Max and Paul's Excellent Adventure

August 23rd and we went to Number 8, a restaurant in Sevenoaks, for Paul's birthday, which was the following day.  It was actually very good and we had a lovely time.  Ellen had kindly made a blackberry upside down cake (given it was blackberry season) and we left the restaurant to go eat sugar, sing birthday wishes and blow out candles.  The following day, Daniel and Ellen were selling ice-cream at an agricultural show in Oxted, so Paul and I went to London on the train.  Our last blast in the big smoke.  After a delicious breakfast at Dishoom we walked around the city and Regents Park and eventually headed back to Sevenoaks for dinner with the crew.  I'd made borscht for the first time.  Earthy dish, that.   Monday was a bank holiday (a public holiday to us Aussies) and the three of us headed to Oxted for the agricultural show. Ellen was working at the ice-cream van again so we spent the day with Daniel wandering around sheep and cows, goat...

Before we arrived at our next pet sitting gig, we spent the night in the Royal Toby Hotel, just five miles from where we had to be. The room was nice enough and we actually had room to move, which so many hotels don't provide these days.  We were booked into the Italian restaurant attached to the hotel, but high-tailed it out of there when we found ourselves listening to overly loud music, complete with ads. There was something amiss with their sound system and clearly no one had Spotify with a boom box so, not wanting to put up with commercial radio, we left and went back to the pub dining room. The meal was fine, but not memorable. As I was talking to Paul an older women hurriedly walked past with her husband, farting loudly as she went, which had begun long before she reached us. 🤣  Well, that was the end of me. We'd had a very long drive and a couple of large glasses of wine and I couldn't contain myself.  And when I looked over at the table next to us on the other s...