H was robbed by a crockery-crook while unattended at table! That dastardly daisy! And about Saint Pierre: it's a tired neo-fusion stunt, aflutter with vain flourishes and candy-bright party-favours, patronised by conspicuously silly cows who audibly and pointedly announce to everyone within earshot that they attended the film festival. Emmanuel is a slightly loony enfant terrible lionised on account of outlandish novelties and a reckless culinary adventurism, Edina a graceless ditz of a socialite, a darling flake. I must revisit to gather grist for the caustic re-review which I have been contemplating. Issued warm recommendations and grave warnings to H re: Silk Road...Snowflake must try, dao1 xiao1 mian4 like congealed ectoplasm, zha4 jiang4 mian4 soupy. Feeling rash and garrulous, I paint Prague as cohabitation and copulation haven for Yale homosexuals, to be rebuked rather rationally by Y. I feel I must be forgiven, for the only specific and memorable depiction of Prague I have encountered is Philip Roth's The Prague Orgy.

"But this is a classless society," she says. "This is socialism. What good is socialism if when I want to nobody will fuck me? All the great international figures come to Prague to see our oppression, but none of them will ever fuck me. Why is that? Sartre was here and he would not fuck me. Simone de Beauvoir came with him and she would not fuck me. Heinrich Böll, Carlos Fuentes, Graham Greene - and none of them will fuck me. Now you, and it is the same thing. You think to sign a petition will save Czechoslovakia, but what will save Czechoslovakia would be to fuck Olga."

Grilled fennel/radicchio a pleasure, other verdures a little arid and devitalised. Penne alla polpa di granchio pleasant but not quite up to snuff. Brownie and pistachio gelato excellent. Tiramisu was not its usual delectable self. Coffee arrived prematurely. Waiter harried and brusque. Perhaps it's this buy-3-get-1-free deal that's responsible for this tardiness. En route to languishing Salut, The Eighties Woman shimmies past us, in her customary white pumps and retro bowl-bob hairdo! Y thinks she looks like a Metro salesgirl; all heartily concur. In and out of Savoir-subordinate Baker's Inn (horrible sour-creamed pasta, no lemon tart, no apple-pistachio-lime [but this is moot; why can't I remember] cake) and on to Millenia Walk's magical-macaroon-factory Baker's Inn. We snap up the last two lemon tarts. The meringue squidges have been disswirled, and they taste of marshmallows. Y says lemon-gouache is too granular, but that is precisely its attraction! H's Gran Couva has a mini-macaroon perched on top and another ensconced within. Then, still unsated, he devours an ill-named brioche with warm creamy egg-mulch and Parma ham.