Weddings and restaurants

'Angel Face' beakers by contemporary potter Anja Lubach

From the Royal Academy (see previous post), we decamped to tea in The Gallery café at Fortnum and Mason, a joint treat for my parents for my father's birthday at the start of March, and Mothers' Day last weekend. We used to go there for tea with my grandmother when my sister and I were little and she came 'up to town', and when I suggested it, little did I know that a proper Fortnum's afternoon tea in the St James's Restaurant costs more than £30 a head!! So we didn't go there... But abiding memories of bumping into the actress Lorraine Chase in the ladies loos, and my toddler sister saying something which made her laugh - though whatever it was she said is now lost in the mists of time...

We caught them up on my cousin Henry's wedding yesterday - a slightly surreal affair, since it was incredibly High Church, which didn't seem at all in keeping with their personalities, which tend towards the Gothic... Henry's taste in music basically equals Iron Maiden, not Fauré's Canticle for Jean Racine, which was one of the musical interludes sung by the church's very own choir; and Rhiannon's bridesmaids were extensively tattooed, all of which made the proceedings a little disconnected from the surroundings. Which were beautiful - the high Victorian glamour of All Saints church off Regent Street, followed by the spectacular views across London from the top floor restaurant of the St George's Hotel...

They looked happy and it was obviously the wedding that they wanted, which is the main thing. We did some very superficial catching up with my uncle and aunt - my uncle being my father's first cousin - and had quite interesting conversations over dinner with the other family extras with whom we were seated: assorted godparents and parental cousins, one of whom turned out to be a former Tory MP, another the chap who invented Lincolnshire Poacher, one of K's favourite cheeses! Amusing to see him so star-struck when he learned this, and suddenly incapable of making conversation about cheese! Lincolnshire Poacher is one of our staples at our now-traditional Sunday night cheese board - and inspired by last night, K stocked up at Fortnum's this afternoon!

As for wedding present - we bought Henry and Rhiannon a bowl in the style of the beakers illustrated at the top of this post, a handmade piece by ceramic artist Anja Lubach, from her 'Angel Face' series. I find them beautiful but also slightly disturbing - I am hoping their gothic style appeals to the newlyweds! We bought it at Contemporary Ceramics in Somerset House - a small gallery which exhibits the work of many contemporary potters, a really nice place to browse, and not overly expensive if you want to buy a unique present for someone.

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We both indulged in a little bit of beef during dinner last night - naughtily as, don't forget, K has given up meat for Lent, which perforce means I have too. I have to admit that I have had fish a few times, though K has been very good about sticking to his principles (apart from a couple of occasions when he actually forgot he'd given up meat!). I was amazed he didn't give himself a little holiday when we went to Moro last weekend with Nigel and Ginny - a really fabulous experience that we certainly hope to repeat after Easter, but also after we have saved up since it was not cheap!

For those that do not know, it's a restaurant in the attractive parade of shops and restaurants at Exmouth Market - which I think has largely grown up due to the Moro owners' patronage of the area - run by a husband and wife team of chefs (Sam and Sam Clark) who combine Spanish and North African cooking and well-sourced ingredients. We have all their cookbooks, and regularly use their recipes, which I find to be reliable and delicious. But in all these years - despite frequent good intentions - we have never actually been to eat there. Mainly because until very recently, we have not been in a financial position to do so.

But what an experience! The first thing that assailed us was the amazing smell coming from the open kitchen at the back of the restaurant - which was a constant delight, changing and wafting over us throughout the two and a bit hours we were there. The menu was short and simple, and you just knew that everything on it would be fantastic. Nigel and Ginny both had amazing looking meat dishes - in fact, I did have a nibble of Ginny's lamb which was gorgeous! - while I had an absolutely huge plate of grilled bream, and K had the vegetable mezze, which actually looked pretty gorgeous too.

But I think what amazed us all the most was the service - completely unostentatious, just quietly and confidently excellent. Somehow they knew who had ordered what, despite it being somebody different bringing the food from the person who had taken our order. There is probably a crude trick to doing this, but my, it's impressive and makes you feel you're in the presence of great restaurateurs!

Despite the fabulousness of Moro, we have found that it is easy to be vegetarian - if you cook your meals yourself. On the few occasions we have eaten lunch or dinner out over the last five weeks, our experience has been that interesting vegetarian options cannot regularly be found on menus. Vegetarian options yes, but options that you might actually want to and enjoy eating - not so much. Surprisingly, since I thought vegetarianism would have been pretty mainstream by now.

Though I haven't exactly missed eating meat, I have found myself craving sausages and mash a couple of times. And K's idea of a meat-free meal generally involves plenty of cheese, so it has not been an altogether healthy few weeks!

Trois jours en Paris

Phew. February. Glad that's (nearly) over. We've all been working like crazy people preparing to install the Ceramics Study Galleries (26,000 objects in visible storage!!), which finally actually begins on Monday. I didn't think I'd be saying this but I might be just about ready. I'm the first to install - weird to think that one of the Middle Eastern pots I put in on Monday will be the first object in those new dense displays, where the intention is they will remain for several decades. So the most important thing to ponder over this weekend is which object it should be...

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The highlight of the last few weeks, however, was our long weekend in Paris last weekend - for our (14th!!) anniversary. We booked Eurostar tickets months ago when there was a half price offer, and both took Friday off work, got a breakfast-time train, and sailed off through the French countryside... Trains really are the only way to travel - especially if they are fast and efficient like the few European high speed lines I've travelled on. Our train left on the dot. Alas, we ran into a security alert on the way back, which meant a horrendous queue to check in, and the train leaving an hour later than scheduled - but it could have been worse: I have just seen that the passengers who left on the train before ours (also delayed) had to endure the additional nightmare of their train breaking down in the tunnel outside Ashford and then sitting in the dark for two hours until another train turned up to rescue them! Apparently our train bypassed theirs! I had no idea - poor people...

Paris is just so beautiful. There really is just no place like it. It was an extra special treat for K who - unbelievably - had not been there for about 10 years. Not since we used to go and visit my aunt and uncle and cousins, who were living and working there for a few years, at Christmas times. Happy memories of their wonderful, typically Parisienne house in Le Vesinet; the night it snowed and fell so heavily that it woke K up... I have had the fortune to go to Paris a few times since then, on courier trips or research visits, so as always it was a treat to go, but it was extra to see it through K's excitement.

We stayed near the Palais Royal and just walked everywhere. That's what you have to do in Paris - it's an important part of soaking up the atmosphere and the architecture. Flaneant, indeed - though sadly we couldn't put our hands on that wonderful book by Edmund White (The Flâneur: A Stroll through the Paradoxes of Paris) which is obviously one of the books currently lodged in K's parents' attic...

I had stayed in this area before, near the Galérie Véro-Dodat (built 1826), and had noticed a lovely looking restaurant which only seemed to be open at lunchtimes, when I was working, so we headed straight there after dumping our bag at the hotel, and jumped straight into a wonderful French food experience. Not only that but completely unexpectedly the ceiling was covered in anaglyptic (embossed) wallpaper in the Alhambra style, which must have been up there since the late 19th century! I was very chuffed at such a fortuitous find.

Anaglyptic wallpaper was popular in the late 19th century, especially among those who wanted to create rich interiors decorated in the revivalist styles that were en vogue at that time - the decoration of the Alhambra being one of the most widespread of these international historicist styles.

The Galérie Véro-Dodat (named for the two men who built it, in 1826). It's one of the few surviving commercial passages in Paris - one of the best preserved too, I think, since it seems to have all the original shop fronts and many of their signs. The tables you can see about halfway down are outside the restaurant where we had lunch.

From there we wandered around the Marais, meandering along to the Place des Vosges, taking in the various gorgeous 16th-century hôtels and modern boutiques along the way. Dinner in the atmospheric Coude à Coude on Rue St Honoré where they squeeze you in "elbow to elbow". For the rest of the weekend, we went medieval - though K was a little surprised (I think) to discover he is no longer a 'proper' medievalist: nearly 4 hours in the Musée de Cluny, and he was disappointed that there wasn't more 16th-century stuff! He still managed to take about 10,000 photographs though.

One of the amazing windows at Sainte Chappelle. It is a relatively small space and was absolutely packed with tour parties, which completely removed any sense of awe or tranquility at being in the space. Every now and again some laconic guard would ssssssshhh!!!! everyone, until the chatter inevitably started up again. It was a little bit like being in the Sistine Chapel - not an experience I enjoyed very much the last time I went.

We did the main churches of medieval Paris - Sainte Chappelle, with its truly stunning stained glass windows, though the apse was behind some rather unattractive hoardings while they do a big restoration project on the glass and lead fittings; Notre Dame, where they were conducting a mass confirmation service for all the parishes in Paris (it seemed), so it was crowded and full of buzz and activity; St Germain des Pres, which has rather suffered from over heavy restoration and repainting in the 19th century; and Saint Denis, the royal pantheon - where K was happy to discover more 16th-century tomb sculpture than is reasonable in a church. But it was the site and excuse for another fine culinary experience - at the extremely elegant Mets du Roy, facing on to the square in front of the basilica. Expensive but amazing beef fillet.

I have always thought that going away for a long weekend like that in the middle of a busy work period would be exhausting - but, on the contrary, it was invigorating and relaxing, because there was so much to see and think about, that I spent very little time at all thinking or worrying about work. So more city breaks - that's the resolution. Especially to cities we can get to on the train. We're thinking Bruges next.

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In Paris we also took a holiday from K's enforced giving up of meat for Lent - only partly because France is, I think, officially the worst place in the world to be a vegetarian. Since getting back, though, he has been strictly enforcing this new regime. Even fish is off the menu. Practically, from a shopping and cooking point of view, it is easiest if we do this together - but I told him I couldn't guarantee that I wouldn't eat meat at lunch times. But so far I haven't and I am not missing it. Though I did join some colleagues for dinner at China City after the SOAS Islamic art research seminar yesterday evening, and I could not resist the prawns...

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I have not posted the calendar image for this month, since it is one you have seen before - something that might become a common occurrence, since the pictures we have selected for the calendar are some of the iconic images of last year, many of which I have already shared here. This month the image is the Natural History Museum in the heavy snow of last February - something which seemed magically rare when I wrote about it at the time, but which has been repeated this year, almost ad infinitum. When it first snowed, early on in the New Year, people were off work and schools were closed and fun and toboganning was had in the streets... But after weeks of the big chill, even the school kids didn't seem to care much for snowball fights any more.

It has been absolutely freezing, though in London in the last couple of days it has started to get milder. Cycling through Battersea Park on the way to work yesterday morning, I was suddenly assaulted by an amazing scent, and then I noticed a huge carpet of crocuses, all about to burst into bloom. How wonderful if spring was actually on the way!

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I finished reading the 900-page-long book - Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver, the first trilogy-in-one of his Baroque Cycle. It's a fictionalised and partly fantastical historical novel about Europe during the 17th century, woven around Natural Philosophy and the Royal Society (appropriate in its 350th year), the rise and fall of kings, money, commerce, pirates, Puritans, brilliantly and amusingly written... I had nothing better to read so I carried straight on to the next volume, The Confusion - 800 pages this time. There is another one after that too. These may be the only books I read all year! But I'm completely sucked in. Highly recommended reading.

Roses, a Palace, Pancakes, a Cathedral

I’ve got quite a bit of catching up to do. Don’t worry, I won’t give you a blow by blow account of the last two weeks, which have been somewhat manic, while I try to ‘clear the decks’ (i.e. most of my workload for the next three months) to free up my time to start writing my book … on Monday!!! No, just the highlights – and the highest (?) of these was that a week ago today we celebrated our 13th anniversary! K sent me flowers at work – beautiful, proper, long-stemmed red roses, 13 of them of course, that were just perfectly in bloom, and they smelt gorgeous too! It’s so rare to find roses that actually have a scent! The lady at reception called me during my lunch break, and I couldn’t understand what she was telling me, it was so unexpected – I thought a visitor had turned up for me out of the blue! But no… I felt rather embarrassed but also extremely chuffed as I walked through the Museum to my office – of course I bumped into someone almost immediately, who I don’t really know but who of course stopped and asked me if it was my birthday. Once in the office I had to show them off to the ladies, and word apparently got around because later in the afternoon, people were coming in from other offices to look at them!! This is how perfect they were:


I had to guard them carefully on the tube on the way to the restaurant where we were meeting – a seemingly endless almost-circuit of the Circle Line. It was a bit busy, but when I eventually got a seat and sat down, the bouquet was nearly as tall as me!! When the lady next to me got up a few stops later, she tripped on it and they fell over – when I picked them up, she said, “Oh what beautiful roses!” and a nearby gentleman said, “They were!” It was funny, but also one of those slightly uncomfortable moments where you make brief contact with your fellow passengers – everyone laughs, then immediately go back to being complete strangers…

We ate at the Bleeding Heart Tavern, where there has been a pub since 1746, which is now one of a group of French restaurants, all at slightly different levels of formality, housed in the tiny Bleeding Heart Yard, near to Farringdon station, in the ancient heart of the City of London. It had been recommended to us by friends aeons ago, and we only just got round to going. It was a lovely meal and really reasonably priced – and to top it all off, they brought us a chocolate cake with ‘Happy Anniversary’ written on the plate around it, on the house! It was the roses that did it… I think we're going to keep going back, trying a different eating establishment each time (working our way up to the grand restaurant)

A post-prandial drink (as my father used to say…) in the nearby Mitre, another historic 18th-century pub, and a late night walk along High Holborn to pick up the bus home… A lovely celebration!

(The roses are still going strong after a week – sitting here on my desk, behind my computer, looking increasingly dark and velvety as they mature. I sniff them when I need a moment of pause.)

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We continued the festivities on Sunday by going to Windsor for the day. Again, somewhere we had always intended to visit, but had never been. Amazingly (for us), we left promptly and were in Windsor by 10.30, and wandering around the palace by 11. The Queen was in residence, as the flag was flying from the top of the keep.


It was wonderfully quiet, partly because it was early and cold (that promised sunshine never materialised, but shone on Saturday instead, when we were in the library!), and also because we were visiting at the end of the Half Term week, so I guess the children were suitably exhausted and the parents preparing to go back to work. South Kensington was utterly packed last week, as it always is at Half Term, but it seemed busier than usual – museums are free, and in this economic climate they’re going to be an attractive option for families looking for entertainment on a budget. But apart from quite a lot of tourists, there were not many other people at Windsor, which made it more relaxing. A contrast, as well, from when we visited Buckingham Palace last summer – not out of choice, I might add, it was K’s mother’s birthday treat … though, in the end, it was quite interesting, but utterly besieged by what can only be described (and this is not intended in a disparaging way) as working class people. I thought it was utterly tasteless (I note I am using “utterly” a lot in this post) – the Queen deigns to throw open her doors to her poorest subjects for a few months in the summer, and charges them thirty pounds each for the privilege. Talk about redistribution of wealth.

Anyway Windsor was sort of similar to Buckingham Palace, in that everything is actually very modern, ‘medievalised’ in the late 19th century. I suppose it’s not surprising, as it’s a lived-in palace, so you can’t expect it to be historic as such, but it is somehow a little disappointing to discover, nevertheless – perhaps because we are fortunate enough to live our daily lives surrounded by history. The ‘Drawings Gallery’ was mostly filled with photographs of and paraphernalia associated with Prince Charles – not really sure why, unless it was supposed to inspire us all with pride at the life and works of our future monarch… Actually, pretty much the best thing about visiting the palace was seeing Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House, an absolutely fantastic, fully-furnished model of an aristocratic London house, in miniature (it’s on a scale of 12:1). Made in 1924, the house was designed by Lutyens, and the garden by Gertrude Jekyll! We decided that the best job in the world would be ‘Curator of the Queen’s Dolls’ House’!

After exhausting ourselves traipsing around the State Apartments, we went off in search of lunch, which we found in the marvellous ‘Crooked House of Windsor’


located on officially the shortest street in Britain!


What a Dickensian confluence of circumstances!

We wandered around some more and eventually found our way to the very lovely Horse and Groom pub, right opposite the back door to the castle, where we sat in the window with our drinks, until we noticed the queue forming for Evensong, soon after 5, which we then went and joined. This was half-ploy to get into St George’s Chapel, which is closed on Sundays unless you attend the services – but is also a lovely thing to do, and the kind of thing I never would have experienced unless I knew K. But the Chapel is definitely the element of Windsor that is most worth visiting – and the most authentic too, being a genuine 14th-century monument.

(This is one of K's wide-angle photos)

The main part of the nave was all in darkness, and we were guided into the choir, which was candlelit, as we were there at twilight, and extremely impressive, with its wonderful rib-vaulted ceiling, contemporary with that at Westminster Abbey, and the choirstalls bedecked with the arms and achievements of the Knights of the Order of the Garter, for which this is the chapel. Enamelled copper plates of every knight that has ever been a member of the Order, since its foundation in the 14th century, are attached to the backs of the upper stalls – I was sitting next to John Major’s stall, who is clearly one of the current 24 Knights of the Order. All this really makes it a unique place to sit for an hour and hear beautiful monastic chant, sung that evening by the Lay Clerks (I guess the choristers were still on Half Term too), and to look up and around and be filled with beauty, as the sun gradually faded outside the stained glass windows. The two clerics who read the lessons and prayers were certainly at the top of their profession – imagine being almost the private chaplain to the Queen – and they had perhaps the most sonorous voices I have ever heard. They did a good reading – particularly the first one, which was a reading about Elijah in the wilderness, from the Old Testament, and vividly dramatic. We weren’t allowed to linger long at the end of the service, but this will be a beautiful place to return to. But how wonderful to experience it that way for the first time!

Since the trains back to London only left once an hour, we had missed the 6 o’clock by the time we emerged from the Chapel, so it was back to the Horse and Groom for some puddings (a gorgeous melting chocolate pot for me, spotted dick and custard for K), and then a gentle amble down the hill to the station in time for the 7 o’clock train. A really lovely relaxing day off.

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Tuesday was pancake day – Shrove Tuesday – which would seem to be a peculiarly English thing, according to this pancake-focused blog on the Guardian website which I had some fun browsing that night!

Of course we made pancakes – too many, it turned out, which we finished off last night, which is against the law apparently. Doing a baked dish with stuffed pancakes always sounds like a quick thing to do, but this one wasn’t, although it was delicious when it was eventually ready, at about 10.30! Pancakes rolled around a stuffing of shredded spinach, pine nuts and red onion, stirred up with ricotta, bechamel and parmesan, seasoned with nutmeg, and smothered in tomato sauce and more bechamel. Delish.

K has given up alcohol for Lent (again), which meant he was really grouchy when he came home from work last night!

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Today I visited Salisbury Cathedral on our departmental away day. It was fantastic! All the more so because something clicked with me that should have clicked before. The first thing was the discovery that William Golding lived and taught in Salisbury, footsteps from the Cathedral…

… and the second was that Salisbury Cathedral not only has a spire on top of its central tower, but that this spire, which was added in the early 14th century, is the highest in England, at 123 m (404 ft) tall. According to the Cathedral’s website, it weighs 6,500 tons, and our guide pointed out to us how the tall Purbeck marble columns at the crossing have bent under its weight.


All this gave me a whole new perspective on reading Golding’s The Spire, a remarkable book which I read last year, an historical imagining (one can’t really call it a novel) of the feverish obsession which drives the dean of an unnamed cathedral to believe God has instructed him through visions to build an immense spire, but his obsession causes many casualties – physical and spiritual – along the way. I found it a difficult book to read, because you really find yourself caught up in the protagonist’s fevered mental state – but it’s an amazing work of literature, and one that is all the more meaningful to me now that I have realised that Golding was inspired (ha ha) by the very real monument at the end of his street.

Over and out.