last fes­tiv­i­ties

We all woke up this morn­ing with the dis­tinct sen­sa­tion that real life had begun again, after the myr­i­ad joys of the hol­i­day.  Jan­u­ary 2.  It sounds dis­tress­ing­ly ordinary!

Actu­al­ly, that’s not true.  I for one am ready for a bit of ordi­nary.  We’ve been rushed off our feet with all the plans each of us made for our hol­i­day sea­son, some­times pil­ing on top of each oth­er, mak­ing it feel as if the days were push­ing each oth­er rude­ly off the cal­en­dar in a rush of activity.

Part of the fun of Christ­mas, for me, is being invit­ed to see oth­er peo­ple’s dec­o­ra­tions!  At least, the invi­ta­tion is osten­si­bly to din­ner, or for cof­fee or cham­pagne, but I waste no time in sidling up to peo­ple’s trees to inves­ti­gate their orna­ments, or to man­tels above flick­er­ing fires to see the ever-fas­ci­nat­ing dis­plays of Christ­mas cards, their cousin­s’s cousins’ chil­dren’s pho­tos.  I love the vari­ety of every­one’s table set­tings, Christ­mas crack­ers, place settings!

The joys of being cooked for, sit­ting at a beau­ti­ful­ly dec­o­rat­ed table sur­round­ed by laugh­ing friends.  Oh, the stand­ing ribs of beef, the creamy pota­toes Dauphi­noise with chives, the roast­ed cheesy cau­li­flower at my friend Elspeth’s fes­tive house, Christ­mas trees glit­ter­ing, hung with dozens of red ribbons.

I spent one qui­et after­noon all alone when John took Avery off to see “Yes, Prime Min­is­ter,” a the­atre ver­sion of the clas­sic British tel­ly series, updat­ed to reflect cur­rent pol­i­tics (appar­ent­ly to David Cameron’s open annoy­ance as Prime Min­is­ter!).  I sat qui­et­ly watch­ing an old movie, cov­ered with a fuzzy throw and a tor­toise­shell cat, with the tree flick­er­ing to the side.  How I will hate to dis­man­tle it!

We woke up on the morn­ing of the 30th, our 23rd wed­ding anniver­sary, full of antic­i­pa­tion of our annu­al cel­e­bra­to­ry lunch at Nobu, the sushi-fest of our entire year.  But as we asked Avery to take our pho­to­graph, I noticed she was dead-white.  Absolute­ly the col­or of paper.  “I don’t feel very good,” she whis­pered, and off she went, back to bed with an upset stom­ach and chills.  “Man pro­pos­es, and God dis­pos­es,” ran through my mind from the old Lord Peter Wim­sey sto­ry, and it some­times does feel that some­one up there wants to remind us that we’re not in charge.

Ah, well, it was but the work of a moment for John to ring up and change our reser­va­tion to the fol­low­ing day, as I was cer­tain­ly not going to enjoy an extrav­a­gant lunch out with the poor patient left at home to suf­fer.  And it was just as well, because lat­er that day John announced he felt awful, too, and there ensued sev­er­al hours of wor­ry and deliv­er­ies of Sprite and crack­ers.  But in the way of these things, by evening every­one was ready for one more help­ing of med­i­c­i­nal chick­en soup and all was nor­mal once again.

Nobu the next day!  A rain-spat­tered, chilly, unpleas­ant New Year’s Eve Day, but noth­ing could spoil our fun.

How we wished for the after­noon to last for­ev­er!  It is sim­ply the best restau­rant on earth, in our opin­ion.  There is noth­ing quite so lux­u­ri­ous, for me, as being fed dish­es I could nev­er, nev­er make at home.  Yel­low­tail tuna with jalapenos and corian­der in a tart, cit­rusy dress­ing, toro with caviar swim­ming in a spicy sauce, sus­pend­ed over crushed ice.  A won­der­ful con­coc­tion called “soft shell crab haru­ma­ki,” which means spring roll, but WHAT a spring roll!  Deep-fried soft shell crab, tiny flecks of chive, tiny diced red pep­pers, all wrapped in the most del­i­cate of super-crunchy pas­try, on a pool of wasabi may­on­naise and thick sweet soy.  I could nev­er dream of mak­ing such a thing!  Per­haps the best exam­ple of this phe­nom­e­non was the clas­sic rock shrimp tem­pu­ra in creamy, spicy sauce.

Now you might remem­ber my for­ays recent­ly into mak­ing this dish at home (scroll down through the post for the recipe!).  It was jol­ly suc­cess­ful, very tasty.  But hon­ey, it was NOT NOBU.  There is an inef­fa­ble dif­fer­ence between my ama­teur­ish grasp of tem­pu­ra, my blun­der­ings with the pro­por­tions of sauce to shrimp, just my inept­ness in gen­er­al that I would nev­er have noticed if I had­n’t eat­en the real thing.  The key, I think, is in the razor-sharp line between the shrimp being under­cooked and being JUST cooked.  Heaven.

We indulged in our usu­al anniver­sary games of “what was the best play you saw this year?” and “what are you proud­est of this year?” and “what would you like to have accom­plished by the next time we sit down to this dish?”  Twen­ty-three years of those dis­cus­sions!  Amazing.

Home to hoover up yet anoth­er sev­er­al thou­sand nee­dles from under the tree.  Hermione the tab­by insists on play­ing under­neath the tree, bat­ting at the orna­ments, wav­ing her tail to and fro under the branch­es.  And at this advanced date, all you have to do is LOOK at the tree and it drops nee­dles.  We lit all the can­dles and brought out the cham­pagne glass­es and the door­bell rang: John and Suzanne come brave­ly through the driz­zle, all the way from next door, to share our New Year’s Eve.  What friends they are.

It was a typ­i­cal me-par­ty, I real­ized.  Lots of can­dles, pret­ty nap­kins, won­der­ful friends, and a cook­ing dis­as­ter.  Do NOT try to make parme­san short­bread with gluten-free flour!  John and Avery tast­ed them before the par­ty began.  I offered a dis­claimer.  “First of all, I warn you, you can’t pick them up.  They dis­in­te­grate in a most unex­pect­ed way.”  “Into pow­der!” John agreed.  “They stick to the roof of your mouth very odd­ly,” Avery said.  “Oh, for­get it,” I gave in, and rum­maged through the fridge for an alter­na­tive.  Luck­i­ly, also typ­i­cal-me, there was plen­ty to choose from.  We sat down to creamy roast­ed salmon mousse, Boursin cheese with black pep­per, Moroc­can oil-cured olives, crisp crack­ers.  No problem.

John and Suzanne had cel­e­brat­ed their anniver­sary the day before ours and had kind­ly brought over their wed­ding album, which I went through avid­ly.  So sweet to see their chil­dren, now par­ents them­selves, as chil­dren!  John recit­ed awful jokes from the fam­i­ly’s Christ­mas crack­ers.  “What sort of piz­za does King Wences­las like?  Deep and crisp and even.”  “What has a neck but can­not swal­low?  A bot­tle.”  There are end­less lists of these, just so you know!  Some of them require a degree of flu­en­cy in being Eng­lish, to be fun­ny.  “What do you get when you cross a cat with a chemist?  Puss in Boots.”

Off they went to their din­ner par­ty, off Avery went to her New Year’s sleep­over.  We set­tled down for an extreme­ly glam­orous sup­per of left­over chilli, but so what?   Lunch had been Nobu!

New Year’s Day found us join­ing our friend Emi­ly and a clutch of teenaged girls, in a crowd­ed, chaot­ic pub in the vil­lage, sur­round­ed by fam­i­lies with lots of adorable Eng­lish apple-cheeked chil­dren, har­ried staff and… Hay­ley Mills!  She has­n’t changed much since “The Par­ent Trap.”  Cool celebri­ty sight­ing, although arguably not quite as cool as Robert Pat­tin­son who had been in the night before.  Fair enough.  Burg­ers, fish and chips and a lot of incom­pre­hen­si­ble quo­ta­tions-in-tan­dem by the girls of tele­vi­sion dia­logue, movie dia­logue, Shake­speare, and Car­ol Chan­ning movie quotes as inter­pret­ed by stand-up comics.

Total­ly unlike Nobu, the food was only so-so and I in fact could pos­si­bly have done it bet­ter!  But John and I agreed lat­er that as long as you know what you want from an expe­ri­ence, it does­n’t always have to be per­fect.  That day, in the thin mid­win­ter after­noon sun­light, we want­ed to be out of the house, sur­round­ed by our girls, watch­ing them laugh and be hap­py, on New Year’s Day.

And final­ly, it was our last adven­ture of the hol­i­days: “Cabaret”!  It was fun to come from hav­ing read “Good­bye to Berlin” (a tru­ly dis­mal book with wild­ly unlik­able char­ac­ters, I thought, although Avery was more enthu­si­as­tic) and seen “I Am A Cam­era” (much more enjoy­able than the book large­ly due to amaz­ing per­for­mances and per­fect cast­ing) to this dizzy­ing delight!  First of all, the Savoy The­atre is a must for any­one who loves Lon­don because it’s adja­cent to the Savoy Hotel, one of the coolest, most icon­ic spots in this won­der­ful city.

Excit­ing­ly for the under­study, the actor nor­mal­ly play­ing the cen­tral char­ac­ter, the nar­ra­tor, was ill.  One can only imag­ine the under­study’s sup­ply of air­borne flu germs!  Oh, the dra­ma of a real West End musical.

And that was that.  One last cel­e­bra­tion.  Home to set­tle in for the com­ing week which will mean for me, tak­ing down the tree, for John, des­per­ate­ly try­ing to save our invest­ments from the “fis­cal cliff” (how I can’t wait nev­er to hear that phrase again!), and for poor Avery, the dread­ed “revi­sion” for the upcom­ing GCSE mock exams.  Eigh­teen “mocks” now and 27 “real exams” in June!  So much work.  I plan to cook what­ev­er she wants for din­ner, for the dura­tion.  It’s about all I can do to help.

Per­haps we’ll find time for a qui­et plea­sure along the lines of this Christ­mas present from me to her: a puz­zle of the tops of the cup­cakes she had for her birthday!

How many lay­ers of crazi­ness is this?  Book cov­ers in icing, turned into a pho­to, then turned into a puz­zle, then a pho­to of the puz­zle!  I think we have squeezed every ounce of enjoy­ment from that birth­day present that could ever be squeezed.

Per­haps I can find anoth­er sil­ly, semi-ath­let­ic, most­ly hilar­i­ous event for char­i­ty for us to do, like the pre-Christ­mas San­ta Run for Home-Start!  We had so much fun on that crisp, sun­ny day, running/walking 5K through glo­ri­ous Green­wich Park.  How many San­tas does it take to pay a social-worker?

Through it all, mirac­u­lous­ly we have all been spared the Win­ter Wom­it­ing Wirus, I mean Vom­it­ing Virus, that has felled over 1 mil­lion Brits.  Fin­gers crossed, hands washed.  Some­day this month-long cold I have been slog­ging through will be over.  In the mean­time, 2013 has begun, a year that promis­es to bring adven­tures with our plot of dirt in South­wark, with the cook­book Avery and I are work­ing on, with new recipes to exper­i­ment with and peo­ple to feed.

Avery, John and I wish you and yours the hap­pi­est and health­i­est of New Years!