I love Mondays

Coughs, cold and croup have blighted my abode so no participating in London Fashion Week (not that I got any tickets!) but I haven't been able to watch any of the live streaming of shows or catch up with the catwalk reviews. Except for the odd Tweet here and there - all I picked up from them is neutral grey pallets, earth tones and textured layers are what's hot for next A/W11.

So it was with great anticipation D and I got a day out to celebrate our belated 9th Wedding anniversary today. Curly haired beauty was dropped at her cousins for a play date, my mum had the twins and I had a frantic session with the iron to make D look presentable. I never normally iron any of his clothes and we had our yearly shoe debate 'never wear Brown in town?'- he only owns one pair of smart shoes - brown leather brogues and lives in his daily uniform of jeans and trousers (same as what he wore as a student). He wore his blush pink dress shirt with fold back cuffs and chunky silver cuff links, grey fine wool tank top (or slip however you want to call it), navy trousers and the brown shoes ; one day I shall make him buy a smart black leather pair!

I thought it was going to rain today and decided with a little regret not to wear my Ghost wedding dress (my ritual was to wear it on every anniversary - which I have done for the last previous 8 years - so I did well cost per wear here)  as I didn't want the hem to trail in a dirty puddle. So I wore my royal blue silk Reiss blouse, BCBG black pencil skirt, ankle boots and Barbour Minx coat and my obligatory grey trilby which has become my winter staple.

Lunch was a Murano's in Mayfair and with a a little craftiness on my part we arrived early and had some time to kill; so it was a little walk to Shepherds Market and what did we stumble on but the first day of Georgina Goodman's shoe sample sale.....dear readers I married a great man - D sat down and made himself comfortable while I spent a good 45 minutes rooting around and trying on lots of shoes and boots. I was gutted I wasn't two inches taller for the knee high boots in crackle patent leather. There were some very eye catching skyscraper heels but I simply could not walk in them. I really wanted the mannish cuban heeled shoes in a grey iridescent multicoloured leather but the 38 was to big and there was no half size smaller. That's the pitfall of such sales, not having the sizes you want in the styles you need, love, have to have. The staff could not have been any nicer or more helpful. D found it very amusing watching the woman sat next to him 'guarding' her shoe selections. I wondered about in my tights trying this one and that one and finally found a beautiful pair called Thea, a black patent, grey suede strappy sandal for £70. Marked down from £234 - that's an amazing bargain and I kept raving to D how well made it was and so much nicer than anything you could find in Office, Kurt Geiger, Dune. I could have been speaking double Dutch reeling off high street store names but he got the fact it was a total steal and had to be purchased!

They look much better on than in the photo and the grey is much paler so colours will go really well for Spring and I just can see myself wearing them with floral tea dresses,  rolled up chinos and a multitude of other things. 

After that buzz of retail excitement, an appetite was worked up and we headed to Murano and had a splendid lunch. Now D and I love to eat but we get really rubbish at trying to remember what we ordered, scoff it quickly and then try and work out what it was we ate. Our palates are not as sophisticated as we would like it to be; trying to decipher the flavours and ingredients used. So its with extreme effort I retained the info for your reading pleasure. To start I had the white onion risotto with parmigiano cheese and truffle vinegrette, Cornish pollock with red pepper stew tapenade emulsion  and the dessert was a Pistachio soufflé, warm chocolate sauce and two chocolate macaroons - I loved the theatrics of the cross made on top and the sauce poured into the souffle. Actually this was D's dessert but I swapped him my White chocolate and olive oil cremeux blood orange jelly. He was kind enough to comply as he knows I love big showy sweet desserts. D had the Sweetbread with caramelised cauliflower purée sauteed cauliflower florets smoked maple dressing, smoked florets for starters  and for his main the Seabass madeira glazed chicken wings pomme Anna and chestnut veloute. OK these dishes sound really elaborate but they were simply presented and the ingredients worked well. Now in-between there were a couple of amusee bouches - cheesy round rice balls thingys and something else (see I told you we don't pay much attention)  some lovely Italian breads with a fruity olive oil, a little wooden board with some sliced cured meats. Just before the dessert came a palate cleanser of tiny assortments of sorbets and ice cream in amazing intense fruity flavours. Stand out ones were the apple and cassis (I forgot what the rest were). 

This dessert photo is from the website;  my photo that I took was after I had polished it off *fails* so not as impressive looking. 

*OVER SHARE ALERT* a little tip here in case you need to visit the ladies at Murano. The loos have one of those automatic flushing devices. I went in to wash my hands and reapply my lippy and it went off 5 times! On my second visit when I actually had to spend a penny I heard the tell tale noise start and I had to really jump up quick! 

After our meal we ambled over to Old Bond Street and let the cold air help invigorate us. I steered us into the Louis Vuitton store, and did a little light browsing in the book section (via the bags, belts, sunglasses, clothes, shoes section - hee hee!). There was a really sweet book illustrated by Takashi Murakami, the Japanese Superflat artist who collaborated with LV on the multicoloure prints . Perfect for Curly Haired Beauty as the story was about a sweet little creature who wanted to be different.

Then we crossed the road to check out David Mach  giant gorilla made of coat hangers at the Opera Gallery . 

This was most impressive, first as a sculpture but the fact it was made out of coat hangers was mind boggling. If I had the funds/space/and no kids I would have snapped it up. But I live in a 3 bed semi, have not much money and oh yeah I can just see the kids trying to clamber all over it and poking their eyes out too....

Then we crossed back over the road so I could check out the latest bags at Mulberry and lovingly stroked the electric blue soft leather bags. Such a good colour for SS11 but I walked away empty handed. BTW in each store D found a comfy seat and chilled out - what a guy to understand my shopping needs, I married a keeper!

Then a short cut through South Molton Street, stopping off to look at a few men's shoe stores (to look at Redwing boots for D) before hitting Selfridges. His mecca and well mine too :-) I won't bore you with all the details of what we saw/did but we finished the day with the most amazing tasting macarons by Pierre Hermes

All in all it was lovely to spend time with my other half, just us, no kids, no rush to get back for the dinner, bath and bed routine. Happy Anniversary D Love you this much <--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> and more xxx Mwah twosp xxx