Love love love London

Hello from London.
We are at the flat on Cadogan Square. Karen just left for Dubai. We will miss her, but right now Rich is busy marking the territory, so she knows we've been here when she gets back.

We got in around 6pm last night, hung out with Karen for a bit, and then went to a place called Zuma, this popular Japanese Fusion restaurant in Knightsbridge. Karen got us the reservations, hard to get on a Friday. The three of us walked in and I thought, "Oh my, I may not be trendy enough for this anymore". ( I was wearing a black cashmere cardy held on by a strategically placed brooch, a sparkly hot pink and black Indian embroidered skirt, and my hair was doing its wild woman of Borneo impression.) It was the seeming epicenter of hip. You know a place is hot when very expensively clad Arab women are there. This place was full of women with glossy hair, pointy high heeled shoes, diamonds and bling, and artfully primitive fur coats, and guys in black suits with black shirts and ties and slick hair. (I call that type of guy a Guido, not sure why, but Guido just seems to fit.)

We waited at the bar for a while and had some drinks. It was pretty full. The fun part was watching people try to squeeze past Rich, he was standing in front of Karen and I, who had our backs to the wall. People would come up behind him, then try and get past, peering around him and kind of hopping up and down a bit to see past his wide shoulders and very tall back. Standing behind Rich is like looking at a tall brick wall, you just CAN'T see around him. Finally they would give up and just sort of attempt to shove him over so they could squeeze past. It was funny to see these little tufts of hair and questing faces peek over his shoulder or around his side. They would all peer up at him inquisitively as they passed, like "Damn what team do YOU play for?"

I went to the bathroom at one point and could not find my way back out, as the doors were all unmarked and had no apparent handles that I could see. Even the toilet stalls were hard to find, what I thought was a wall had doors in it that would swing out and suddenly out popped some woman or other. Finally I got out of there by just waiting to see what someone else did. I acted cool by fluffing my hair for, like, 10 minutes. (It was getting damned fluffy so I knew I could not do it for long without drastic anti-fluff maneouvres.) Finally someone else stopped fluffing her hair long enough to actually leave and I nonchalantly followed her out. I was definitely not cool enough for that bathroom, if I could not even find the doors.

It turned out, as the evening progressed, that I was indeed trendy enough for the joint, as I had a very handsome man gazing very obviously at me all evening, to Rich's patent disgust and Karen's and my great amusement. As we left the restaurant, he stopped me and said hi, and told me that my glasses were completely awesome wherever did I get them, they suited me so well. I told him where (Kirk Originals in Floral Street, Covent Garden, my dahlinks) and smiled and gave him my best 'yes I am your dream woman and you will never see me again so remember me well, perhaps we may meet again in another life' look. (Yes there is a look that can say all that.) He was quite smashingly handsome and was wearing some pretty cool glasses of his own. We glasses geeks, we are an exclusive clique.

Oh, and the food? Well, a place like that is not necessarily about the food, it's about the scene, but.....The food was good. What I remember of it. Many small plates of savory yumminess, mostly of a sushi nature, and the best calamari I have ever had. Expensive? Yahuh. Very. Rich and I are eating sandwiches and Walker's Crisps for the rest of this trip!

On the way out we ran into Mohammed Al Fayed. Of Dodi and Diana, owns Harrod's fame? Yeah. Him. But you know, just another day in London for us glitterati.

If only I could figure out those bathroom doors I'd SO own this town.....