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!

Rest in Peace

On Friday, we said goodbye to K's grandfather, Robert - on the day before what would have been his 96th birthday. It was a sad day, because we were all still in shock at his passing. He was bright as a button until right before the end, a wonderful, intelligent old man, who loved to stir up dinner-table discussions about world affairs, who lived on his own and was totally independent - he loved to cook his signature dish, wiener schnitzel, from a recipe he had found on the internet!

Just over a month ago, we were all together in Hereford for the 3 Choirs Festival - where these photos were taken, on a lovely sunny afternoon, in K's parents' garden, before we all went our separate ways. Two weeks later - on the August Bank Holiday Monday (we were out having dinner with friends, sitting out in another garden) - he fell and had to go into hospital for a half-hip replacement. He was due to go on holiday to Switzerland the next day with K's parents, and he insisted they go anyway. By the time they got back, he'd have had his op, and be ready for them to take him home. But the day after going into hospital he contracted a mild chest infection, which caused his pneumonia to come back, and by the time we had a chance to visit him after work on the Thursday, he was in quite a serious way - he looked tinier than ever, lying in bed with a nebuliser to keep him hydrated and comfortable.

We had a good visit - Robert asked me how my book was going, and I could tell him I was working on my first set of proofs. K could tell him about Royal Collections Studies, the course he was heading off to that weekend. But he was starting to get a bit confused between near and distant objects, and kept pushing his bedclothes on and off. The ward sister wanted to talk to K about the family's wishes about resuscitation, and all the way home on the train K was phoning his parents in Switzerland, and his uncle who was away on a residential course, advising them to come back, and filling in his aunt and his brother on Robert's condition. We sat out on the concourse at Paddington Station for about half an hour while he finished updating everyone. Everyone came back, and it is a good job they did, since he just faded away, dying on Sunday morning, with his son by his bedside.

K had managed to get back to see him on Saturday afteroon - I hadn't had the chance to go back, since my sister and I were going down to the Cotswolds for Maryam and Ollie's wedding near Tetbury that Saturday. I had a call from K's mother during the wedding barbeque on Sunday afternoon to let me know that Robert had gone peacefully that morning. The awful thing was that neither she nor I could get through to K - by now ensconced in Royal Collections Studies - and there were several hours when he didn't know his grandfather had died.

But it was as good a way as any to go - he would have hated losing his quality of life, gradually losing his marbles, which had been totally bright and sharp. He would have hated being looked after, having to go into a care home, or a granny flat at K's parents. All that we knew, but it was still hard for everyone to say goodbye when they weren't ready. Especially since next weekend, his younger grandson - K's brother - will be getting married. But now he joins his wife Betty, who he missed so much over the last few years.

There was a reception at The Bedford Arms, a pub in Chenies where, as K commented, we had never been together when he was alive. We sat outside as the sun came out and ate chocolate éclairs, of which there were far too many - Robert would not have approved! Afterwards, we walked them off by walking back to his flat in Little Chalfont, repeating a walk K and I had taken when we were there last Christmas, through woodland, surrounded by fields and gorgeous views - you would hardly believe you were only half an hour outside London. We had tea, talked about him some more, and then began the rather awkward task of identifying the things in his flat that we would like to have. It seemed tasteless, but K's mother and uncle have to embark on this completely practical task themselves now, and it was the first thing we could do to help. Robert and Betty liked to collect nice things, so they have some gorgeous pieces of furniture and lots of paintings and ceramics. I have no idea what we would do with half of the stuff K put on his list (which included two bookcases), but one feels certain things should stay in the family. And it also looks as if Robert's generosity is going to help us to be able to buy somewhere, possibly even somewhere bigger than we could have considered otherwise.

Thank you Robert and rest in peace. You will be missed.


We were exhausted by the end of the day - from general tiredness (K had been on the go non-stop during Royal Collections Studies - what he described as 'art history boot camp'!), plus all the emotion from the day. We went straight to bed, but of course that was the night that our obnoxious neighbours on Hayter Road decided to have another late-night party out in their garden. We refer to them as 'the bastards', though I can assure you that other, less affectionate words have been used. This has happened on and off throughout the summer - about 7 or 8 times by now. It almost makes you wish for bad weather.

Since our block runs parallel with Hayter Road, the rooms on that side of the building back onto the gardens of those houses - so there is always the odd night when you get disturbed by neighbours partying or sitting out late in their gardens. But this has been more than a one-off - earlier in the summer, it was happening every weekend. And since we sleep on that side of the building, we hear everything as loudly as if it were happening in our very bedroom - somehow the acoustics work that way. Even tightly-closed double-glazed windows (an unpleasant prospect on a hot night) and ear plugs do not allow one to sleep - or me anyway. K somehow manages to sleep through it all, with only the vaguest awareness of being disturbed.

The last time it happened, I finally called the council's noise control 'hotline'. They have a 'rapid response unit', but it took them an hour and a half to get round to us. Since I had called at 2am, it was getting to the point where the neighbours were chilling out a bit more - normally they go till about 4am. The council's 'noise service operators' (!) have to assess the noise level from within your flat, and of course - typically - by that time it was not too bad. But they went round and spoke to the neighbours anyway (by cycling down Hayter Road to and from work every day, I had worked out which was the offending house), which seems to have done some good, since it has been quiet for a couple of months. We reinforced it last time by writing them a letter and saying we would continue to report them to the council, and that they should be aware of the legal action that the council can take against them.

This time, however, I didn't bother. I just needed to get some sleep, and I couldn't face the prospect of staying up through the night, waiting for the noise control team to turn up. This weekend was the last chance I have had to work on the conference paper I am giving at SOAS on Friday, and I needed to get a good night's rest. So I took my pillow and a spare duvet and went and slept on the futon in our study. K was completely oblivious.

Resurfacing slowly

I'm sitting here with a cup of green tea and a Ben's Cookie (triple chocolate chip!) which I bought purely in honour of Yamin - she always raved about them when we were all living in Oxford and used to buy us boxes of the things, but I associate them with her and Oxford and because she is now in New Zealand and we in London I never eat the things. But I was passing their stall in High Street Kensington station earlier, and decided to pay memory lane a visit. Very tasty!

It is probably that Oxford is in my mind, since we were there at the weekend. We went down for a brilliant wedding - and if you know us, and how we usually feel about weddings, you'll be surprised to hear me say that. It was Polly and Steve's, and the theme was village fête - they had the service in a tiny, beautiful English country church, then the reception was in Polly's parents' garden, or rather in the field behind it, which had this amazing view down into the valley and the 'dreaming spires' of Oxford. The village fête theme manifested itself in the form of all the silly games you usually find at such things - welly wanging (!), coconut shy, skittles, treasure map... There were genuinely amusing speeches (including a singalong element to the best men double-act) and after dinner highly amusing barn dancing - you could hardly hold K back, and normally he's the last person to get up on the dance floor! It was all just joyous and great fun, and Polly and Steve seemed to be having a brilliant time, and that's the main thing.

Unfortunately, having finally got my hands on the camera to download the pictures of the day, it seems as if it had accidentally set itself to film rather than photo, and there are now lots of brief moments when I thought I was taking a snap, followed by lots of footage of the ground, as I held the camera in front of me ready for the next photo opportunity. It makes you rather sick watching it through actually! There is the occasional good capture - like this one, the first of the barn dances, based on a Central European wedding dance apparently...

I don't think I'd been to Oxford since February last year, when we went down for K's PhD viva. After 10 years of living there, it is so utterly familiar, that is never weird going back - it just feels like you've only been up to London for a day or so, though maybe some of the shops or cafes are different. There's a Costa cafe on Cowley Road for god's sake! Talk about gentrification. Still, I don't miss living there - I enjoy London too much now. But it was so so wonderful to catch up with old friends - Bob and Bev, who we stayed with, squeezing ourselves into their front room as Bev's brother was already staying; and Nigel and Ginny, who are back in Oxford now, living in an entire corner tower of Christ Church's Tom Quad! We had a wonderful lunch with them and an idyllic few hours sitting out in the Sunday afternoon sun in their garden, surrounded by medieval Oxford walls and the large fig trees which are the offspring of the seedlings which Edward Pococke - first chair of Arabic at the University of Oxford, in 1636, and who used to live in Nigel and Ginny's very corner tower - brought back with him from the Middle East!

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I am now on leave from work for two weeks, trying to shift gears in my brain and start thinking about our Scottish holiday... It's been an utterly crazy time at work since getting back from my Research leave - not just trying to get on with the remaining work on my book, but also getting sucked in to work on the Jameel Prize, which has been interesting but unexpected - it was never something on my work plan for this year. And the second round of comments and edits came back from the copy editor on Friday, leaving me no choice but to spend the first two mornings of my holiday working on those files, so they could be delivered to the designer today. The next time I see my text it will be starting to look like a book!

The weekend in Oxford felt like the start of the holiday, though K has the big academic conference on Henry VIII this week, so I have hardly seen anything of him! I have been enjoying being out and about - on Monday afternoon I went to visit Moya, and went with her to collect her kids from nursery, and played Lego with them while she prepared the supper. I even got to read Sam a bedtime story (actually 3!) - which was fun for being something I don't do every day! Yesterday I went to see the J.W.Waterhouse exhibition at the Royal Academy - as you may know, I have a soft spot for the Pre-Raphaelites, and though he was not really one of the Brotherhood, he worked in their mode, and created powerful visions of the classical world, especially of Homeric myths, or moments of tension from episodes in Ovid's Metamorphoses, just before a captivated all-too-human (usually) man falls prey to divine vengeance. His powerful, magical women fill the canvas and conjure long-forgotten stories from the Odyssey, or the Morte d'Arthur... I'd forgotten how these were the images that first inspired my interest in classical myths and legends. I love his painting St Eulalia (1885), and the striking contrast of the martyred virgin's unclothed body against the falling snow.


Today I have been pre-holiday shopping - how is it that that always entails spending about £50 in Boots?! On this occasion, I was investing in insect repellant, since everyone I have told that we are going to the Outer Hebrides has warned me about midges - and I am someone who usually receives a lot of attention from biting insects! I got 3 for 2 of a spray called Jungle Formula, the ‘Extra Strength’ variety for ‘Tropical Use’ - hopefully that will keep off the little devils!!!

It's time to think about cooking dinner - I'm doing Valentine Warner's 'spring chicken salad'. I really like his recipes - he does a series in the food magazine we get, Olive, about 'What to Eat Now', so it's always seasonal ingredients but I think he makes really imaginative and fresh combinations. It's also a specially nice meal, as tonight's our last night together until Sunday and holiday: tomorrow I'm going to my parents' and my sister and I then fly to Edinburgh on Friday morning, for a couple of days of girly together time, then we meet K at the airport on Sunday to fly to the edge of the world - Stornoway. I wanted to check in with the blog before disappearing again, so you knew I was still here! I am sure when we're back from our chilled-out week in our Hebridean cottage there will be lots of pictures to post and lots of seal- and dolphin- and whale- and puffin-watching to update you on... Speak to you then!