Agreeable Friday Afternoon and Evening

I went to Borough Market yesterday with an old friend, Hortense,who wanted to invite me for a birthday tea. We wandered about the market for a while first, which was very pleasant with children from a local school singing carols and Christmas songs. I bought some fleur de sel, recently highly recommended by Marco, which I had been using for years anyway, some prunes d'Agen, and some red peppercorns.

We then had a marvellous tea. Amazingly, the place was completely full of people still having lunch at 4pm. They seemed to be in groups from local offices having a Christmas lunch. We had a table by the window so could observe goings-on outside. For my birthday, Hortense gave me a clever little ring holder, in the shape of a cat with blue eyes. Funnily enough, I used to have an identical brass one with green eyes, but had lost this, so the new one will be very handy.

We had a long chat about the past and our recent doings before coming back to my place. The floor was not admired . Hortense said that it looks like laminate, but perhaps this was because it is new! However she did quite like my white colour scheme and my new lamp, which no one else has liked. She also liked the chintz, which I gave her, and which they may come and collect today. Her husband Robin was on the company Christmas outing, apparently on a paddle steamer on the Thames. We tried to visualise this and decided it would not exactly be our kind of thing, especially at this time of year. It put me in mind of an awful river trip I made to Greenwich many years ago, again a staff outing, which sounded inviting but was absolutely appalling - everyone getting totalled and beer cans being thrown over the side - two of us managed to get off at Greenwich and avoid the return trip! I do hope Robin's one was rather better than that.

We discussed computers and emails - Hortense is not keen - and blogs - she is very much against. Rather like Pierre in Canada Hortense thinks these are the products of inflated egos, and said she would not like the world to be able to see all about her private life. I confessed to an inflated ego, Hortense heartily concurred and we agreed to disagree about blogs.

After a couple of gins we sloped off to La Dolce Vita for dinner. This was OK but I think I prefer the more intimate experience at Caprini. The Dolce Vita is more handy, only about five minutes walk from the house. We both had asparagus soup, then I had liver and she had three enormous lamb chops with vegetables, then we realised how late it was and she set off home. During dinner there were long chats about one thing and another. It seems that Robin's aunt, a Frenchwoman, played piano for Piaf many years ago, and that she had been featured in the film La Vie En Rose. I thought of my father playing the trumpet in the film Isadora, which I have been told about but not seen the film. Life, eh?