116. Fabulous Fables

23rd April 2014, Fable Bar, Chancery Lane, London

The greatest friends are those that you can meet every six months and still spend hours and hours with like you only saw each other yesterday.

Lollipop Woman is one of these people. My first real London friend after I first arrived here, 22 years old, all innocent and naive (or maybe not so much) from safe little Luxembourg in 2007 and the one who taught me everything a girl needed to know about big bad London.

And bits on the rest of the world too. Like the fact that South Africans don't keep elephants in their gardens as pets and thereby shattered my views on the outside world for good. But it's OK, I've forgiven her since - she taught me how to drink Savanna cider and to pronounce Afrikaans swear words afterwards to make it up to me. 

Following four years of basically having breakfast, lunch and wine for dinner together a lot of silly, serious, outrageous and hilarious stuff have gone down. Even though our outings together are not as frequent these days, I know this girl will always have my back - whether it's dropping everything to get to the hospital after I get myself maimed by a truck or laughing at my bad jokes that no one else seems to get. Although she still refuses to go running with me in my bunny ear muffs which is a bit snobbish to be honest.

Last time we met up they'd just put the Christmas lights up on Bow Lane and since then it's been a war against our packed diaries to get some time in for further wine dates. Finally we managed to squeeze this rainy Wednesday night into the calendar and it wasn't a day too soon.

Meeting up at The Fable was not purely based on the fact that it's on The List as the only Drake & Morgan Bar I haven't visited to date. There's also the fact that most bars in the City have been frequented by us back in the heyday and are associated with memories of various levels mayhem with many funny and sometimes rather embarrassing anecdotes as a result. And seeing as we are sophisticated grown ups nowadays, at least officially - new venues are much needed, where no one other than us hold the memories of said anecdotes.

As previously stated, I love all the other Drake & Morgan bars - but not quite sure what was going on here. I can deal with being seated under a staircase next to the kitchen, but if I have to go and ask the Maitre D' if they do in fact have waiting staff employed, it's not great. And just now it dawned on me why Lollipop Woman may have made a remark on me being a tad rude. But hey, I was thirsty and dehydration kills people every single day!

I have over the year realised that for the people eaves dropping on our conversations, our lives must seem extremely spectacular and interesting down to The Code. All those years of spending virtually all of our time together gossiping over virtually everyone crossing our paths have resulted in an extremely long list of code names and code words allowing us to do this out in the open. Discretion is overrated. Plus it's pretty hilarious seeing the looks on people's faces when we talk about what Elvis did to Bill Clinton with the baking pin. Too bad there wasn't any staff in this particular place to overhear it...

And shock and horror - we now already have two more days in the calendar within the next six weeks and that has got to be some sort of a record! I think it's down to the Pornstar Martinis - another alcoholic master piece Lollipop Woman introduced me to once upon a time.

Granted, I had to lure her in with free cocktails at Mr Foggs, but nevertheless the dates are in the diary and hers is an old fashioned paper one, meaning it can not be erased.

Plus they have biltong and tall men in safari gear at Mr Foggs - she will feel right at home!

Long overdue catch up with my favourite South African!

Now this is a Pornstar Martini smile if you ever see one.