sog­gy, sog­gy, soggy

Oh, it was bound to end bad­ly, as Alyssa would say. Or as the Eng­lish say, “it end­ed in tears.” Well, not lit­er­al­ly, but we were wet enough.

As soon as every­body left for “Dick Whit­ting­ton,” John and I decid­ed to open Jill and Joel’s Christ­mas box and see what was inside. And there, tan­ta­liz­ing­ly, was the “Col­lec­tors’ Edi­tion” Gone With the Wind that I had begged for! It was but the work of a moment to put Disc Three in and we were deep in the world of Mar­garet Mitchell, cast­ing Scar­lett, George Cuko­r’s hissy fits. So when the hour to leave for din­ner arrived, I think it’s safe to say that for a bet, we would both just have stayed home. But you know when it’s An Event, like your anniver­sary, and you’ve made the reser­va­tions, and your child is safe­ly in some­one else’s hands (for­get safe­ly, in fact, she’s just some­where else), you feel you must Go Out. So we did.

Straight into a blind­ing, blow­ing, freez­ing rain­storm. The cor­ner of Wood’s Mews and Park Lane was like some­thing from the Wiz­ard of Oz, with­out the music and the witch on a bicy­cle. No, actu­al­ly there were sev­er­al witch­es on bicy­cles, and they each rode per­ilous­ly close to us. The lit­tle space of black tights between my skirt and boots was instant­ly soaked, and I want­ed to go home. Plus no taxis, and it was too late to take a bus. There was noth­ing for it: John decid­ed we would dri­ve. So he spun around and elbowed me in the face, break­ing the tem­ple off glass­es and dash­ing them to the wet side­walk. Now, THEN, it was def­i­nite­ly time to stay home. But no, we were intre­pid. Into the house I go, find old skanky glass­es (after all, it’s only my wed­ding anniver­sary, no need to look appeal­ing, he’s stuck with me), then back out to crawl into the car and be off.

I wish I could say that “din­ner was all we remem­bered,” but either we don’t remem­ber much because our expe­ri­ences at Wod­ka were heav­i­ly steeped in vod­ka, or the restau­rant had declined. For what­ev­er rea­son, it was­n’t tremen­dous­ly yum­my. I don’t think we’d go back. Unac­count­ably, a small bull ter­ri­er was part of the decor, fol­low­ing wet patrons from the door to their tables and then look­ing tru­cu­lent. And the menu was paper. And the food very oily, except when it was dry and shoot­ing off the plate. Actu­al­ly, a starter called “peli­meni” was quite good, a sort of meat­ball in a dumpling (how could it be bad?), but even the iced vod­kas were not as good as the many vari­eties I remem­ber John and I made when we moved back to New York the last time. We found that any­thing was good in vod­ka! Except water­mel­on, which watered it down. But cucum­ber? Fresh gin­ger? Chili pep­pers? All good.

Ah well, soon enough we were home and cozy.

This morn­ing we head­ed out to the British Muse­um to meet up with every­one and hear all about last evening. More on that lat­er, but right now… Hap­py New Year’s Eve! We hope you are doing what you like best: whether that’s sit­ting qui­et­ly on your own with a book, or par­ty­ing mad­ly with lots of sloshed friends, or get­ting engaged on top of the Empire State Build­ing, or hav­ing din­ner with a select group (as we did). See you in 2007!