Close to Home

home in London --
the scaffolding is down!

We're a little shaken.

The whole world, it seems, is a little shaken.

So we were just as glad to stay close to home this week.

There's no such thing as
too British, right?

Klauser has been threatening to take us to a real afternoon tea since we arrived, and finally we were able to set a time and place -- Fortnum & Mason, Wednesday after class, when Phil would already be dressed up. A friend of ours referred to the store as "Fortune & Mason," and the bill proved him quite right. But in the meantime, what a tea!

There were sandwiches. There were scones, both savoury and sweet. There were pastries, both savoury and sweet. There were cakes. There was endless tea, and any of the comestibles could be replenished as well (only the scones were, and we took some home, as by then we were all popping buttons). There was a pianist who played "Night and Day" and "I Get a
Kick Out of You" and the theme from Downton Abbey. (In a strange moment that must have been an auditory hallucination, I could have sworn I heard him playing Country Joe and the Fish's "Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag" in tinkling tones. And when I took a look at him, there was a certain "I've been to Woodstock" vibe going on beneath the pastel jacket and well-groomed coiffure. But it can't really have happened.)

We checked out the Christmas decorations on the first floor, and the dear Klauser bought me chocolate truffles to make up for having missed the opportunity to buy myself a box of Neuhaus in Belgium. And we didn't need to eat again for 24 hours.

We discovered a local pub, The Dovetail, that has more than a dozen Belgian beers on tap and many more in bottles. This too helped us feel less deprived about curtailing our Belgian trip. And we had lunch with our friend Kries, whom we were supposed to meet for dinner in Gent, when he stopped in London for a conference.

On the weekend, we were both touristy and nontouristy. With Klauser and Sue, we ate excellent Chinese food and saw a not-so-excellent movie, Steve Jobs, which we all agreed was well acted and badly written, bearing out my belief that everything is all about the writing.



Yes, a codpiece

We were thinking of going to the seacoast on Sunday, but frigid temperatures and a certain amount of exhaustion led us to stay in London. Instead, we went to the Museum of London to see the medieval rooms -- with, as always, a brief stop to look at World War I materials. The exhibits were very nicely done, though the written explanation of the fourteen-century plague pandemic noted that experts are still not certain if the disease was actually bubonic plague or another disease. I'm pretty sure that recent DNA analyses have found that remains of plague victims were definitively infected with the plague bacteria, Yersinia pestis.

We've spent a lot of time this week watching the BBC News, with Phil's favorite newscaster, Moxie Croxill. I'm not sure what the attraction is -- her name, maybe? Or is it her blond hair? Anyway, the news about Brussels is alarming, and we hope that all our Belgian friends stay safe.



Next week -- Ben! And Thanksgiving! We've ordered a turkey from the butcher near the Smithfield Market, where this happened:

On the upper left is an advertisement for a wife sale,
which apparently went on at Smithfield when divorces
were difficult to come by

 Our many pubs for the last two weeks:

filled with wooden carvings
of fat, happy friars

makes up in beer what it lacks in signage



just around the corner, named after
Elizabeth I's possible lover and the
owner of our property in the 16th century

nice craft brews



winner of weirdest name to date, full of
people with nice buns (both kinds) and extremely good
posture from the nearby Sadler Wells dance theatre

where Marx and Engels -- and Kries as a
student -- ate and drank