Every mother's dream

London was everything I had been dreaming about since I booked my plane ticket a few months ago.  The flight was a delicious haze of sleep interspersed with food and watching Bridesmaids, The Waitress and Something Borrowed.  As we ploughed through the blue sky over the familiar curve of the Thames I felt wide awake and refreshed.  Within two hours of the wheels touching down in Heathrow I was sitting, freshly showered with the friend whose wedding I have come for, outside Pizza East on the Portobello Road, eating pizza and salad and drinking wine in the shade while we chatted excitedly and watched the achingly hip stroll past.  The last three days have seen dinners and lunches in The Chamberlayne, The Electric Brasserie, The Duke of Clarence (my old local), The Paradise (which included some lung bursting karaoke) as well as lovely meals in friends’ houses surrounded by their little children.  The train I’m on is steaming towards Bristol where my little nephew awaits.  I can’t stop smiling.