Shelley Dark
- Sep 1, 2018

#3 Guess where?

With hanging flower baskets like this?

I've suddenly been transported into a game of Monopoly! Mayfair and Pall Mall, The Strand and Marylebone are real places! A land of red telephone boxes and double decker buses, quaint black cabs and private garden squares which take up whole city blocks.

Where the 'hood looks like this.

And workers celebrate the end of the week at the Hereford Arms.

This is the land of Peter Pan - we're not 100 metres from this house where J M Barrie wrote the story. Hope it's catching!

Let me invite you in to the treasure-filled flat in Kensington. It's owned by an interior designer. Have you ever seen lampshades made of whole tortoise shells?

I'm tempted to just sit and stare at the tooled screen behind my desk, painted gold and black. It would be very Garden of Eden if it weren't for the ring-in dragon.

Take your choice of sofa - grey velvet or buttoned red leather.

Or maybe just admire the six-inch floor boards?

And the divine silver chandelier...

Or the pretty blue plates on an architrave.

There's one locked room which had me totally intrigued, until I realised that my breakfast nook has windows looking into it. I just had to peer behind the blinds!

The sunny breakfast room as it was when I arrived - black marble table and two café chairs, paper napkins stuffed into the wine glasses - festivity especially for you and me!

There's to be no draping yourself on the chaise longue in my bedroom thank you....

Or swinging from the paper chandelier....

But you may sit on the front balcony, overlooking the garden square, sipping an Earl Grey tea.

I had lunch at Margaux with its brilliantly gleaming copper bar.

Grego showed me how it's done.....

Afterwards he served me a dainty entrée size black ink tortellini with crab and lobster emulsion. Mmmmm.

Followed by arguably the best panacotta I've ever eaten - not too wobbly, nor too firm, with strawberries in armagnac syrup and dried strawberry too, making an amazing textural contrast. There was some biscuit in there somewhere as well...