Monday, August 12, 2013

One Aunt Took Us Out To Lunch!


One of the man's Aunts was most happy to take us out to lunch. She hasn't seen the man for eons and doesn't come up to London often, and we haven't managed to catch her during the past few trips. Of course we don't bother visiting all relatives whenever we're in town. We simply sit down with the ones we're closer to.

Born and bred in London, this Aunt has since packed and upped to live in Cumbria. Living in an elegant cottage where she proudly grows her own vegetables, she very much enjoys the pace of life here. She lives just an hour out from the little town we were stopping at for two days. We offered to drive out to her (nowhere is unsearchable when we're powered by GPS), but she insisted on driving to us instead, and drove us around.

She graciously arranged for lunch at Holbeck Ghyll's beautiful restaurant where she's a fan of head chef David McLaughlin. Ooh, nice! We were wondering if to stay here while in the area, but were persuaded by The Punch Bowl Inn. Now we got to chill out at Holbeck Ghyll for the afternoon, and take another short walk around the estate. Hurrah. Food, was good, as expected. Most satisfying. We've been eating ridiculously well.

Within 15 minutes, we decided that we would drop affixing 'Aunt' as a term of address and simply address her by name. The man's more or less decided that she's going to be his favorite Aunt ever. Hahahahah. As if he doesn't have enough a secret army of favorite Aunts lurking around. She's that sort of cool and hip Aunt. Like mine. HEEEEEEEE. She's acquainted with my Aunts too, though not through us. She knew them from work in London. Yeah, the world is that small.

Conversation simply flew. She doesn't feel like a generation older, although we struggled very hard to describe to her what's 'post-prog-rock'. She decided to break it down for us in terms of time progressions and rhythm, and got it totally when we described Icelandic-scapes and put on Sigur Rós and Opeth in the car for her. She promised that she would insist on taking us out to an evening of opera in London. UGGGH. We'd love to see her...but...we need to convince her to do other things instead. If there's one thing the man and I agree on in music, it would be musicals and operas; we can't bear to sit through them. As it is, there's a family outing to La Traviata in Singapore in September that we'll squirm out of.

What a lovely lovely day out.

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