A perfect shopping expedition

The sun's shining at last, we're about to go on holiday, and I've just come back from the perfect shopping expedition in my home town of Henley on Thames.

I started at Patisserie Franco-Belge, where I bought a white sandwich loaf. When I was a child, the Saturday morning queue outside Franco-Belge used to snake out of their lovely medieval premises right round the corner - that was in the days before Henley had a supermarket. This morning, I went to the more industrial premises they moved into about 20 years ago, no queue at all, but I was served by the same smiling lady who has worked there for most of my life.

Then round the corner into the Market Place to the butcher, Gabriel Machin, for a piece of steak to put into the bread to make a travelling sandwich for Monday's drive to Scotland (I will post about this remarkable sandwich as soon as I get a connection next week). I had to explain to the smiling butcher exactly what I was going to do with his steak so that he could cut it the right shape - much merriment in the shop, which was full of customers. This butcher is under fairly new management, and at least as good as ever; in fact, I like it better now. I remember going there once or twice as a child (my mother used a different butcher, now defunct), the butchers used to write a ticket for everything you ordered, and you'd take it to a booth in the corner of the tiny shop, to pay a little old lady who would then hand over your parcels, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string.

Then down to the Bell Book Shop to pick up Lettice's holiday reading. That's another shop I've been using all my life; it opened when I was a teenager, just beginning to want to buy books. Now my house is full stuff I've bought there, although, these days, I prefer the sister shop in Marlborough, the White Horse Bookshop.

Off to Waitrose, for big flat mushrooms, cherries, vinegar, and a crab for supper tomorrow night. Lucius and I are off to a wedding now, staying overnight in Tunbridge Wells, then on to a lunch party on the coast near Chichester, back home, pack, and then off at the crack of dawn to catch the last ferry for Mull on Monday evening. A few days there, then a week in Edinburgh, and the flat I have rented is near both a lovely secondhand bookshop and the wonderful marvellous magnificent Scottish-Italian deli Valvona and Crolla.

Out of the car park by 9.50, and home by 10, to find coffee made and on the table. Bliss.

On the way home I drove past the river, to see if the floods are subsiding. The answer is yes, but slowly. These photographs were taken a couple of days ago, just before the peak, about two inches higher than this. Now it's back to these levels.