a lit­tle sushi, a lit­tle Holbein

--November 11th, 2006--

Pssst. Want a hot, secret nugget of wis­dom about the Tate Gallery here in Lon­don? Go on, you know that’s why you read “Kris­ten in Lon­don,” it’s for the hot, secret nuggets of wis­dom about just about any­thing in our fair city, stuff you can’t get from a guide­book. Well, here’s today’s lit­tle trea­sure: if you don’t have to cross the Thames to GET TO the Tate, you shouldn’t cross the Thames to GO BACK HOME.

That’s right, I man­aged to top yesterday’s Bar­bi­can Blun­der, and we got on a Num­ber 88 bus to come home from the museum and got all the way to bleed­ing Brix­ton. Went in the bloody wrong direc­tion! Just hap­pily rid­ing along, both Avery and I exclaim­ing over the lovely lights on the river, “Hey, the Lon­don Eye is red! Must be for Christ­mas,” never once think­ing that it was odd to have to cross the river to get to… May­fair. From the Tate. Mind you, I’ve been to the Tate that is on the other side of the river. I can offer no expla­na­tion for my extreme stu­pid­ity. Be sure and say that with the proper posh Eng­lish “shtew-pidity” pro­nun­ci­a­tion. Avery said today, “It makes me slightly crazy the way the Eng­lish say Tues­day as if they were talk­ing about eat­ing. Chews-day.” Well, at least they don’t spend an hour and a half get­ting home from a major landmark.

Seri­ously!

Any­way, we had fun. I needed a bit of cultcha because last night I made a real stab at see­ing an actual film in a the­atre, for some cultcha, and when I got there, they had mys­te­ri­ously decided to sub­sti­tute the film I wanted to see with a Latin Amer­i­can Film Fes­ti­val. What? No one seemed very inter­ested in my whingey protes­ta­tions about accu­racy on one’s web­site about what one is offer­ing to the inno­cent film-viewing pub­lic, so I slunk out. By then the driz­zle had turned to a real soaker, so I quickly decided I needed to go indoors and would you believe it? The clos­est place I could find was… Nobu. Okay, not the clos­est, but the clos­est place that served yel­low­tail with jalapeno and cilantro in a ponzu sauce. Always makes me a bit home­sick, Nobu. I have no idea why they seated me, in ratty jeans and soak­ing wet and in an orange pash­mina that smelled like a wet labrador, but they did. Bliss. A dou­ble order of the yel­low­tail, a nice chat with a Por­tuguese fel­low sit­ting next to me at the sushi bar who was miss­ing his kids back in Sao Paolo. Not for me the flir­ta­tious chat with some­one lonely on a busi­ness trip. No, we talked about our chil­dren. Sigh. That is so rep­re­sen­ta­tive of my life.

Home and to bed early, miss­ing my fam­ily. I was glad to run out to Kens­ing­ton this morn­ing and pick up Fifi from her friend Julia’s house. What an incred­i­bly eru­dite fam­ily Julia’s is. Her mother is Ital­ian, her father Pol­ish, and their house com­pletely beau­ti­ful, filled with Ital­ian con­tem­po­rary paint­ings and gor­geous piles of impres­sive art his­tory books on their (yes) cof­fee table, reminded me of the gatril­lions of equally lovely books that I own, now pro­vid­ing hours of edu­ca­tional enter­tain­ment to the bats and mice in the barn in Con­necti­cut. Some deci­sions I make are just shtew-pid.

So Avery was hot to see the Hol­bein showbecause of their study­ing the Tudors and the Renais­sance at school. And it was worth see­ing. We each got the audio guide because I know next to noth­ing about Hol­bein and Avery, while extremely knowl­edge­able, allowed as how she might learn some­thing from an actual museum expert. It was fun to wan­der around and enter num­bers into the guide and have the nice Eng­lish lady tell us lots of things we did not know about Sir Thomas More, Jane Sey­mour and the like. I wish I had had my cam­era with me, because Avery’s out­fit was amaz­ing and she got lots of admir­ing looks from the other museum-goers: robin’s egg blue tights, a fuzzy caramel-colored short skirt, a sequined pink vin­tage cardie, and a grey felt beret with the sil­hou­ette of a jackrab­bit on the bit that hung over her eye (the rab­bit had a crys­tal eye, just so you know). But John has the cam­era in Con­necti­cut, and I’m ashamed to say Avery actu­ally said she was relieved to have a moment in her life go undocumented.

She was a lit­tle melan­choly on the ride home, totally uncon­nected to the fact that we saw most of greater Lon­don on the bus ride. “Mommy, this is my first Christ­mas not at home. I mean, we are at home, but not… at home. And I know there are peo­ple who spend Christ­mas abroad. But we’re not that kind of peo­ple! And yet we are! Spend­ing Christ­mas abroad. And yet at home.” She sighed. “It’s very con­fus­ing.” Poor dear. She is also con­cerned that the famous Oxford Street Christ­mas lights are num­ber one, waste­ful of elec­tric­ity in these envi­ron­men­tally sen­si­tive times, and num­ber two, really tacky. At least she has her pri­or­i­ties straight.

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