Totally Tubular!

I might be wrong but Tubular is something the Ninja Turtles said instead of cool right? Well I just googled it and yes it was so this works as a title. Because my trip to London was totally tubular and I'm a sucker for puns.

Tube-wise it wasn't so great though cause half of them were shut down for repairs. Also I felt kind of like a rat scurrying through huge (hot!) drainpipes which is always a nice feeling. But they led to very cool places that I'd not discovered on previous touristy trips. The Aladdin's cave of make-up that Diva briefed me about was discovered in Covent Garden to be Lush's sister company B never too busy to be beautiful. A silly name but don't let that put you off- this is everything you ever dreamed of when you dreamed of glitter dusts, powders and pouting. The pictures below are a small sample but are nothing to the reality of it. And each little pot of beauty stuffs we bought was popped into little gold organza bags and tied with a ribbon before being put in a bag.... ah, so much specialness...

Mrs C was practising her baking skills for BB's wedding as well as for her future role as our cafe's patissiere extraordinaire. The sugar roses took us (Me, Mrs C and Mrs C Snr) the whole first half of Gone With The Wind to roll out- we only had 18 between us after 2 3/4 hrs of deriding the pathetic saddo cad Ashley. I was NOT impressed with that guy at all! He could have nipped all Scarlett's nonsense in the bud when she was a kid but instead he gives her all these dying mooncalf looks. Idiot. Anyway the next day we (Mrs C, the two Miss Cs and me) began the Great Cake Experiment. Well Mrs C ran the operation with the rest of us as her minions though I must say I was the most alert, being used to Mrs-C-minionship. Our main obstacle was the lack of a sieve - but we resourcefully unearthed three tea-strainers and for about 40 minutes a patient tap-tap-tapping prevailed. We were happy to leave Mrs C out of this drudgery although she did return from watching wedding videos to stir the flour in occasionally. It was all we asked for. The result as you can see were some very glossy and smart cupcakes. Mrs C Snr did worry that her flouncy style of rose were too large but they turned out as beautiful as the rest. The dark chocolate and cream ganache topped cakes were extremely rich but, balanced with ice-cream, deliciously so. I didn't mean to write so much about cakes but it's done now and if anyone's mouth is watering come to BB's walima.. you might just get lucky.

Somehow the London atmosphere or perhaps all this whooshing through subways left me even spacier than usual. Case in point: after being dazzled by the above shop and Pout, Mrs C took me to Urban Outfitters where I bought a dinky little table for my halls. On paying Mrs became enamoured of two lip glosses temptingly stacked on the pay counter. The first did smell deliciously cinnamony - but there is an embargo on new lip gunks and goos since the long-suffering Mr C bought the whole set of juicy tubes and firmly said "that will suffice." To her credit she did resolutely put it down saying £9 was too much and gave me the other yearned for 'Fat Lips' tube to buy instead. I innocently went to pay for table and tube- but when the assistant put the gloss at £12 I thought, as any right-minded person would, No Way, and told her to take it off. That was the first of a series of mistakes that built up sadly to make me known as an utter disgrace throughout Urban Outfitters. The last one was leaving my debit card in their machine and having to be chased after by the mean assistant...

Anyway on a happier note this is pretty much what my gorgeous cake stand looks like:
Only I don't have a small top one and mine is more beautiful.
I'm going to the kitchen now to admire it so more.