A night out

Where does the time go? Can't believe my last blog was on Monday!
So what has been happening since then? Well, I was out for supper on Tuesday night! A couple of customers who come regularly to the shop invited me to join them for "food and drinks". It was at Julia's flat, an upstairs apartment in one of the older houses of Peebles. You get to her place through a narrow passage between buildings - what we call a close, or a pend - round to the back, and up a curly outside stair to the front door.
Once inside it was immediately obvious how arty Julia is! The whole place was delightfully "bohemian" with walls painted with brightly coloured naive flowers, mismatched furniture, Indian throws, old painted chairs... in the kitchen diner there were gorgeous old pine cupboards on the walls, shelves full of kitchen stuff and others crammed with ornaments, papier mache fish on the wall, a weirdly shaped overhead lampshade homemade from paper..... and amongst other treasures, a rubber duck - a plucked one! It was wonderful.
Three of Julia's friends were already there, Chris, Ian and Jo, and eventually Cath blew in! We'd already begun to tuck into the cheese and olives, and the bottles were open, the wine flowing! Julia was cooking something that smelled delicious in a large orange casserole, which when dished up WAS absolutely delicious - like paella but made with quinoa (keenwa), with chopped up veggies and prawns. That was followed by a very rich chocolate torte brought by Jo, and all accompanied by, and followed by, copious glasses of vino rosso and rose. They have wonderful names for wine these days, I suppose to encourage young folk to try it. It's not just Chateau this or that any more, but Laid Back Ruby, the Big Chill, etc. I can definitely recommend the Fish Eye rose!
Well, the conversation veered from the intellectually sublime to the completely bawdy ridiculous, and what a great time we had. I think I got home around 1.30 a.m. and feeling remarkably sober for the amount of wine I had consumed!