Halloween!

Today has dragged, but that's only to be expected as it was my last day at work until next Thursday! I tackled all the emails and then scanned three months' worth of box office returns to a folder on my computer. We are having to think now about the stuff we store at work, as we will be moving offices soon, probably as soon as next month. I'm not looking forward to it, to be honest, as the new office will be a lot smaller and Nicola will be sitting with us and won't have an office of her own. It's going to be noisy bedlam!

At 4pm, I sped home and prepared the house for tonight's Halloween festivities. Unfortunately, Mooney spotted our horrible cackly demon and fled. It not only cackles and screams, but its eyes flash red as well! Scary!

I put lots of sweets in a bowl, lit some tealights under our terracotta pumpkin and awaited Sophie's arrival. As soon as she came home, she put on some spooky makeup and made us Dragon Breath cocktails, consisting of vodka, triple sec, raspberry syrup and, weirdly, egg whites! The drinks were delicious!

Sophie and Gomez

Keith went to the pub and we settled down to watch The Shining, gettting up every now and again to welcome Trick or Treaters! We didn't have that many, so now we have a lot of sweets left! Sophie will take them into work and try and get rid of them!

It took ages for us to get Mooney in tonight, and he didn't appear until almost 10pm, so I was starting to get worried. Gomez, unusually, came in early. Typical!

Good news... and bad news...

I don't know whether it's because of the half-term holiday, but we've received far fewer emails this week, so it's given me a chance to catch up with other jobs. I put two new classes on today, and also, to my great delight, worked out the new system for our playscheme places and put them onto the system as well. I was so pleased! It suddenly just fell into place, so now I need to show Sara and Sheila, and we'll have to test them on our website, something I can do next week. I'm on annual leave Monday and Tuesday, so I'm looking forward to five days off.

Keith picked me up at 2pm, we drove home, and then I went straight out again to see my parents. My Dad had gone down to one of the lounges to play carpet bowls, so I sat on the sofa with my Mum, who seemed to be in a very morose mood. When my Dad returned, he appeared vacant, so I said goodbye and returned home.

It was my turn to prepare dinner tonight, and we'd decided to have a Berlin favourite, a potato and sausage soup. I chopped up potatoes, an onion and celery, and sweated them gently in a casserole dish. Once they were softened, I blitzed them and added chopped up frankfurters. We ate the meal with flatbread, and I have to say the soup was delicious and almost as good as the one served in Reinhard's. How we miss that restaurant!

After dinner, the care home called to say that both my parents had fallen over (my Mum helping Dad when I told her not to) and they had to call an ambulance for my Mum as she'd cut her head. I was angry with them both for ignoring all the advice and getting themselves into another dangerous situation again. At 10pm, the phone rang again, and it was one of the carers saying that she didn't think my Mum would need to go to the hospital. Thank goodness for that!

Looking back

I have spent today pottering about, and it's been very enjoyable! I amused myself first thing by doing the usual Wednesday chores, and we managed to get the shopping list completed early. It's always a bonus when that's out of the way, and I scoured the recipe books for something different to eat on Sunday. It's a real chore choosing meals, and sometimes I'm tempted to take out a Hello Fresh subscription. Whenever we cook something that needs exotic ingredients, we're left with a whole jar that we rarely use again. There was a jar of galangal paste in the fridge that we'd only used once!

Talking of which, I did a bi-annual cull of the jars in the fridge and chucked out a load of stuff that was well past its "best by" date. Being good, I emptied the jars into our food waste bin and washed them out before recycling. A horrible job, but needs must!

There was no chance of getting out into the garden today as it was damp and chilly. I'm waiting for the wasps to die off in the nest in the compost bin, so we can tackle the corner behind the garage, which needs a lot of attention. A nice, dry and sunny day in late November should be perfect!

In the afternoon, I transcribed my 1987 Nepal diary and also read my normal diary, which I kept at the time. I was always out on the town then! Or working! It's hard to believe that it was 38 years ago! 

Sopie cooked us "stand and stuff" minced beef tacos for dinner tonight, and the meal was delicious. There was enough left for me to have two lunches; Sophie is still eating the jerk chicken pasta I cooked last night!

Nice and spicy!

Today has been better than normal, and nowhere near as loud as it usually is! I finished the moan report (hooray) and played around with the new playscheme bookings page as it neared 4pm. 

Keith collected me from work, and back at home, I relaxed. Keith was going to see Sileby play this evening, and Sophie and I were going to cook Jerk chicken pasta. Keith had marinated the chicken breasts for me, so that had helped.

We opened a bottle of Cotes du Rhone white wine, nibbled on some Pringles and started watching the last film in the "Before" trilogy, Before Midnight. We had to turn it off after about half an hour to concentrate on cooking dinner. When it was all done and we were eating, Sophie said it was the best I'd ever done! It was certainly hot and spicy!

We watched the rest of the film, overjoyed to get both cats in early tonight! What a bonus! Gomez curled up on the sofa between Sophie and me and fell asleep. He likes me to rest my hand on his belly, and he lifts his leg up in a really strange little manoeuvre! He can be so sweet!

Keith came home well chilled to say that Sileby lost 3-4... oh dear!

Half-term starts!

Sophie didn't go to the gym this morning, so we sat and enjoyed Hunted with a coffee. We were impressed that a convicted sex offender, who had been wrongfully released from prison on Friday, was caught yesterday in London. The show may be more realistic than we thought!

I drove myself to work and had a busy day, tackling all the emails and spending the afternoon putting the finishing touches to the moan report. We had a full office again, and our MD visited in a very jolly mood! It's definitely the season for coughs and colds, though, and Nicola's daughter was in to help, despite feeling unwell, bless her. It was the first day of the October half-term today, but the phones weren't as busy as we were expecting.

We had last night's meal for dinner tonight, and we really need to consider the vegetables we're choosing to accompany the meals. Tonight, we had boiled cabbage, a mix of swede, carrot and parsnip, and Brussels sprouts. Both Sophie and I are heartily sick of them, so I ordered a vegetable cookbook from Amazon. I'm hoping to get some inspiration!

A quiet Sunday

I had a lovely lie-in this morning and didn't feel guilty as the clocks had gone back an hour last night! It was great to pootle about, do some jobs and not have to go anywhere. Sophie and I still felt disappointed with last night, and we read some more reviews this morning, all of them saying that although Erykah Badu is a great performer, she does a lot of improvisation with her songs and has several costume changes. This, coupled with appearing later than advertised, means we would have been very late home!

I found this review from The i Paper by Siobhan Norton:

"No one seemed in a hurry to get seated at the Royal Albert Hall, even as the lights dimmed and the warm-up DJs began. Rows of seats remained empty, and the main arena only had a scattering of people milling about. Yet it was a sold-out performance to see Erykah Badu, the queen of neo-soul, for a tribute to her seminal sophomore album, Mama’s Gun.

“Let’s just hope she turns up,” one concert-goer said to her friend as they settled in at the bar. In 2024, Badu cancelled her headline performance at the London festival Cross the Tracks, despite making it as far as a sound check. She cited illness, but fans speculated that she might have had other reasons – this woman plays by her own rules. Tonight, time began to creep, yet the mood of the crowd didn’t dip – they know Badu well.

At 50 minutes past her scheduled stage time, she emerged – nonchalant, poised and resplendent in her now signature towering hat and oversized coat and trousers, more fitting to an Alpine ayahuasca ceremony than an Italianate concert hall – and all was forgiven."

Hmmm!

Sophie went to see a friend at lunchtime, and I continued my pottering about, not doing an awful lot! Keith had prepared all the vegetables for tonight's dinner of toad in the hole, so there wasn't much to do for dinner. 

After Sophie returned, I had a bath, completed some feminine tasks, and we gathered back down in the kitchen to chat. We all decided, again, that we didn't fancy dinner, so we postponed the meal until tomorrow. We are going to have to rewrite the rules for our weekend meals!

Just waitin'...

After a decent lie-in, coffee, a Wordle-off and a new game, Connections, I drove Sophie to Kingsley Beauty Salon for a quick treatment. Unusually, there were no spaces in the tiny car park, so I had to drop Sophie off and park a few streets away.

When she was finished, we popped to Waitrose to get a newspaper and something light for lunch as we were driving down to London for an Erykah Badu concert at the Royal Albert Hall in the afternoon. Even here, the forecourt was rammed and I was forced to park opposite. The slight inconvenience set the tone for the rest of the day...

When we arrived back home, every surface in the kitchen was liberally covered in flour. Keith had made a batch of sausage rolls and didn't tell us until Sophie had unwrapped some scones to have for her lunch. I had, in a moment of madness, bought myself a Cornish pasty to eat (which I knew I was going to regret later), and both of us stared at him in amazement. Why didn't he tell us he was going to make sausage rolls before we left earlier? Sophie had spent £10 in Waitrose!

We decided to take a couple with us to eat when we arrived in London, and while Sophie had a shower, I cleaned up the kitchen and swept the floor. Keith had also made a jam tart, and the door of the fridge had a big smudge of jam all over it. There was flour on the floor, on the cupboard doors and all over the worktops. It was like cleaning up after a toddler had been baking!

I then had a shower and we left at 1pm. We'd booked a parking space through Just Park on Exhibition Road, about a five-minute walk from the Royal Albert Hall, and had booked a table at a Georgian restaurant nearby. I had elected to drive to a) save money on train fares and taxis, and b) because we didn't want to catch a train home late at night. 

We had a stop-start journey down to London on the M1 before taking the North Circular and then driving along residential streets to Kensington. I was astounded to see that all the roads had a 20mph speed limit. Driving at 20mph was difficult. Even with my foot off the accelerator, I had difficulty, so I just prayed I wouldn't get a ticket.

It took us an hour to cover five miles, but we arrived at the block of flats just after 3pm. I was amazed to see these were the flats we used to walk past to get to the museums years ago, when the children were small. We had to press a buzzer to get into the gated forecourt and spoke to the concierge, who gave us a laminated sign to put in the car. We then drove down to the bowels of the building to park. It was very tight, but I managed to reverse into the ultra-secure space. We made our way back up to reception, and Sophie asked the friendly concierge if she could use the loo. He kindly took us back down to the boiler room, and we tried to remember the way back!

We made for Hyde Park first, and spotted a café. Sophie ordered a hot chocolate and a tea, and we sat outside, well away from a screaming baby who belonged to a French family. It was a gorgeous, Autumnal afternoon, and it was pleasant to be able to sit outside and watch people come and go. We sneakily ate the sausage rolls and threw the crumbs on the ground for the fat pigeons who strolled about.

After we'd eaten and I'd used the facilities, we walked over to the Albert Memorial opposite the Royal Albert Hall.

In the distance, we could see ominous clouds gathering, so we decided to see if we could have a drink at Stein's Berlin, a café/restaurant a few doors up from one of our favourites, Ognisko. Why hadn't we booked a table here, we wondered? Because we wanted to try something new, and a friend of Sophie's had recommended the Georgian restaurant.

The staff at Stein's Berlin were friendly and accommodating, and led us to a table at the back of the dining room. There was a lot of pale wood, and it wasn't at all how I expected the restaurant to be. Berlin bars and restaurants tend to have dark wood and are dimly lit, so I did wonder if the owners had ever been to Berlin!

We had a look at the drinks menu and both chose the Berlin Spritz - Riesling, Aperol, soda and strawberry liqueur. It was delicious and came with a little bowl of pretzels. Perfect!

We sat and enjoyed our drinks and chatted. We were tempted to stay and enjoy the German food, but I wanted to experience Georgian cuisine, so we drank up, paid the bill (£30) and walked down Exhibition Road to an area that was bustling with tourists and had lots of bars and restaurants. We had been visiting the museums for years, but never ventured across the road to this area!

Shoty was situated on a lively street, and we went down a flight of steps first, thinking this was the entrance to the restaurant. A waitress took up back up to the street and into another dining area, a long, narrow room with a few tables already occupied.

We took our seats and looked at the placemat menu. I have to admit that neither of us was ravenously hungry after stuffing sausage rolls and pretzels, and this did have a bearing on the food we chose. We decided to share a starter of meat rolls (blini) and Sophie spotted dumplings on the menu (pelmeni with chicken). I just didn't fancy boiled beef or pork, but I briefly toyed with the idea of having fried Spring chicken. In the end, I opted for cotlet but had no idea what meat it was! We also ordered a bottle of Georgian dry white wine to accompany the meal.

The restaurant was quite austere, with sombre paintings on the wall and a television set broadcasting Georgian songs on YouTube. Two men were putting up lights outside, and the waitresses were efficient but not particularly friendly.

Our starter arrived and we tucked in, dipping the pancake rolls into soured cream. They were filled with some kind of meat and were delicious. Once these were eaten, our main courses were delivered. Sophie had seen giant dumplings on a nearby table, but they weren't the same as she had ordered, unfortunately.

Her dumplings were small, and that was all she had! No salad, no vegetables and just a small bowl of soured cream again.

My cotlet turned out to be two patties, very similar to McDonald's burgers without the buns. They were smothered in mashed potatoes and served with wedges of cucumber, tiny tomatoes and onions, and a tomatoey sauce. Sophie was bitterly disappointed with her meal and said the dumplings had no flavour whatsoever. The same could be said of my meal. Maybe we had just ordered the wrong items, I don't know, but we were both disappointed. The wine at £32 was OK, but definitely not worth the price!

After a little interval, we chose a walnut and honey cake for dessert. This was a thick slab, and if we were hoping to get cream or ice cream with it, we were disappointed... again! It was like eating a brick!

We stumped up just under £100 for the meal, and I asked Sophie if we could get a black cab to the Royal Albert Hall. I had been suffering from a headache all day, and Sophie had also had one earlier, so she readily agreed. The thought of walking back to the venue, with full tummies, was not a pleasant one!

The journey didn't take long, and our friendly driver dropped us off right outside. People were streaming in, and although we were early, we went up to the third floor to take our seats. The auditorium was virtually empty, but then it was 6.30pm! The show was due to start at 7.30pm, and while we sat, we listened to some great music. We liked a couple of tracks and even added them to our favourite playlist!

However, as it grew near 7.30pm, hardly any of the seats had been taken. A couple had arrived to sit next to Sophie, and quite a few people were in the row behind us, but we could see loads of empty seats. The music then changed to rap with a lot of swearing, which I wasn't happy about. I hate rap, and being forced to sit and listen to it was most unpleasant! I stuck it out for about fifteen minutes, but then had to leave. By now, it was about 7.45pm, and people were still milling about and heading for the bar for drinks. We had a horrible feeling that they all knew more than we did...

We stood in an empty bar area and watched more and more people arrive, none of them in any hurry! I said to Sophie that if Erykah Badu wasn't on by 9pm, we should go. Sophie stared at me in amazement! She said she'd be on long before that, but then we started to look at reviews of the shows. Every single one said she was consistently late and kept her audience waiting. The normal time she appeared was about 9.30pm, and sometimes even later! 

We were astounded. I had anticipated being home at about midnight, but if she was on until 11pm, it would be after 1am when we got home. If I'm brutally honest, neither of us was in the mood, and although we like quite a few of her songs, we weren't huge fans. If it had been John Mayer or Ben Howard, we would happily have waited, but both of them were on time when we went to see them and didn't keep us waiting!

Sophie asked the friendly usher when she was likely to appear, and he said about 9pm, but I think he was being optimistic! We decided to leave and go home and not think about how much we had paid for the tickets. We spoke to the security men at the entrance door who said she would be on at about 9.15pm, but again, I think he was being cagey!

We walked back to the car and drove out of the decidedly creepy underground parking space. Several cars were covered in sheets, and we saw Porsches, Bentleys and a Rolls-Royce, all snug and dry! I couldn't imagine a safer spot to park a high-value car!

After a brief panic when the gates wouldn't open, we were out and heading home through busy streets, full of people enjoying the nightlife. Cyclists and mopeds weaved in and out of the traffic, and I was terrified of hitting someone on a bike. Hardly any of them were using lights, and I really had to rely on Sophie to be another pair of eyes. Two cyclists even rode into oncoming traffic! 

Thankfully, we were soon in North London and then, miraculously, on the M1. I have never been so glad to see it! We made good time home and arrived at 10.45pm. Keith had already changed the clocks to an hour earlier, so we sat and relaxed until midnight, telling him all about our day and hanging about waiting for Miss Badu!