It's so nice to be home

When I was in London last weekend I kept thinking longingly of our pretty house in Brittany. The London air was so smelly that we felt a little sick from all the constant diesel fumes and our skin felt tight and dirty. I'm sure this isn't a psychological thing; I do enjoy being in London - I'm a North Londoner after all - but we spent a lot of time in the West End and the noise, pollution and crowds do get you down after a while.

Monday we spent time in various bookshops browsing and buying. It's something I miss here in France. French bookshops are good too but I prefer to do my reading in my own language. We met my old boss, who is also our accountant, for lunch and went to a lovely place in Charlotte Street that I hadn't been to - Pescatori, an Italian fish resto. The food was delicious (I had safffron roasted cod) and we're so used to drinking French wine that it made a good change to sample some from Italy.

In the evening we met up with an old friend and ate in the restaurant of one of our favourite London hotels - the Hampshire in Leicester Square. Food also good there (wild mushroom broth with truffles) and I had melon martinis which didn't really match the food but I just fancied the sound of them (and they turned out to be an excellent choice)

Talking of martinis, we had a lovely time in the American Bar at the Savoy on the Friday evening prior to seeing Evita. What a lovely bar that is, a bit expensive though. I had champagne cocktails ( peach royales) and they were £15 each. In fact our bar bill came to £50 which was a bit of a steep hour.

Evita was excellent. The actress playing Evita - Elena Rogers - is first class (obviously she will never end up in Les Mis), a real all-round talent and anyone reading this who is not sure which West End show to go and see, give it a whirl. It's not aged at all. I toyed with the idea of booking Blood Brothers because my chap has never seen it but I'm glad now that I went for Evita. Obviously, in retrospect, I wish I'd booked BB instead of LM but I'm sure we'll catch it another time. Spamalot has received good reviews but we caught it on Broadway last year (how flash I do sound) and I don't think I'd like to see it again.

So, back at home and - so far - loving it.