How has August almost vanished, and in such a dizzy whirl of activity?  I blame myself.  When I first started staying in London for the summer season I was astonished to discover how empty it was.  Would that I had kept THAT to myself!  Now everyone without children is refusing to leave which at least means the roads are clear of Prozac-ed mothers in Chelsea tractors, parking with gay abandon across corners and zebra crossings and it is safe to venture onto a pavement without the risk of being mown down by a surly toddler called Bertie on his scooter and his iPhone.

However, all the proper grown ups appear to have stayed on and are determined to enjoy the freedom.  There is a feverish feeling like Delhi after the memsahibs have left for Simla.  (Remember I went to school in Tunbridge Wells where such things were spoken of with reckless abandon.)

My friend Deborah, Doris to my Elsie for those of you who were glued to the wireless during the Blitz, is here from Australia and we have a couple of years of nattering to catch up on – doings of husbands and lovers, children and grandchildren, neighbours and colleagues – mountains of goss all to be washed down with industrial quantities of red wine.  We’re exhausted!

On the plus side the bloody sales are over and shops are filling up with gorgeous Autumn/Winter stock.  We have the bumper September Vogue under our arm and shopping can commence.  I have already invested – code for buying something way out of your budget – in a pink suede trench coat and following on the success of last year’s thigh length red boots,  I have updated to the same thing but in royal blue velvet.  To die for, people and it’s no good thinking you can pop into the shops when you get back from the seaside.  The wise virgins (sic) have got there first.

Today’s event is an organised walk entitled ‘Decadent London’ with my oldest friend who is probably just revisiting the haunts of his youth, aka the years between  20 and 65. Whilst the word decadent has a certain appeal – a possible first outing for the Boots – ‘walk’ is far from my favourite activity.  We are lunching first so I may suggest we have a second bottle and go Christmas shopping instead.  The first cuckoos of Yuletide, the bumper tins of Quality Street,  are already on display.  No time to waste.

 

 

I am back in beautiful Devon this week and it’s hard to avoid the food, even if you wanted to although we’ve always been so full up at all times that we haven’t even attempted to force a cream tea between our lips.  Not even a ‘wafer thin’ one, to quote Mr Creosote.  Last night’s dinner was a fabulous Indian meal, detailed review available on Tripadvisor as it’s Saturday and it will give you an excuse to delay doing all those chores ….

We have also been talking about food – we never spend an idle moment – and trying to decide which country has the best food.  Obviously NOT France.  So very last year, last century in fact, as they haven’t had an idea since Escoffier died.  Germans go for quantity over, over everything really and haven’t tried anything new since a pig fell into a sausage maker.  Switzerland scores surprisingly high with me.  I love cheese and potatoes, their bread is without any question the best in the world and they produce fabulous wine, almost none of which manages to leave the country.  The snag is that there isn’t a lot else so if you’ve a low boredom threshold, and you are not seriously rich, it may not be for you.

Lebanon is also a bit monotonous – day one is great but they serve exactly the same things three times a day until you never want to see them again.  They are also quite often having a war which tends to deter the casual diner.  However, like Switzerland, they score highly on the wines.  Pop out and get something from the Bekka valley if you’ve never tried it.  Greece sinks close to the bottom of the rankings because the food is similarly dreary and the wines are undrinkable.

Don’t even toy with the idea of Russia.  A vegetarian nightmare.  Meat soup followed by meat with meat and meat ice cream to end.  They may even put meat in the coffee.  What kind of meat is, worryingly, lost in translation.  Possibly wisely.  We ate nothing but Italian during our visit and very good it was but you’d do better to go to Italy where the weather is nicer and the people aren’t entered for the ‘Most Surly Race on Earth’ award.

Despite a liking for the odd bit of sushi I could live without ever eating Japanese food again.  I’ve never felt really satisfied by a bowl of brown water with two bits of spring onion floating in it.  People rave about Thai and Chinese food but there’s not much to them except chills and lemon  grass in the former and to my untrained eye, the latter’s fabled  Dim Sum are just a procession of wet dumplings which all taste the same.

So our final three and America gets the bronze.  It’s not all burgers and chips.  There are tiny green shoots out there and it is one to watch.  Sweden, which did have the Best Restaurant in the World title for about twenty years running, is my number two.  Amazing, mouth watering food marred only by the eye watering prices and the fact they eat at very peculiar hours.  Go into a restaurant for lunch at one and all you’ll find is a waiter sweeping up and turning the lights out.

And now, at number one is … the United Kingdom, although this is achieved by denying the Eurovision viewers a vote, and not before time.  If it’s food you’re after, from top quality ingredients prepared with constantly changing ideas, you need never worry about Brexit again.  There really is no place like home.

 

I had hoped to have photographic evidence of my recent produce-focussed industry but the chances of mastering the technology to transfer it from one device to another are slim to non-existent.  Just take my word for it that after labours which would make Hercules quail,  my entire home is stacked with bottled produce, from onion and chilli relish through to blackberry liqueur (Of the latter only limited stock still remaining).  Which is probably a Good Thing as according to an article I read yesterday, pictures of your fecund  garden  are up there in the top ten most irritating images on social media,  just behind snaps of your perfect family on a sun kissed Ibizan holiday. Not arguing.

What one always forgets in the headlong springtime dash to get a thousand seedlings into the earth is that the little buggers will, slugs permitting, mature and bear fruit, or vegetables, all of which will eventually require attention.  It’s the modern day equivalent to expecting people who had picked cotton all day getting home and having to start spinning, or looming or whatever process is involved.

All this time spent stirring boiling pans has left me thinking, always a dangerous occupation and it occurs to me that the reason people with money always look so relentlessly miserable is the expectation, not wholely unreasonable, that being rich will take the work, and more importantly, the aggravation out of life.  Sadly it doesn’t.  Planes still don’t leave on time, it continues to rain on your birthday and the shoes you must have or die have been discontinued.  Especially in your size.  Forever.  There is, and always will be, a twelve week wait before the sofa of your dreams can be delivered because that’s how long it takes to make it.  Just for a moment try to imagine how very cross-making that is when you thought, having made your first couple of million, that you were leaving all this frustration behind.

There is, however, a tiny chink of light at the end of the Tunnel of Despair, and this once it’s not an express train bearing down on you.  I have been given membership of a concierge service – possibly a concept with which you’re unfamiliar.  The idea is you pay them an annual, eye-watering fee, mysteriously waived in my case, and in return when something, anything,  wants sorting, they do it.  Top idea or what?  It’s almost a scandal that it isn’t available to everyone but as it is one of the very few upsides of being rich, let’s be big enough not to mind.

A victim of deep Protestant guilt, way sterner than the flimsy Catholic sort which doesn’t BEGIN to compare and can be overcome by a few Hail Mary’s, I had never actually used it until yesterday.  I was due to meet my daughter-in-law designate for lunch at a trendy eaterie which doesn’t take reservations (Why? Why?) and the thought of the poor girl having to queue after a hard week at work was just too heart rending … even my lofty principles buckled. We might even have ended up  too exhausted for shopping afterwards.   One swift phone call and we’ve got the magic password that bumps us to the front of the line and thence to the nicest table in the house.  Search hard enough, or let the concierge do it for you, and there’s always an upside.

Readers, life isn’t all bad.

Morning, morning, morning reader, she said, worryingly briskly. Yes, I am feeling positive, even empowered.  I have been … wait for it … planning. A very new line.  My chequered career was peppered with shouts of “Busk it, darling” ringing across the studio floor in response to pretty fundamental questions such as ‘What in God’s name shall we do?”.  Preparation was, as a certain American lady said about taxes, for the little people.

This week has been a flurry of research, discussion, decisions, a whole series of firsts. We are off on the road again, to the Lake District.  Beat that, Mr Kerouac.  This is going to be like the programmes with Rob Brydon and what’s his name, only with savage cruelty instead of pathos.  I may even take a camera.

First thing to be sorted was the cast list.  No men.  Hardly even worth stating.  We want fun and by definition this is  not listening to someone shouting at the satnav and a thousand prostate-induced loo stops. No one of childbearing age.  We certainly don’t want a contraceptive crisis in the middle of nowhere. Participants must drink like a fish and swear like a trooper.  And no effing vegans.  Obviously.

We have taken a romantically named cottage.  Could be a cause for concern when one recalls the sodden acres of rusting caravans in Skegness, always called something like Apple Blossom Pastures.  This will probably turn out to be empty only because some desperate refugees turned it down as unfit for human habitation, the pictures on the web site having been Photo-shopped to death. It has a wood burning stove and I have taken the precaution of getting a fire starter kit.  No repeat of the unfortunate smoke-boarding incident in the Borders involving Staff Nurse, an erratic flame thrower and some petrol.

It transpires that there is a medical theme to the dramatis personae and bearing in mind my six memorable months on ‘General Hospital’ and that documentary on leprosy (Do NOT ask for details) I have appointed myself Maton.  We have a doctor, a staff nurse and a student nurse, always referred to as Sluice Room Sue for some reason.  Her inclusion means that there will have to be Extremely Strict Bathroom Protocols.  Who can forget the daily hours we spent waiting to use the lavatory while SRS reclined in bath memorising the Daily Mail? A second bathroom was a must.

Moving on let us discuss Dress Code.  We will not, not be going native.  No thick socks, trousers with zips at the knee, no maps in plastic.  And clean shaven. It’s exactly like dressing for dinner in the jungle.  We must maintain standards and technically, as someone with an engineering degree explained to me, wearing high heels when mountain climbing means that you are always on flat ground, at least on the way up.  On sober reflection  I think I should have asked for a diagram…

And how many times has that phrase crossed my lips?