Angelic Conversion

Yesterday I was not ill! YAY!

You did not hear from me because I was hurtling down the motorways of merrie olde England to visit my friend Lizzie and her lovely son, Frazer.  We should have spent the whole weekend with Lizzie and Frazer, but instead managed to cram a whole weekend’s worth of fun into one, exhaustingly busy day.

Lizzie lives on the other side of Birmingham.  Birmingham, as you may know, is not only the second largest city in the UK, but it has millions of miles of complicated motorway systems going through, round and under it, sometimes all at the same time.

It only takes me an hour from my house to get to Lizzie’s house, but in that hour I have to negotiate three, separate motorways.  One of the motorway interchanges I have to get round is particularly hair raising as it splits into three different motorways as you branch off.  You have to know before you start which of the three motorways you want, because if you don’t get in the right lane instantly, you will be heading into the darkest bowels of somewhere you never wanted to go, faster than you can say knife.

I have done this wrong on several occasions.  It is my bete noire.  The sat nav is no help at this point either. It seems just as bewildered by the extravagance of choice as I am.  Sometimes I guess and we end up swirling into the vortex. Yesterday I guessed and we did it right.  It was entirely accidental.

If you get it wrong, it is possible to rectify your mistake, but it is a fairly labour intensive effort, and can add literally hours onto your journey, particularly, if like me, you are already inept, and you have three small helpers squeaking along in the back of the car.

They are always convinced that if we have to detour, or if the word ‘lost’ is mentioned, that it is irrevocable, forever, and involves being eaten by mastodons.  I never, ever, ever, confess to being lost.  Even under torture.

I am afraid of being trampled in the rush for the exits.

Anyway, we did alright yesterday, and had a lovely day zooming around Brum on the bus and eating lots of food.

We found a marvellous bakery/tea room called The Fallen Angel.  It is in a place called Harborne.

You must go. You must brave the motorways of the Midlands to get there.

Their cakes are insanely good.  I had the most divine piece of red velvet cake. Like a red velvet cupcake, but bigger, and with more cream cheese frosting.  Need I say more?

It was indeed, as their motto says:

love at first bite.

We had a truly excellent day, but didn’t get home with late, and my invalid status of late has left me fairly exhausted, so instead of blogging I ended up falling asleep over Ernest Hemingway’s ‘A Farewell to Arms’. It only has a little bit of dribble on it. Honest.

And a few stray crumbs of Red Velvet mixture.

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