The beast book; or "all poshed up and no way to phone"

The beast is getting tamer... it is down to about 94,ooo words. I've deleted all the big chunks I think I reasonably can without having to adjust the arguments. I've chucked most of the bits that say what I'm going to say next. A whole lot of footnotes have gone to God. Now I'm just scrolling through it at random making sentences shorter. Limit of one adjective per sentence.

Anyway onto more pleasurable things: yesterday was our 2nd wedding anniversary so Richard and I treated ourselves to dinner at Forty One. It was partly chosen because they have a lot of vegetarian options. I had the "potager" which is a vegetarian degustation meal of seven small courses. Everything was beautiful but there were two highlights. One was the truffled organic creamed eggs, which combined the high comfort of scrambled eggs and that deep truffle flavour that always makes me think of moss. The other was the tiny beetroot jelly, which had a perfect thumbprint on its glossy purple surface (I think that was unintentional, and I wouldn't even have seen it if the light had been slightly different). It was glorious being so high above Sydney... we had a window table & watched the harbour getting slowly darker and all the city lights coming on.

Although I really enjoy them I always feel a little out of place in posh restaurants, coming from Marrickville in my 1985 Honda. I look around at the other people there and wonder if it's a special occasion for them too or just a normal night out. Do they live in mansions? Do they drive Porsches? Do they holiday in the South of France and shop on Rodeo Drive? I identify more with the waiting staff (I was a waitress for years) than the other clients and probably say "thank you" too much. I head off to the toilets to check out the flower arrangements and the little rolled towels for drying your hands. I savour every sip of champagne. Last night I would even have called the kids from the mobile to tell them all about it, except that I had no credit in my pre-paid account as all the cash was going on the dinner!