We will get onto the bears in a second. Yesterday I had a perfect lunch.
From soup to nuts it only took seventy minutes. I started with a glass of champagne then stuck to white Burgundy. My host and I had asaparagus (first of the season for me) with hollandaise to start. Then he had scallops, in fact a mountain of scallops – too rich for me. I had freshly scrambled eggs with smoked salmon and black pudding. My host hadn’t wanted the bp so I hijacked it. Scrambled eggs and kedgeree are favourites but both, more often than not, disappoint in restaurants. An exception was The Pacific-Union Club in San Francisco where they whisked up scramblers healthily made with only the whites. I suppose they save the yolks to make prairie oysters for the more dissolute members.
Yesterday’s lunch was rounded off when my host asked for the bill. “Of course, my Lord” said loudly enough to impress neighbouring tables. I never realised I could have such an enjoyable lunch in just seventy minutes: scramblers and snobbers.
I walked to lunch through Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, on the prowl for unblogged material and hey presto the huggy bears; as kitsch as Peter Pan. A 1939 bronze by Kenneth Keeble-Smith (not a big name in sculpture) draws the admiration and attention of children and thieves. It was stolen in 1967 and what you see today is a replica. An attempted theft in 2019 was thwarted and it has only recently been repaired and re-installed.
I took out a free subscription to The Daily Telegraph and remembered to cancel before starting to pay. Ever since the DT has been trying to entice me back. Their latest pitch is 33p a month for three months. They need me to boost their readership and advertising income but I don’t need them. Well maybe for the Matt cartoon. The DT policy on the war is peculiar. It is not mentioned until page ten or twelve. Content must be pitched to appeal to the readership, so it doesn’t say much for Middle England DT readers. To wrap up, my lunch sponsor yesterday told me his wife is in Ukraine handing out pizza, coffee and hugs to traumatised refugees – https://siobhanstrust.uk click the link.
