Cocktails and Tapas,

With rickshaws well driven,

Brown paper hen bags and chalk boards within,

These are a few of my favourite things..

No, they aren’t actually, hen nights are NOT my favourite thang….this one for No2(sorry shabby) my step daughter, was however destined to be a good one. I feel I should add that I was a child bride and Rocket had his kids when ridiculously young…bla bla bla…

An early ban having been placed on paraphernalia like veils, L plates and other items I was feeling a lot more positive about this – it would be a bit more classy.

We were ‘tourists’ in London for the evening and it was going to involve some lovely drinks and tasteful tapas.

Started at the Ice Bar – it was stipulated by No2(sorry shabby)that the evening would begin there.

A few glasses of bubbly Chez Poppy and away we went. No1 organised the whole thing and had pre-booked at the bar, it was very efficient, involving no queuing. As we wandered through the entrance staff threw thermal capes over us, fluffy hoods and mitten gloves attached on string. Turns out, it’s cold in the ice bar (really?!) and having tripped over the cross trainer machine (oh the irony) the day before and I think broken my toe, I was clad in some lovely sandals…..anyway, back to the tale.

We had some sort of champagne cocktail package, to be fair it’s all stupidly over priced but anyway you get 40 minutes in there and the drinks are in glasses moulded in ice. I don’t know if it’s the cold or the general excitement but we had a great time and it was a promising start. There is a clock on the wall that counts down to your time of exit – they threw the lights back up at 6 minutes to go and started ushering people out quite insistently. I didn’t need to glance at my cohorts to know that wasn’t going to happen, I think it was No1 who piped up first “we’ve got 6 minutes, we aren’t leaving yet”…followed by everyone else.

Just for the record and future reference the others were of course No1 and No2, my sisters in law Tigger and Clio along with ‘(Chocolate) Mousse’ and Stitch,  my nieces. Sadly El Porcio (also my sister in law) wasn’t able to join us. At 10 seconds to go we counted down, and left with a flourish well pleased with ourselves. We had a few drinks somewhere warmer and then off to ‘Andalucia’ in Panton Street, a little Spanish place. The order of the day was practically every small plate on the menu…twice. It was delightful – and I think all the better because they were so accommodating and whilst not a rowdy bunch, we may have lost our volume buttons. What I particularly enjoyed about it was that it wasn’t a chain like so may tapas places in town so the dishes were a bit more individual and homely – in a good way.

The staff didn’t seem to mind the late’ish hour or the fact that we spent quite a while there. Having hoped for a very chilled section of the evening for our meal, that was exactly what we got. We had a decent supper for 7 (no desserts, just the tapas) with plenty of very reasonably priced wine for £180 – in central London…unbeatable on value.

There was some hilarity as No1 had rented rickshaws to take us on to a club afterward….Tigger had some health and safety questions around this and jumped out whilst in transit, which led to some serious heckling – I was more concerned about the poor bloke having  heart attack whilst dragging us all around.

Finally to ‘Jewel’ for a bit of a bop – a good night, now we just have to make sure the wedding lives up to the Hen!

The next day, No1, No2, Mousse and I had dropped Tigger at home and were heading off when Rocket’s brother ‘Slippers’ rang No1. Over the speaker phone he said ” when my wife left home yesterday, when I trusted her into your care she was a perfectly healthy correctly functioning woman, and now you have returned to me someone who is barely alive and who cannot even string a sentence together”. No problem Slippers – it was a pleasure!

It’s fair to say we were all feeling terrible in varying degrees but poor Tigger was suffering and so was I. We apologised for returning his wife in a state of disrepair. I shall not be drinking again. Until the wedding that is, brace yourselves for some healthy living posts….