Half-term, Halloween and Guy Fawkes night celebrations for our girl

Posted on 8/11/09

A friend of a friend who lives in one of the gorgeous buildings among the circle of former artist homes surrounding Lord Leighton’s (currently under restoration) had some furniture stored in her garage that she was keen to find a home for. Another friend of a friend of hers also had two beds stored in the same garage. The owner of the beds organised the removals through her friend and I met the removal guys, who found it rather amusing that none of us connected to the garage knew each other. The removal company was none other than Edwards Removals, which carries the Royal Warrant, so the two men must have found their job even more amusing when they moved my landlord’s furniture: one £7.99 Ikea side table, one heavily stained sofa and four cheap pine chairs from my studio into storage. However, they remained professional throughout and offered to wrap the sofa in protective plastic – although, in hindsight, perhaps they just wanted to hide the sorry thing – and regaled me with celeb stories such as the Cruises once requiring 14 strong guys to move one huge marble table.

A friend recently came up from Brighton for a night out, so the opening of Miss Q’s, the rock ‘n’ roll pool bar, diner and live music saloon on Earl’s Court Road was perfect timing. Owned by Nick Valentine (of Molton House and Cuckoo Club) and Eddie Bloom, son of Jamie Bloom (former owner of the legendary Rainbow Theatre), we had high expectations, which the music and décor lived up to. Nick seemed to be the biggest fan of the Elvis impersonator, though, and while the girls had all the made the effort and looked gorgeous, my poor friend couldn’t seem to shake off a middle-aged geek.

As last week was half-term, my teacher friend came up to London for a couple of days. I do feel for teachers not being able to escape kids during their time off. Anyway, we managed to have a relaxed breakfast at Tom’s Kitchen and hit Anish Kapoor’s fab exhibition before the crowds formed. We also had a rather disappointing afternoon tea with some friends at Baglioni. A good tip I’ve since learnt from a friend is to order one afternoon tea between two and an extra tea, thus avoiding food and money waste. My current favourite is The Dorchester’s.

I thought I’d be able to work off the tea with a boxercise class at Kitts Nightclub on Sloane Square. Our trained boxing instructor knew her stuff, but she hadn’t been prepared for the small space, sticky floor and pillar. She assured us the class would be changed to work round these problems – perhaps she could put some padding round the pillar for us all to punch… Failing that, we could cover ourselves in padding so we needn’t worry about colliding into each other during the warm-up.

I noticed more people made an effort for Halloween this year. I saw plenty of bloody outfits on the way to a friend’s party off Ladbroke Grove. I also thought Cleveland Square looked gorgeous for Guy Fawkes night. Projectors lit up the grand Victorian terraces and a classical soundtrack accompanied the fireworks. We had to cover our eyes from the fallout, though. I must admit my favourite display is at Ravenscourt Park – maybe it’s the number of young kids who bring out the kid in the adults. Ooh! Aah!