CANTEEN

On Sunday morning Ibolya took Ruby and I for a special St Valentine's Day breakfast at Canteen on Baker Street. It's a really terrific place; spacious, child-friendly, superb service, nicely designed and a tremendous breakfast. Were also joined by some Frenchmen on their way to the rugby. After breakfast we did some shopping down Marylebone High Street and then returned home to finish a Valentine's love-hunt, Ibolya had organised, which made me find clues in different parts of the house and ended with me finding a shiny new iPod under a pillow in our spare room.
There are some days when the music you play, or maybe it's the choices you make, just sound absolutely incredible and what we listened to this Sunday sounded sublime.
We started Valentine's Day in a romantic mood with 'The Essential Andy Williams' and I still can't get 'Happy Heart' out of my head. We then had a little, light weight, jazz funk with 'Best of Spyro Gyra'. Then went Latin/Blues/Rock with Santana's first, self titled, album 'Santana'.
We played with Ruby in the long room to some Hungarian/Jazz/Folk fusion, which Ruby really got into. While I was cooking tea we listened to Electric Light Orchestra 'All Over The World', which sounded unbelievably good. Our Valentine's duck dinner was served to repeated plays of Omar's 'There's Nothing Like This'. Then to round things off we had Ruby's bathtime and bedtime accompanied with 'The Best of Burt Bacharach' sounding absolutely out of this world and music from the gods. It's a best of which uses Burt's Abbey Road instrumentals, with the odd sung chorus and some of Burt's terrible singing but it allows melodies and arrangements to shine through in all their magnificence.