The busyness continues…

Life is busy but good for me at the moment. How are you?

This week as well as working every day I went out several times. Firstly I went to book club at The Swan pub on Tuesday night. There were only 3 of us this time (2 ladies and 1 man) but we had a great time chatting about our book for this month, “Hamnet” by Maggie O’Farrell, and also life, the universe and everything, a bit like The Waffle I suppose. I liked the second half of this book a lot more than the first that kept going off on tangents and jumping about. I probably wouldn’t have persevered with it had it not been for book club, but I’m glad I did.

There was white wine and takeaway pizza as the pub isn’t doing food yet.

That was quite a late night Tuesday… Then back to work and on Wednesday night it was off to the cinema as usual. My friends and I now have the Odeon Limitless membership which is fab. At the moment it’s £9.99 a month for unlimited films at any Odeon cinema except Central London. I have already seen 4 films this month…..Our Ladies, The Courier, Respect, The Many Saints of Newark. The Courier was by far the best film out of these and in my opinion was worth the £9.99 monthly fee on its own. It’s about being a spy during the Cold War and Benedict Cumberbatch was excellent. This week we also visited Noodle Nation in Maidenhead beforehand. I had a huge bowl of Singapore rice noodles with chicken, pork and prawns and a Diet Pepsi. My friend Sue has commented that one of the main reasons to go to the cinema these days is to relax in their reclining almost lie flat seats for a couple of hours a week. It’s like flying club class and always amusing mid film when I turn over and manage to get the seat out of control by pressing the button by accident with my hip/bum! Such fun 😂.

Haha we don’t feed each other popcorn….! Cinema is our girls’ night out away from the husbands who moan about sitting through the adverts and in my husband’s case any film that isn’t sci fi.

Yesterday I went to London for the day… yippee! I love London and consider myself a Londoner as I grew up in Richmond. I love the slow train to London.. Windsor and Eton Riverside to London Waterloo. The first part of the journey is really scenic often seeing sheep, herons or rabbits. (Actually none of these on this occasion as I was busy reading my book!). Then crossing the beautiful River Thames at my old home town of Richmond. The trains from Windsor come in to platforms 20-24 at Waterloo which are the new platforms where Eurostar used to be.

So this was a proper girls’ day out with “the Swansea girls” as I call us as we all met while studying at Swansea University many years ago. We hadn’t seen each other for about two years due to the pandemic and we had many big birthdays to catch up on.

You can tell by the big smiles (me: back right) we were all very pleased to be back together again. We had lunch at Bill’s in Clink Street near Borough Market, then went for a walk over the Millennium “wobbly” bridge and back, and then back to Bill’s again for tea and cakes. None of us live in London.. we all come in by train about an hour or so each from all directions.

Hi girls! You’ve made it on to The Waffle. Hope that’s ok?! 🤞🤞I love the funky decor in Bill’s and the food was quite nice too.

We’re already planning our meet up for 2022. Maybe a weekend away in Swansea. We like to do this once a decade!

So the girls nearly fell off their chairs when I told them I wasn’t rushing back to go out for dinner with David yesterday night. They know we (and especially David) are creatures of habit and it’s most unusual for us not to be dining out on a Saturday night. Instead we enjoyed a seafood box at home from Côte and a bottle of champagne that was a present given to my boss who doesn’t drink. It was great champagne and so good with the seafood. We had masses of king prawns with a garlic aioli type dip followed by 3 juicy scallops in their shells each with garlic butter with a crusty baguette. Tonight we’re having the rest of the box which will be half a dressed crab each, half a grilled lobster each, more crusty bread and butter. I’m also going to do some roast potatoes, it being Sunday! For pudding there will be vanilla ice cream and possibly sticky toffee pudding if we can manage it. The Côte seafood box costs £75. including delivery, but the stuff is really good quality and lasts us for 2 nights.

We also got a complimentary lobster tea towel which I really like, as much as one can like a tea towel!!

I’m pleased to report that David and I have also successfully managed to procure some petrol for our car.. for those of you not in the UK we have a shortage of lorry drivers to deliver such things which is leading to a bit of a panic. I’m sure this is only the start of such consequences of Brexit which I didn’t vote for (oops, politics on The Waffle again!). Food and wine shortages to follow in time for Christmas but I’m sure we’ll still have plenty and meeting up with our nearest and dearest and avoiding Covid is obviously the priority.

I’m going off to be busy doing other stuff at home now. The Waffle will be on pause for a week. Back next Sunday for some more chit chat and pics! Au revoir! Xx