Our Favorite Things

As we finish packing, hoping hopelessly that our belongings will fit into the bags we brought, we look back with premature nostalgia on some of the most wonderful aspects of our Clerkenwell neighborhood. It's been an amazing place to live -- near everything, bursting with food and drink of every sort, endlessly entertaining. We are more than sorry to leave it.

Our first pub:

Our first dinner place:

Leather Lane at lunchtime (endless food carts!):

Tongue and Brisket on Leather Lane (needs no other explanation):

The very blue and often quite snug suits who lunch on Leather Lane;

The WWI statue outside our tube station:

Our Belgian pub:

Our very political pizza place:

Where the heist took place (just down the street):

The wonderful Old Mitre, where Queen Elizabeth danced around the Maypole:

Phil's favorite bridge, the Holborn Viaduct:

Bee's Bakery, which we just discovered (too late to take full advantage, alas!):

Our neighbor:

 

St. Ethelreda's, a 12th century church on the next block:

The charming boy and girl statues above what used to be a school (18th century), next door:

Our building (called Sienna House -- the horses are meant to evoke the Palio, and yes, it's misspelled):

Where Phil ran nearly every day:

And finally -- we love the Tube. It gets you where you're going and tells you when it's arriving; its seats are padded, and only rarely has anyone thrown up in it. We couldn't figure out what the OYSTER in Oyster card stood for, so Ben decided for himself:

Our pubs for the week:

 



 

Brewdog -- opened 3 days ago

 

Winding Down

Things are ending.

Biggie and Gary have gone home (with various misadventures compliments of Virgin Atlantic). Ben has been to Portugal and back. We've said good-bye to all the students and administrators at a lively dinner in a Kensington Italian restaurant. Glasses were raised, compliments given, and one student toasted Phil, noting that he was known for giving a three-minute break in a three-hour class: "Enough time to go, but not to wash our hands!"

Before Biggie and Gary left, we decided we had to try a Sunday Roast, a dinner that is offered on Sunday evenings by nearly every pub in the UK. I did a little research and we settled on the nearby Wilmington Pub, which turned out to be exactly the right choice.

The roasts (pork, beef, and chicken) were delicious, and the Yorkshire puddings were as big as our heads. And there was sticky toffee pudding for dessert. I have become a little obsessed with sticky toffee pudding -- those who dine at our house, you are forewarned!

Phil went on a walkabout with Cynthia yesterday to see three of Nicholas Hawksmoor's six London churches. Hawksmoor was a well-known eighteenth-century architect who helped design St. Paul's with Christopher Wren (among many other Baroque buildings). They went first to Christchurch Spitalfields, then on to St. Mary Woolnoth.

They stopped by the flat to pick me up,  and we had some tea and then set off in the rain for #3, St. George's, in Bloomsbury. To our dismay, the church was closed, but there was an exhibit in the basement (along with, strangely, a Museum of Comedy and a Pilates studio), describing the building and rebuilding of it, and we photographed the exterior. Horace Walpole described the tower, depicting a lion and a unicorn and topped with King George in Roman dress, thus:

When Henry VIII left the Pope in the lurch,
The Protestants made him the head of the church,
But George's good subjects, the Bloomsbury people
Instead of the church, made him head of the steeple.

Then we walked to the Lady Ottoline for mulled cider, a lovely invention (well, one of us had a martini). We had to sit upstairs because there was a very loud Christmas party going on downstairs. Christmas parties are a Thing here -- every single business apparently has a Christmas party at a pub, starting at the very beginning of December and continuing all month. The parties feature reindeer horns and golden crowns and Christmas crackers and vast quantities of booze. The lunchtime ones usually don't end until around 7, and the after-work ones go on until the pubs close. It is VERY difficult to get a seat in a pub in business-friendly Clerkenwell these days.


Finally, we stopped at the Vietnamese place where we first ate when we arrived in London. We dined on monkfish, prawns, and goat, which may alarm some readers but was truly delicious.

The next morning we returned to the Wilmington to have brunch with the ever-generous administrator John Harrington, who made our whole London sojourn possible. It seemed a suitable way to close the semester.

Now there are half-packed suitcases scattered around the flat and, just as before we left, no way everything will ever fit into them (only more so. That damned cape!) We plan to go to the Tate Britain tomorrow to see the Pre-Raphaelites and eat Indian food on Brick Lane, then drop off our belongings at Heythrop. And on to Turkey, if it has not gone to war with Russia by then. Wish us luck!

Our pubs for the week:

excellent Sunday Roast, excellent brunch

 

 

a beautiful Victorian pub with Chimay on draft

 

the spectacular -- and spectacularly loud -- red tin
ceiling at the Viaduct

around the corner, reflecting the diamond
trade a block away



Christmas Dream

All the world knows that my child-bride, Diane Louise Zahler, is the blogger supreme of our five month idyll. So, as our remaining days in London dwindle to a precious few, I am grateful for the opportunity to file a curious entry of my own.

Recent readers will recall that on our visits to Christmas fairs in Hampstead and Bath we were nearly crushed in stampedes of agitated revelers wearing plush reindeer antlers and reeking of too much mulled wine. Longing for a festive alternative to these mercantile orgies, we visited a seasonal event familiar only to the cogniscenti—the Druid fair in the tiny neighborhood of Crumb-on-Saucer in a remote corner of London’s East End.

The passionate neo-pagans who hold this gathering each December wait feverishly for the winter solstice, for they are an urban offshoot of the worshippers at Stonehenge. Indeed, they have erected a miniature model of that fabled temple in a courtyard behind the 16^th-century Hedgehog Tavern (hard by the oldest Sainsbury Local in Britain). Here blue-faced celebrants of both sexes dance bare-chested, chanting rhymes in a tongue so ancient that some anthropologists have traced its cadences to the mating calls of prehistoric birds.

Our journey to the fair was eventful in itself, a hypnogogic ride. Descending further underground at the Holborn tube stop than ever before, we  took the little-known Nutmeg and Squirrel line (an off-shoot of the Picadilly), and our ride was made unexpectedly festive by a band of Icelandic folk dancers wearing musk-ox horns, which sounded thunderously when they butted heads in a complex reel. The N&S line, which is available for use only between November 28^th and January 14, featured complementary cups of rum punch infused with a viscous red elixir
that we were told was the blood of newly slaughtered she-foxes and served by pale young women in buckskin bustiers. It was certainly a potent decoction because I slept through the remainder of the circuitous subterranean ride, and neither Di nor Ben (visiting from New York) could remember arriving at the festival.

When the vulpine head-fog clearer, we found ourselves in a circle of azure-dyed worshippers, dressed in long white gowns, circling about us and bowing in succession to setting sun, just visible above the corner of a long abandoned Pret a Manger. Momentarily, we three realized that we were standing on a small slab altar and that the druidic ceremony unfolding would involve live sacrifice! There was, I’ll admit, a collective moment of panic, loin-girding, and “all that sort of thing” (as the locals like say). To our

relief we soon discovered that were but place holders for the actual victim—a recalcitrant goat who was pulled into the circle, braying in protest. Always sensitive to animal cruelty, Di covered her eyes, but she needn’t have: within minutes the celebrants, using tiny brushes, had painted on the protesting beast, from head to hoof, a map of ur-Druidia, a kingdom that once stretched from southern Greenland to Asia Minor and of which modern day Luxembourg was its sacred capital.

Still more surprising was the ritual insertion of a fir tree in a wood chipper that followed, a rite intended to propitiate the angry sun-god and induce him to lengthen the diminishing days, to rescue true believers from the ever-encroaching kingdom of night. How forcibly these atavistic survivalists put me in mind of the primitive vitalism of that high modernist moment when Eliot published The Waste Land and Lawrence lionized the dying-reviving Mexican god Quetzalcoatl!

Di and Ben exhibited little interest in my literary exhortations because there was so much novelty surrounding us.  There was immolation: a beaver effigy made of puff pastry was set afire; and there was shopping: hand-whittled water-diviners to locate urban restrooms, polished stone amulets for the prevention of baldness, and badger testicles to be worn under one’s tunic for aphrodisial stimulation. Each of us bought one of the items above, and I invite you to speculate on the specific distribution of these purchases. I will say only that afterward, Ben was accosted in an aggressively amorous fashion by a splendid young Amazon whose hair was twisted into a knot rising nearly ten inches from her head. Throughout our unforgettable visit we were made to feel quite at home, embraced by the warm blueness of these modern tribalists.

Our day concluded with one of the strangest and most succulent holiday meals I can recall—a huge platter of local pigeons that had been roasted in a conical oven, accompanied by the flesh of an unidentified ungulate whose carcass we had seen turning on spit and some locally purchased cranberry sauce. Was it all a vision or a waking dream? Did we wake or sleep? Will Christmas ever be the same for us again?     

Sweet and Savoury (and a Little Bubbly)

We started a week of celebrations by heading up to Hampstead for the Christmas Fair. It turned
out to be so incredibly crowded that we couldn't actually see the stands to buy anything. We did manage to eat sausages (savoury), which we can do under even the most difficult circumstances, and catch some musical acts, including carolers, dancing musicians playing folk tunes, and a Talking Heads cover band. Seasonally inappropriate, but entertaining.

On Tuesday we hosted the last student tea. Eighteen hungry students, two administrators, and a vast quantity of scones (sweet) made for a lively afternoon. Sabina and Sophia gave us a Christmas wreath, pictured, and Ben did an admirable job pouring tea.

Biggie and Gary arrived Wednesday, jetlagged but thrilled to try out the bunkbed. Biggie was so completely at home in the upper bunk that I believe they're considering buying one for their own house. They staggered out with Phil to Borough Market, returning with meat pies (savory) for dinner.


While they took an early night, we headed out to the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden to meet Klauser, Sue, Cynthia, and two of their friends for Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet. We had box seats, which were the utmost in elegance if a bit lacking in sight lines, and Klauser had arranged champagne (bubbly) for the intermission. The Juliet was exquisite (the Romeo somewhat less so), and she was showered so heavily in roses at the end -- this being the final performance of the 50th anniversary of the MacMillan choreography -- that we feared she'd be knocked unconscious.

The next morning, Phil and Gary went to the Old Bailey, where trials are open to visitors. They were admitted into the gallery for a terrorism trial and watched as a forensic specialist went through the idiotic errors the accused made with his laptop while tracking down instructions for making bombs. He did not erase his cookies (not sweet). Both were delighted to see that all the lawyers and judge wore elaborate wigs, even the women. Just like in the movies! No photos, as cameras, cell phones, and even purses are not allowed.

 Klauser's birthday fell on Friday, and we rode up on the bus, carrying still more scones (sweet). K's charming brother Matthew was there, as was Cynthia, and Sue had made a birthday cake (sweet) and a delicious cherry trifle soaked with sherry (very sweet).We ate sugar and drank prosecco (bubbly) and laughed until we were nearly comatose.


 Biggie, Gary, Phil and I set out then for Harrods to see the legendary food halls (best approached when not hungry) and ended up buying quite a bit, including a plum pudding and hard sauce (sweet) and the Harrods version of cronuts (obscenely sweet). These, it turns out, are pretty much just rolls of sugar and butter formed into the shape of a croissant. I recommend them highly, but not if you want to live past 60.

Our final celebratory event was a trip to Bath to see Handel's Messiah at Bath Abbey. We went in two groups, one earlier to see the sights, one later. Bath too was having a Christmas Fair; this one eclipsed Hampstead's in size and variety. It took over the entire center of town and was completely jam-packed. The sightseers still got to visit the third-century Roman baths, dedicated to the goddess Minerva, which are impressively laid out. Bath is so photogenic, even with a zillion extra people, that I've put extra photos at the end.

We had an excellent dinner at a gastropub (savory) and then headed through the throngs to the Abbey. Going to The Messiah has been our holiday tradition nearly every year for thirty years or more, and for me at least, this was the most beautiful, moving version we've ever heard. All four of the soloists were exceptional -- there was a bass rather than a baritone, and a contralto rather than a mezzo soprano, so the sound was unique. Add to that the Abbey organ, with the sound of the chorus rising to the gothic heights of the fourteenth-century cathedral, and the result was -- in the literal sense of the word -- awesome. This was Klauser, Gary, and Biggie's first Messiah, and I think they were suitably impressed.

We made an early train back, squished in with the thousands of Christmas Fair revelers, and returned to the apartment by 12:30 -- whereupon we realized that because we live in a city, we could order pizza for delivery at one in the morning. So we did.

 (Very savory indeed.)









More Bath pix:

 

And our pubs of the week:

in Bath; excellent venison and cider

our second Old Red pub (see
Old Red Lion, November 28)