Tea at the Ritz
Yaaaay.*
http://www.theritzlondon.com/tea/index.asp
http://www.theritzlondon.com/pdfmenus/PALM%20COURT%20menu.pdf
And yes, okay, we had the tea and the glass of champagne. Sue us. And the scones–and the clotted cream and the strawberry jam–and the pastries and, oh yes, the little silly sandwiches with the crusts cut off and the delicate perfectly arranged thin layer of filling which is supposed to convince your bemused stomach that it’s being given food.** And we had the Ritz Royal English tea because the London Ritz is The Only Place in the World You Can Get It, so hey. (Also, I love Assam maybe best of all tea and Ceylon second, so double hey.) We swore to each other that we were not going to eat like menopausal women for the evening and we didn’t.*** Merrilee is going to get up early tomorrow morning and run laps around Hyde Park before she catches her plane home and I am going to give hellhounds an extra long walk.† Every day for the next month.
But the whole experience is such a rush. There are like six strapping young men in fancy-hotel uniform opening doors for you–all those superfluous doors exist specifically to lay on extra strapping young men in uniform††–just to get in to have your tea. And it’s all murals and gilt and floral arrangements the size of the Eiffel Tower everywhere you look. And the guys in the tailcoats††† that bring you your silver teapots and your silver tiered tea trays call you modom and do everything with a flourish and at one-and-a-half speed. If they were horses they’d all be prancing Hackneys.‡
And furthermore, because Merrilee is the best agent anyone ever had‡‡, she had scarfed me an advance galley of Neil Gaiman’s new book. I had brought the proofs for the paperback DRAGONHAVEN to read on the train . . . but on the way home I read The Graveyard Book instead. It is soooo wonderful. I have to go to bed now so I can read some more. . . .
* * *
* Well. Till I got home again. So, hellhounds have been pretty stable for a fortnight or so. I do not say that we do not have to go through The Ritual every meal^, but, as hellhounds go, they’ve been relatively stable.
So, this morning, Chaos has diarrhea. For the first time in two or three weeks. And getting lunch into him was one of our Epics.
And, you know what? I’m going to London anyway. I’m going to see Merrilee. And I do. And it was lovely. Till I got home and Chaos hadn’t touched his supper. Which means that tomorrow he’ll be fully into Living in Outer Space mode and I’ll need fancy NASA space-station billions-of-the-taxpayers’-money equipment to fetch him back again and my budget is more of the tinfoil hats to keep the alien rays out of your brain type. You know, I can’t stay home for the next fifteen years. I really can’t. Can I?
^ That’s every meal. That’s every, every meal. Every meal.
** Vegetables? You mean those green specks on the egg salad and the even thinner layer than other layers of cucumber, indeed the paper thin layer of cucumber, which is obviously to show off the chef’s hand on a kitchen mandolin, in a few of the sandwiches? And the cucumber sandwiches also have cream cheese in them. More cream cheese than cucumber in fact, which is not necessarily saying a lot. But they are very pretty.
*** Chocolate mousse! Itty bitty napoleon! Little bombe-shaped thingummy stuffed with caramel! Several varieties of fruit tart with custard and/or sugar glazes a quarter inch thick! More scones! More clotted cream! I’ve had my serious dairy ingestion bacchanal for the year! And will probably be paying for it for weeks! I don’t care! I had Tea at the Ritz!^
^ Fate cannot harm me, I have dined today.
Sydney Smith
† In the vain hope of giving Chaos an appetite for lunch. Sigh.
†† Merrilee and I both thought there were unusual numbers of the door opening brigade even for the Ritz and that a lot of them seemed to be wearing wires, so maybe there was Someone Really Famous staying. If there was, we didn’t see them. Or maybe we just didn’t recognise them. ^
^ Colin Firth went to school in Winchester and there’s a rumour he’s bought a house around there somewhere. I never saw Pride and Prejudice. I never saw Bridget Jones. I’ve read both of them.
††† White. I think they’re black in winter, but I don’t actually go there often enough to have a mind for detail.^ I am too busy being dazzled.
^ Which is a good thing. Neither my wallet+ nor my waistline could stand it.
+ Although Merrilee won the arm wrestle and paid this one. Well, I was weakened by an encounter in Green Park, around which I was strolling because I arrived early. And a group of Young British People came up to me and asked politely if I knew where you got the boats. You mean like the Serpentine? That’s in Hyde Park. You go that way. –I told you I have that kind of face. And I laughed all the way back to the Ritz.
‡ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackney_(horse) : ‘. . . In motion, they are recognizable by their showiness and style, with distinctive high knee and hock action due to very good flexion of their joints. They have a distinct moment of suspension, and reach out their front legs from their shoulders with each stride. Their hind legs’ flexibility allow those legs to rise up, bending the hock, and reach forward to carry the weight of the body during each stride. This distinctively spectacular movement makes the horse seem to float effortlessly over the ground. . . . ‘
‡‡ We were actually talking about The Tour Thing. Merrilee figured she could get away with this during tea at the Ritz when I probably won’t hide under the table because I might miss something. That was, however, before I got home and discovered Chaos hadn’t eaten supper. He has my best interests at heart, really he does. I don’t like touring.
Hello folks
Hello folks, Robin’s second American guest here.
Robin was kind enough to pick me up at the station despite my having called her Tuesday night to say I’d be in at 3:30….. then again today to tell her I’d missed my train from Bangor and the subsequent re-routing of my ticket would result in my arriving at 5:30, not 3:30….then AGAIN from the platform in London to say I’d managed to catch a slightly earlier train on the last leg and I’d be arriving at 5. I wouldn’t have blamed her a bit if she’d just left me on the platform awaiting a return train. But she did pick me up, and didn’t throw me out of the car in retribution for all the time changes, and I’ve arrived more or less intact.*
As it happened, the late arrival meant that I’m in turn staying longer than originally planned. This led to two consequences; one you’re reading right now–I get to guest blog. Huzzah! And two, I got to go to Wednesday bell practice.
Do you play bridge? Because I don’t, and yet I sometimes read the bridge column in the paper for my own amusement just because it’s such complete gibberish–dummies and ruffles and clubbing your spades and all that kind of thing. Trying to follow what was going on in change ringing, beyond “Hmm, these people appear to be ringing some bells,” is similarly utterly indecipherable to the unindoctrinated. The ringing master keeps shouting out what seem like completely random words and phrases, and despite my best efforts to pay attention I only had a slightly better grasp of what he was talking about after than I did before. I did know, from reading Robin’s blog, that the ringers follow one another, and that who they follow relates to what pattern they’re ringing. So I decided to watch the fellow across from where I was sitting and see where he was looking. This turned out to be more of a challenge than I’d anticipated, as that particular fellow had a slight cast in one eye and I couldn’t for the life of me tell who he was actually looking at. So that was a wash. But the extreme high point was getting to climb up into the tower and see the bells themselves (you can’t from where they’re ringing, the ropes go right up into the ceiling) and then having a go at pulling a rope myself. Wild Robert was kind enough to run me through the basic parts of ringing a huge-ass bell, and it was pretty fabulous if I do say so. Next time I’ll have to show up for sacred home tower practice on a Friday. Though next time I might just have to abandon the train and hire a car….**
* * *
* This is the POLITE version. I got this email from her like ten days ago saying, hi, I’m coming to England this week, want to meet up? And I’m: yo, woman, you couldn’t have given me WARNING? Naah. Warning wasn’t in the plan.^ Blah. Phooey. So, she says she wants to experience some bell ringing. We can do this. She’s going to be in this area on Wednesday, and I ring bells every Wednesday at the same tower, so they have to be glad to see me and be nice to anyone I bring even if my visitor lives four thousand miles away and is never going to be anyone they can ask to ring that wedding when all the local band are in Bermuda. So I say, great, stay over Wednesday night, I’ll take you to practise. But noooooo. She doesn’t have time to stay overnight . . . grrrrrr . . . let it be known that I do not take it well when I am teased about bell ringing. So, okay, she’s going to be here about four hours, we’ll have tea, hang out, whatever. And then I’ll put her back on the train and make rude gestures as it pulls out of the station. And then I’ll go bell ringing.
I got back from walking the hellhounds this morning to a message on my phone machine that she’d missed her train and er um not only is she getting in late but she’s going to have been on a train for a very long time–apparently the rerouting was via Edinburgh–and er um was that offer of a bed overnight still good? Er um.
At this point I looked vacantly into the middle distance for a moment with a grisly little smile and contemplated my options. After running through a few of the more extreme ones I decided the one that appealed to me the most was to say suuuuuure, I’ll give you a bed for the night (I might even throw in supper if you behave) but (a) you have to come to bell practise with me and (b) you have to GUEST BLOG. After all, the new rule is that anyone who stays overnight has to guest blog. Mwa ha ha ha ha.
^ Plan? There was a plan?
** Next time you’d better give me BETTER WARNING or there will be SERIOUS TROUBLE.
Americans
This would be happening when I have all these proofs to read: this is my Americans week. I have visitors like twice a year in a good* year and I’ve already had Hannah and her family for an incident-packed week** . . . and now this week I’ve got Americans just passing through on three different days. Yeeep. First one today, second one Wednesday and then I’m going up to London on Thursday for tea at the Ritz*** with Merrilee, my agent, who is over here for a week of licking British publishers into shape. She arrived today; I hope she remembered to take her arnica.† She’s going home again Friday so I will pump her shamelessly for publishing gossip Thursday night and she’ll smile kindly and not tell me anything. Sigh. But if I’m lucky I’ll get the odd free book or galleys. Plus tea at the Ritz is approximately my favourite (ridiculously overpriced) silly indulgence, and I haven’t been in years. I pay for it worse now than I used to–never mind the money††, pre-menopause I used to have a working metabolism, instead of a series of carpenter gremlins who apply all calories directly to my waistline with tiny trowels. One of the greater ridiculousnesses of tea at the Ritz is that you††† have to wear a skirt‡ and lady shoes. ‡‡ But then men in tail coats bring you tea in silver teapots‡‡‡ and two or three courses on tiered silver tea trays of the stodge that built the Empire. There are quite a few London hotels that do serious high tea–some of them even have silver teapots–but no one else does it with quite the authority the Ritz displays. And, since we’re at the final sitting and are going to be pretending it’s supper, § we can also have champagne. It doesn’t get any better. (Except for the failing to get the belt buckle fastened the next day.)
But today’s friend and I just hung out. You were supposed to get a photo of Connie and Her New Friend today, because I took my friend (and Peter, who hadn’t met Connie yet either) over to Jenny’s yard, and pressed my camera into my friend’s hand. And she took lots of photos and they’re all terrible. I would have gritted my teeth and allowed a terrible picture of me, but you will have a good photo of Connie, or none at all, and so, unfortunately, for the moment, it’s none at all. Waaaaah. And here I am stuck writing another entry. But it’s been a beautiful day, so before I took my friend back to the train, we sat in my tiny garden at the cottage, with hellhounds frolicking about our knees, and listened to my tower ringing a quarter of a death-defying abyss-brink surprise method. With long golden afternoon sunlight, cups of tea, hellhounds, roses (not forgetting the scent of said roses, which, as I’ve mentioned, tends to get held in my garden by its walls–like tea in a cup), and the sound of bells, it was pretty flapdoodlingly idyllic, if I do say so myself. And I didn’t know yet then that I didn’t have a good photo of Connie to get me out of writing a blog entry.
* * *
* Or possibly bad
** Hannah says she suspects Cormac misses driving in England. Every time they come to another jammed-up four-way he says, Roundabouts! Give me roundabouts! –Roundabouts really are a very sensible way to deal, once you’re used to them.
*** No, really
† Arnica for jet lag. Did you write it down the last time I told you?
†† Merrilee and I will wrestle fiercely for the bill. I can stop galloping horses with my bell ringing shoulders, but she’s a gym bunny. Even odds.
††† If you’re a girl. Boys have to wear jackets and ties.
‡ Although I showed up in my barely-covers-my-ass black denim mini once–the one that I still wear occasionally because I’ve officially decided to grow old disgracefully: the one that some day I will get Peter or someone to take a disgraceful picture of me in–and nobody batted an eye.
‡‡ The idea that All Stars count as trainers [sneakers] is of course deeply offensive . . . but I just love tea at the Ritz, what can I say? It’s like being a Noel Coward character for a couple of hours. Or possibly PG Wodehouse.
‡‡‡ Proper tea: loose tea, which you’ve chosen from a list of varieties. And they pour it for you too, from a height. I think there’s some nonsense about aeration involved. I think it’s just flash for the tourists, myself.
§ Merrilee is also metabolically challenged
Getting back to normal*
And the bad news is . . . well, in the first place, they’re gone. I wrote Hannah an email last thing last night, saying, I’m going to bed and it’s still early evening for you. Had a return email this morning saying ‘I woke at 2 am’.**
Email is great, but she’s writing from three thousand miles away. They’re gone.
Although not without excitement. Sunday morning was not one of any of our better mornings. I woke up at seven, said ‘stuff this’ and rolled over. And stayed that way. Some while later I gradually opened one eye thinking comfortably, hmm, I actually did get back to sleep, didn’t I? And the one eye slowly swivelled toward the array*** of clock faces on the bookshelves† beside the bed.
They all said variations on a theme of ‘8:35.’ And I have to be up a ladder with my hands on a bell rope by 8:50, although 8:45 would be better.
You never saw any still-asleep person move so fast. –What is this? Never mind, just put it on.†† Hellhounds were outraged: they move slowly (and, in their case, luxuriously, which is a little beyond me) in the mornings too, and here I am hustling them immediately outdoors when they haven’t so much as finished stretching and purring††† yet–and where they stood around looking aggrieved–fine, come in, keep your legs crossed or your penises retracted or whatever you say to boys–and then back in the CRATE?! They’re used to Sunday mornings but this is . . . indecent.
In the tower we started off with the Fantastic Four‡ but eventually had enough for minor (six working bells) and I had one of those Moments That Count When You’re a Mediocre Ringer. I was on the lowly treble, but the thing that is regularly undervalued about the lowly treble, when you’re a mediocre ringer (the good ringers know better), is that the treble in ordinary methods really does keep the inside bells sorted out. When you’re ringing an ordinary touch–especially on Sunday mornings when you’re a hero by being there at all–lots of ringers, myself included, ring by when they pass the treble, which tells you which piece of ‘work’ you’re supposed to be doing. If you forget, where you are in relation to the treble is probably your first recourse. This requires that the treble be in the right place, which may not be happening if some of the other bells are going wrong because you’re going wrong. We had one of those moments Sunday morning where someone went rather shatteringly wrong. We had two blows of cacophony but I on the treble, for a wonder, had remained in the right place, and our third blow we were all rather miraculously back where we were supposed to be again. This is mostly down to our ringing master shouting orders, but it was also because the treble stayed in the right place and dragged everyone after her.
Thanks to last minute stragglers we managed to ring down all eight bells in peal too which is a glorious noise when you get it right, and we got it pretty right. So I was feeling comparatively okay despite the leftover cold trickle of ten-minutes-to-get-to-the-tower adrenaline plus the immediate prospect of saying goodbye to some of my nearest and dearest . . . when I saw Hannah’s face appearing at the top of the tower ladder. She’d said she’d come by for service ring if she could, but I hadn’t been expecting her because packing always takes longer than you think it will, and they needed to leave by ten. I was going to swing by the newsagent for chocolate‡‡ for the plane journey and go say goodbye.
The lock on the porch door won’t turn, she said. I had to crawl out a window. ‡‡‡
. . . . And they have four large suitcases and an airplane to catch.
Climbing down the tower ladder, and the adrenaline is starting to gallop again.
Hannah said, And we don’t have a key to the bolts on the sitting room door.
The sitting room door is a piece of plastic garbage which I want to replace but it has to get in line. When Third House was finally mine§ and the Lock Man came round to change all the locks he couldn’t replace that one because it’s integral to the stupid plastic door, so he added two locking bolts. The locking bolts have dumb little keys that the Key Man can’t duplicate. So only the master set of keys has the bolt keys. Which has never mattered because everyone goes in and out the side door. Which leads to the porch door.
Yes you do, I said.
No we don’t, said Hannah. I gave them back to you yesterday.
No you didn’t! I said, starting to panic. I gave them back to you again!
Two women standing in a churchyard staring at each other. And have I mentioned that there was a lot of bad-tempered weather circling like a tiger around a nilgai yesterday? Two women standing in a churchyard staring at each other while the thunderheads pile up.
Peter usually meets me as I come out from service ring, and he was there yesterday. So we all parted, Peter and I to hasten back to the mews and the cottage respectively for the spare sets of Third House keys in case one of them has a porch-door key that will work, and Hannah to go back to Third House and turn her handbag upside down in the hopes that the master keys are in there somewhere.
It was raining by the time Peter and I turned up at Third House with our useless keys: some piece of the lock has fallen down in the keyhole and you can’t even get a key in. But the boot of the rental car was full of Large Suitcases: the master keys were in the bottom of Hannah’s handbag. Whew.
It was really pelting down by now. And–I’m not kidding–the first lightning zapped across the sky and the thunder crashed as Hannah and I threw our arms around each other. They drove off in the-bridge-is-out-and-how-will-the-doctor-get-to-the-kid-with-diphtheria-now? weather, the water sheeting off the roof and geysering out from under the wheels. Peter splashed back to the mews and I went wetly back to the cottage to commiserate with sulky hellhounds.
But Hannah and Cormac and Rebecca and Ruby are all home and dry today. And three thousand miles away.
* Nah.
** This shouldn’t happen if you’re taking your arnica for jet lag. Arnica is brilliant for jet lag^, nine people out of ten, or even nineteen out of twenty, ^^ and I started Hannah on it several years ago. You take your first one–usually a 30c is enough–about an hour before the plane leaves, another one as soon as you arrive, and a third when you go to bed that night. This puts you on local time: if you’ve lost a night’s sleep you’re still short of sleep and it won’t cure that, but you’ll be short of sleep on local time. And be sure to go to bed that night on local time. I know it has worked for Hannah–I probably told you all this last October when she was here before: I do my little arnica tap dance as often as I can create the opportunity–so I hope this is an aberration. If it isn’t we may fiddle with the potency a little. One of the lovely things about homeopathy is you can always adjust.
^ As well as for horseshoe-shaped bruises and an assortment of other damage.
^^ For the twentieth person there are other homeopathic remedies to try.
*** At the moment there are three of them. Plus the 24-hour kitchen timer that is the only time-appraising apparatus that does what I tell it to. Long, er, time readers of this blog know about my dogged^ inability to come to terms with the fourth dimension.
^ And dogs do have something to do with it
† In front of the books
†† And no, I did not show up at the tower with my pants on my head. Not, I will add, that this necessarily would be noticed, since Sunday mornings are a trifle drastic generally. Which is doubtless why more Sundays than not we’re extremely grateful if we are able to ring six bells. Weekly heroism is in short supply in the modern world. Especially weekly heroism that happens at 8:45 Sunday morning.
††† Sic
‡ Although we’re three girls and a bloke so some reassignment of superpowers is perhaps in order. Although I’d like to be the lumpy one that bursts into flame easily. I already have a tendency to burst into flame easily. I’d quite like to be able to back this up by burning things down when they peeve me. I’d also like to be able to point my finger at aggressive off-lead dogs and make them disappear to the Planet of Odd Socks. And then fry the owners.
‡‡ Definition of civilisation: somewhere you can buy Green & Black’s on a Sunday morning. We have a very enlightened newsagent.
‡‡‡ What a good thing I do not have civic-minded neighbours. Although if the next-doors–the ones with the Evil Terrier–called the cops on me it would be war. I found seven balls in my back garden Sunday afternoon from over the wall. Seven. Five tennis balls and two black and white soccer balls.
§ I suppose all real estate transactions have an epic quality . . . like a few millennia of Sunday service rings all in a row. . . .
Final Guest Blog
Hello friends and fans of Robin–Cormac here. I’m not much of a blogger, but since the only fact that I believe you know about me is that I’m the idiot who put petrol into a diesel engine, I thought I’d better write a bit in an attempt to clear my good name*.
We’ve had a glorious time visiting here in Hampshire. Robin and Peter have been meticulous hosts; both in their graciousness in letting us use Third House as our home away from home–and in their endless supplying us of good British food and drink.** I’m quite a fan of good British sausages, which are just not as savory or delicate in the States as they are over here. Peter prepared us a simple dinner of sausages with potatoes and green beans upon our return from London last evening, and they had a subtlety and complexity of flavour that is just unknown in the States.*** U.S. sausages are blunt and coarse (not unlike our President!). †
I’ve been to London several times, but never to this part of the UK before,†† and I’m totally smitten with it.††† I loved our trip to the New Forest, particularly the town of Beaulieu, where there were wild ponies and cows wandering around the streets and sidewalks of the town. All of us, and Ruby in particular, were charmed by the animals in our midst, which is not in any way part of our normal lives in New York City. Aside from our dog Sadie (who is a terrier mix of unknowable heritage) we don’t have animals in our lives in a daily way. That was lovely.
I was also amazed at the antiquity of so much of the town of Bath–not only the Roman ruins, but so many of the buildings in use in town. It is a lovely city, reminiscent to me more of Italy than of England.
We had a terrific time in London, and saw many of the tourist sites which I know the girls already wrote about. We also saw a terrific production of The Importance of Being Earnest, which was a perfect British experience for all of us. The actors were wonderful; the play of course was perfectly silly, and the production gloriously lavish. Not surprisingly, Hannah and I were taken by the wonderful British actress playing Lady Bracknell; and the girls were awed by the young hunky actor playing Algernon.
We very much look forward to coming back; and we’ll try to check in with the blog from home. Cheers!
Hello People,
I’m very pleased to say that Ruby seems almost back to normal after her run in with the bad-tempered pony during what was supposed to be yesterday’s lovely Lambs and Bluebells walk. She will certainly have a very ugly horseshoe-shaped bruise on her leg but she’s walking around just fine‡ and even plans on going along for today’s Short Lambs and Bluebells Walk.‡‡ (Robin and I already went for a Long Walk that included bluebells but they were kind of accidental and there were no lambs, at least not up-close and personal ones.)‡‡‡
I’m very sorry to be leaving here. Not only has it been lovely to see so much of Robin, but showing the girls England has been wonderful for me.§ And Cormac and I realized that while both of us have been here many times, we have never been here together.
Spent much of the day sitting in the sun in unspeakably lovely little gardens, taking photos of dogs and Robins in various combinations and then loading them onto the computer — well, actually Cormac did the photo work. I just stood around and admired them. The one photo that really came out badly was of two snakes (actually I’m told they’re not technically snakes, but the only way to describe them is to say that they look exactly like snakes so why complicate matters) having a romantic tryst (ie, screwing) which is too bad because it was one of the strangest things I’ve ever witnessed. They were attached down towards the tail and when we got too close they wriggled away, the head of one leading with the head of the other dragging behind. I wanted to follow but Rebecca said we should give them privacy. How did I manage to raise someone with so little intellectual curiosity?! §§§
I’m now being dragged away by Ruby who did a lovely drawing of a horse¤ for Robin and is now ready to head back to Third House to get ready for the final walk of this visit. I’m sad!¤¤
Yours very truly,
Hannah
* Cormac has a fine name. He’s driven his camera’s megawhoppingbyte memory card to the verge of a nervous breakdown but he’s done nobly. I now have something like 1,000,000,000 photos of hellhounds and attendant wizened female biped on this computer waiting for me to stop screaming and agree to expose a few to public view. No, no, I promised, I really am going to hang a few here–tune in this time tomorrow–but the shock is a trifle severe. I have spent my entire life avoiding anything to do with the front ends of cameras (except reaching around from behind and putting lens caps on or taking lens caps off) and I’ve literally never had to look at dozens of representations of my face before one right after the next, like having your foot repeatedly stepped on or your face repeatedly slapped. Hey–! you keep wanting to say. Ah, oh, ow, the digital era. Meanwhile–as I do keep saying–I’ve got old. I knew this, of course, but . . . anyway. I was sufficiently rubbed up the wrong way by all these damn photos that when we were on our way out to dinner tonight, and we were all late back from the Lamb and Bluebell walk but I was the only one who had to feed hellhounds as well as get changed, and I didn’t have time for my better judgement to manifest, I pulled out my ancient black denim miniskirt–the one that is so short and tight that I have to yank the hem simultaneously with standing up–and wore it. I’m going to be old a lot longer than I was young (fate permitting) so I might as well say the hell with it. Opaque black tights cover a multitude of defects. And losing my mind also gave me an excellent excuse to wear the amazing two-tone pink smooth-leather-and-suede stacked sandals with the tassels that I bought at one of those designer sales where the only sizes that have anything interesting left in them are .05 and 82. I have size 82 feet so sometimes I can find cool shoes. I can’t walk in them but I am amusing standing perfectly still (holding my breath to help my balance).
The hellhounds, however, are breathtakingly gorgeous, heartmeltingly adorable, comprehensively darling^ etc. They’re the easy part of this photo drill.
^ Biased? Me?
** This is a bit rich coming from someone who keeps hauling us out to dinner and then bribing the waitress to give their side of the table the bill. Not to mention several bottles of champagne and droll tactics like this morning, when I brought Hannah back from our hellhound walk and Cormac met us in the driveway brandishing a spatula saying, I’m just making scrambled eggs with smoked salmon and there was some wonderful bread at the farmers’ market, you are staying for breakfast aren’t you? –I haven’t eaten breakfast in years. It was lovely. I can see why it caught on.
*** We’re all sort of food obsessed, aren’t we? Well, don’t forget Hannah is the one who said, when I was complaining about the amount of time I spend on the blog, WHY DON’T YOU POST MORE RECIPES?
† Fortunately this is not Pollyanna’s blog. Stet.
†† Hey! You were here long enough to . . . uh, have dinner with us . . . two years ago when you were in the UK on business!! Granted there wasn’t a lot of sight seeing involved. Except the inside of a very good restaurant.
††† Yessss! And you’re coming back SOON!
‡ Yaay arnica! It really is the wonder drug. And the mark is a perfect horseshoe shape. It’s sort of great in an awful way.
‡‡ Yes and I misjudged which is why we were all late getting back. The hellhounds and I cover ground and I’m just not used to the speed normal people walk at. I thought I was ALLOWING for the fact that one of us was wearing a horseshoe-shaped bruise and moving a little short on that side.
‡‡‡ This urban fixation on lambs. Please. The hellhounds and I stood in the middle of a field muttering to ourselves while everyone else gambolled with the lambs. Cormac took photos. Of sheep. I said to Hannah, you know, us yokels worry about keeping you smart sophisticated city folk amused when you visit. –We would also have been less late back if there had been less gambolling.
§ Yessssssss!!!!! So you’re coming BACK!
§§ Slowworms. Everybody had a lot of trouble with the concept of a legless lizard. And I say that isn’t a snake because–?
§§§ How did you manage to raise someone with a deep understanding of legless lizard sex?
¤ Which I am also planning to post. But not tonight.
¤¤ Tomorrow morning! They leave tomorrow morning! I will go up to Third House after service ring to say goodbye and then they will leave! Waaaaaaaaah!