In which I show myself to be an utter piggy wiggy

To celebrate the boy's birthday, we went out for a nice dinner last night. I'd actually tried to book a table at his favourite restaurant, The Great India, but apparently they won't take bookings for twosomes for Saturday nights. It must be all the large groups of Give-me-yer-hottest-curry folk who, having drunk the pubs dry, need to fill their stomachs with something challenging.

So we went to The Recovery Room, which used to be the hardly-missed Malo, and before that the very-much-missed John Street Grill.

When I eat out, dessert is pretty much compulsory, so I told the boy I intended to skip the starters and just order a mains and a dessert. But the boy insisted that we both get starters, because he had his eye on the scallops with the black pudding pancakes.

So, against my better judgement, I ordered the selection of warm breads - 6 thick slabs! - with olive oil and a nutty dip.

(FYI, the boy's main was an excitingly-described lamb rump with roast potatoes. Both it and the scallops caused him to roll his eyes back in ecstasy. I had the intriguing chocolate pasta with grilled haloumi bits, a very "meaty" vegetarian dish which I couldn't finish 'cos it was too rich.)

And after all that, I still wanted dessert. This wasn't anything to do with physical hunger, oh no. It was the call of the creme brulee accompanied by almond biscotti and raspberry sorbet.

Yummy as it was though, I was too full to do it justice. I really didn't want our romantic dinner to be marred by digestive failure (again).

The boy playfully admonished me for not cleaning my plate.

"I knew I should've just ordered main and dessert", I retorted. "It's your fault for making me order a starter".

"Yeah but you only ate half of it" he replied.

"It was a starter for two!". (Okay, maybe you had to be there.)

All in all, it was a lovely evening out, despite the icy winds and the unexpected rain (possibly because I'd had the foresight to wear my hooded sheepskin coat - the boy however, got a little wet and cold around the ears). The boy can be difficult to please when it comes to eateries, so it was nice when he announced it as being "pricey but really good". My own opinion would be "Good, but pricey".

Valentine's Day via the stomach

I had the problem I always have when it's time to get the boy a gift - I don't want to spend up large because I'm not bringing in a heck of a lot of bacon, and anyway he's probably only going to want computer peripherals anyway.

So I did what I always do. I put it off until it was too late to do anything really cool, like organise a geek-o-gram or surround his workstation with embarrassingly cute photos of me 'n' him 'n' The Little Madam.

This afternoon TLM and I went out for a walk to the shops and bought the boy a nice litte card. It's got a picture of a fluffy middle-aged couple and the words "Soul Mates" on the front, with the word "Forever" on the inside. That's probably the most touchy-feely I've ever gotten in my choice of Valentine's Day cards. Then I bought him a bottle of Chardonnay just to be sure.

The boy's Valentine's Day prezzies to me were actually presented yesterday - a sweet bunch of blog-pink roses, adorably too short for the one vase I possess, and a heart-shaped, berry-topped chocolate cake that looks solid enough to substitute for Elven bread during a long march to Mordor.

But, as the boy said, it's good for you because there's fruit on it.