An evening at Claridge's

An absolutely hellish day at work. Got to the office extremely early, for what was easily the most horrible day for a year. I managed to slip off for a swim, at one point, which offered the sole respite.

Much more cheerfully, however, I went out in the evening with a colleague Lisa to Claridge's - where we took one of my clients Florence out for a meal in the reading room.

Florence does sculptures in her spare time and is one of my all time favourite clients, who is moving back to France with her husband Eddy. I have been for drinks with Flo and Eddy in dodgy pubs in Ealing, so it was really excellent to be able to create a mental snapshot of us sitting in Claridges spooning creamy amuse bouche from an eggshell in an art deco jewel of a room.

The food was very good generally, and there was an excellent wine too. Dislocating to hear the Japanese wine waiter in discussion with Florence, who is French. Florence went for a reassuringly expensive French one.

On the train home I was remembering one of my first encounters with Florence as a client. She was earnestly talking about her customers, and saying firmly "We need to think about the Baziques." This was rather alarming as the briefing I had received had mentioned nothing about this Bazique product. I nodded along encouragingly. It was only on the way back from the meeting and after discussing it with the Gnome that we worked out that the Baziques were in fact the basics.

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