How do you spend Sundays? Absolutely in the pursuit of pleasure, in our case: food. We hire a Zipcar and drive to the farmers’ market at Marylebone for breakfast at La Fromagerie, where we are greeted with great warmth and fake disdain from Christophe, who’s French, and who pretends to find us impossible.
What’s for brekky? It could be porridge, yoghurt and granola or smoked salmon. Then we’ll say hello to all the storeholders and buy gorgeous piles of organic vegetables. We’ll load up, put it all away, and I’ll lie down on the sofa and read the paper.
After that? There are various possibilities. I might do a bit of gardening, which won’t take long because I’ve got a postage stamp of a garden. If I’ve got lines to learn, I might do that. Around teatime, we share a piece of very good quality cake.
Let’s chat cake… At the moment we’re on carrot and walnut. It’s deep with lots of icing. It shows an extraordinary amount of discipline that we share a piece.
Dinner? Hilton, my husband, is a really good cook and I’m a great assistant. It’s always at least two courses, usually Italian-ish.It could be asparagus and parmesan to start, then quail with sage and butter or chicken with lemon and thyme, with the vegetables we brought back from the market.
To drink? Before dinner, there will be a cocktail, maybe a whisky sour. We have a peaceful moment where we actually talk to each other, sipping our cocktails, looking forward to dinner. After dinner, we take our high-percentage chocolate to the living room and have a couple of squares while we’re watching something.
Sunday regrets? If I have to go away to work, leaving on a Sunday is really sad. I like my Sundays to be like this. They’re well-formed, we’ve practised, so we know exactly what we’re doing.
Watch Lindsay Duncan in Dear Octopus, now streaming on National Theatre at Home (ntathome.com)