Can't hear myself think right now

So, outside of my office there are two burly workmen digging up the footbath - with pneumatic drills. I can feel the vibrations through my desk/keyboard and can't hear a damn thing. We are having to shout across the office to one another. A great Monday morning!!

SoooOOOooooo, the weekend has again passed by... I worked on Sat morning then had a big house clean in the afternoon then popped into town for some Christmas shopping. I managed to get a fair amount done. I also took delivery of a rather large box which contained a cross trainer machine that Nick had ordered. He assembled it yesterday while I was asleep in bed. It is rather large and annoying to look out, but it strengthens my argument that we need a piano so...

On Saturday night we had the most fabulous meal out, at Christophes restaurant, which has a Michelin star and is very posh and la de da. It was a friends 30th and he wanted to try the 'Gourmand' menu which is 7 courses with different wines all included. OK it wasn't cheap, but we were there for a good 4 1/2 hours eating and drinking so all in all not too bad for £50. So, what did we have?

On sitting down at the table we were all presented with a small blue cheese profiterole and a green lipped mussel on a silver spoon. This was to get the tastebuds going. Then, they came around with a sweet white dessert wine. This was to go with course no.1 - fois gras in a creme caramel sauce with a sweet cinnamon biscuit. It was delicious and my favourite course.

Course No.2 was a small portion of lobster rissotto with a white Chablis - very very nice.
Then we each were given a small coffee cup filled with a white creamy bean soup with truffle oil. Again, really beautiful but I could have downed a pint of the stuff.

Course 4 was the main course and was venison in a wild mushroom sauce with a kind of cheesy pureed pumpkin roulade on the side. Awesome. This came with a gorgeous red rioca.

After this was the cheese round - Oh, the cheese round! The waitress came out with a trolley with about 20 incredibly stinky interesting cheeses on it and asked all in turn what kind of cheese we liked and then made up an individual array of cheese to suit. I said I liked everything and ended up with a really stinky Rocquefort, a goats cheese, a cheese from the Champagne region of France, a very rich Brie sort of one and I can't remember the last. We ate this with a glass of port, grapes, walnuts and homemade biscuits. Nick had a cheese that was literally grey in colour and couldn't eat it - it was so strong.

Then we each were given an ice cold shot of passionfruit juice with ginger. Very refreshing. By this stage we were all getting a bit full and sweaty and having to pop out for cigarette breaks.

The final food round was a sort of pear cheesecake with a blackberry sorbet. It came with a sweet Italian red wine - very unusual and quite similar to the port in taste. This was perhaps my least favourite course as I'm not a huge fan of sorbet -too cold!! After that we had coffees/teas and homemade chocolate truffles and biscuits.

So that was my meal out, if anyone is thinking of doing the meal there I would recommend it, you can see what we had was amazing but they change it in line with what is in season.