Being Tourists

Well, first I must say again that this blog will migrate to “invi­ta­tion only” in a few days (I’m hap­py to say that requests keep com­ing in so I want to give you all plen­ty of time to email me at kristen.blog.london@googlemail.com to request a spot on the invi­ta­tion list). Just let me know! All will be revealed when we’re on our own. Whew.

But we have been so incred­i­bly busy late­ly being tourists, in these days of Avery’s end of term break, that I thought I’d bet­ter let you know all the cool things there are to do with­in a tiny dis­tance of cen­tral Lon­don, or even with­in it. Then you can plan your trip!

First, last week saw us at Oster­ley Park, a state­ly home just out­side Lon­don prop­er, and an absolute mec­ca for fans of Robert Adam, which it turned out… Avery and I are not. John just rev­els in all the opu­lence, which is fun­ny con­sid­er­ing that his idea of prop­er real estate for him­self would be a big Geor­gian house, com­plete­ly emp­ty. I too like the odd Vic­to­ri­an ceil­ing dec­o­ra­tion and carved man­tel­piece, but Oster­ley: crazy! The paint­ings, the tapes­tries, the secret-draw­er tables built just for the room. Just too much! But love­ly if you like that sort of thing. What I think will bring us back, at least accord­ing to my friend Vic­to­ria, is the gor­geous park­land sur­round­ing the house where one is, appar­ent­ly, wel­come to bring a pic­nic! This was, sad­ly, not an option for us, since as we left the house it began to SNOW. Hor­ri­ble! I love snow, but after East­er? No, thank you. I don’t even have a pho­to­graph of the place to show you because it was sim­ply too mis­er­able to doc­u­ment our vis­it. But I think it’s worth a sec­ond trip, when I’m able to be cer­tain the cli­mac­tic con­di­tions don’t drop a load of hail on us!

More to our lik­ing was the Han­del House Muse­um in Brook Street, where the great man wrote, I’m ashamed to say I had for­got­ten, “The Mes­si­ah.” We sat prim­ly in the lit­tle video room and watched a short pro­gramme full of intim­i­dat­ing opera singers assur­ing us of the “human­i­ty, and the pas­sion” of Han­del (nev­er thought of him that way), and we did find our­selves burst­ing occa­sion­al­ly into a stan­za or two of the “Hal­lelu­jah Cho­rus,” whose strains have been known to get me in trou­ble before now. I tend to get very gig­gly when I try to sing seri­ous music. Imag­ine our con­ster­na­tion on leav­ing the video room for the muse­um, to find a sweet lit­tle vol­un­teer camped out just beyond the door, no doubt lis­ten­ing in hor­ror to our every note. Mor­ti­fy­ing! But it’s a love­ly, tiny muse­um. Appar­ent­ly Han­del was, between operas, quite the bon vivant, and one of the most amus­ing bits of the dis­plays was a pair of lith­o­graphs of him as a pig!

There was a dar­ling musi­cian perched at the spinet, or what­ev­er it is, prac­tic­ing away for an upcom­ing con­cert. They do con­certs near­ly every Thurs­day night, and it seems that every­one I know has been to one. I’m embar­rassed to tell you that I can take only about as much opera and spinet music as the muse­um tour last­ed: after that I start want­i­ng to pull my fin­ger­nails out. I am real­ly not very cul­tured. Here’s how lame I am: my favorite part of the entire muse­um was the dress-up area where Avery found, to her intense hap­pi­ness, a full boy’s suit just her size! Vel­vet knicker­bock­ers, a waist­coat and frogged vel­vet jack­et, plus a tri­corn hat! She looked absolute­ly adorable, of course we had no cam­era. It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing place, and there are snip­pets of music you can lis­ten to over sim­ply the BEST head­phones I’ve ever expe­ri­enced. Amazing!

From the sub­lime to the com­plete­ly unbe­liev­able, Mon­day found us in Green­wich, hav­ing tak­en the absolute­ly delight­ful fer­ry from Embank­ment Pier. What a ride! And the LONG walk up to the Obser­va­to­ry at the top of the hill. I don’t know about you, but I find astron­o­my to be very gig­gle-induc­ing indeed. When the learned experts begin talk­ing about mil­lions of years and bil­lions of some­thing else, I just can’t reg­is­ter the notions. I have a hard enough time with the Lon­don tube sys­tem, and remem­ber­ing what hap­pened last week, with­out try­ing to envi­sion galax­ies and how long light takes to trav­el from wher­ev­er, much less imag­in­ing what will hap­pen when the intri­cate grav­i­ta­tion­al pull from some­thing changes and we all go whirling off into the sun­set. And I mean SUN­SET. Avery and John lap all this infor­ma­tion up, how­ev­er, although Avery admit­ted to being a lit­tle “freaked” by the vast­ness. But what a fan­tas­tic muse­um, and it is always fun to stand on the merid­i­an line and be first in the east, then in the west. I am always impressed by the knowl­edge that my beloved can trot out on these occa­sions, real­ly under­stand­ing lon­gi­tude and lat­i­tude and where we are, and time zones. And who knew there was such a polit­i­cal con­tro­ver­sy around “Day­light Sav­ings Time,” near­ly 100 years ago? And the VIEW. And pos­si­bly our favorite bit: the cam­era obscu­ra. There we were, hud­dled in a round room sur­round­ed by black vel­vet cur­tains, look­ing down on a pro­ject­ed image of the Christo­pher Wren hos­pi­tal and the street below. I did­n’t believe it was a real live view until Avery point­ed out a red bus mak­ing its way across the table. So impres­sive! One teenag­er dressed all in black breathed, “It’s a bleed­ing video pro­ject­ed from the sky! Wicked!”

As we walked down the hill from the Obser­va­to­ry (it seemed a much longer walk UP! not for the faint of heart, be warned), Avery mused, “You could write a won­der­ful mur­der mys­tery about that, you know. A per­son is alone in the cam­era obscu­ra, and wit­ness­es a mur­der in the scene below, but by the time she gets to where she saw it hap­pen, there’s no sign of any­thing.” Yes, that’s an idea! I won­der if it’s already been done.

While you’re in Green­wich you must have lunch at the love­ly, inex­pen­sive and ter­ri­bly friend­ly Ital­ian bistro “La Cuci­na Di Soteri,” in Nel­son Road. We’ve dis­cov­ered, after many pricey lunch­es out that left both Avery’s and my meals half-eat­en, that the secret to suc­cess is to share. She was crav­ing steak frites, and I was skep­ti­cal about find­ing it, but would you believe the first restau­rant we came up walk­ing up from the fer­ry… steak frites! And love­ly spaghet­ti car­bonara for John, plus a very fresh insalate tri­col­ore for me, with real­ly nice moz­zarel­la, toma­toes and avo­ca­do. And if you and your puny appetite share with your small daugh­ter, let me tell you every bite gets eat­en, which is very sat­is­fy­ing! Try this love­ly lit­tle place, and you’ll have the ener­gy to get up that Obser­va­to­ry Hill!

The week­end found us host­ing Avery’s dear friend Jamie, after a won­der­ful skat­ing les­son for the two of them. John and I actu­al­ly put on our skates ear­li­er in the week just to keep her com­pa­ny, and to get a lit­tle exer­cise, and boy are we BAD. It’s even more appar­ent how good Avery has become when you’re on her lev­el on the ice! Mor­ti­fy­ing­ly bad. Well, we don’t hold on to the rail, but it’s not much bet­ter than that. John has “hock­ey skat­ing,” which means the only fun is going real­ly fast and try­ing to knock down teenage girls, and I for­bade it. But Jamie and Avery are superb. We brought her home and had fab­u­lous Moroc­can meat­balls (with dilled cucum­bers in yoghurt, and but­tered noo­dles, it’s the per­fect din­ner in my opin­ion), and watched, I’m ashamed to admit, “I’d Do Any­thing.” Yes, it’s true. We’ve become quite addict­ed to Andrew Lloyd Web­ber’s lat­est cast­ing scheme for the upcom­ing revival of Oliv­er! “YOU COULD BE NAN­CY!” The hys­te­ria! But it’s good clean fun. And the recent BBC ver­sion was out of this world! That and “Bleak House” have been keep­ing us out of trou­ble over the hol­i­day, plus you can always tell your­self, “Hey, it’s Charles Dick­ens, it’s EDUCATIONAL.”

We met up over the week­end with Jamie’s fam­i­ly and they took us to their local Ital­ian eatery, and it’s well worth a vis­it if you’re in Not­ting Hill. Oste­ria Basil­i­co is very dif­fi­cult to get into on a Sat­ur­day and they don’t book, but if it’s a nice day, put your name in and go shop­ping and come back. Love­ly carpac­cio di man­zo (I driz­zled it with rather too much chilli oil and was sweat­ing!) and gor­geous pizzas.

Final­ly, yes­ter­day we ambled up to High­gate and took in… the ceme­tery. You MUST do this. Not so much for the celebri­ty graves (odd phrase, that) but for the sheer atmos­phere. The West Ceme­tery take only guid­ed tours at 2 p.m. (get there 15 min­utes ear­ly, because we did­n’t and they cal­lous­ly shut the gate in our faces), but the East Ceme­tery is just as much fun and total­ly open. Karl Marx is buried there! And Vir­ginia Woolf’s father Sir Leslie Stephen, and the man who invent­ed the phrase “sur­vival of the fittest,” Her­bert Spencer. Now why did I think Charles Dar­win invent­ed that phrase? And Avery was absolute­ly gob­s­macked to see her cur­rent favourite author, Dou­glas Adams. She’s deep into about her hun­dredth read­ing of “Hitch­hik­er’s Guide to the Galaxy” right now, inspired by see­ing his mod­est lit­tle tomb­stone. It cer­tain­ly makes one think, read­ing all the encomi­ums, prayers and apho­risms peo­ple choose (or some­one choos­es) for their grave­stones. I like the mor­bid ones about decay and bit­ter­ness, but Avery grooved to one par­tic­u­lar­ly win­some notice: “To Mary, a Real Good Moth­er.” Fair enough. We all won­dered: is the place so run­down because of lack of funds, or because the pow­ers that be recog­nise the atmos­phere that over­grown ivy pro­vides? Once in awhile you come upon an obelisk or angel wrapped in cau­tion tape, and you know it’s com­ing down in a mat­ter of… min­utes. Wonderful.

Well, I must run and siz­zle up some lamb chops for din­ner, but not before telling you about the lat­est incar­na­tion of my ever-meta­mor­phos­ing spinach casse­role. Let me tell you, recipes have to evolve when you can’t find the right ingre­di­ents, and then when you find bet­ter ingre­di­ents and think up bet­ter meth­ods. I still love my orig­i­nal ver­sion, but since you can’t get Mon­terey Jack jalapeno cheese here and I’ve yet to find some­thing that tastes just like it, and since my oven was on the fritz last night and I had no frozen spinach, I have come up with what I think is an even bet­ter method. Because it’s not baked, the spinach retains more of its nutri­tion, I’m sure, and it does­n’t take but a nano-sec­ond to make. Get your­self a big bag of baby spinach, already washed, and read on:

Quick Cheesey Spinach
(serves four)

1 large bag (a pound, about) fresh washed baby spinach
2 tbsps butter
4 cloves gar­lic, minced fine
1 medi­um white onion, minced fine
8 ounces Gruyere cheese, grated
4 ounces evap­o­rat­ed milk
1 tbsp cel­ery salt

Now here’s all there is to it: put about half the spinach in your Mag­im­ix or Cuisi­nart and, puls­ing care­ful­ly, chop till just chopped, but not smooshed. Take it out and put it in a bowl and put in the oth­er half, same treat­ment. Now melt the but­ter and saute the gar­lic and onion till nice and soft. Throw in the cheese and milk and stir till melt­ed and soft. Add the cel­ery salt and remove from the heat.

Now take care of the rest of your din­ner (my spe­cial baked chick­en breasts are superb with this spinach) and just at the last minute, when every­one is seat­ed and about to gnaw each oth­er’s hands off at the aro­mas, throw in the spinach and return to the heat. Warm just through. Done.

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Lil­lian Hell­man Chicken
(serves four)

4 bone­less, skin­less chick­en breasts, nice­ly trimmed
3/4 cup each: may­on­naise (get it? Hell­man’s?), grat­ed pecori­no cheese
juice of 1 lemon
pinch gar­lic powder
1 1/2 cups fresh breadcrumbs

Sim­ply mix the mayo and cheese and lemon juice and gar­lic pow­der and smear it all over the chick­en breasts. Coat them thor­ough­ly in bread­crumbs and baked on a foil-cov­ered dish at 425 or so for 35 min­utes. Sim­ply deli­cious, and so SIMPLE.

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Right, I’m off to those lamb chops. Now don’t for­get to send me your email and I’ll migrate this all away to Ether­land very soon… hope to see you there!