I shouldn't say that, really. We had a delightful lunch on Wednesday at Carluccio's Neal St restaurant, with our friend, Neil, who lives here on a canal boat. The great man himself (Antonio) was in attendance, which got both Neil and I excited. I had met Signor Carluccio before, when he came to New Zealand a few years back. After lunch I went over to say hello, like a fan. Of course he remembered me straight away. (Ha, not really.) But he was very gracious and charming, and asked if we enjoyed our lunch (we did; lobster linguine, sea bass, tiramisu) and said he was thinking of coming back to New Zealand soon because of his winemaker friend, Daniel Schuster. So; you read it here first. We also had a nice lunch at the Habitat cafe in Regent St, which reminded me of a Ponsonby Road cafe: communal tables, fresh salads ( a lovely puy lentil number like I myself might have whipped up), nice coffee. And of course we have eaten well from Pret a Manger, which must be my favourite place to eat in London. What a great philosophy they have: fresh, real food, friendly staff, good morals. And pretty decent coffee as well. I love all their literature which explains their philospies on everything from hiring of staff to the giving away of leftover food. The most fun one was on the same street as the Conde Nast office, where we had breakfast and watched all the skinny, nervy Vogue-ettes on their way to work.
We had a reasonable Italian meal at a little restaurant near our hotel with my lovely cousin Ana. The maitre d' took a shine to her and tried to get her to go downstairs, where they had a dancefloor, and dance with him. He thought he was pretty charming, I must say. I think Ana thought he was a little creepy. And we ate a really nice Chinese meal at a tiny local place across the road from our hotel on our first night back in town. I must say the first bit of ginger I've eaten in a couple of months tasted pretty great. 
London in November is quite different from London in August. For one thing, the temperature is about half. As Billy Connolly says, there's no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothes; and our clothes were really not up to the job. We were forced to buy jackets, hats, gloves and scarves. I got a big puffer-style thing from H&M which makes me look like the Michelin man, but feels like a big duvet wrapped around my middle. Perfect. Sandy picked up a similar sort of thing for 11 pounds, believe it or not, at a store called Primark. This is a massive, hangar-like shop full of the most unbelievably cheap clothes. It's mayhem - Sandy reckoned there were more garments on the floor in there than there would be hanging in most NZ shops - but it is incredibly cheap. Neither of us can figure out how they do this - it's practically disposable fashion - and I have a suspicion the answer is not good, ethical or environmentally friendly. But, we were freezing, and using NZ dollars. 
We had booked for three days into a hotel we found on lastminute.com. We've been doing this all trip, and mostly it's worked out pretty well for us. This time, it turned into a bit of a Fawlty-Towers-style experience. The hotel, in Paddington, had only been open a month, and billed itself as four stars, luxury, "with all the facilities the frequent traveler requires". This would be true, if the frequent traveler did not require air conditioning, an elevator, internet access, room service or a glass of wine. Our room was on the fourth floor, up eight flights of stairs. The room was boiling hot, so much so that we were forced to sleep with the window wide open (it was 10 degrees outside) and sleep on top of the bed. Forget that the room was only just slightly larger than the bed, and the power went off on the last morning as we were trying to shower and dress. We had a robust discussion with the manager about all this, before departing for Bond Street, where we checked into a real hotel, the Westbury. Sandy used to stay here years ago when he traveled for business, and I can see why. We have a lovely big room ( at a nice temperature), friendly service (doors opened, "hello" said), and a brilliant location just around the corner from Oxford Circus and the one shop anyone who's anyone needs to visit in London: TopShop.
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