My sister has been staying, she is younger and far more fashionable than me so I capitalised on this by dragging her out to trendy Shoreditch for the evening.

I know the area as it is fairly close to home and contains two of my favourite places – the Geffrye museum and Columbia Road Flower market however it has been ages since I’ve been there out of hours.

One of the things the area is famous for is Pho mile – Kingsland Road or the A10 is home to masses of Vietnamese restaurants – we headed there and chose rather randomly based on business, ambience and a half remembered time out review. I think our choice was good – summer rolls to share, cassava noodles with tiger prawns and bun special ( warm vermicelli noodles, salad chargrilled pork, hot and delicious crispy spring rolls and a spicy sauce). Yum! Even better was the fact that the bill was very reasonable.

We meandered on down towards Spittalfields then to the bar which hides in a fridge. Somewhere I’ve wanted to go for a long time but first – a detour onto Brick Lane to buy hot beigels for breakfast the following day. The heat was somewhat wasted but they were very reasonable and very good.

Onwards to the bar in the fridge – a “secret” cocktail bar entered via a fridge. Amazing drinks my sister chose some crazy number which came accompanied by a flaming Scotch bonnet chili. There is nothing like. Abit of drama – it even got the punters talking to one another – not a common occurrence in London. I had a more mundane but still lovely fresh combination of gin, elderflower and a few other things.

Then we meandered home via 24 hour Tesco to buy Philadelphia to go with the beigels.