Of Scones and Clotted Cream

I think this holiday with the family is slowly but surely driving me insane. And it’s been only two days. I haven’t lived with my family since I came back from university in 1998 so this time spent together in an enclosed space is somewhat of a shock to my system. Trust me, the space is very enclosed indeed. Everywhere I turn in this lilliputian apartment, I see at least one or, most of the time, three of them. Mum wakes up at 7am to make breakfast. I never have breakfast. I am usually racing to get out of the house to get to the school quadrangle without having to break into a sweat. So the breakfast thing is making my body go slightly out of sync.

To ease my separation anxiety from my five times a week gym routine, I trotted down to the local gym to have a wander about. I grudgingly attended a gym class with my mum and sister. It was quite horrifying because it seemed to come out of a 1980s Jane Fonda home video. The gym instructor had us on all fours lifting one leg in the air – like a dog at a fire hydrant. All I needed was a leotard, a sweatband, a pair of legwarmers and Barbarella doing the grapevine.

C.Klein and I did the whole chi-chi thing and had tea at Harvey Nichols. It was absolutely fabulous and overpriced. We had scones with clotted cream, coffee and lots of champagne. Getting slightly merry in the afternoon is a glorious feeling. We realised that tai-tais are the same all over the world. The big hair, Dior sunglasses and too much bling on each hand. One difference in London is that they like the St. Tropez look a lot more than in Singapore. So the women here are more a carroty orange as opposed to the fluorescent white of the Singaporean tai-tais.

Clotted cream is wonderful. It’s a thick yellow cream made from unpasteurised cow’s milk and it apparently has a minimum fat content of 55%. A surefire way to get a stroke.

The pictures will be posted once I figure out the camera.