During the course of Editro threatening torture to my cats to get me to write this 'perfect Sunday' post, I was tempted to leave the entry blank. My perfect Sunday in London, after all, involves doing not very much at all. As someone in the ranks of the self-employed, the tyranny of the approaching Monday doesn't affect me as much as it might do others, so there's not so much pressure on me to 'make Sunday count'. Perhaps I'll read the colour supplement, the tv guide, and dream of protein on a plate before eating enough to sleep. Oh, that Sunday sleep.
If I had my way, I would start every Winter Sunday by waking up to Jimmy Carr and Iain Smith's show on XFM. Handily, they pad out their show by mocking the juicier stories from the red tops, so once I've gathered enough energy to cross the road to the newsagent, I no longer need to buy a copy of the News of the Screws to accompany The Observer. Copious cups of tea later, it's time to whack the Sunday roast in (Nigel Slater's roast chicken recipe in Appetite, the one where you stick a lemon up its arse, is foolproof and stress-free), before tucking into it and falling asleep in front of the telly.
The wife, on the other hand, sees things rather differently. Her perfect Sunday involves me bringing to bed a builder-strength cuppa for her to drink while I go back down to the kitchen and poach some eggs (poaching being the form of egg-cooking she finds impossible). Amazingly, having prepared a delicately-poised albumen only just holding a velvety yolk held together solely by surface tension, she insists on placing the eggs on some scratchy old cardboard. Or 'toasted wholemeal bread', as she calls it.
This done, it's off to Bluewater, to her favourite shops. Here are some shopping tips for those of you looking for Christmas ideas:
Space NK stocks hard-to-find beauty products and, I'm told, 'cult' products. So if your imagination limits you to cosmetics or smelly things for female gift recipients, at least try Space NK, where you might get something not likely to be found in the department stores.
Lucy In The Sky is a Spanish store which has the best accessories, apparently. It's like an up-market Accessorize, but has more unusual stuff.
Sustenance comes in the form of Krispy Kreme, and a chocolate mint bliss at Starbucks before relaxation at the Molton Brown Day Spa. Apparently it's acceptable, desirable even, to ask for a facial at these places nowadays, although the last time I did that when having a massage in Denmark I got thrown out of the hotel.
So there you have it, a split-personality Sunday: an old-fashioned day of rest or a modern day serving mammon.
