God-denier, Richard Dawkins allegedly uttered, ‘I detest Jingle Bells, White Christmas, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and the obscene spending bonanza that nowadays seems to occupy not just December, but November…’ Taking a more positive view of the eleventh month are our top trio of bloggers…
We begin with cheerful ‘long term expat’, Emma, who charts, through her Technicolor site, ‘the wild and wonderful English way of life a decade on from landing on the Heathrow tarmac…’
The Clementine team loved reading, over several posts, her discovery of Bordeaux with her British husband of seven years – particularly so their stay at Château Pape-Clement:
‘To say our stay was a Downton Abbey style dream simply wouldn’t give enough credit to the care and attention we were shown. We were greeted by name, taken on a mini-tour of the castle-like Château, where Bernard Magrez works each day, and shown to our breathtaking suite of master bedroom, study-second bedroom and marble bathroom…’
True to the site’s name, Adrian Long’s The Hedonist is a cleverly written vehicle depicting his take on ‘the hottest new London restaurants and bars, delicious and sometimes sinful recipes, exciting trends in travel and art as well as the coolest music in town.’
The musician, composer and record producer ‘who loves to have a good time’ quotes Oscar Wilde in his bio: ‘The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself…’
We found his narrative of a pre-dawn Muscadet-focused mission to London’s foremost fish larder riveting:
‘Forty five minutes later I’m somewhere called Billingsgate which is full of dead fish and a motley crew of desperados. I must be in on a big heist job. Or maybe I’m dead?-sleeping with the fishes as the mafia boys say…’
Our final blog of November is written by the extremely enthusiastic Binny, a Kenyan in London who ‘loves cooking, baking and eating out.’ Her site draws inspiration from the quest to ‘strike a balance in my life between being a career woman and wife.’ She writes: ‘it wasn’t till the past year or so where I actually found cooking to be the perfect way to unwind from a long day at work and now I find being a home chef is really fun! What’s more it honestly doesn’t take that long. Just need to have a bit of organisation and a spot of multitasking!’
We particularly liked Binny’s Gift Guide for Diwali as well as her (first) book review for I am Malala.
‘I truly believe everyone deserves a basic right to education. Malala, in my eyes, is truly a courageous young lady who was not scared to speak up on behalf of all the girls in Pakistan (and across the world) on the right of girls to an education. I really am in awe of that as at her age I would never have had the courage to do anything like that…’
