My Book Club

Yesterday evening I met with my Book Club at the Observatory Hotel in Sydney. Books & Nooks booked out the presidential suite on the top floor and sat in a circle on gilded, antique chairs, drinking French Martinis and eating canapes, whilst beauty therapists from the Observatory Hotel manicured and polished our nails - (I chose a shiny, cherry red and I keep looking at it on my nails as I type)!

Oh, we also discussed the text, that we had read this month. An English lecturer convened the discussion and at times our opinions varied greatly. One lady and I(she a psychologist, who no doubt psychoanalysed me) - did not share the same opinion about one particular character in the book. Things got a bit heated, which was great - it was so good to really get into the text with someone.

Afterwards, I met my date - Paul, in the bar. At the bar, I got quite a taste for the French Martinis that had been brought around to us on silver trays at our book club meeting - so I continued drinking them throughout the evening. Note: Ask for for your French Martini shaken with fresh pineapple pieces and garnished with a big, chunk of fresh pineapple, it gives a taste of ....Bermuda? Hawaii? The Maldives? At least that's where I thought I was last night...

In the restaurant I then ordered a clear Pipi soup infused with lemongrass, ginger and God only knows what else, but it was so good, so refreshing that it tasted like the very 'broth of life' itself and I made it my business to tell the chef this exact thing. I don't, however, quite know that Yomo knew exactly where I was coming from. Yomo's broth was so nourishing - it could bring back the dead. It felt like it had cleansed my body and my soul. This man - the head chef can seriously cook. I think of my batches of blueberry muffins and Smoked Salmon Pasta and they are lame and ordinary suburban concoctions in comparison.

The rack of lamb that we ate next did not disappoint. It was encrusted in garlic and shinju mushrooms and the crust was black. Seriously if Yomo told me it were derived from boot polish, which is what it looked like, I would have continued to eat it after I took my first bite - the flavour was phenomenal and cutting the lamb was like slicing a hot knife through butter. Chewing was optional.

Paul and I returned to our room for the night to find that someone had been in our quarters! Paul initially thought it was a 'robber', however, on closer inspection the 'robber' had a fetish for classical music as well as an obsessive compulsive disorder. Classical music was playing. The quilt on our bed had been pulled down and our bed sheet neatly folded back and tucked in. They, he or she had put a bottle of water in a weird, sleeping-bag-type-holder on each of our bedside tables. They had also cleaned up my makeup that had been strewn about the marble vanity and they had also folded my nightie and placed it on the wing backed chair! The staff at the Observatory could not have been more attentive and left no stone unturned. Get thyself there!

We also had a spa before I went to my Book Club meeting and we looked at the stars on the 'ceiling' of the pool. Paul was in his element- it being a Hotel that promotes the whole Observatory/Science/Astronomy theme. Over dinner in the 'Galileo' Restaurant, Paul enlightened me on all that Galileo actually did for us in our modern age! Fascinating really...