It always seems to happen so fast. One minute everyone's huddled in coats, the next they're displaying highly unnecessary bits of themselves to an unappreciative audience on the underground. Elsewhere, visually, London blossoms with pretty girls in gangs and good dresses, swinging along - the first fake tan of the season expertly applied to their endless legs. As you travel through London, you find yourself in pockets and pools where everyone looks gorgeous - and others were they really don't. On Tuesday, I moved from Shepherds Bush (mostly regrettable with some flamboyant exceptions - including my beautiful daughter), Pimlico (fairly ordinary) to Chelsea (spectacular) to go to the opening of a terrific new bar on Sloane Square called The Botanist.
The sun was shining, and we sat on the sill of the big open front window swinging our legs, sipping champagne, spotting the 'human statue' climb down from her plinth and slip round the corner for a sneaky cigarette, and watching the latest batch of Sloane Rangers swing by. They are much prettier these days - their hair long and golden, their skirts much shorter, and their sense of style completely different from the pie-frill collars, frumpy long navy skirts, flat buckled shoes and padded velvet hair-bands of Princess Diana's youth.
We could have been in Rome, with the fountain playing in the Square and the trees bursting into leaf. Victoria Hart, a pleasing blonde in on-trend bondage shoes with seven inch heels, sang show standards with her band of balding genial jazz musicians.
And there was the Earl of Cadogan, whose family have owned 90 acres of the land around here since it was populated by two sheep and a herdsman. Opposite the Botanist is a Sloane Square staple called the Oriel, which has attracted the Earl's negative attention recently. He told the Telegraph diarist at the party: "I didn't like the food and the prices there are far too high. I can tell you that we won't be renewing their lease when it expires in two years' time. We are going to have a new development there." So the aristocracy still has some power in the land, if only to close down restaurants.
Genial Swiss chef Anton Mossiman was also there - last time we spoke to him was at his private dining club in an old church in West Halkin Street, a stride away from Sloane quare. He was celebrating the grouse, which my husband Thoby had been riting about. Now, I thought I disliked grouse intensely until quite ecently and couldn't understand the fuss - until I had young, fresh rouse, properly hung and cooked. I now realise that this was because o being shipped off to stay with completely strange grand people in he country on a regular basis when in my teens. This is a British tradition. If someone in the neighbourhood is having a dance, people with big enough houses will host a party of young strangers for the night.
Kind of them, but it meant that culinary excellence was seldom or never on the menu. The hostess would dig reluctantly about in the bottom of her cavernous chest freezer and find miscellaneous things her husband had shot - perhaps years beforehand. These would be defrosted and shoved in the AGA to be cooked for a random amount of time, and then served with vegetables from the same source. The husband would wrap the Hungarian plonk in a napkin. We didn't care. We were young and looking forward to the dance, but the grouse I tasted under those circumstances was full of flat, thin, lethal shards of bone, dead-tasting and tough as an old handbag. Anyway, grouse at Mosimann's last year was, needless to say, delectable...
I recommend the Botanist: excellent for people watching, the canapés were delicious and interesting - which bodes well for the full menu - including little glasses of cold crab bisque. The atmosphere was genial and the blown up botanical prints on the walls reflected the nearby Chelsea Physic Garden and the annual Chelsea Flower Show. A perfect place to be on an early summer evening.