Mimi Makes Cupcakes

One of my favourite things in the world is to bake cupcakes. They are such pretty happy things, and if they are not particularly nourishing for the body, they certainly nourish the soul! These are dense and very chocolatey; a devils foodcake base topped with chocolate buttercream icing. But don't worry, they are not as naughty as they sound....the only actual chocolate is the vermicelli sprinkles on top...the rest of the chocolateyness comes from cocoa which we all know is ever so good for you!

For these chocolate cupcakes, take one flowery pinny, add The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook to a sunny Thursday afternoon, and mix with The Puppini Sisters on your ipod. Beat together a bowl of happiness from Marks and Spencers, put good wishes and cake batter into each cake case, and bake in a warm until the house smells of chocolate and happiness. When they are cool, whip up some icing, get out your favourite piping bag and pipe on top an unfeasibly large swirl of icing, sprinkle with sparkly thoughts and chocolate vermicelli, then present to your husband when he comes home from work! Oh, and before you open the front door, make sure you have wiped the smudge of icing off of your nose!

To Market, To Market

Even though I had the day off today, I still got up and left home early to catch the bus that gets me into the village where my little library is for 9:00. Why? Because just opposite my little library, there is a sports hall, in which, on a Thursday at 9:00 is the most wonderful W.I. Country Market. So although I could have been tucked up in bed sipping tea today, I sallied forth instead.

It has only been a few months, but Mum and I have taken to meeting at the market, doing a little shopping together, having a cup of tea, and then she goes home and I pop over the road to open up. It really makes me look forward to Thursdays!

When I first ventured into the market, I was not entirely sure what to expect, but for some strange reason, I fully expected things to be...expensive. I am happy to say that I was utterly wrong! There is a lady who sells the eggs from the hens who live in her barn, wander outside for a scratch in the sunshine and eat an organic diet, and for this she charges £1 a half-dozen. The garden produce stall is one of my favourites- everything is in season, and so fresh that it often has the dirt on still! Today I bought a bag of spinach, a cucumber, a bag of apples, a punnet of blackberries and a bag of runner beans for less than £3. Sometimes there is a sausage stall, but today instead there was the wood carving man. I bought Carl a little dibber for him to dib with when he gardens, turned from a piece of oak and less than £2! Another favourite stall is the 'ready meal' table, where you can buy a little foil dish of liver and onion, shepherds pie, or lamb kashmir curry; individual rabbit pies, and little sausage rolls with the tastiest, flakiest pastry. There is a shelf of gleaming pots of chutneys and pickles, and a sister shelf of jams...and not just strawberry, but things like kiwi marmalade and peach preserves. Between these two shelves lays the baking stall, and here you can find plain, cheese or fruit scones baked freshly that morning, cheese straws, fairy cakes, ginger and date loaf, lemon drizzle cake, bread pudding studded with glace cherries and dried apricots, loaves of bread....I could go on and on and on!

And after I have gone on and on buying things, I usually have a bag crammed full, and still change from £10! Then Mum and I take a seat at one of the little tables, covered with a green gingham table cloth and adorned with a jam jar of flowers, and enjoy a cup of tea or coffee. You go to the serving hatch, and pay 75p, and are given a cup of filter coffee and the instruction to 'help yourself to a biscuit'. Then we sit and compare purchases, talk about books, and say hello to people as they go by.

Normally, after fifteen minutes or so my phone alarm goes off, and I go to work, but today Mum and I decided to pop to the supermarket in her town so she could buy a new ironing board. She drove us through the back lanes, and we suddenly spied a bush fat with blackberries, so we pulled over, rummaged in the boot of the car for containers, and did some picking. Then we spotted a stall outside a garden selling plums, runner beans, tomatoes and bunches of garden flowers. £1.10 dropped into their jam jar got me a bag of plums and a bunch of heavenly flowers!

After we had been to the supermarket and decided that perhaps the car was a bit too full for an ironing board, we decided to collect Dad from home and go on to our favourite nursery for a cup of tea and a scone. I love sitting there and looking out over the fields, and then seeing all the rows of plants and flowers. I always feel so relaxed after a gentle meander through the greenhouses.

After all this, I hopped on the bus home, and read a little (After The Armstice Ball, my latest Dandy Gilver mystery). Now as I sit typing this, there is the smell of chocolate cake wafting through the flat, as I have baked two dozen cupcakes from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook. Carl's boss is leaving tomorrow, so some are for him to take in to say goodbye, and the rest I am going to take to my work. Once they have cooled I am going to ice them with chocolate buttercream, then dip them in chocolate vermicelli. Before that though, I have some washing to hang out, and hope it doesn't rain!

Thank you everyone for your lovely comments. I am never entirely sure of the ettitquette here....do I reply to each comment? Visit your blog to comment on your comment? Try and divine an email address? I don't know! But what I do know is that I really appreciate each and every comment. I just wish that we could all sit round sipping tea and nibbling cupcakes and get to know each other better! So- Vintage Kitten, oh how it has made me smile to realise that there is someone else out there who loves the smell of libraries! You are right, there is a certain smell that only old libraries and a particular kind of second hand book shop has, and I adore it. I have been found with my nose buried in a book before, not reading, but smelling it! We have a room full of newspaper archives at work that I also love to pop into for a little smell. Dinah, it is soo difficult for me to get Lipton's Yellow Label tea, but I really do adore it! I love that we are so many miles apart but have such similar loves! Do you get Victoria Magazine where you are? Again, so hard to get here, but makes me feel so English when I read it!

Before I sign off to wield my icing bag, I must ask, did anyone else see Economy Gastronomy last night? I was utterly, utterly shocked by how much that family were spending on food a month, just through a lack of planning and thought. It made me laugh when the father said it would be 'tough' to cut back their spending from over £600 a month! I liked the idea behind the show and enjoyed some of the recipes, but I would have liked it if they had shown a few more ways to use up the giant pot of beef stew that they made at the beginning, other than just fold it into pasta. I must go to BrocanteHome.Co.Uk and print out some more weekly meal planners!

Happy Thursdays, everyone!

What's On My Library Ticket?

One of the best things about working in a library (well, two libraries really) is that I often stumble across an author I would not have otherwise found. Recently I was shelving some crime novels when Bury Her Deep by Catriona Mcpherson fell on my toe. I took it home and devoured it, and have since read two more. There is one waiting for me to collect it, and having visited the authors wonderful website, I have found that Dandy Gilver and the Proper Treatment of Bloodstains will be published in December. How I love a good murder mystery at Christmas! Set in the 20s they are a delightful read and I could spend a great many words telling you about them...but why not visit here instead? http://www.dandygilver.co.uk/

So, what is on my library card at the moment?

A Very Great Profession by Nicola Beauman is all about the kind of novelist published by Persephone Books (her own company) but was written years before she started it. Persephone have recently republished this book, and it is a great companion to this hot water bottle genre of literature, and at the back of the book there is a kind of glossary of writers, which has given me lots of ideas for books to order in the future!

Learning To Cook Vegetarian by Rose Eliot since we are having a month of vegetarian eating at home, this is the perfect book for lots of great ideas for tasty dinners to make. Because naturally, there are a lot of vegetables in vegetarian cookery, it makes it easier to eat with the seasons. One of my favourites so far is a cashew nut and broccoli curry served with home made naan bread.

Boudoir an utterly divine book, about turning your bedroom into a boudoir, with several different 'themes' but not in the obvious Changing Rooms way. There is a country-ish section, a 'starlet' section, sections with a rich jumble of beads and butterflies...it is hard to settle on one style, but I like marrying several together. It has given me lots of ideas for prettying up our bedroom once I have finished tidying out and decluttering. Alas, dear Carl does not approve of my idea to paint our bed white!

Marguerite Patten's Top 100 Teatime Treats was left on my desk by a colleague who knows I love baking and afternoon tea. This one has lovely sections on specialities from different places around Great Britain, and savoury ideas too. I think that once I have tried out a few recipes, this may be a book that I have to buy!

The Edge of Love a dvd treat that I am saving for tomorrow! I watched Ballet Shoes yesterday and was transfixed. Not only was the story lovely, but visually, the sets, the costumes....I have high hopes for this one too!

100 Flowers to Knit and Crochet is a delightful book that I have had out for a while now. There are so many that I would like to make that I hardly know where to start. As well as brooches and hair decorations for myself, I want to make some holly sprigs and misteltoe bunches to adorn Christmas presents with this year...the idea being that they can act as a bow on the parcel, and then be hung up or worn later.

Coco and Igor by Chris Greenhalgh. On the night that I went to the Proms, I heard some music by Stravinsky. On the way to the concert hall, I saw lots of posters for Coco Before Chanel, which has Audrey Tatou in the lead roll. While I was searching our catalogue for some books about Stravinsky, I found this novel, which is the fictional account of the real life affair between Chanel and Stravinsky. I can't wait to dig in!

Tales From Greenery Street by Denis Mackail is an interlibrary loan which I was pleased to see on my desk. It is a series of short stories and I finished them this morning. I have several other of his titles on the way, and I can't wait!

A Classical Education by Caroline Taggart. How could I resist a book that had this on the back:

From engineering and architecture to drama and democracy, the world around us is founded on the principles and discoveries of the Ancient World, yet our understanding of it is episodic at best. So if you've ever confused Plato with Pluto, struggled with Socrates, wish you could formulate a logical argument or wondered whether the Romans really dined at vomitoria, then carpe diem and delve into this book- it is never too late to learn!

I know I am biased, working in public libraries as I do, but I think the fact that anyone can walk into their local library, answer a few questions and then be given a card that lets them borrow books without having to pay a penny is just amazing. In my own authority, it is 14 books, and you can use every single public library in the county. You can reserve books free of charge if you do it yourself, so often I will have a pile of brand new books that are on sale in the big bookshops just waiting for me to take them home. There are times when I fall in love with a book and go on to buy it, but I could not possibly afford my reading habit without my library! It is so amazing to be able to try a book without risking anything. I pick up an author I fancy trying, and if I don't like it, I just hand it back and try another. Imagine if I had to pay for every book I borrowed!

Recently a friend came back from New York and gave me a book journal from the New York Public Library. I have tried to keep a book journal so manh times, but have never got very far. I have turned over a new leaf though, and really keep this journal. Part of me thinks that I should keep a little note of how much each library book I read would have cost to borrow, so I can work out how much I have saved over a year!

Looking Forward to Falling Back

A sweet friend recently posted about the comforts of home and looking forward to autumn: http://prettylittleblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/no-place-like-home.html
and I have to say, while I am not wishing my life away, I cannot help but be really excited by the coming of autumn.

There have been one or two mornings recently where I have flung the window open to wave goodbye to Carl, and there has been the faintest hint of autumn mornings to come. At the local farmers market, bags of home grown apples have started to appear. I have always loved Autumn...the smell of woodsmoke in the air, autumn leaves to scuffle through...I can hardly wait!

I love the back-to-school feeling of September and new pencils that mistily drifts into Autumn and pumpkins, before being rounded off with sparklers and bonfires.

Soon there will be apple day at the local orchard, and I will have mueseli with grated apple for breakfast, and pear juice with ginger to drink. I will bake apple crumbles and fill jar upon jar with gleaming purple blackberry jam. I will take all my softest jumpers from the bottom of my wardrobe and wash them so they are all soft and ready to wear again. This is the year I am going to buy an electric blanket to make our bed snuggly warm. There will be hot water bottles and mugs of cocoa, and rich stews cooked in the slow cooker and studded with dumplings. I will knit a new scarf for chilly mornings, and paint my toenails chocolate brown, or velvety purple.

There will be peppermint-and-nutmeg to spray upon my pillow, and autumn leaves pressed between pages of a book. Bowls of pinecones and shiney conkers will sit in bowls, and I will read 'Mrs Miniver' again, and buy huge bunches of bronze chrysanthemums. I will bake pumpkin cupcakes for halloween, and go on long walks.

To be ready for all this, I am having a really large clear out. I would love to take a week off work and turn out every cupboard at once, but I have done this before and it is exhausting. Instead, every week I am doing a little bit at a time. We are going to buy a new, bigger book case for the living room, and then we will be ready to snuggle up our home for Autumn.

Mimi Goes To Another Wedding

This is really the summer of weddings for us! This wedding was that of Carl's cousin, and was the first civil ceremony that I have been to (as in not a church wedding, not as in a civil partnership). We drove through a lot of twisty turny country lanes, and surprised ourselves by not getting lost, and arriving here http://www.gaynespark.co.uk/

The ceremony itself took place in the Orangery, and was over a little sooner than I thought it would be, and there was no singing. The bride (Carl's cousin) is really petite and tiny and looked great in her dress. While we were waiting for the bride to arrive, a lot of Carl's relatives turned round to us and asked if it brought back memories for us! It was a gloriously hot day, and we all spilled out onto the lawn for glasses of Pimms and photos.

When we went in to find our places for the meal, we found that all the tables were named after different superheroes, and the favours were cones of penny sweets! I really like it when couples bring a lot of their personalities to their wedding. We had a field mushroom stuffed with smaller mushrooms to start...oh how I hate mushrooms! But being a good young lady, I ate it, and just held my breath as I swallowed! Then we had some really amazing steak, and dessert was a chocolate roulade that looked a lot heavier than it tasted. All through the dinner, there was a man singing swing tunes! It was such a lovely touch, and he sang all my favourites, including 'Ain't That a Kick in the Head'.

After dinner and the speeches (which included a video of the poor groom dancing to 'I'm Too Sexy' as a teenager!) we mingled and chatted with Carl's family. There was a table set up so you could help yourself to tea and coffee, so after a while Carl and I wandered outside with tea and sat to reflect upon the day. Dusk had fallen, and the barn doors were open, so it was almost like being at the theatre! Then Carl's Uncle and Aunt joined us with tea, and we sat and chatted for ages.

When it got to about 10:00 we decided we would go inside, make our goodbyes and leave for home. But just as we got back inside, the swing singer from earlier came back out...dressed as Elvis! He was so infectiously enthusiastic that we ended up stopping and dancing for several hours more...until we finally left to go home, where we sat in bed drinking tea and eating wedding cake. The perfect end to the day...

Wednesday Afternoon and a Cup of Tea

It is a good thing that I have a cup of tea to hand, or I might just be in tears now! Oh it is nothing serious at all, but this morning I did two loads of washing and pegged them out to dry, because yesterday Radio 4 assured me that it would be cooler today, but not showery. And now? The rain is coming down so hard that the air has taken on that misty quality! It is tapping against the window and drumming on the cars outside! I could go out and bring it in, but then I would be soaked myself, and we do not have a tumbledrier to put the wet things in anyway...

I wanted to watch Midsommer Murders on the itv player, but it is not on there. I have a tummy ache and feel really rather vexed! I have finished my book, and while I do have more to start...I don't know which one to choose!

I had planned to tidy out my collection of magazines, weed some, and put them away....but I didn't feel like I had the energy, and now I wish I had!

What a misery I am! Ah, but it is not all doom and gloom. I think I am suffering from having Carl's company all day yesterday, and being on my own today. Not entirely alone though, because I did have a very lovely tapas lunch with some dear friends in town earlier, and even better, we had a voucher for 50% off our bill!

We have planted some lettuce seeds to grow in windowbox, and the first little shoots are starting to appear, which makes me smile at the wonder of it all.

The health food shop has a new range of vegetarian food in- Amy's. http://www.amys.com/about_us/index.php We are not totally vegetarian, but having cut down on meat a lot recently, we have decided to have a month of eating vegetarian at home, and only eating meat if we are out, and it is good quality. I have been cooking a lot of Rose Eliot recipes, and while I really do enjoy cooking from scratch, sometimes it is so nice to have a little something stashed in the freezer that I have not made, is tasty and healthy. Amy's ticks all the boxes! I got us her Indian Samosa Roll and Bean Burrito's to try in our lunchboxes this week.

I have two bottles of raspberry gin steeping on my sideboard. Even though it won't be ready for a few weeks, it tastes wonderful already! Summer in a bottle, and the prettiest pink colour ever!

I have a brand new bottle of bubble bath sitting in the bathroom just waiting for me to turn the hot tap on!

I am going to be baking chocolate cupcakes from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook tomorrow. I made a little shopping trip to Marks and Sparks this morning, and now have a box of organic chocolate vermicelli sprinkles just waiting to be sprinkled!

So really, I have plenty to be cheerful about! I think it is time that I made the kettle whistle again, and brew another pot of Lipton's Yellow Label tea!

I hope that the sun is shining on you today, and if you have rain, I hope that you have not pegged your washing out!

Mimi Goes To The Proms

Quite a few months ago now, I was cooking dinner for a dear friend, and we were talking about the wonderful pianist Stephen Hough-read his blog here: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/author/stephenhough/ - when he said 'why don't we go to the Proms together?' I accepted at once, as although I have been to the Royal Albert Hall, I have bever been to the Proms.

Imagine how excited I was when I found out that Stephen Hough would be playing...and then how disappointed when Adrian said that he doesn't like Tchaikovsky (which is what Stephen would be performing). Several months went by, and nothing more was said, so I decided that perhaps we would not be oging to the Proms after all.

I was sitting in bed on a rare Saturday morning off work, sipping tea and reading a book when my phone bingly-bongly-beeped to say that I had a text message. I read 'where are you?' I replied that I was at home. Bingly-bongly-beep! 'Fancy the proms Monday?' Monday? Monday!

I phoned work quickly and was able to take the afternoon off....so I replied and said yes please! Which left me only to shake poor Carl awake to tell him how excited I was, and fret a little about what to wear. Happily I found the perfect dress....you see my instinct is to dress up when I go out, and especially for the Royal Albert Hall....but the Proms are very informal. So informal....and yet...I wanted to look nice! I wore the dress in the picture along with a black cardigan to dress it down, and some sparkly ballet flats.

I left work at 3 (should have been there till 7!) and caught the train to London. We sat and sipped tea on the way up, which for me is the only way to travel! When we got to London we went straight to the Royal Albert Hall to pick up our tickets, and then went to a little Italian called Dino's for dinner. It is very near to the V&A...if you are ever in the area, do go, the food is utterly scrumptious. A real home-made place. I was torn between the carbonarra and the pasta with mussels, clams and cherry tomatoes...and decided to go with the mussels. Imagine my horror when I discovered liberal servings of calamari amongst my mussels, and even worse, entire baby octopusses! (Octopussi?) Happily my dining companion was more than happy to eat the offending seafood, and my tiramisu dessert was utterly scrumptious!

There was just enough time for a glass of water at the bar at the Royal Albert Hall before we had to go in. Adrian bought me a programme which I really enjoyed reading, and then we went to our seats to enjoy Prom 15 http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/2009/whatson/2707.shtml alas it is no longer available on iplayer, but it is on youtube!

I just did not know where to look! There was the splendour of the hall itself, all the rich red and tiers upon tiers of seats. Then, the people. I was glad that I had not dressed up too much after all, as most people were casually dressed. Such a mix of people! Some who had obviously just wandered over from the office, some young men, older people, one man with an amazingly long beard, a real cosmopolitan pick-and-mix assortment.

Oh, and the orchestra! The instruments were fascinating, and it was amazing, once the music began, to see it being played as well as hearing it. My favourite part was the ballet Petrushka by Stravinsky. It was the whole of the second half of programme. It made it quite impossible to sit still, I was all of a tapping foot and nodding head!

The funniest thing happened on the way home. I was holding Adrian's umbrella and balancing both our cups of tea while he went to the loo at Liverpool Street station, when I spied a man who looked a lot like my little brother. Bearing in mind it was really rather late at night, and my little brother (who is 23!) may have a beard one day, none the next, goatie the next and so on....well I was a little unsure. So I sidled closer and closer until I suddenly realised that it was my little brother! After I introduced him and Adrian, we caught the train home together!

Mimi Goes To A Wedding

Looking at the pictures of me taken at the wedding of our lovely friends Jo and John, I have noticed that I have a Very Bad Habit. Because Carl is shorter than me (and I was wearing heels) I have a habit of bending my head towards his whenever someone points a camera in our direction. Which is fine for one picture, or maybe even two...but it is all of them! I look like I have something wrong with my neck, or perhaps my ear is glued to the top of his head! My hair was much, much bigger than this at the start of the day...but by this point it had been blown about quite a lot, rained on twice, and squished up a tiny spiral staircase...

The wedding was in a tiny but oh so pretty village. The church was really picturesque, and slightly unusual in that it had a balcony-gallery area. It soon became apparent that the bride and groom had more family and friends than there was room, so some of us were invited up to the gallery. The only thing was, the only way up was through a tiny doorway and up a stone spiral staircase...which were slightly shorter than my husband, and only a bit wider! All the ladies in our party had to take of fascinators and heels, and the men had to fold themselves almost double, but it was worth it for the wonderful view.

It was the kind of wedding that I adore...simple but elegant, with so much of the bride and the groom in the details. The church was decorated in wonderful swathes of babys breath, as there were two weddings taken place that day, and it let either bride put whatever flowers they wanted with it. One of the hymns (Lord Of All Hopefulness) was one that we had at our wedding, so I really enjoyed that! It poured with rain until the bride arrived, at which point the sun shone. It was hard to keep a straight face once or twice as the rain lashed down again, and crashed against the stained glass window behind us. It was almost like being at the seaside! Happily, it then dried up again when we left the church.

There was Pimms to drink when we arrived at the reception, and plenty of time to talk to the other guests, throw confetti and take photos. When we went back inside for dinner (a very generously portioned roast beef dinner with yorkshire pudding, followed by profiteroles) the rain began to lash down again. There was something really cosy about being inside, eating roast beef, and seeing the rain sheet down. In the centre of each table was a tall thin vase filled with white delphinium, white roses and bear grass. Each person had a tiny brown handbag made out of card and decorated with a white rose at their place, inside which were some mini chocolate eggs!

I normally don't love the disco part of weddings, but we had so many wonderful friends around us (including a boy I have known for 25 years!) we ended up staying to the very end...so late infact, that the staff were clearing away, and I was able to take home one of the table centres as they would have been thrown away otherwise. I have pressed some of the flowers, and I am going to put them on a little card and send them to Jo. I did that when I caught a bouquet at a wedding a few years ago!

We have Jo and John some money for their honeymoon, because that is what they really wanted, but I have a gift in mind for future weddings. I have just read (and adored!) Greenery Street by Denis Mackail. The marvellous Persephone Books have republished it, and it really is amazingly funny. It is the story of Ian and Felicity Foster, and their early years of marriage in a little house in the eponymous Greenery Street. It is full of wonderful domestic details (written in the 30s I believe) and is really witty. Definitely one if I am stuck for a wedding gift in future! When I wrap up wedding gifts, I like to buy one of those wind up elastic band butterflies to go in the card, and then put in plenty of glitter or confetti. The more sparkly the better!

Mimi Goes To The Spa

Two years ago, on August 11th, I woke up to find the only sunny Saturday that summer was dawning. Several hours later, I found myself at a tiny country church, walking up the aisle towards my wonderful Carl, and saying the vows that would change my life forever.

Last year, we celebrated by going to Dorset, and spending the day at River Cottage. I can't believe it has been a whole year since then. We had to shelter under a huge umbrella as it simply poured down with rain.

And this year...well it rained again! In the morning, anyway. But happily the showers gave way to sunshine, and once again we spent the day together.

Cotton is the traditional gift for the second anniversary, and Carl bought me a lovely cotton nightie. It is very Cath Kidston-Bodenish. White, with tiny blue flowers all over it, and blue and white polka dot buttons! I gave him a candle in a glass jar which smells of 'clean cotton'.

After several cups of tea, we set off for Clarice House Spa which was just a little jaunt down the motorway away. I had not been before, but the idea of spending the day wafting about in a soft white dressing gown and bobbing about in a swimming pool was just the very thing! When we got there, we were given a cup of tea and a medical form to fill in, along with a menu so we could choose what we would eat for lunch. It was really hard to choose, as everything looked so delicious! Although when I read 'chocolate brownie with vanilla ice cream' on the dessert menu, that part was not at all hard to choose!

Once we had changed into our dressing gowns and slippers, we went off to explore the facilities. Clarice House was a big country house that has been converted into a spa, so in some parts of the house I half expected to see Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot taking tea! I loved the aromatherapy room, which was a dark steamy room scented with lavender, and tiny twinkling lights in the ceiling! There was time to sit in the jacuzzi and splash in the pool, and dry off in the sauna before padding back round to reception for our treatments.

We both had facials (even though Carl had shaved that morning, he still thinks he exfoliated his therapists hands rather than her exfoliating his face!) and then I had a pedicure while Carl had a manicure. It was all rather new to him, but I think he rather enjoyed the pampering! I had my toes painted in 'Affair In Red Square' red-a wonderful shade, which reminds me of faberge eggs for some reason!

Lunch was really scrumptious, and we were seated at the best table, overlooking the gardens. I loved how my salad was served- on a square, completely flat plate, almost like a piece of slate. I must keep an eye out for some at home!

We went for a walk around the gardens, and we spotted some rabbit holes, but sadly no bunnies! Before we went home there was time for some more bobbing about in the pool, and I must have relaxed too much, becuase I was just so tired all of a sudden, I didn't even change out of my dressing gown to go home!