My semi-weekend was spent well, loitering about London visiting a few old favourites and a few new ones. On the upside, I loaded up on macarons and strawberry tarts from Laduree and Patisserie Valerie and on the downside, Harrods is still heaving with an unbelievably insane crowd due to the “Sale”.

I like to think that it was this crowd that pushed me brutally towards the Food Hall. And I blame them for forcing me to buy a couple of darling little poussins.

And of course you cannot really go about town in London without spending a few quids on clothes, shoes and accessories. And so I did. A gorgeous Jane Norman number in black and purple, a pair of leather wedges from Aldo and a yellow carry-all from River Island. Bounty? Oh yes.

The whole experience was obviously a break from my daily routine of curling up under the duvet and type away at the laptop and cooking poached egg curries (that invariably get slightly burnt on the underside). Three days, no worries. Ashwin and I lunched at China Town where he tried chicken’s feet for the first time and then keeled over when he realised there were more bones than flesh. But at least he spent two hours learning to use chopsticks at Busaba Eathai over a bowl of pad-thai and a crab soup. We spent Friday evening (after drenching ourselves to the bone in rain) sipping hot chocolates at Freggo, a teeny-weeny little cafe right behind Nat Geo at Piccadilly Circus, the almost dark alley gleaming in front of us. Another lunch included monstrous burgers at Byron, after dragging heavy shopping bags around Shepherd’s Bush. A stroll through the Tate and Burlington Arcade added the finishing touches to the weekend. And that was just what I needed to clear my head and refresh myself.

And now, the pictures.