I am writing this whilst sitting in blissful luxury in the gorgeous lounge of the Royal York hotel.
Mark is reading his book and we are waiting for our cocktails to arrive. I am having something wonderfully dodgy with bourbon and he is having one which is made up almost entirely of things that I have never heard of. it is called a Black Bison, and apart from the cassis, which I know is blackcurrants, the rest of it is a mystery.
The lounge is lots of gentle shades of silvery grey, and there is a cream rose on our table. We have had a lovely day, and are curled up in comfortable armchairs with fat stuffed cushions in front of the enormous windows. I have given up on smart, and am wearing a comfortable T-shirt and jeans and flip flops, and hopefully added my pearl necklace and earrings to try and give the impression that I am middle class really, just incognito.
It has been, and still is being, a gorgeous, glorious, happy day.
I don’t think I have got the words to describe the joyful, intriguing milling about that we have done. We have wandered all around the alleys and byways of York and looked at everything.
We got up pleasantly late to clear skies and brilliant sunshine, and ate a huge breakfast with superb mushrooms and sausages. After that we put on our favourite thick wool coats and scarves and bounded outside into the wonderful fresh morning.
We started off in the museum gardens, which have got lots of interesting plants, like a hornbeam tree and things, but I wanted to see the squirrels. The ruined abbey there has got the fattest, sleekest, most optimistic squirrels that I have ever come across anywhere, if they think you might have a sandwich that you are willing to share, they will come and paw at your ankles hopefully. In consequence of lots of people being prepared to share their sandwiches some of the squirrels are now almost too fat to get up the trees.
We watched the squirrels, and walked by the overflowing river, and looked at the gardens: then we went on to a place called the Barley House which is a renovated pre-Tudor house in the middle of town. There is not an enormous amount to see there, but we were in there for well over an hour and a half, because Mark got into conversation with a tour guide, and before long we were lost in a discussion of fireplaces and ceilings and Tudor renovations and the tour guide was showing us the builders’ marks that they made when they were matching up the beams.
When we left he shook Mark’s hand, and both of them said happily how much they had learned from one another. If anybody should like to know how you might make a window out of a cow’s horn, I can now help you out, what a day of learning I have had.
After that we went on to the Castle museum, which is ace, it is history for the masses with accompanying waxworks, which is exactly what I like.
There is a Victorian street and a couple of dungeons and a heartbreaking exhibition of tragic things from World War One, and a toy section, and a 1960s display, which made us feel old. They are refurbishing part of it to do a new exhibition of women’s underwear through the ages, which Mark thought hopefully that we might come back and visit, he can bring Oliver and they can do the Railway Museum at the same time.
We had coffee in the museum and were astounded to find out that it was already four o’ clock when we came out, which meant that our day was almost over. We went shopping and bought a cinnamon candle and some more Hotel Chocolats, and went to a restaurant which did an intriguing combination of lots of different small plates of things, so we had some Thai food and some sweet potatoes with yoghurt, and some Argentinian prawns, and something very spicy made out of duck, along with some very large glasses of red wine, which made it a bit difficult to find our way back to the hotel.
We considered having a swim and doing some exercise when we got back, but we didn’t. Instead we retired to the Lounge to drink cocktails and loaf about, which is where you find us now.
We might do some exercise tomorrow if we get up early enough.
That is not at all true really. We almost certainly won’t.
