ingredients for a weekend

What a perfectly social, London weekend. It is like living someone else's life!

There was the fabulous party in the wonderful Princess Victoria; a tasty vegetarian fry up, followed by a visit to the painfully cool 'Tina, we salute you'; thence to Canteen, so conveniently situated for a night at the Festival Hall, listening to those short-listed for the T. S. Eliot poetry prize - where we caught up with some more charming acquaintances. The gent commented that I'd probably met all his friends, intentionally or by chance, over the weekend! And eaten good food, I murmured into my scarf.

My tasty veggie fry: diced, par-boiled potatoes, drained and rinsed in cold water - then fried in hot oil until crunchy outwith; a rattle of maldon salt over the top. Tip onto a plate to keep hot in the oven to make room in the pan for: mushrooms and tomato. Fried eggs, over-easy (I finally found out that this just means turning them over to cook the top too!) but still completely runny inside. If you are a decent sort, then you won't be able to help but put the egg on the crispy potatoes and let the yolk drip over.

'Tina, we salute you': the website is tres stylish, but kind of hard to find anything useful on - like opening times - so I've given a link to the Time Out review instead. That's what happens when you deal with a librarian rather than a hipster Dalstonite. Here we had fabulous coffee (from Square Mile) and enjoyed a slice of nicely judged blueberry and lemon loaf cake. So good that the gent brushed the crumbs from his trousers, strode over to the bar and ordered another slice with a further two flat whites. Good man. A gorgeous place to read the papers and lose your head over coffee.

Canteen, on the South Bank, was chosen for its convenient location, but had a lot to recommend it. The house wine was really great - coming in a 25cl carafe was even better: the booths were sweet and sociable and the menu was spot on for what we needed. One of us had pie, the other a salad: both polished off. Next time we would definitely stop at the bar for another glass or two of the wine and maybe a fish finger sandwich, or pate and piccalilli on toast. Everywhere seems to be upping the ante with their bar menu at the moment!

It is not my remit, but Simon Armitage and Sam Willetts really rocked, poet-wise.