The great, the good, the rich and famous descended on Suffolk this weekend for one of the biggest house content sales of the year, held in a village nearby. The collection of furniture and objet d'art was huge and very valuable, and judging by the Telegraph this morning, made over £2 million! Keith Skeel the famous interior designer and collector is moving on and out and abroad. The side roads were awash with expensive cars and posh folk all vying for a piece of the action.
Not much there for us or that we could afford, so we headed out of Suffolk down to Essex to have lunch with four of our bestest friends.

The sun shone by lunchtime and we were able to sit outside the Barn Brasserie at Great Tey for pre lunch drinkies. This large barn conversion is a wonderful restaurant that even caters for the likes of me with my food intolerances and the menu is marked accordingly, gf, gluten free, df,dairy free and even vegan. Something for everyone and as usual the food was spot on.
For some reason or another the service was rather "hit and miss", but it caused us so much hilarity that we forgave them and accepted complimentary coffee to compensate.
We were called into the restaurant at 1.15 as our "starters" were ready. We were served from a huge selection of breads; tomato ,seeded, nutty, etc. etc.
Alas no warm oven baked fresh bread for me. However, because we were talking so much we clean forgot the time and by 1.45 realized we still hadn't actually had our starters and we were ploughing through the wine fairly!
We signalled the waitress and she promptly rushed over and started clearing the table. We explained we had only actually been eating the bread and "where was the rest of it". She looked aghast. There was much toing and froing from the kitchen and raised voices were heard.
She explained that we had been "breaded" and the kitchen hadn't been informed. Well, we all fell about as we had not heard this expression before - I personally thought it made me sound like a bit of scampi - or perhaps some deep dark masonic ritual or "blooded" as in hunting and all that.

Anyway it set the tone for the day and we laughed throughout. I think we left there at 4.00 pm - a hell of a Sunday lunch!

Our designated driver brought us back, and we finished the day off with nibbles and fizzy overlooking my stripy lawns. No one wanted bread.

Today is back to reality with the silage being cut in the next field and the huge baler coming behind. In my younger days silage was collected and heaped in large silage clamps on the farm to be used as and when. Now it is stored like big straw bales. I wonder if it is to do with Health and Safety - the clamps used to be covered with black plastic and old car/tractor tyres - I don't expect this is correct anymore!!

The deer have found my new rose bed of David Austin "Sister Elizabeth" roses planted in memory of my mum. They have stripped them bare of their leaves and all that remain are the pink frothy heads hanging forlornly on the twiggy branches. I would laugh if it wasn't so sad.
So no pictures of the roses, just one snapped through the hedge of the silage making in progress.