Hana Yori Dango

Posted on 2016/02/03 22:11:24 (February 2016).

[Saturday 30th January 2016]
I had originally planned to go to Cheltenham today for the Festival Trials Day, which was to be a day off from parenting as my reward for having looked after Erika singlehandedly for ten days whilst Chie was in Japan at the end of December / start of January.

However, after Thursday's ridiculous excess I thought I should probably have a complete break from drinking for a few days, and it was hard to imagine going to Cheltenham without a glass of Champagne in the Golden Miller bar, amidst the tweed wearing classes (in many ways the main point of going), so I decided just to stay in London.

Instead, I joined Chie, Erika, and one of Chie's "Mamatomo" and her daughter for dimsum in Chinatown. We went to Golden Phoenix, which to me isn't a patch on Joy King Lau, but maybe that was just a vegetarian bias. Quality of the food aside though it all felt very wholesome and heartwarming and I was confident I'd made the right decision.

The title of this post is a well known Japanese proverb - "hana yori dango" - which means "dumplings above flowers".

The girls were going to a show after lunch, so I left them to it at that point and instead headed back in the direction of home, and did a bit of shopping en route, then spent the remainder of the afternoon cleaning the flat. Again, probably a form of penance for Thursday's over indulgence.

For dinner I made something I referred to as goulash (because it had lots of paprika in it) but I suspect would be unrecognisable to somebody from Hungary. Either way it seemed to be quite well received.

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