eight things I love about London

Actu­ally, one of the things I like best about Lon­don is that as I was com­pil­ing this list, the num­ber of “things I love about Lon­don” kept grow­ing! I thought I’d bet­ter stop before I got to dou­ble dig­its. That’s for another time.

But we are think­ing a lot about how much we love it here, as we start think­ing about leav­ing. Con­necti­cut beck­ons: the green of the grass (cue Avery moan­ing here, about how pre­dictable I am), the red of the barn, the blue of the sky, the white of the fence… our beloved fam­ily and friends. And we want to go, of course. But there is so much to love about our adopted city, such an idio­syn­cratic lit­tle list this evening, that I thought I’d let you in on some of the best. I’ll warn you: it’s no tourist list. It’s the kind of list you make when you’re fully entrenched some­where, where the tiny bits that make your home love­able are weird, quirky, and all your own.

First, may I say how much I adore the fish­mon­ger who has moved into my neigh­bor­hood? He is Tony of The Fishmonger’s Kitchen in Shep­herds Bush Road, and he’s Aus­tralian, gor­geous, gen­er­ous and funny. For months we and our neigh­bors looked in cha­grin as the fish­mon­ger before him jumped ship (so to speak), and the shop moldered (and molded, prob­a­bly), and the hair­dresser next door reported smells of grim death float­ing under the walls.

And then sud­denly: there was Tony! With his lovely blue-painted chalk sand­wich board out in front, trum­pet­ing “Cooked Lob­sters to Order” and “Why not throw some fish on the BBQ this week­end?” and “We now have fresh sushi!” From Tony I bought the many crabs nec­es­sary for my recent tele­vi­sion sojourn, and the huge slabs of salmon for many din­ners, as well as juicy pieces of yel­low­tail tuna to sear for a week­day lunch with my beloved, and gor­geously fresh king prawns (as you see!) to mar­i­nate in olive oil, smoked paprika and sea salt, to saute for two min­utes and then pull their lit­tle heads off and lick your fingers.

Sauteed King Prawns with Paprika
(serves 4)

2 dozen king prawns, raw with heads and shells on
1 tbsp smoked paprika
6 tbsps olive oil
1 tsp sea salt (or to taste)
fresh-ground black pep­per
a lit­tle more olive oil for the pan
chives to garnish

dip­ping sauce:
1/2 cup may­on­naise
juice of 1/2 lemon
squirt of pre­pared wasabi (as hot as you like it!)
fresh-ground black pepper

Cut each prawn up the back with scis­sors, end­ing before the tail. Place the prawns in as sin­gle layer as you can fit, on a large cookie sheet. Sprin­kle with all mari­nade ingre­di­ents and smoosh them around, mix­ing the paprika with the oil. This releases a mag­nif­i­cently earthy, sen­sual aroma that will get your taste buds kick­ing in.

Sprin­kle a lit­tle more olive oil in a very large skil­let and heat till really hot. Place the prawns in imme­di­ately, all at the same time, and begin turn­ing them as they turn pink. Con­tinue to cook over high heat, turn­ing all the time, until they turn stiff and are com­pletely cooked (2–3 min­utes total time, depend­ing on size of prawns). Do NOT over­cook beyond being JUST done.

Sprin­kle with chives and serve over rice or spaghetti, spoon­ing out all the oil and cook­ing debris from the skil­let and sprin­kling it over. Serve with the dip­ping sauce and pro­vide a large body plate for the shells!

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Thank you, Tony. Hav­ing you there in the road, to chat with on a hot summer’s day, to report on the recipe of the night before, to stop in for some wickedly fresh Cor­nish had­dock for tomor­row night’s fish fry, makes every day just a lit­tle cozier, a lit­tle warmer, and our cor­ner of Lon­don a lit­tle more like a village.

And then there’s Sun­drica, our gor­geous lit­tle Ital­ian deli, for parme­san cheese to make my put­tanesca even saltier than it already was! Never mind, skip salt tomor­row to make up for it. Sun­drica is a tiny lit­tle space next to a flower shop by the Ham­mer­smith tube sta­tions, and is packed to the gills with del­i­ca­cies that you won’t know you needed until you walk through its mag­i­cal doors. Ital­ian tuna in olive oil, duck fat in plump glass jars, giant bowls of cured black olives, long rows of many whole salami, pep­per­oni, chorizo, pates of every descrip­tion, sand­wiches of moz­zarella and basil on arti­san bread, home­made gnoc­chi and ravi­oli… go, do. Pick up a tin of lovely Ital­ian plum toma­toes, a chunk of parme­san, a hand­ful or two of black olives, a packet of spaghetti and a tiny of anchovies and a jar of capers, and you’re good for:

Spaghetti Put­tanesca
(serves 4)

1/2 lb spaghetti
3 tbsps olive oil
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 hand­ful (200 grams-ish) oil-cured black olives, pit­ted
1 soup-size can peeled toma­toes, cut in sixths
3 tbsps capers, rinsed if held in salt
6 anchovies, rinsed
1 cup grated parme­san cheese

Boil spaghetti. In the mean­time, mince the gar­lic and onion. Saute in olive oil in a saucepan, then when soft, add the olives, toma­toes, capers and anchovies. Saute till mixed. Throw in the drained spaghetti and serve with cheese.

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This is wickedly, evilly good: strong-flavored, robust, not for the faint of heart. If you can find a tin of tiny whole cherry toma­toes, get those. They’re whim­si­cal, like slightly col­lapsed red bal­loons. Makes the whole dish even nicer.

Once you’ve brushed your teeth from all that gar­lic and anchovy, go to the Vic­to­ria and Albert and book tick­ets for “Grace Kelly: Style Icon” (you have to book them! there’s no show­ing up on the day, it’s far too pop­u­lar). Take a teenage girl or two: it’s the per­fect event for them to see what glamor was really like. There are her REAL dresses from “High Soci­ety” and “Rear Win­dow”! Avery’s jaw sim­ply dropped at the sight of these iconic gar­ments, with their impos­si­bly tiny waist­lines… and there are lovely videos of her engage­ment announce­ment, her wed­ding, her hon­ey­moon… and enough jew­elled hand­bags, sun­glasses and shoes to make any 13-year-old girl swoon. And the shop! There is noth­ing like the V&A shop. Avery always touches every­thing, and if her Iowa grand­mother is with her, it takes twice as long because they EACH touch every­thing, with each other. Per­fect for birth­day party gifts.

And then, it’s late June in Lon­don, so it’s… Wim­ble­don. Can there be any­thing more sat­is­fy­ing than play­ing a mag­nif­i­cently sweaty game of ten­nis on our grotty local courts, com­ing home to shower and change, and flop­ping down on the sofa to watch a lovely Amer­i­can called John Isner duke it out for over 11 hours with a French­man? Over eight of those hours were SEQUEN­TIAL! The match played out, as you all know by now, over three days, and they are both my new heroes. Now, when­ever John and I are exhausted after our hour, I say, “So let’s do that for seven more HOURS.” It was sim­ply awe-inspiring. The only com­par­i­son I can pos­si­bly even sug­gest to myself is child­birth: at some point, or many points, one says to one­self, “I don’t think I can see this process through. I think I’m done.” And then one’s hus­band says, “No one can have this baby but you. You’ll have to stick it out.” (I’m sure he said it more poet­i­cally and sup­por­t­ively than that, but you get the idea.)

It must have been like that for these two lads: with every impos­si­ble serve, they must have thought on some level, “I really can’t be doing with this any­more,” but what choice did they have? No one but they could fin­ish the match. Truly inspiring!

And then, in my never-ending quest for new things to do that not every­one gets to do: go visit the Law Courts at and around Lincoln’s Inn Fields and… hush hush… get to have lunch in the Mem­bers Com­mon Room! It pays to have illus­tri­ous friends, I do have one, a very cool solic­i­tor friend who is a loyal blog reader and there­fore an unques­tion­ably good per­son, and she kindly invited me along to lunch in the exalted space. It is the orig­i­nal wine cel­lars of the larger din­ing hall upstairs (in order to get into which one must be a bar­ris­ter, which is the Eng­lish type of lawyer who appears in court, not the type who works with the gen­eral pub­lic and is called a solic­i­tor. But she walked upstairs with me after we had our lovely gos­sipy lunch, and we gazed upon the glo­ri­ous vaulted ceil­ing, painted chan­de­liers, long refectory-style tables. “It’s like Harry Pot­ter!” she mur­mured, and exactly so! She described to me the old-fashioned bar­ris­ters work­ing in their Geor­gian offices and then repair­ing at the end of the day to their flats above, with menser­vants, just like Oxford dons…

It was such fun to see some­thing pri­vate and impres­sive and rather secret-feeling, the build­ings soar­ing around the Old Square and New Square, leafy and green, and encap­su­lated by wrought-iron fences to keep out peo­ple like me. I am happy to report that my friend is just as impressed with her sur­round­ings as I was, so we were able to be glee­ful for her together.

And then, of course, there is Avery’s beloved school. I fully real­ize that the clock is tick­ing on my being wel­come there, in fact on her being there at all. Of course come to that, the clock is tick­ing on every­thing, so I don’t know why I should suf­fer par­tic­u­larly over the school, but it is quite the most mag­i­cal place we could ever have envi­sioned send­ing her. This week was the Cel­e­bra­tion for her year mov­ing up into the Mid­dle School from the Lower School, and frankly, the sight of all 100 of them in their teen glory, per­fect bod­ies and hair and gor­geous smiles and all of them just start­ing out, so earnest and yet cool and sophis­ti­cated, was enough to make me want to cry, as usual. I do try so hard not to! Luck­ily I was brought from bathos by the sheer intel­li­gence and charm of their pre­sen­ta­tions: “A Very Civil War: or, The Entire Recount­ing how Charles Stu­art did come to lose pos­ses­sion of both head & crown in a sin­gle stroke with this sorry tale reduced to five min­utes.” If I told you that the girls’ analy­sis of the salient bat­tles was told in football-analysis lan­guage, would you find that as amus­ing as I did?

Sit­ting in the great hall, pan­elled up to the gallery from which girls hang, arms folded, cling­ing to their friends, lis­ten­ing to an excerpt from “The Cru­cible” in which most excite­ment was obtained from a con­certed scream (the acoustics are impres­sive, I found!)… I felt com­pletely happy, in spite of the heat!

(I inter­rupt this paean of love to Lon­don with a brief screech: enough with the heat already! We go to Con­necti­cut for this! Let’s have some nice driz­zly grey for just a day or so, so I can stop being all pink in the face and sweaty, even before I start a game of tennis.)

Finally, tonight we picked Avery up from a cupcake-making birth­day party (she dec­o­rated hers with Doc­tor Who ref­er­ences, per her cur­rent obsession.

She said, “It’s really hard to make a Dalek’s arm out of frosting.”

We smiled at each other. “That’s a good one for the game,” I said, refer­ring to our ongo­ing love affair with sen­tences that we reckon have never been uttered before.

“I know,” she said, as we trooped to the car, she in her beau­ti­ful grey Bon­point dress (dot­ted with choco­late from the cup­cakes and gone sud­denly too short with her shoot­ing up), and a pair of tot­tery vin­tage charity-shop heels. Only Avery could get away with it.

We raced away from the party to my last thing-I-love, and that’s the Old Vic. How many dozens of times we have dri­ven there through town across the West­min­ster Bridge, look­ing up at Big Ben (which Avery always reminds me is not what you can see, not the tower at all, but the bell inside: the tower is St Stephen’s Tower), West­min­ster Abbey and the Houses of Par­lia­ment and the Lon­don Eye. It’s the tourists’ tour, only it’s on the way to the theatre!

Tonight it was “The Tem­pest”, and while it is not my favorite of dear Will’s efforts (I sim­ply can­not keep the plot straight, and Avery and I agree that the Ceres-Juno scene is not just incom­pre­hen­si­ble, but down­right annoy­ing), but it was great fun to see the glo­ri­ous stag­ing, hear the idio­syn­cratic live music com­ing from both sides of the stage, and to revel in know­ing that in this town, Shake­speare is a local play­wright done good. It’s funny how present he is, when you live here. He’s alive and well, and we all feel that he must be read­ing the reviews, shak­ing his head over pedan­tic mod­ern stag­ings, wish­ing he could throw an Eliz­a­bethan ruff over some char­ac­ter dressed as a bicy­cle mes­sen­ger (I’m not mak­ing that up). The Old Vic is sim­ply a cozy, ele­gant, friendly the­atre that sim­ply churns out beau­ti­ful pro­duc­tions: “Gaslight” last year, the never-to-be-forgotten “Six Degrees of Sep­a­ra­tion” this spring, and tonight… I, well, I LOVE it.

And… did you know that when you book tick­ets for a play in Lon­don, the choices of “title” (instead of just Mr, Mrs, Miss, Ms and Dr), include “Lady”, “Lord” and “Sir”! I love that too.

And there you have them: eight things I love about liv­ing here. I wish you could do them all with me, but then if you lived here, you’d have your own eight things. That’s what makes this city great. If you ever think you’re a tiny bit bored, all you have to do is look up and there is some­thing to cher­ish, to invite a friend to do, to chor­tle about after­ward, to hold to your heart and enjoy. Now… it can cool off.