A Tale of Two Weekends

It's amazing what a difference a week makes. One weekend you're eating bacon and egg sarnies and glugging cider in the middle of a field, the next you're savouring Best End of Lune Valley lamb with garlic purée and quaffing Côteaux du Languedoc 2003 in the middle of seven courses.

What are we on about?

Well, the first weekend was the V Festival - a two-day music festival held out in Essex. Yes, after swearing he'd never go to another festival after the mudfest that was Glastonbury 2007, Johnny was somehow convinced to try it again. Damn that Bec and her persuasive powers! But the tidy line-up (which included Lenny Kravitz, The Feeling, Muse, The Kaiser Chiefs and The Verve) was also a considerable factor working against his extreme dislike for camping in fields and chemical toilets. Not camping in chemical toilets, mind you. Although sometimes it can smell like you are... Thankfully, the weather was far superior to Glasto, although the atmosphere was definitely not as electric, with the whole shebang having a distinctly commercial feel.

Quite a contrast to our outing the following weekend, to Aubergine, one of London's finest restaurants (with a Michelin star to prove it). If you're not familiar with the Michelin star rating, it is frequently used in Europe as a measure of culinary excellence, although you might be fooled by the official definitions - 1 star is "a very good restaurant in its category", 2 is "excellent cooking, worth a detour" and 3 is "exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey". Seeing as there are only eleven 2-star restaurants in the whole of the UK, it's almost certainly going to require a detour to try one! The food was, unsurprisingly, exquisite, as were the carefully-matched wines that accompanied our seven-course dégustation - the only bitter taste being the frankly horrific bill at the end of the evening. Ouch. Bec was blissfully unaware of this though, having been given the "non-payer's" menu at the start of the night - identical to Johnny's except for the strategic omission of the prices!

Here's a montage of our experiences. Which would you prefer?