Cordon Bleu Arrives In Norfolk

Nick Neal our sales and marketing director hails from deepest Norfolk - a county not known for its culinary delights. So Nick was fascinated when a relative invited him to dinner on Saturday evening and asked him if he liked waffles. This was quite an adventurous change from the normal fayre on offer at the family home and it was explained that his hostess was taking a cookery course. Duly impressed Nick waited in anticipation for the dessert to arrive and he was salivating when an attractive dish made with a white chocolate base topped with fruits and surrounded by golden waffles arrived at the table. Nick's wife Collette took a spoonful and the table looked on expecting glowing praise. "Well?" asked Nick's relative smiling. "I'm sorry" said Collete "but it tastes of potatoes." .....yes that's right. The dish had been made with potato waffles to which the host's response was "are there any other types?" As Nick says, Norfolk has some way to go to catch up.

While Nick was going without pudding on Saturday, Marion and I had slightly better luck as we spent a very nice weekend at Rufflets Hotel just outside St Andrews where we had a relaxing time and enjoyed some excellent food. We were there visiting our daughter Sarah and her partner Duncan who have spent the last fifteen months renovating their house which they bought in July 2009. It is hard to believe it is the same place as Duncan has been working flat out and it has gone from being a fairly rundown bungalow with a loft space to a fabulous house. There's still some work to be done but the light is definitely shining at the end of the tunnel and Duncan has done an amazing job. Sarah has taken after her mum and her interior design ideas are working very well and the couple's cooking on Friday was great.

The wonders of Sky Plus were apparent again when we got back from Scotland last night and managed to watch both Saturday's two and a half hour X Factor extravaganza and the Sunday show in just over eighty minutes without really missing anything (apart from the great IKEA ad of course). It just goes to show how much padding there is in Cowell's domination of ITV's weekend schedules. The standard of the contestants this year is very high and I am still struggling to pick a winner although Matt Cardle's odds are dropping fast and he'll be odds on before long. My long shot picks of Treyc and Katie don't look too hopeful with Treyc finding herself in the bottom two being inexplicably pipped by Wagner (has the Stephen Fry YouTube video boosted his popularity?) and Belle Amie but I still think that Cher at 14:1 is a good bet.

I couldn't read Craig's daily email at the hotel on Friday evening as his report on the sales is in a spreadsheet and the hotel Internet didn't have Excel and I didn't want to start messing around with memory sticks. You might wonder why I am still interested in how we are doing as we're off into the sunset in under five weeks now. I suppose that it will always be with us and even in the future we will be looking at the beverage equipment in cafes and restaurants and seeing if they are Instanta. I managed to open Craig's form on Sunday evening and the sales showed yet another good week. It's quite obvious that we won't be missed as everything seems to be running like clockwork.

Monday is always the time when we start thinking ahead to what to go and see for Orange Wednesday. Halloween this week so it's a no brainer