of friends, and a quite per­fect sandwich

Now, nor­mally noth­ing in the world would induce me to post a por­trait of myself on this blog. Nor­mally it would not enhance your per­cep­tions of me, dear read­ers. But I have to tell you about my friend Vincent’s pho­tog­ra­phy, so you can say you knew him when. And he man­aged to make a not cringe-worthy image of me, so that tells you something.

I’m going to go out on some­thing of a limb now and pro­vide you with a link to Vincent’s artis­tic web­site, but with a very clear caveat: you must be 18 or over to look at his site, and I will tell you that some of the images are quite shock­ing, even to my rel­a­tively pro­fes­sional artis­tic eye. He con­cen­trates on the nude male body, no holds barred (so pho­tograph­ing me was a com­plete depar­ture and an awfully nice favor!). I see his work as stand­ing on the shoul­ders of the great activist pho­tog­ra­pher Robert Map­plethorpe, since no one can pho­to­graph men’s bod­ies with­out incur­ring the legacy of those works of the 1970s and 1980s. But because Map­plethorpe achieved what he did polit­i­cally, Vin­cent doesn’t have to be polit­i­cal. He can choose to explore the pure phys­i­cal­ity of the body, and cel­e­brate the lim­it­less vari­ety of the human body, and revel in quite riv­et­ing and star­tling detail, with­out hav­ing to make any polit­i­cal state­ment at all. His gen­er­a­tion of pho­tog­ra­phers reminds me of my gen­er­a­tion of fem­i­nists: because of what peo­ple achieved with their intense boundary-testing 30 years ago, we can now hap­pily enjoy cook­ing and rais­ing our chil­dren, AND hav­ing a job, or not, with­out mak­ing a new polit­i­cal state­ment with every choice.

As Mapplethorpe’s orga­ni­za­tion pub­lishes on their web­site, “Some of these pho­tographs were shock­ing for their con­tent but exquis­ite in their tech­ni­cal mas­tery.” I think Vin­cent goes beyond tech­ni­cal mas­tery (although he has that qual­ity with­out ques­tion) and imbues his sub­jects with sen­si­tiv­ity and a great sense of humor.

In any case, my take on Vincent’s work is that he is tremen­dously tal­ented and expres­sive, and he takes incred­i­ble joy in bring­ing out the true spirit of his sit­ters, all of whom know we’re in the pres­ence of a really gen­er­ous artist. And there’s always a chance that some­one read­ing my blog will be taken enough with his work to give Vin­cent some cool oppor­tu­nity. He’s already been approached by the fab­u­lous inter­na­tional pho­tog­ra­phy mag­a­zine Eye­maz­ing, for a spe­cial fea­ture in the autumn. Good on you, Vin­cent, and may the art world embrace you. Plus you’re an awfully enter­tain­ing com­pan­ion, and about the best friend any­one could wish for, in good times and bad.

Well, enough seri­ous busi­ness! I had such fun yes­ter­day meet­ing up with a new friend, who I will iden­tify only as “6point7” as she appears on the inter­net. Can you imag­ine (prob­a­bly you can, but I am very old-fashioned, really) hav­ing a friend you’ve met only online? We tip­toed around each other on the super-entertaining Matthew Mac­fadyen fan room, real­iz­ing that we share not only our enthu­si­asm for him, but even more for Lon­don. We both sim­ply adore the fan­tas­tic spirit of this city, she rather more for its film and the­atre worlds, and I more for… what? Its food side, and the fun of rais­ing a child here, and just the irre­press­ible British per­son­al­ity that walks its pave­ments. So we cau­tiously decided to meet for lunch, and yes­ter­day after­noon found us at Getti’s in the Maryle­bone High Street. I stood out­side the restau­rant in the over­whelm­ing wind, feel­ing buf­feted and wish­ing I was car­ry­ing a rose between my teeth, when a lady approached me and said, “Are you Kris­ten?” and there she was! It wasn’t even a bit awk­ward, as I had thought it might be. It’s funny how you can gain a real impres­sion of a per­son just through writ­ten cor­re­spon­dence, and it was very intrigu­ing to try to match up the typed per­son with the real per­son, sit­ting oppo­site me in the sun with impos­si­bly blue eyes.

We had a lovely time. She was very sweet ask­ing about Avery; I think it is a spe­cial and unusual qual­ity when child-free peo­ple have any inter­est in other people’s chil­dren. Lord knows I could not be both­ered to give the time of day to anyone’s kids before Avery, but then I think we’ve estab­lished I am more self-centered than the aver­age bear. We talked movies, tele­vi­sion, star encoun­ters we have rev­eled in, fam­ily, every­thing. She expressed the opin­ion that she’s less intense in real life than onscreen, and I would have to say that seemed true; her real per­sona was unex­pect­edly gen­tle and warm, when I think I was antic­i­pat­ing a very strong opin­ion on lots of things. I won­der how dif­fer­ently I present myself on line? When I get the link to her film/theatre blog I will pass it on.

And the food was lovely. I had, I have to say, a com­pletely for­get­table plate of sliced toma­toes (I’m pretty sure I ordered tomato and moz­zarella, but who knows), but it was fol­lowed by the best carpac­cio I’ve had in Lon­don. I do tend to order it when I see it, because done well it’s so sim­ple: just thinly-sliced raw beef ten­der­loin with tra­di­tional accom­pa­ni­ments of shaved parme­san and a lit­tle salad. This beef was quite per­fect, com­pletely ten­der, and added to the plate were beau­ti­ful lit­tle crispy curls of cel­ery. I am an utter sucker for cel­ery in any form, like­wise cucum­ber, so it was such a nice addi­tion. And a tiny dol­lop of fresh pesto, always a good thing. 6point7 reported that her pump­kin soup and risotto were very good as well, so I think it’s two thumbs up for Getti’s.

Speak­ing of pesto, I have come up with pos­si­bly the per­fect sand­wich (I do love a good sand­wich), and it’s prac­ti­cally free. I am, as you know, devoted to roast chicken. It’s cheap, it cooks itself, it’s com­fort­ing, and after din­ner you can make roasted chicken soup, and then you get sand­wiches with the left­overs. Here’s what to do. Click here and scroll down for instruc­tions on roast­ing your chicken and mak­ing your soup. Then, once you’ve got your nice lit­tle dish of the chicken breast meat that you didn’t fin­ish at din­ner time, at lunch time the next day you get it out of the fridge (hop­ing no one has eaten it at mid­night, but since you’re the only one up at mid­night this should not be a prob­lem). Then:

A Per­fect Chicken Sandwich

1 whole meal pita, toasted and opened into a pocket
1 roasted chicken breast (skin on PLEASE), sliced thin
1 slice red onion, sep­a­rated into cir­cles
1 tbsp fresh pesto
1 tsp but­ter
four slices Dou­ble Glouces­ter cheese

Sim­ply slather the inside of the pita with but­ter on one side and peso on the other, then tuck your chicken, onion and cheese inside. The result is pretty, with the pur­ply onion and bright green pesto, and it’s got crunch, herbs, creamy cheese and vir­tu­ous whole wheat. Plus, as I say, it’s prac­ti­cally FREE. Of course if you wanted to skip roast­ing a whole chicken (one won­ders why that would be, but one never knows), then you could eas­ily buy a chicken breast alone, herb and but­ter it up, and roast in the oven for 30 min­utes. In any case, tuck in.