There was gossip to be analysed, so the sisters and I decamped to Bluebird for lunch. I arrived at 11.47am but, as it was a sunny, bank holiday Monday, the patio was full and there was already a queue of glossy people dehydrating, quietly and patiently, whilst they waited for a table. I went upstairs, where it was much cooler. The only thing about my current penchant for shoulder pads (“what’s wrong with your normal shoulders?” said one friend, completely missing the point much as he’d just missed my entire arm during a hug by bouncing off the aforementioned item in my jacket), is that you get a bit hotter than normal concealing statement foam about your person.
So, inside it was. As I surveyed the noisy rabble below, with an icy eyebrow and a powerful cucumber martini, I felt content. Then my sisters arrived and asked me why I was wearing stupid shoulder pads.
We proceeded through cocktails with only the most minor of disputes. We’re more King Lear princesses than Disney princesses, as sisters go, but, after a brief game of musical chairs, this was pretty amicable. More cucumber martinis and then the spirit du jour, or at least it was a few months ago- I lose track, pisco with passionfruit. We had the 3 course set lunch menu, reasonable at £25 a head with a glass of wine. We split our starters as neatly as our doubles matches into two butter lettuce salads with champagne vinaigrette, and two mini kilner jars of potted, salted beef and toast. Both were popular, although I thought the salad was a bit basic and was more of a side order. It had no ‘good bits’ in it, if you see what I mean. Nuts, avocadoes, tomatoes, spring onions, cheese, bacon…the things that turn a ‘salad’ into a SALAD.
Main courses were two pork bellies with mash, one pea risotto, and my order, the joke, a piece of salmon so small that it looked like a starter. It was good, but genuinely half the size of everyone else’s, which didn’t help our natural sibling rivalry. Cleopatra killed her sister, you know.
Normally I will swap any obligatory pudding order for cheese, but this didn’t appear to be an option so I went for the tiramisu, which at least has mascarpone in it. I was also able to regale the table with the factoid about it meaning ‘pick me up’ in Italian. The withering looks were balm for the soul. Sister number 2 ordered a sticky toffee pudding with banana, and asked if the bananas could be left off. The waiter laughed at her because apparently the bananas were part of the sponge. I think, if you’re going to laugh at your customers, you should at least know that the fruit in sticky toffee pudding, if any, is normally dates. The incident at least provided a moment of solidarity between us, as we tend to close ranks when threatened externally. The pudding was good when it arrived, except they had cunningly disguised the clotted cream as a nice scoop of ice cream, leading to much exaggerated gurning when Sister number 2 dug in. This time, we laughed more than the waiter.
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| Mine's the water |
