S. Worthen | Weblog

We spent the last day of this year in greater Manchester, with our hopefully soon-to-be-more-than-annual visit to sioneva. It's not far down the road from Preston in the scheme of things, although the trip was slightly longer than necessary on both ends because going there, the right exit was engulfed in roadworks and coming back, C. couldn't remember quite what to do once we'd left the motorway. We finally got to meet targaff, and all four of us went to a very pleasant restaurant in Chorlton named Lead Station. Even better, they had very tasty food. I had a delectable eggs florentine, sioneva opted for eggs benedict, and C. and targaff both went for the Cajun chicken salad. Their ginger beer was a little odd, but pleasantly medicinal on my still-not-quite-recovered throat. To finish, there were profiteroles, sticky toffee pudding, and a lovely, light "Eton Mess", an elegantly squashed lump of whipped cream, broken meringue, and strawberries.

Back in Preston, it's the quiet before the storm. The kitchen has been a storm of productivity in our absence. The table is laden with canapes, quiches, mince pies, trifle, rice salad, pasta salad, green salad, fruit salad, cheese straws... and I'm probably missing again as many nibbling options for tonight's New Year's party.

I feel as if I was just settling in to 2004, just getting used to it, finally remembering to write the year correctly on forms, and here it is, trailing to an end already. I hope you're all doing well, wherever you are, whatever you're doing, wherever you're going.