Nativity -1 day.
Right, that’s it. Lily is frog-marched back to school, even though she sounds as if she is only just recovering from the bubonic plague. I worry that her missing rehearsals will imperil her BAFTA winning performance as the “dame”, now a significant figure in the New Testament, along with Little Bo Peep, at least according to the scriptures discovered by Guildford Infant’s School. Her feisty school friends, Lillian and Lucy are both barely able to contain their excitement upon the realization that Lily had not forsaken them, has not vanished into thin air like a princess lost in a dark forest. I guess three days is an eternity when you are a 4-year old. I inform Lily’s teacher that she is ready for the Nativity and that her understudy should report back to the choir of tinseled-up angels.
Returning home, I do a little more work and then along with Tomoko, head to The Ledbury packing Burgundies for the WIMPS Xmas lunch. We have the entire restaurant to ourselves, each table devoted to a particular region. There must be around 35-40 oenophiles in attendance, something that would have been impossible before the Internet and social forums.
Communal dipsomania for the discerning drinker.
There is a great atmosphere, warm and convivial, including some old, slightly fatter faces from bygone off-lines. Below is Mr David Pope, whose summer tastings at his flat in Leytonstowe are the stuff of legend and who once nonchalantly proffered a Chateauneuf to go with a spag bol, not quite realizing that Reserve de Celestins 1988 had risen tenfold in price since he bought it on release.
Unlike Tuesday night at the La Conseillante dinner, I can actually eat the Brett’s exquisite cuisine, which includes some delicious venison sausages, a loin of Berkshire Hare dusted in juniper, Pyrenean milk fed lamb should with white truffle cream potato and a belly of suckling pig with grilled onions, smoked lentils and bacon.
In other words, equal to KFC.
We depart around 4.30pm after I finish taking my notes, then pop into a chichi boutique as there is a pretty dress that I would like to buy Tomoko for Xmas, at least until I catch sight of the price tag. That is the problem with Notting Hill: it resembles the normal world except that everything has an extra couple of zeros glued on the end. You go out for a pint of milk and you need to get a bank loan.
We catch the train back, Waterloo Station thronging with commuters zig-zagging across the terminus like ants, desperate to catch their train that left 20 seconds ago.We relieve my parents of the kids when we get home. Mum has corrupted Daisy’s meticulously honed, dietary regimen with a illicit trip to Guildford’s McDonalds. Consequently, Lily is insane with jealousy that her younger sister has enjoyed a Manchurian banquet, whilst she had to make do with stodgy custard pudding at school dinners. I will have to ween DAisy off fast food and revert them back to proper meals.
Like KFC.
In the evening, I chill out as I am still recovering from my Manflu, watch Gavin & Stacey, which is the funniest series so far and then somehow I fall asleep like a narcoleptic, midway through the 10 O’Clock news.
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