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Restaurant Review
Ah, what a lovely weekend. Nice quiet Friday evening pottering round the house tidying things up, followed by hugs from Alex. Lovely lay in on Saturday morning listening to Saturday morning Radio 4 through a haze of semi consciousness. Then up and dressed in time for my parents to come round at lunchtime for their stay.
Its a funny thing, but everyone I know seems to think that my relationship with my parents is slightly freakish (except the rest of my family). Basically I had a very happy childhood and because I was fairly bright my parents treated me like an adult from quite a young age both in terms of what I was allowed to do and the sort of things that we talked about. This has resulted in my having a very close friendship with both of them where we chat and exchange work gossip and things like that. It also helps I suppose that I get on quite well with several of their friends so we can goss about them too. I have a special deal on my pay and go mobile phone where I get free calls to a land line of my choice so I get free calls home. I make use of these almost every day (often on the bus on the way home) to give them a call and have a chat to find out what's going on. Its also very rarely more than a couple of months before one of us will visit the other. When I describe this to other people though they all give me a *look* as if to say "Wow, what a freak!" and I'm always vaguely surprised that other people don't really seem to like their parents very much or want to keep in touch but force themselves to ring every couple of months or so out of a vague sense of duty. I know that I'm pretty lucky to have had it as idyllic as I have but I still find it surprising that I'm pretty much the only person I know who has this kind of relationship with their parents.
Anyway, back to my weekend! Alex having escaped to Dawns (ex-girlfriends) in London after the second hand record shopping phase of the day had finished we headed for B&Q. I know - I've turned into a middle class person! You can't say you didn't suspect after my R4 habit though. I bought myself curtain pole and gardening tools and we went back to get started - after a cup of tea of course. I now actually have a lawn mower of my very own which is kinda cool in a way and once we'd raked the worst of the leaves off and mowed the grass it actually looked quite tidy although it did show up the fact that really it needs replanting. Then yesterday we turned to the business of taking down the annoying blind in the front room and replacing it with curtains. Eventually - after a bit of hacksawing to get the net tracks to fit in the windows - we got the curtain and the voile up so now no-one can look in and watch me in my living room - or my bedroom come to that cos we put some up there too. After we'd finished all that we downed tools for tea, the Observer and R4 and then went out for dinner...
I'd decided that it would be nice to make my parents visit really special by booking us a table for Sunday evening at Le Petit Blanc - Raymond Blancs Oxford brassierie - for a really good meal. Dad and I are both really enjoy eating out and Dads quite keen on Raymond so it seemed like it would be perfect and I have to say that it pretty much was. We spent ages deliberating over the menu while we sipped our apperatifs (Alex recommends the Electric Margarita) before finally choosing. I had snails, celery, cucumber and misc in a very garlicy and spinach sauce which was absolutely fab and I believe everyone else similarly enjoyed thier starters. We then had a really nice bottle of Cab Sauv with the main. Dad and I both plumped for the confit of rabbit with haricot blanc and green mustard which was georgeous. It was very rich and you got a huge portion too so amazing value. Rounded off with cheese and port it really was a great meal and ended up costing only about £30-35 a head for the whole thing including drinks so amazing value too. I can't really recommend it highly enough.
Its a funny thing, but everyone I know seems to think that my relationship with my parents is slightly freakish (except the rest of my family). Basically I had a very happy childhood and because I was fairly bright my parents treated me like an adult from quite a young age both in terms of what I was allowed to do and the sort of things that we talked about. This has resulted in my having a very close friendship with both of them where we chat and exchange work gossip and things like that. It also helps I suppose that I get on quite well with several of their friends so we can goss about them too. I have a special deal on my pay and go mobile phone where I get free calls to a land line of my choice so I get free calls home. I make use of these almost every day (often on the bus on the way home) to give them a call and have a chat to find out what's going on. Its also very rarely more than a couple of months before one of us will visit the other. When I describe this to other people though they all give me a *look* as if to say "Wow, what a freak!" and I'm always vaguely surprised that other people don't really seem to like their parents very much or want to keep in touch but force themselves to ring every couple of months or so out of a vague sense of duty. I know that I'm pretty lucky to have had it as idyllic as I have but I still find it surprising that I'm pretty much the only person I know who has this kind of relationship with their parents.
Anyway, back to my weekend! Alex having escaped to Dawns (ex-girlfriends) in London after the second hand record shopping phase of the day had finished we headed for B&Q. I know - I've turned into a middle class person! You can't say you didn't suspect after my R4 habit though. I bought myself curtain pole and gardening tools and we went back to get started - after a cup of tea of course. I now actually have a lawn mower of my very own which is kinda cool in a way and once we'd raked the worst of the leaves off and mowed the grass it actually looked quite tidy although it did show up the fact that really it needs replanting. Then yesterday we turned to the business of taking down the annoying blind in the front room and replacing it with curtains. Eventually - after a bit of hacksawing to get the net tracks to fit in the windows - we got the curtain and the voile up so now no-one can look in and watch me in my living room - or my bedroom come to that cos we put some up there too. After we'd finished all that we downed tools for tea, the Observer and R4 and then went out for dinner...
I'd decided that it would be nice to make my parents visit really special by booking us a table for Sunday evening at Le Petit Blanc - Raymond Blancs Oxford brassierie - for a really good meal. Dad and I are both really enjoy eating out and Dads quite keen on Raymond so it seemed like it would be perfect and I have to say that it pretty much was. We spent ages deliberating over the menu while we sipped our apperatifs (Alex recommends the Electric Margarita) before finally choosing. I had snails, celery, cucumber and misc in a very garlicy and spinach sauce which was absolutely fab and I believe everyone else similarly enjoyed thier starters. We then had a really nice bottle of Cab Sauv with the main. Dad and I both plumped for the confit of rabbit with haricot blanc and green mustard which was georgeous. It was very rich and you got a huge portion too so amazing value. Rounded off with cheese and port it really was a great meal and ended up costing only about £30-35 a head for the whole thing including drinks so amazing value too. I can't really recommend it highly enough.