so friday afternoon is certainly an odd time to remenisce about last weekend. but it hasn't been done yet, my network is being weird and i could do with a break from spreadsheets (i may be too busy for a lunch break but no one can brgrudge me a minutes peace).
so, last friday:
finish work, walk home in the sunshine with homemade peanutbutter cookies with chocolate blobs on top. yum. my baking has improved exponentially.
6:32,surreptitiously liaise with my hook up. namely, trade said cookies for an early copy of Harry Potter from Jamie*. In fact get two, as part of the bargain is I deliver the other to a mutual friend on the dot of midnight as a surprise.
*names have been changed to protect the innocent
6:34 begin reading.
7:20 Liam comes home. He surmises the situation and drifts away to make dinner.
8:02 Liam brings me dinner in my room and I give it up for the rest of the night as it is just stupid to think I can't wait another second. Spend the rest of the evening goofing off as per usual.
saturday morning
sneakily wake up before 7am alarm as Liam must be up for work in a couple of hours. quickly dress and wait by the window for cab to arrive.
am whisked to new station for pottermania live radio interview.
other than in my sleepy haze calling the completely wrong person on arrival (instead of station, call a picture book author friend of mine who gets v confused and eventually says 'sara. i have no idea what you are talking about. what's going on?' where i realise i've called the wrong person, have to explain the faux pas then cut short as am late for interview now!)
sit in a red felt booth the small enough you could touch all the walls, fitted with headphone and microphone and clock. am fired questions from some bodiless voice frmo glasgow in front of god knows how many weekend insomniacs on live radio. (said author friend listened in after this and reassures me i did just fine). it's harder than it sounds, radio.
taxi home to cuddle up with the book again for a few hours.
saturday afternoon
bundle and pack as liam and i are away for the weekend when he finishes work. i couldn't afford to take time off for a week in brussles like we hoped, so we are going to blow my holiday stash on a decadent mini-break with only an hour's travel time.
the important question of what does one pack for a weekend where you don't intend remove the supplied fluffy bathrobe or eat anything but room service takes up a good portion of the afternoon.
after, trek to town and realise i think i should buy something nice for our little excursion. suffice to say this becomes a detour to the weird leather & lace sex shop for some ace kama sutra massage oil and a surreal conversation with the comic-book-guy like employee about lube with a easy access squirt handle.
saturday evening
pick up liam, hop the train, sit together eating blueberries while i read Deathly Hallows and he reads Azkaban with regualr interruptions where he asks for the current death toll.
arrive One Devonshire Gardens (where the likes of George Clooney, Justin Timberlake and the rest of the visiting pazparrazzi-ites go as it's the poshest one in the city, and Glasgow is the poshest city in Scotland). Men in kilts take our bags, ply us with whiskey in the opulent living room and I sign away my life savings.
get the tour of our Classic King Suite (with full on four poster with massive draped, bay window bigger than an SUV overlooking the garden and a black marble bathroom.) and try to have the 'should we tip' conversation with only our eyes behind the consierge's back.
when we're alone obviously we immediately put on the fluffy robe (and matching slippers), play a bit of putt putt with the specially engraved putter supplied with every room and check out the minibar (full mostly of champagne and imported chocolate)
I order the room service while Liam runs the bath. There are candles and bubbles and it's deep enough water comes up to my shoulders. It's spectacular.
Then all pink and glowing (and still in robes), we sit down to a multi-course dinner on silver platters at the little table in our room like real celebrities. We even got a visit from the sommelier and our own waiter (who we wouldn't let stay while we ate because that is just fucking weird, so he went to get the next course).
If you care, I had a beautiful salad and steak. Not that it mattered by then.
Before crawling under the canopy for for a relaxing massage, we hang our breakfast order on the door and then retire in the decadent silence of the high life.
sunday morning
wake up just before breakfast is delivered at 11 on a massive tray. though, with liam still in bed i insist on taking it at the door.
we peek open the drapes and have a leasurely breakfasting the sitting room. pastry, fruit salad and a pot of fresh tea. sigh.
sunday afternoon
after a nap, a shower and the final few pages of harry potter, we wander about the west end. things are deteriorating quickly. He is mad and I am upset and everything is rubbish. we have a bit of a scuffle. snippy, tired, crabby and ridiculous we try and scrounge a picnic as I have booked for Shakespeare in the park.
we head to the botanics for what should be a wonderful production of othello and a sumptuous feast only to find it's folding chairs in a greenhouse. crowded, humid and incapable of spreading out the snacks, i break down. i was so looking forward to this as the highlight of our trip and suddenly it looks like a holt high school production I'll have to suffer through for 3 hours
we decide to ditch the play, hedge our bets and have a picnic in the last rays of sunlight in the garden. we are better than mediocre shakespeare anyway, with our fancy seed humous and dried blueberries.
of course, we bought lots of the provisions in a kroger-a-like, so when we had a bag of crisps left over, we had to hide them walking into the hotel. who could flash their wal-bob roots in front of bloomingdales? only the tell-tale crinkle under liam's eggplant coloured velvet blazer could give us away.
monday morning
we are resolved to get out of bed before 4 this time, and have breakfast in bed and read about the flooding in the downs in the paper.
we then head to some tiny little second hand bookshops where i buy a lovely book of errudite poetry and a beautiful edition of vanity fair.
monday afternoon
lunch in a fancy french cafe yields decadent cheese boards (ooh. appenzeller with chilli chutnney on saffron crackers...)
then have raspberry cheesecake in the sunny gardens before wandering through a spectacular museum of Hunter (one of the first medical detectives - babies in jars, skulls with syphillitic groths, it was ace) and then exploring Glasgow's unbelievably beautiful university. It's like if all of Oxford's colleges were combined into one, up on a hill with spiral staircases and a glorious cathedral.
monday evening
then a train ride home and a giddy evening of holiday hangover and calm.
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