There is a wedding at Rothley Court this evening and the place is abuzz with activity. The slim and the beautiful are eating their all-English fare with relish and drinking their Chilean wine with gusto (or maybe they’re talking with gusto and drink their wine with something else).
I decided to dine at the suitable time of 8:30 pm. Not too late to be pretentious and no too early to be a completely unsophisticated tosser. Tonight it’s a delicate little fish-thing starter with quail’s eggs and a glass of Shiraz followed by calves liver and probably another glass of that fine plonk. And, I may, since this is my last sleep here, splash-out on some delicately sweet desert and an espresso to finish — maybe Treacle Lattice Tart served with a Spiced Apricots and Plumb Compote.
The dining room is intimate and as you might expect full of dark wood panelling combined with 18th century stonework and rich red carpets. The staff are young and nice and efficient and the fare is good — above average English fare I’d say and at a reasonable price.
Those who know me will testify to my delicate eating habits and my attunedness to a finer, subtler more ethereal form of eating experience. And dining at Rothley has surely lived up to these high personal standards. 
As I look around I notice the wedding cake has recently been cut because the wait-staff are scurrying hither and dither with platters full of wedding-cake for the guest and the table to my right has just arrived — it’s 9:30pm and obviously an even more suitable hour to dine.
A cute blond waitress stands patiently beside me waiting for me to stop typing. She asks, “would you like custard as well as ice cream on your apple crumble?” And instead of answering immediately I ponder how life seems to be tougher in the UK for the average Joe than for us Aussies.
With an exchange rate against the UK pound that is to die for, things don’t get much better than this so I go for broke. “No,” I tell her. “I’ll have two scoops of ice cream and, when you have a moment, will you also fetch me a Cognac.”
Chin, chin. 
I had the feeling that even if the pound to aussie dollar exchange rate wasn’t that good you may have enjoyed a little arm twisting over one verses two scoops of ice cream, from that cute blond. Glad to see your enjoying the local fare. Proost. rob
You know me too well