I've just introduced Mum to a series of books by Ben Aaronovitch, which marry the supernatural with detailed London geography and police procedure. I thought they might be too bloody and/ or densely plotted for her. She's nowhere near stupid, but she feels she only gets time to read a chapter at a time (insufficient commitment, tcha) and with the large cast of peripheral characters I thought she might lose interest. No, she loves them. She knows the London he writes about, and the police.
So I thought we'd go in search of
J Sheekey's which is mentioned in all three of the books. We found it, but they do not have a bar licence. You can only drink if you are eating. Mum wanted a cocktail, but neither of us wanted to eat. And we'd have to take a a second mortgage in order to do so. But the staff were so polite to us.
So instead we popped into
Browns. Mistake. I had some of the same issues I'd had in Browns in Oxford, plus the fact the toilets were down a spiral staircase, which would not have been good for Mum's gammy knee, and smelt of damp. Oh and the mocktails all looked like they would be sweet and sickly.
So we scampered out of there, feeling quite cheeky and (in my case) relieved.
Into
All Bar One. No seats available.
Crikey me, 16.30ish on a Tuesday afternoon? Have we wandered into a Hogarth engraving?
So we went to
TGI Friday's.
Are they authentically American? Or do they just pretend to be?
The portions are American sized, but the prices aren't.
Anyway, we sat in the bar area and Mum got her Kir Royale and as previously mentioned I had an ice-cream smoothie.
I ordered some garlic bread with cheese because I knew we'd be there at least an hour and by then it would be teatime. It was good. Mum had already snaffled a piece before I got the camera out. It was very good.