In which Tumperkin stretches her metaphors

I am just back from a lovely weekend. The in-laws had the children for a night and Mr T and I went off for a very grown up night away in a fancy hotel with a Michelin starred restaurant. How exciting.

I packed Another Eden by Patricia Gaffney, a book I've long-wished to read and that Laura Vivanco recently gave me. I'd been saving it for a special occasion.

I am about halfway through Another Eden just now so this is not a review. However, I am richly enjoying it. Though I am not finding it an easy read. The heroine is married - very unhappily - to a man who uses her son as a weapon against her. The hero has been employed by her husband as his architect. The relationship between H/H at this moment is unconsummated, and slowly growing. The husband is dreadful but no pantomime-villain. There is a tiny kernel of something in him, a glimmer of something that stops him being wholly evil, a subtle sense that he bears a poisoned sort of love for the heroine. Their little boy is his direct contrast, a loving, delicate, sensitive child. He is like a vessel for the heroine's soul, a precious thing that seems constantly in danger. Throughout the book there is almost unbearable tension, a sense that something dreadful is about to happen (Gaffney's great gift) even as the romance grows. All of this makes this a far from easy read, but an extremely satisfying one.

Which chimes rather neatly with our special dinner. It was extraordinary. I would type the menu out in full if I wasn't worried about boring you. Suffice to say that it was incredible, a fantastic array of flavours and textures, richness and delicacy, from the light and airy to the dense and earthy.

Very satisfying. Very rich.

Afterwards, Mr T and I wondered if we could eat like that every day. We concluded we could not. It was wonderful, but intense. Aspirational. A high water mark for us.

But sometimes we don't want that. Sometimes, more than anything, we crave good plain fayre, substantial and nutritious.




A Sunday roast, if you will.

Sometimes, we want comfort food, stodgy and plain, soothing and mild.




And sometimes we just want something fun and silly.

Reading romance is rather like that. I loved my experience of haute cuisine but I couldn't eat it all the time. And I tend to devour the haute cuisine sort of books in small portions, like 70% plain chocolate, a square at a time. Another Eden is proving to be such a book.

Other times - most of the time - I want what is good and well-cooked and balanced. The sort of book I can read in a sitting or two and enjoy thoroughly, feeling pleased and satisfied at the end of it.

Macaroni cheese? That's the sort of book that isn't necessarily very balanced or good for me but that still leaves me feeling happy and as though I've had a proper meal, as it were.

And then there's space dust. Sometimes I love a bit of space dust.

All of which brings me neatly back to my fine dining experience. Our pre-dessert (yes! Pre-dessert) was 'Walnut Whip' a deconstructed haute-cuisine version of the 1970s bit of classic confectionary much-loved by my granny. This featured a cone of coffee ice-cream with a topping of walnut cream. And a secret ingredient.

Space dust!