Breaking Bread

Food is always a source of great delight in our family and many wonderful weekends are spent with friends cooking, eating and drinking wine.

My first moment of awe and wonder this weekend was marvelling at how we have passed on the joy of breaking bread to our children. We were at a friends house house for 'tea' on Friday, and often these events are truly stressful tantrumfests. But not this week. The six children invited, aged from 2 to 8, sat around the table told stories and jokes to each other and ate a convival meal of pizza and salad, occassionally toasting each other (and each other's burps!) with French grenadine. It was brilliant: partly a glimpse into the future of their lives and partly a miniature mirror of our own.

Later that evening, my husband and I made fatayer for our picnic on Saturday, a delicious middle-eastern treat... a total faff to make. But we did it together, sharing a bottle of wine - stopping only to eat chicken barbecued with a harrissa marinade and to dance around the kitchen. Wonderful.

Saturday was a picnic at Kew Gardens with dear friends. We packed my granny shopping trolley with a feast and took the boat from Westminster Pier. Behaving like a tourist always reminds me of how awesome our capital city is: steeped in history, brimming with creativity and beautiful to look at from the Thames in the sunshine.

Kew Gardens itself is a magical place; there is always something new to see. Today there were giant sculptures of seed pods crafted from wicker. They were fantastic, the children loved them and so did we. (Last time we went, it was new born ducklings who wanted to share our picnic and the only place in London where the sun was shining).

We found a beautiful spot near the bottom of the lake to lay out our blanket and feast. We were joined by friends, opened some champagne and shared much laughter. Every now and then one of our group would wander off to look at something in the gardens: the treetop walk, the sackler crossing, the water lily house, where the lily pads are so enormous they would probably hold my five year old.

I spent much of the day thinking about my quest for awe and wonder and that whenever I think it doesn't exist I must just spend the day at Kew. It is an awe-inspiring place: from the beauty of the natural world, to man's desire to love and protect it. The best of it exists here.

Sunday was a lazy day, lounging with the papers at Brockwell Lido. London in the sunshine: awesome!

All in all a great weekend for awe and wonder. I'm enjoying the search; looking for the positive in things that surround me. After all it would have been very easy to feel extremely pissed off when: 1. my husband decided to get car insurance quotes just as we were about to leave the house on our way to Kew causing us to miss our boat, or 2. when my daughter refused to eat anything other than ice cream at our picnic on Saturday or 3. when I got a £120 fine for going into a box junction. Arse! Life can be as awful as awesome.