The 5. Day

I asked him in the morning if there was anything he hasn't eaten in a while but would love to. He said, spinach. What he meant was a creamed spinach dish from spinach, milk, butter, flour, garlic, salt, pepper and bit of roasted ham / bacon. Best with fried eggs (sunny-side-up) on top. This is a typical Hungarian dish, but in London we make it from fresh spinach leaves and not frozen spinach as done in Hungarian households. Also, we make it with plain flour instead of pieces of bread and add a touch of bacon. I am trying to find the recipe in English, no luck just yet.

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Back to the 5th day. Another surprise awaited him today. I have written in our shared calendar that from Friday to Sunday that there will be "Something to do, do not book anything else" for these days. We have done similar surprises for each other in the past, sometimes we had to wait for six months (!) to find out what a "blocked out" evening or weekend was all about. As said before, I love surprises, both creating and receiving them. I think the importance of creating good surprises for each other in a relationship should be taught at schools. Instead of the bullshxt they do teach. Anyways.

A few weeks ago I booked 2 nights at this place. From several choices I decided to go for something that didn't cost much, wasn't far to travel, was fairly new build, looked comfortable and most of all, offered a pool and sauna, which he loves.

He called me at 5 pm to say he is going to the pub with colleagues and I should pick him up there as he didn't know what I was planning had any time constraints or not. So I gave him another hour (which gave me more time to prepare too).

As these apartments are fully serviced, I made the creamed spinach (first time for me, he is the one who usually makes it) at home and also took along some other bits of food. I picked him up at the pub where he was sitting inside. This is an important detail. This was probably the first time in years that he was spending more time sitting inside a pub and not standing outside smoking with the cool people. Part of the smoking culture these days is that sooner or later you will be cold as it is forbidden to smoke inside buildings. So you go outside.

Smokers tend to say it's cool to go outside, it is the cool people who go outside (into the cold) and have the cool conversations. If you are sitting inside and you are warm, your brain stops working. Obviously.

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We took a short ride to Paddington. At Paddington we bought some drinks and some eggs - he didn't even blink. The eggs were for the spinach puree, of course, which he hadn't known about at that point. I love surprising him because he doesn't start asking questions, doesn't get nervous and doesn't try to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

Gotta get some sleep now. Will write about this slightly scammy hotel tomorrow.

5 days done.