The Blonde: Home: Part One

Greetings from not so sunny Hertfordshire!

It's Sunday night, and iv just crawled into bed after an all day drinking extravaganza to celebrate my dads 70th birthday. Shattered!

Rewind 5 days, and I hopped on a Qatar airways flight from Doha back to my hometown of Herts. Mum, dad and the dog met me at Heathrow, and it was such a huge relief to finally be home and with my family, especially in light of everything that is going on at the moment.

I spent the afternoon catching up with the animals over a cup of tea and one of my mums infamous cupcakes

Before heading to the pub down the road for a burger and a glass of wine in the sun

The first night, my brother and my sister in law came round for a big family roast dinner - iv missed mums cooking!!

Next day, mum and I headed to Westfield in Stratford for some shopping, drinking and lunching.

We had a belated Mother's Day lunch at Jamie's Italian..

We both went for worlds best olives on ice to start, along with butternut squash and ricotta bruschetta (for me) and crab and avocado bruschetta (for mum).

We were both disappointed in our mains, so no photos of those!

Lunch was followed by more shopping, a Pretzel break for dessert, and a cheeky cocktail before catching the train home, loaded up with goodies.

Thursday I met my old boss Mossy for a catch up over a glass of vino and a pint at the local pub. He's jetting off to Abu Dhabi with his new company next week and is stopping by our offices in Doha to visit on his way back, must be mad!

On Friday I had a long overdue hair cut and colour with my beloved hairdresser of many many years, Jane. After one disasterous and one slightly better hair cut in Doha, it was a relief to finally have my hair cut by someone I know and trust. I'm back to being a proper blonde now, no more roots!

Friday was my dads 70th birthday. We'd been at the hospital with him during the day..no news yet..but come evening time we were ready to go out and celebrate so we headed to Sheesh, a popular Turkish restaurant in Chigwell.

The restaurant is gated, as a lot of celebrities eat there (the car park is full of ridiculously expensive cars). Once inside, the restaurant itself looks impressive from the outside - a big courtyard with vintage cars and cosy heated outdoor seating.

We ordered drinks in the bar, before heading down to our table

The food was amazing. We ordered various starters - olives, cheese pastry, mushrooms, calamari, halloumi, and ended up dipping into each other's..

Without nearly enough time to get over our starters, the main courses arrived...

Enormous kebabs piled high with salad

I went rogue and ordered a speciality chicken dish with creamy mushroom sauce, Cinammon spinach and the best chips I have ever ever had

After dinner, I got pretty excited when Mark Wright from The Only Way is Essex, his entire family (big mark, Carol, Nanny Pat!!) and Arg came and sat a metre away from me at the next table. Love a bit of towie!!

I was too excited to eat dessert, but the family ordered profiteroles and strawberries