Today I’ve spent my day in and around some of the most expensive, exclusive places in the world. I’ve been seeking out a special place to hold our 2005 awards dinner. The trail has been long and pretty painful when you consider it should have been a huge pleasure.

Before Christmas, we thought we’d found our venue – the Waldorf Hotel – a swanky place in the heart of London’s ‘theatreland’. We organised a trip to view this place that our marketing department had proclaimed as ‘the place’ for a great do. It was lovely, really beautiful and just the sort of place we wanted…..until we discovered that they’d had a change of policy since we’d expressed an interest and introduced a ‘no music’ policy to ensure the diners in their restaurant were not disturbed by rowdy revellers. Had they phoned and told us this, we’d not have made the effort to go and look but they didn’t bother so we all had a wasted trip. I calculated that the trip had cost our company £4,500 in lost time when you take into account that there were six of us there and calculated the charge-out rate of half a day of all of our time. I was very angry to put it mildly.

Today we’ve been for a look at three more. There were four on our shortlist, this photo is no 4 – the Ritz, surely one of the most prestigious names in the hotel and catering industry. Jan and I bought our parents tea at the Ritz for their retirement pressie last year and they loved the experience. Today though, they didn’t have time to see us and so they miss out on our booking because we’ve seen somewhere we like. The closest we got to the Ritz was walking past in between Mossimans and Quaglinos, two of the biggest name restaurants in London.

Sometimes the arrogance of these venues amazes me. We’d booked time for a look around Mossimans and been assured they had a suitable private dining room. When we arrived, I loved the restaurant – a converted church with some beautiful original features, including a spectacular vaulted ceiling and a balcony around the edge of the dining room with a beautiful wooden balustrade. Oh yes, I thought, this is the place for our ‘do’.

The manager came to show us around and guess what – they took us up flights and flights of stairs (so many that I was nervous that if we’d hosted our party there we’d have needed to administer oxygen to some of our guests!!!). When we arrived at the top, the manager proudly took us into the staff canteen and it became obvious that we’d be expected to have our private dinner in there. I wanted to get out as quickly as I could – my colleague, Louise, said later that she’d had to avoid looking at me in case she burst out laughing. I was not amused again – the second time our event organiser had let me down.

We walked to Quaglinos which turned out to be wonderful – nearly perfect……until we walked into the final restaurant, which proved so fabulous that it won hands-down. A firm booking later and we have our venue fixed so now all(!?) we have to do is organise the party. Cool. You’ll have to wait until October to see where we end up.

Once again, I am struck by the gulf of difference between the things I ‘have’ to ‘love’ for my job and the things I really do love in my home life. I sit here at the scrubbed pine table in our little stone cottage here in the wild depths of Bodmin Moor tonight and can barely believe what I have been doing for work today (wandering around central London and inspecting restaurants that I can’t afford and wouldn’t feel comfortable in) and am incredulous at my own photo……it’s a funny old world.

I was rather proud of last year's shot - both compositionally and in execution!