Well hello there, I’m now a fully vaccinated member of society!
As of 2.15pm on Wednesday I’m double jabbed!
I have no idea how or why I got my second jab at 8 weeks, rather than the usual UK gap of 12 weeks. I have now overtaken all of my older friends and got jab 2 before them. Weird huh?
Anyway, I’m happy, I’m free (or I will be in 2 weeks).
Huge huge thank you to the NHS, huge thank you to my GP surgery for putting me forward for it.
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So what’s new? Well I can now be used as a 5G cell tower! Hahahahaha. Do you remember way back when, where people were saying that sort of shite!?
Where do they come from? :)
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The biggest thing to happen in my social calendar this year was our long awaited, long overdue trip to The Savoy!
We had it booked for my birthday last year, Christmas, well, Boxing Day night anyway, our 25th wedding anniversary and my birthday this year.
The three prior occasions were hit by lockdowns. Every single time.
We kept booking it, and then we’d go into lockdown. At one point it seemed almost as if you could guarantee a lockdown if we had a trip to The Savoy booked. So I do apologise for any inconvenience we may have caused you. Hahahahaha
Well, we finally managed to go. And as I always say to others, and try to remember to live by myself, ‘anything worth having is worth waiting for’.
I’m very impatient though, so I have to reiterate this over and over again in my mind.
We have been visiting The Savoy for meals at the Grill, Kaspers and the Thames Foyer for afternoon tea, for years, but we have never stayed overnight at the hotel before.
It’s an absolute corker. I would recommend.
I have been blessed and lucky enough to stay at some of the finest hotels in the world. We stayed at The Beverly Wilshire, in Beverly Hills, we’ve stayed at The George V in Paris. We stayed in Oberoi hotels in Delhi, Jaipur and Agra.
We’ve stayed at Le Manoir Aux Quat’Saisons in Oxfordshire, we have stayed at the beautiful Burgh Island Hotel in Devon too.
I have been very lucky and I’m very grateful for those amazing experiences. But I have always had a yearning to stay at The Savoy. It’s iconic. It’s an incredible place.
The issue I have is, if you are going to such an iconic hotel, that is the destination. So you don’t want to leave it. Most of the time when we are in London, we have plans that would mean leaving said hotel. Therefore hardly worth the extravagance, because that’s exactly what it is. We could stay in a perfectly nice hotel for a fraction of the price if we’ve got other plans out and about, and we do.
So this trip was planned with that in mind. We did my birthday present hunting trip on the Monday prior to us going to the Savoy on the Friday.
The plan was to arrive Friday and never leave until Sunday afternoon.
We did actually end up going out for a meal on the Friday night because we couldn’t get booked into any restaurants in The Savoy for that particular night.
But that was fantastic as I love Chutney Mary. We were there Monday and Friday night, if I lived closer I’d be there every night. :)
Staying at The Savoy - come to that staying at any hotel, 5 star, 3, star, 1 star or none star I have to prep for it the same way.
There are things that cause me some anxiety. I have found ways round them now, after years of practice.
Having a colostomy doesn’t smell in day to day life, well, it shouldn’t anyway. Possibly trying different bags would help with that if you are getting regular leaks. But having a colostomy and changing the bag stinks, honestly, I don’t know if it’s just me (I’d find that a bit hard to believe and a tad galling) but bag change time is ripe. It makes me a little gaggy, sometimes, depending on what I’ve been eating. But at home I have privacy and and plenty of windows to open.
Now, no one, absolutely no one wants to stink out a hotel room with a bag change. It’s somewhat unfortunate and a bit of a buzz kill.
So I pray for a few things. 1, good extractor fans in the bathroom, and 2 opening windows to allow air flow in.
I also pack my secret weapons in ‘operation fresh air’.
So, this is in my must take pack. Proper Ostomy room spray. Make sure you definitely get the Ostomy ones. Because believe me, normal air freshener is a toxic mix!
A friend and I nearly passed out from the disgusting smell when I tried to use a normal air freshener when we stayed at a hotel once. She said she’d actually prefer no room spray at all, to having to smell the bag change/room spray combo.
I have no idea why normal room sprays aren’t great. But I have noticed the droplets from the Ostomy sprays are bigger, so maybe they do more to capture smells.
There are plenty of Ostomy room spray options, I can’t get mine on the NHS anymore, I’ve no idea why. But they are worth paying out for.
I don’t tend to use them at home, so that does keep the cost down.
I also use the little freebie tester bottles of perfume, I pick up when I’m buying full size perfume.
They can be handy in combination with an Ostomy room spray or on their own. Again, the droplets are bigger so maybe that’s why it works. Who knows, I ain’t no scientist! ;)
So that’s tip number 1. Tip number 2, for weekends away is;
I quadruple, or even quintuple layer my disposal bags. I appreciate this is not very eco friendly but my main objective and concerns are not the environment at this point. I’m sorry to say that rather selfishly I am only thinking of my immediate environment and my roommate mates, and also, house keeping that have to tidy up after me. 4 or 5 layers of disposing bags seems to be the least I can do.
As long as I remember to pack Ostomy room spray and plenty of the disposing bags I can stay as merrily as anyone else at any hotel in the world.
So let’s get to this trip:
Well, first off I treated myself to a few new outfits. You don’t have to dress up for 5 star hotels at all. In fact Prince or pauper a very good hotel will treat the clientele just the same.
But you know me, any excuse, I love a little shopping trip, and I’ve grown out of most of my other clothes.
Dress from Kate Spade, Long sleeved top from M&S, Shoes from Louis Vuitton
I popped to Tesco before our trip to London. And a very eagle eyed, very clever lady, happened to recognise me from my blogs, which a mutual friend posts weekly on her Facebook. I was stunned and delighted, and more than anything incredibly impressed, because I can hardly recognise my own friends in face masks, and this rather clever lady recognised me from photographs and masked up.
I was absolutely made up. How lovely that my blogs are being read and enjoyed. I write them and post them but I never really know the faces behind the screens reading them.
So I’d like to say thank you to her, and thank you to my friend Hazel for posting my blogs. Xx
Oooh I love this dress, it feels so nice on too.
Dressed up with a pair of nice wedges, or dressed down with trainers, it’s just a great, classic, classy dress…it’s a pain in the arse though as it turns out to be dry clean only. Arrgggh!!
We arrived by car, always helpful I find. That way I can take more than I need and know that there are back ups locally. Stoma supplies are very rarely sold over the counter in the UK, and I’d say almost zero chance of being in stock, available that day. So I feel more confident and comfortable with spares in the vicinity.
What a beautiful sight. :)
We were upgraded to a river view room by the Savoy team, which I was so shocked, but so happy about. As we had very few plans to leave the room it was perfect (I took a lot of reading material actually, get your minds out of the gutter hahahaha).
This trip was 48 years in the making. It absolutely lived up to all expectation.
The room was beautiful. And filled with spectacular flowers. One from Belinda and the Savoy flowers team, and one from our friend that works for Boodles.
I felt like a princess, or at the very least a Duchess. :)
It was incredibly special.
Things I now know for next time - The Savoy has a pool. Take cossies. I had no idea. Plus book restaurant bookings when you book the room. Not that it was a huge problem for us as we managed to get tables when needed for lunch time.
We booked Chutney Mary because, well, we love curry and all things Indian.
Dress from Ralph Lauren, Shoes from Louboutin
Again, you don’t need to get dolled up for Chutney Mary, I’ve been in jeans many times. But I wanted to get all gussied up because I bought this beautiful dress a few days before and wanted to wear it. :)
(Huge thanks to Claire at RL for helping me choose new dresses. :) Chris however, not thanking you ;) hahah
I forgot to photograph the rest of the food. I am a gannet and I just ploughed in. But it was all beautiful and more importantly, delicious.
We had a fantastic evening.
Then it was back home (hotel home) for bed.
Do you remember me going off alarming about those ridiculously expensive, rather low quality pyjamas from Victoria’s Secret last week.
Well I was determined to get myself some for a lot less than £80!
And I achieved that very easily.
Top from Hollister, shorts from M&S, both from our local discount village. I believe the combo came to £18.
I looked online and found loads of pyjamas for very reasonable sums of money, even from The White Company and John Lewis. So the question remains, who is buying the Vikki Secret’s ones??
The beds are beyond comfortable, and huge! I kept having to check Chris was still there all through the night.
We came back to the room from dinner to find the turn down team had made our return extra special. How beautiful is that!!
I didn’t know what to do with them, it seemed such a shame to bin them, so I bagged them up and brought them home. :)
Can’t and would never skip the most important meal of the day.
Well that’s a lie, I did try the fasting (12-8) diet thing but it gave me crippling constipation, so I gave up on that and decided to be the size I am because it’s no one’s business but my own. And as I happen to like how I look it’s all that counts. :)
We had no plans at all. We were just happy to enjoy enjoying the hotel.
Ben and Kaitlyn were in town for a Banksy exhibition. We invited them to join us for lunch.
The only problem is the restaurant we could get in was the seafood one. Ben has a very narrow palette. I think he’d eat a McDonald’s Fillet O fish but other than that and and a prawn or two and he’s done.
So we had drinks at Solas, the temporary, pop up restaurant, which was put in place for just this year (more on that later).
We then went to our room and ordered room service for 4.
I love room service. I’d never had it before about 3 years ago. I had always been scared it would be really expensive. But even in the Savoy, it’s simply a £5 extra charge on top of anything you order from the menu. So we paid £5 extra for this all to be brought to our room, which would be the same charge if you simply had a pot of coffee brought to the room. I say stack it high and get your monies worth! Hahahahaha. I’m all class, me. :)
The food was fantastic. It made the experience all the better to have the amazing view from our window, and our beautiful little visitors.
We feel very lucky that we get to spend time with our boys and their partners. I’ve never been one for ‘oh my baby/child is my best friend’, but I love that we are great friends with our kids now they are adults… and their friends come to that.
They headed off for more London fun, and we chilled out…reading books in our room. :)
And then we got ready for our meal at Solas. Solas is a pop up restaurant for May and June. It was born of covid restrictions, I really wanted to experience it, because it’s not likely to ever happen again. Dear god I hope we don’t have another pandemic in my lifetime. I’m pretty much over this one now!
Dress from Karl Largerfeld. Shoes from Dior.
These shoes are both beautiful and horrifically evil, the pain!! The pain! I think my feet need to get used to being back in high, pointy shoes after 15 months in slippers. ;)
The decor in Solas is magical. It’s elegant, simple and very effective. I really want to recreate it in our garden tent, but my creative director isn’t so keen.
We ate a delicious meal of seafood. I really enjoyed it. Chris became very quiet. I had no idea why. But apparently after he eats seafood, very occasionally he feels sick. Nothing to do with the quality of the food, it was very superior quality, and he doesn’t have an allergy or anything. It apparently just happens very occasionally.
Well because he’s married to an absolute nutcase, germaphobe, he felt he couldn’t mention it, because I would have lost the plot. I’d love to say “oh my god of course I wouldn’t”, but I would, I really really would.
Someone feeling sick is the biggest trigger of anxiety, panic and borderline mania for me.
So the poor thing just kept quiet about it. But really really quiet.
I wasn’t quite sure what was the matter. But something was up.
I suggested a walk, which I enjoyed very much, I assumed he had. But he was too busy concentrating on not being sick.
I wish he could have explained, and I wish I wasn’t so neurotic that my head wouldn’t have exploded if he had.
I think that’s the greatest, most thoughtful gift he’s ever given me. He gave me a night off of anxiety, so I could enjoy our special stay at the Savoy… And I will be forever grateful, he is the best human I’ve ever met.
He was fine by morning, which was handy because we ordered room service breakfast and I ordered enough for 3. I saw something on the menu I hadn’t tried before, so I thought I would. And as there was no one but us to see that I’d ordered 2 breakfasts, 3 if you include the fruit plate, I thought I might as well.
I will never forget waking to this view.
Or this view.
I was telling my mum that we had breakfast in the room. She didn’t know how they manage to get it to you still hot, and nor did I until 3 years ago.
Mystery of hot. room service food is now solved. There’s a hot box on a trolley, and the table pulls out from that.
Genius really.
I very much enjoyed all my breakfasts.
We had a very lazy morning, I couldn’t not really as I’d eaten two breakfasts and a fruit plate.
We then got up, got ready and went for a bit of an explore.
We couldn’t believe how close to Covent Garden we had been all this time. London is a funny place. Everything seems so far apart but actually it’s a tiny area.
We had a stroll to Trafalgar Square, and generally enjoyed soaking up a Sunday morning in London.
Track suit from Ralph Lauren. Bag from Gucci, Shoes from Louis Vuitton.
Honestly, one of the best weekends I’ve ever had. Proper dream come true stuff. Handily the weather was shocking so staying in felt perfectly fine.
We came home, somewhat deflated, and a rather nasty case of anticlimax set it.
So I unpacked, put the washing on and repurposed the rose petals from our beautiful room.
Chris was very impressed that I not only got them home in one piece. But managed a pretty good heart shape too.
What an incredible weekend. :) I feel very blessed.
So back home, and back to reality. One of my reality’s is table scaping…no, really it is, I’ve kept it quiet all this time but it’s true. Hahahahaha
Anyway, what with the table scaping addiction, and now lusting for a coffee pot so I can serve hot chocolate in it like they do in the Savoy…I decided I needed a car boot sale. And rather handily there’s one on a week day near me.
So off I toddled.
Viola!
So let me explain this boot sale haul.
I wanted a coffee pot for my Savoy style hot chocolates. I saw loads, and I’m so glad I waited for the perfect one. The lady was tucked right out of the thoroughfare and I wasn’t even going to bother walking over, but I’m so glad I did.
This coffee pot is perfect. In condition as well as exactly what I was after, as it compliments nicely my existing dinner service.
The lady was quite posh, she said ‘it’s a good one’. I had no reason to disbelieve her, and with good reason as it turns out.
I came home and had a google, they’re selling online second had for £38, so it must have been very pricey new.
Also, I’m obsessed with Mrs. Alice’s website, but not so enamoured with her prices so I try to reproduce her looks for less.
I feel I did ok with my bird. It’s not perfect or identical, but it’s close enough…and the price point is far more appealing.
My new boot sale coffee pot was £3 and my little bird was £2
Compare that to £38 for the second hand pot on line and Mrs.Alice’s parakeets at £238 for the pair…
All in all. It’s been an amazing week so far. Fingers crossed that lasts.
As I said, I’m now double jabbed as of Wednesday.
I can’t believe I was panicking back at the beginning of March about when I would get my first jab. And here I am. Mid May, double jabbed. Before a lot of my golden oldie friends too. How weird is that.
Hello life, see you properly in 2 weeks, where I will hit the streets, licking strangers again….
…apologies, dyslexia, I will be liking strangers again!
HahahhahahahahahahHahahah
Keep well. xx.