Blimey what a week! Started it off stressfully with unleaded petrol in my diesel car (thanks to dopey partner) £120 down and on a very wet Monday I manage to have 2 children here for sleepovers (how the hell did that happen?). Pretty tired on Tuesday after my early morning wake up call. I manage to get them both home and dump my two at my parents for a sleepover (getting my own back!) plus an all day “letter-boxing” session on Dartmoor the following day thrown in – Yippee!

I spend Wednesday doing a two-hour voluntary shift in the village shop, then off to Kat’s for lunch with Kate and Maureen, to celebrate Maureen’s birthday – during which we drink far too much vino and have to stagger to the co-op to stock up, via the fire station (don’t ask). Another seven-hour battering of the liver! Thursday…..didn’t achieve much (no surprise there) kids off to Jessie J concert in the evening in Plymouth (thanks to free tickets from “Lovely Lucy”) and off I trot to book/wine club in The Thatched Tavern for more liver battering. We seem to have progressed from all deciding on a book, reading said book, discussing the book and then choosing the next book (the usual book club format); to not bothering to read a set book but all taking good books we have read in order to swap them with each other; to spending the whole night eating, drinking and chatting (well getting extremely pissed if the truth be told) without a book in sight . . . much more fun!

Ashamed to admit it, I am still fast asleep at 7.30am on Friday when the allocated book club driver strides past my house to be reunited with her car at The Thatched Tavern.  I do however have to deposit my eldest at Teignmouth station for 10am so she can go ice-skating in Plymouth with her friends, so I grab my 10-year-old and tell her we are going on an adventure. We end up at “Bel Green” in St Leonards, a lovely new Cafe which has just opened up. There we have a healthy breakfast of coffee, hot chocolate and cake.  This new venture is a partnership between Teresa Green (the textile designer often featured in Country Living) and her friend Isobel, hence the “Bel”.  It is fully licensed, open evenings and doing Art House cinema nights at £5 a head once a month. Serving good home cooked food and Luscombes drinks I am hoping to get there regularly and support them. So much nicer than any high street place, the back of the Cafe is set up like a 1950s store selling vintage bits and bobs interspersed with Teresa’s lovely textiles and handmade cards. It is well worth a visit . . ..

Breakfast at Bel Green.