Rye Hotel? I say no, no, no

When we got woken up at 6am this morning, the sun was already shining so brightly that we all had a quick bowl of cornflakes, pulled on our wellies and headed out to Dulwich Woods. It was fantastically muddy and we came back filthy and rosy-cheeked. We stripped off in front of the washing machine and Scrap went straight back to bed for an hour and a half while we read the papers and listened to the radio. Did you hear Andy Kershaw on Desert Island Discs? I really loved him. And all of his record choices. It's repeated on Friday at 9am, if you missed him.

Then we went to the Rye Hotel to meet our friends Liz and Steve and their two girls Lily and Ollie. Really, we wanted to go to the Herne Tavern which I've heard very good things about but when Liz called to book on Monday, it was already fully-booked for today! It must be good. Which to be honest, is more than can be said for the Rye Hotel. It was very far from good in fact it was very poor. To start with the whole garden was fenced off because the grass was being treated. Yes, on a Sunday afternoon. So we sat under the gloomy marquee beside a gas heater even though it was a brilliantly sunny day outside. The house wine was rough. The food was shocking. Where do I start? We all had the Sunday lunch roast chicken. You know, I think I'm quite easy to please but they obviously roasted off a ton of chicken leg portions at 10 in the morning, so by the time we got them, they were dry and flabby-skinned. The potatoes had definitely not been roasted from fresh, in fact I'd put money on them coming from a bag in the freezer, they were hard on the inside and soggy and greasy on the outside. The veg was limp and very greasy and the whole thing was cold. It was bad and it cost us £45 per couple. Waste of money, waste of calories, waste of all our time. We were so fed up we decided to get out as quickly as we could and went in search of cake.

The only place I know that actually serves proper home-made cake is Petitout on Choumert Road. We all sat outside in the sunshine, chose from three different types of fresh, light and buttery cake and had great milky, frothy coffees. On the way to the little park down the road for a game of footie, the kids each got a new book from the Review book shop on the corner, Scrap chose Igor, The Bird Who Couldn't Sing by Satoshi Kitamura and Liz and I went nuts and bought a dress each in Fenton Walsh. We all went home skint but happy. Rye Hotel? No, no, no!