around the lounge, just as Mummy used to do. 

Always loyal to the memory of her time as a WRAF officer, it was difficult to curb her enthusiasm, it must be hereditary.  If so, the next stage will be finding myself breaking into song in shops and open spaces when I hear a Christmas carol and I now have to look forward to being hushed by my girls, as this uncontrollable sensation takes hold of me!

I wonder if it will embarrass them more than my guilty habit of setting off all the mechanical santa, reindeer etc, which temptingly gaze at me from the Christmas shelves!

How dare they dictate what we should aspire to?

I was outraged to open the pages of the Daily Telegraph newspaper this morning to see the image of a very glamorous looking lady posing next to the headline meet the 80-year-old supermodel. 

Great to keep your poise, looks, health and charm to such a grand age, but do not try to fool us that this photo is actually reality.  Technology has been working overtime to portray Carmen Dell’Orefice as a perfect example of how to manage the years.  You just need to look at the perfectly smooth hands, then compare them to real photos of her, with the normal raised veins and colouring to be expected as time marches along and where did she borrow that neck from?  

Photo: fashion.telegraph.co.uk

The fact is that she is a beautiful woman and looks tremendous for her age.  There are many other photos which have shown how stunning she is, but acknowledged the signs of ageing are there and we can admire how well she has defended them.  The first photo has just smoothed over and filled in at least thirty years of her life, this picture shows a vibrant lady with a story to tell.

It is not only the youth who suffer terrible self-doubts about their image due to the over use of photo shop techniques and similar, it affects the other end of the age scale too and can only be damaging in trying to make it appear that beauty can only be found in perfection. 

I’m the first one to agree that everyone should make the very best of what they have, for their own self-esteem.  I think it is about time there was more of a campaign to embrace the character of people and admire how individuals want to face the world, not churn out images which editors and the likes think we should admire.  How dare they dictate what we should aspire to?