Home Again in London

[lillibet]

We have pretty much recovered from our colds and started having lives again
this week. Jason went up to the office on Tuesday and Thursday, while I
started trying to get our lives back in order. Before we'd realized we were
too sick to have guests on Sunday, I had already made a lasagne big enough
for five of us, so we had to eat that for three days. It was a relief to
make burgers on Wednesday.

The sad news of the week was that Jason's grandfather died on Monday
morning. His health has not been good over the last year and he's been
failing rapidly since just before Christmas. Jason had a very good visit
with him in the summer and has talked to him by phone several times over the
fall. Jason's father, Steve, was able to be there for the last few days.
They held a memorial service on Saturday and we were sorry to miss it.

On Thursday I met Bob Kelley, a friend from Boston, at the Tate Modern. We
had a nice lunch (I had a delicious warm potato salad with slices of parma
ham--what the rest of the world calls prosciutto--and cheese, while Bob had
halibut fish & chips with mushy peas) and wandered through most of the
exhibit space. It's such a great museum of modern art. We both bought
posters of one of my favorite pieces, The Great Bear by Simon Patterson--I
think I described it from my last visit there, it's the London Underground
map with all the station names replaced with names from history.

Bob wanted to get a few presents for people, so we went down to Fortnum &
Mason and he picked up tons of teas and I got some powdered rosemary. We
stopped into Virgin in Picadilly Circus to see if they had the Buffy DVD and
I got the A&E Pride & Prejudice on DVD, the one with Jennifer Ehle.

We came back to our place and I inflicted our pictures from Egypt on Bob.
Jason came in from work and I turned over the narration to him while I made
pan-fried salmon filets with lemon caper sauce, rice pilaf and sugar snap
peas. After dinner we had fill-your-own crepes and played a long game of
Trivial Pursuit.

On Saturday Jason and I took the bus--it's so fun to sit on the top deck and
watch the city roll by--down to Great Russell Street and went to the British
Museum to take another look at their Egyptian collection, now that we know a
little more about what we're looking at and how the various eras go
together. It is fun to be able to recognize some of the hieroglyphics. The
museum was more crowded than I have ever seen it, so we left after seeing
what we'd come to see. We walked down Tottenham Court Road (stopping at The
Link to buy Jason a new cellphone, and me one as well, so now we'll have a
phone to give out to guests--they're really cheap here and you don't have to
be on a plan, so there's no expense to just having one around) and Charing
Cross Road, past all the booksellers, and through Chinatown to Leicester
Square. We went to the half-price tickets booth and got tickets to see
_Madame Melville_ that evening.

We had hours to spare before the show, and the National Portrait Gallery is
open till six, so we went there and finally got beyond the top floor
(Tudors, Stuarts and early Hanovers) to Victoria and her descendants. They
have an amazing statue of Victoria and Albert, all got up in Saxon dress,
with her gazing up at him adoringly. We wandered through the galleries
enjoying the photographs of Alfred, Lord Tennyson throughout his lifetime
and another set of Oscar Wilde. Having just read a biography of the early
life of Victoria until her marriage, I was pleased to see pictures of
various political figures of her reign whose names have suddenly become more
familiar.

After a pleasant hour there, we made our way down to Maiden Lane and found a
tapas bar called La Tasca. We were impressed with the quality of their
tapas and hope to go back there. We had a small dish of paella, a mix of
fried fish (swordfish, salmon, prawns, whitebait and the tenderest calamari
I have ever eaten), meatballs, chicken on a skewer, pork loin slices on
toast, and stewed lamb. It was all very good, tho' the chicken was dry
enough that we'll probably skip it in the future. For dessert we shared a
lovely peach mango cheescake that was right on the midpoint between
cheesecake and flan and very delicious. Washed down with a Montalvo Rioja,
the meal was a complete success and took exactly the time we needed to
spend.

We walked the block to the Vaudeville Theater on the Strand and found our
box seats. Neither of us had ever been in a box before, and that was kind
of fun, tho' the sightlines weren't great and there was another woman
sharing with us that made things more awkard than they might have been.

The story of the show is that the narrator, Carl, is reliving the weekend
that he spent being seduced by his French teacher, while spending a year at
the American School in Paris at age 15 in 1966. The teacher, Madame
Melville, is capably played by Irene Jacob (of Au Revoir Les Enfants and
Red). Carl is played by Macaulay Culkin. All the critics had given
"y'know, he's not that bad" reviews, but he was exactly that bad. He gave
no signs of having any idea what he was saying, sat through her speeches
obviously just waiting for her to give him his cue, and smirked
inappropriately throughout. He needs to get a new life, I'm afraid. But
the script was good and we mostly tried to ignore him and enjoy the show.

We got to bed at a reasonable hour, but Jason snuck out to play computer
games until the wee hours, so I had a lovely Sunday morning alone, reading
email and getting house chores done. I made beef stew and Barbara and Leah
came over around six to help us eat it. We showed them our pictures from
Egypt and played the Harry Potter Trivia Game and had a very giggly good
time together. steve had called earlier in the evening, so I called him
back and chatted with him and Tom while I did the washing up.

This morning we received our wedding album. Unfortunately, it was damaged
in transit such that all the pages are loose and we will have to send it
back to be fixed. Oh well, eventually we'll have it to keep. It looks
lovely and we expect to be very pleased with it in its final form.