Christmas week

Friday, 19 December: snowstorm and rehearsal dinner


I landed in Boston less than an hour before the snowstorm hit. Connecting flights were cancelled, and the drive from Boston to Connecticut was a scary snow-blind slalom using tail lights and rumble strips to point the car in the right direction.

As the snow fell, the wedding rehearsal was cancelled. The rehearsal dinner was re-located to a bunker in the hotel where the majority of the out-of-town guests were staying. In spite of all that, Mom was looking gorgeous - as you can see from this photo:


When we finally got to Tolland, we couldn't make it up Route 31 to the house. Ahead of us, wriggling frictionlessly against gravity like salmon swimming into a waterfall, were tens of cars blocking our path, sliding perilously close to us, each other, and the cars sliding in the opposite stream down the hill. Clint executed a heroic, Hollywood-worthy 2-point turn, and we made our way to the hotel for the rehearsal dinner. The groom was trapped on the West coast somewhere.

Saturday, 20 December: wedding

The groom arrived around midnight; the church filled up; Ben played Christmas carols on the piano; the happy couple were married. And the party moved to the Mill on the River, where the food could not have been more perfect. While Ben jockeyed the discs, I grabbed a dance with the flower girl.


Sunday - Monday, 21 - 22 December: family, friends and flights

So Megan and Michael left for Las Vegas, and the rest of us chilled out. I said goodbye to the new in-laws at church on Sunday morning. The snow started again, and Sunday school and the evening service were cancelled.

Over the next 254 hours I worked my way through my boxes in the attic, and set aside photographs and correspondence from my pre-England days to bring back with me (once I get hold of a scanner, I'll see about up-loading the most embarrassing of these).

Monday afternoon Papasan once again drove me to Boston (thanks!) and I met up for a beer at the airport with my old rowing coach and friend, Adam, and we reminisced about the good old days. Then I boarded a horribly uncomfortable flight back to the UK. If it weren't for my numbing addiction to Patrick O'Brian (which kept me plastered to my novel throughout), I don't think I could have managed to muster a trillionth of the equanimity with which I viewed American Airlines that day.

Tuesday, 23 December: work

Work was crazy. I came straight from the airport, and was told I had a long call with a client to go through a warranty schedule. I fell asleep as I was preparing for the call. Five other matters kicked off.

Wednesday, 24 December: work and Oxford

London was eerily quiet. The office was nearly empty. I left at 1 for an extended, boozy lunch with old college friends - one last steak before descending into the vegetarian orgy of Christmas with the Itens and Susie's family. After lunch I walked back to the flat and finished wrapping presents, hopped on a bus to Oxford, and marched to Wolfson. We decided to go to the midnight communion service at Christchurch Cathedral. Walking back at 1 a.m., the streets were full of other families coming home from church.

Thursday, 25 December: Christmas!

We opened presents in the morning. Special thanks to Jennie and Uncle Craig for the cds! And thanks to Mom, again, for the cushions and duvet and pillow covers! And of course thanks to the Itens for the goats. (Jaime: I think I understand why the goat on the left is wearing a hat in the photo - it's so I know who Mr Goat is, right?).

We went to Rani's for our Christmas dinner. Rani, Jaime's employer (and a brilliant brilliant chef), cooked up a feast. I would have been full even if she hadn't then plied me with 3 puddings. As it is, I left feeling like I'd been hit by two Thanksgivings in a row.


That evening we digested, reading books and watching a bit of Short Circuit. We Skyped/phoned Brad; Mom, Ben K, Julie and Annie; and Anne Marie, Mandy and Dad. Apologies to Jennie and Megan for not speaking to either of you!

Friday, 26 December: Boxing Day

I went back to London and met up with Susie for our own personal Christmas (Susie knitted me the most beautiful scarf!) before heading over to the Rosses to be spoiled with food, drink and gifts. After something like 6 years of asking, I finally got some Simpsons dvds.... Yay! The feast included Susie's delicious chestnut and mushroom pie, turkey and bacon (for me and Susie's dad), roasted potatoes, and I attempted to recreate Rani's salad from the day before (I'm a big believer in recreating dishes as soon as possible after first experiencing them, to keep the memory fresh). The mains were followed by pan d'oro and stollen.

And that's it for this long catch-up post.

Christmas list

Sorry it's taken me so long to get this up on the internet, but here's my Christmas list. I might add links later on down the road (no time right now), but thought it would be worth having the list up to start with:

• Jigsaw puzzles (Susie's now addicted)
• Gravy boat
• Warm but not ugly gloves (cashmere charcoal grey)
• Another NICE pot (medium size, stainless steel - Pro Clad, All Clad, or equivalent))
• Napkin rings
• Slippers (warm)
• Radio (small)
• Bathroom matt
• Simpsons dvds - but not the first 2 seasons, and no season after 2000, please (unless you know something I don't) (NOTE - I think Susie's mum is very likely to be getting me one or more seasons, so pick something random like season 7)
• Silver (c £400 a place setting)
• Rolling pin
• Street bicycle
• Two bike locks (one high-quality D-lock and one quality chain type lock) - quality really matters with bike locks (which is why I don't have a bike)
• The Indian Jones films (on DVD)
• Good recording on Tchaikovsky's violin concerto
• Good recording on Tchaikovsky's piano concerto
• Schumann & Dvorak chamber music (CD)
• Violin and viola duets (sheet music - not Mozart, Pleyel or Handel) - be original
• Viola sheet music - not J C Bach, J S Bach or Stamitz (try a bit of Hoffmeister, and other composers from the Baroque and Classical periods)
• Big memory stick/flash drive
• Towels (not white)
• New Britney cd
• Decembrists cds

For the Itens

To watch British terrestial tv online, just click on the play symbol after a television listing.

A few responses to Jaime's posts

A few belated thoughts.

On the question of wave energy, there have been tide mills in operation in London since Roman times. The Romans may not have been producing electricity, but it was wave energy put to good use. According to Wikipedia, the first excavated tide mill was in Strangford Lough, which isn't far from where Ben K's Julie comes from.

About your friend, Lauren. I had always thought this was cousin Lauren (nee Callahan). From something you said about being in sophomore year together, apparently not?

Evie is welcome to make contributions to the Found Fund when she is ready. For now, I think candy is a pretty good cause. But if I bring along some candy next time, perhaps the choice won't be as difficult.

Oxford revisited

Susie, Mom and I went up to Oxford in Susie’s purple Nissan Micra this past weekend to spend the day with the Itens. As the disstupid amongst you will have surmised from the title, it was not the first time I had visited.*

*I’m reading Nicholas Nickleby at the moment. Has anyone else noticed how round-about Dickens’s style is? Instead of saying “he was thinking about Smike”, Dickens writes: “[h]e sat in a musing attitude for some time, regarding Smike occasionally with an anxious and doubtful glance, which sufficiently showed that he was not very remotely connected with his thoughts”.




Remarkably, for me, I remembered to take (and use) my camera. I had intended to post my photos in this blog, but I am prevented from doing so by my own manifest disintelligence: Tired of carrying my camera around all day like a Wally, I thought I would be Clever and slip the camera into Susie’s bag, unnoticed. But at the end of the day, I forgot to retrieve the camera. Like a Wally. By now Susie’s probably flogged it on the grimy streets of Tower Hamlets. But fear not. I’ve plundered some photos my mother posted on Facebook, so the less verbally-inclined amongst you can still follow our adventures in narrative pictorial form.

We started off with a tour of Ben’s and Jaime’s place at Wolfson College. The flat is surrounded by family-friendly facilities (including safety gates for families with small children) and beautiful gardens. And the River Cherwell meanders along the borders of it all. Inside, the flat is spacious, with a large and functional kitchen, a light, airy sitting room and roomy sleeping quarters (with a view!). (I can’t help sounding like an estate agent right now. Sorry.)

I was particularly delighted by the signs everywhere reading “RIVER DANGER”. Given that Oxford is spiritual home of mediaeval English literature, this presumably refers to the threat posed by Grendel’s mother or similar.

For lunch we walked to the King’s Arms, one of the better pubs for food in the centre of town. I wasn’t about to repeat the mistake of a fortnight ago, when I marched everyone into the wilderness but failed to produce the fish and loaves. The King’s Arms proved a good choice, although curiously everything was served with salad on top. Including the pizzas.

While hovering outside the pub before continuing our tour of Oxford someone spotted a 20 pence piece on the ground beneath one of the picnic tables. An ingrained sense of social decency prevented any of us from collecting it for the Found Fund, as this would have involved crawling on hands and knees beneath a table full of revellers and physically lifting someone’s shoe out of the way. In anticipatory compensation for this failure, the Itens had produced a 10 Euro cent piece. (This has been noted in this week’s draft report to head office.)

We toured Oxford, stopping in at the Turf Tavern and the Bodleian library (pictured), and going round Merton College, where we saw Mob Quad (pictured), Fellows Quad (site of the annual Merton Time Ceremony), and the gardens. After this we visited the Covered Market for coffee, and then made our way back to Wolfson to crown our visit with a game of Pooh sticks and a tour of Wolfson’s grounds.

Flat for sale + I'm up to date

No, it's not snowing here at the moment, though it is pretty cold. But it's a nice picture.

I'm selling my flat. Or at least listing it. If you want to see the most perfect flat. In the world. Ever. You'd better see it soon. I know I've uploaded this photo before.

In other news, I read everyone's most recent blog entries. I can particularly recommend Brad's last two, and Jaime's, too. What's up with Jennie and Ben and Ben? At least post a couple of amusing pictures.

Found

Those of you who have any regular contact with Julie’s father, Barry, will be aware of the significance of the Found Fund. Instituted some nine years ago, the Found Fund is the brainchild of Barry and his friend, Ian, and it is dedicated to putting ‘found’ money to good use. Each Wednesday Barry and Ian meet to compare their findings for the week, and once or twice a year they select one or more charities to donate their cache to.

The rules are simple, but rigid. Only money which is genuinely ‘found’ may be accepted. ‘Found’ money may include coins (and smaller notes) found on the pavement or in the road, pennies at points of sale (in shops), money which has fallen behind the seat on an Underground carriage and any other money where the owner genuinely cannot be traced. Donations cannot be accepted. Money which falls from the pocket of the person in front of you in the queue is not ‘found’. And £10 notes found in the back of a taxi, alas, should be given to the taxi driver.

Over the past nine years, Barry and Ian have raised (literally) over £900 ($1,800) for various charities through the Found Fund.

This last month I was admitted to associate membership of the Found Fund, London branch (I would scan a picture of my certificate, but I don’t have it handy). In the past four weeks, I have found over £9.49, as well as $0.01 (Canadian), €0.05 (Euro) and 0.20 Mauritian rupees. I’ve done this with the help, increasingly, of two colleagues at work who have joined in the effort.

Finding money is addictive. It is also competitive. I walked out at lunch on Tuesday with one of my colleagues, looking for coins. I spotted a 5p. She didn’t.

So, if you would like to join the ranks of the shameless filthy street grubbers, let me know, and I’ll funnel your legitimately found money to HQ in Bangor. I always credit my sources.

In response to Jaime and Mandy

It’s not just the Canadians who are outcasts, Jaime. You'll discover that you will be deprived of US sites when in the UK, too, not surprisingly. But on the other hand you’ll have the BBC iPlayer, which is super cool, and not available outside of the UK!!

Mandy, the only other pictures in my workplace are shown here. I just liked that picture of you.

For Jaime

If we have the same calendar, Jaime, I don't know what that says about your veggie credentials...

For Mandy

Ok, I probably missed the reason why we're all being so nice to Mandy. Not that we shouldn't be nice anyway. But not to be left behind, here's a photo of my desk at work.

Four great reasons to move to England

Re my previous entry - Megan and Annie: if you want to come along at Christmas, you're more than welcome. It would be great to have you!

And now today's topic - Four great reasons to move to England.

This country still has the power to surprise me and make me smile. On my walk home the other day, I happened across a notice on the brick wall of a vaulted railway overpass next to the Thames (pictured). The sign said, in essence, that busking (performing live music for money without a valid licence) is prohibited. But it said it in such a quintessentially English way that I laughed out loud.





I then continued my walk. Hopton’s Almshouse, pictured in winter (I nicked this off the internet), is one of hundreds if not thousands of almshouses or ‘hospitals’ established in England from the Middle Ages onwards. This one, located in the heart of London near the Thames, was established in the eighteenth century. It is a horse shoe shaped estate of low buildings and gardens, dwarfed by the surrounding by large office buildings, such as IBM (across the street). Almshouses or hospitals were established as charities, usually to house the poor who could no longer work (at a time when there was no such thing as retirement). I can recommend a brilliant novel about one of these.





The next wonder I came across was the inscription over the door to the Kirkaldy’s Testing and Experimenting Works: “Fact Not Opinion”, a testament to the empiricism which underpinned the Industrial Revolution. From publicly available information, I learned that Kirkaldy’s works primarily involved the use of a giant machine 'which could test materials by putting the materials "under various stresses, namely, Pulling, Thrusting, Bending, Twisting, Shearing, Punching and Bulging"'. It was built in 1864-65 by Greenwood & Batley of Leeds, and measures 47 ft long and weighs almost 116 tons. The machine's hydraulic ram can produce a maximum force of 1 million lbs. "Kirkaldy's works attained a world-wide reputation in materials testing. Among its achievements, the machine performed tests for Blackfriars Bridge, which opened in 1869, the St. Louis Bridge over the Mississippi (built 1867-74), Hammersmith Suspension Bridge (opened 1887), Sydney Harbour Bridge, and the cables used to suspend the Skylon at the Festival of Britain in 1951. It was also used in accident investigations, including the 1879 Tay Bridge disaster and aircraft crashes."





Finally, just down the street from Kirkaldy’s works, I came upon a new Marks & Spencer Simply Food, which had just opened last week. I went in to have a look around and ended up spending way too much money on things I don’t need, like vanilla pods. Ben and Jaime, you will come to realise just how nice M&S is (and Waitrose, too).

Christmas 2008 in England: what it might look like

Day 0 (Saturday December 20^th)

Sam greets any early guests at the Bachelor Pad

Sam sends nanny to Ohio 1 week prior to Ben, Jules, Ella, and Sophie's departure to help with Ella and Sophie and packing - nanny stays on through trip and returns with kids on plane while mom and dad take mini break in the Seychelles...

Day 1 (Sunday December 21^st)

Early: People begin to arrive at London Gatwick and take the train to London Bridge

Noon: Check-in at Chez Kessler followed by snowball fight in the square

12.30 p.m.: Takeaway from Pure Pie (London Bridge) to be eaten by the Thames

Please choose your pie now.

Afternoon: Naptime/free time

7.00 p.m. Dinner is served at Sam’s

Late: Slumber party

Day 2 (Monday December 22^nd)

9.00 a.m. Travel from Paddington to Oxford

10.30 a.m. Meet the Itens

1.00 p.m. Travel to Woodstock to check in to our lodgings

Afternoon: Stroll across the street to Blenheim Palace and walk around the deer park

Evening: Family dinner at the Trout Inn beside a log fire

Day 3 (Tuesday December 23^rd)

Morning: Hang out with the Itens

6.00 p.m. Service of Nine Lessons and Carols at Christ Church Cathedral

Day 4 (Wednesday December 24th)

Morning: Collect Christmas goose and Christmas nut loaf from the Covered Market

Day 5 (Thursday December 25^th)

All day: CHRISTMAS!!

Day 6 (Friday December 26^th, i.e., Boxing Day)

Adults: Lie in

Late morning: Walk to Wytham for pub lunch

Afternoon: Kesslers and Itens travel to London

6.00 p.m.: Ice skating at Somerset House

9.00 p.m.: X Box tournament

Late: Slumber party

Day 7 (Saturday December 27^th)

All day: Sam laments as people begin to return to the U.S.

Job alternatives

When I looked out the window ealier today, this was the view I was greeted with.

As I had spent all day yesterday down on the Solent sailing a clipper ship and pondering that perhaps an outdoors-y kind of job might be just the thing for me, the idea of getting to dangle in mid-air on a harness, building what may be liberally described as giant Legos immediately struck me as a fantastic idea.

In other news, today is of course Ben's birthday (happy birthday, bro). I'm very excited by the prospect of having Ben, Jaime and the girls around! Haven't had a younger sibling (let alone an entire clan) in the UK since Anne Marie left St Andrews for St John's. Not to downplay the benefits of having Ben K & family to hand in Northern Ireland every now and then for a quick and treacherous game of Risk, it's nice to think that I'll be able to invite the Itens round for a proper Sunday lunch every now and then without the need for anyone to board a plane.

In order to be a proper doting uncle, I'm contemplating Christmas in the UK. But to that end, I would want to be sure to get a chance to see all (or almost all) of the siblings in Cape Hatteras August. Sadly, this is an either / or (either Cape Hatteras or Christmas in the US). Vote now.

On the topic of the Northern Irish branch of the family, Susie and I will be travelling to Bangor in June to meet Barry, Anne and the Mournes. I'm hoping to be able to get over in August, too, to meet Sophie.

I voted three times

Right, having implied in my last post that I don’t get obsessed with politics....

Today local elections are being held across England and Wales. Almost 5.5 million people are eligible to vote in London. Unlike the rest of England and Wales, London has since 2000 been able to elect a mayor (not to be confused with the Lord Mayor of London, who is, I believe, elected by the City guilds and presides over the Square Mile, i.e., the City of London). The Mayor of London is a very powerful executive position with access to an £11 billion budget, making decisions on education, transport, social services, policing and environmental issues.

Many people choose whether to vote based on the weather. Because of this, what would otherwise be a non sequitur flows quite naturally in this BBC report this morning: "Polls opened at 0700 BST and close at 2200 BST. A mixture of sunshine and showers is forecast in most areas." If it's sunny, I anticipate my three votes will be diluted.

We Londoners get three votes: one for Mayor of London, one for the London Assembly, and one for our local borough assembly. For complicated reasons (which would give away who I voted for if I explained them), I voted for three different parties.

Now we wait.

And while we’re waiting, an interesting fact (which I can verify). As you will all know, in AD 1215, a group of barons famously forced King John (of Robin Hood fame) to yield a number of royal prerogatives, and to grant certain civil liberties. The writ of habeas corpus and the right to trial by a jury of one’s peers were among these. The charter (“Magna Carta”) was confirmed by a number of subsequent monarchs, and the version now on the books dates from AD 1297. This excerpt is from the moiety of Magna Carta which still has the force of law in England and Wales:

“The city of London shall have all the old liberties and customs (which it hath been used to have). Moreover we will and grant that all other cities, boroughs, towns, and the barons of the five ports, and all other ports, shall have all their liberties and free customs” (Magna Carta 1297, chapter 9).

This provides the legal basis for the other London mayor, the Lord Mayor of London, who is also Chief Magistrate of the City of London, Admiral of the Port of London, Chancellor of City University and President or Patron of many other civic and charitable organisations. The Lord Mayor is elected each year. The first recorded Lord Mayor was Henry Fitz-Ailwyn (1189).

Are we in for a rough ride?

Sub-prime mortgages, packaged into asset backed securities, are sold to investment banks -- especially in London. The US property downturn results in negative equity and thus inadequate security. Liquidity troubles arise in the financial centres of the US and the UK as banks refuse to lend to each other, each fearing one anothers' creditworthiness amid prospects of bankruptcies from exposure to the sub-prime. Northern Rock, which had relied on a business model entirely dependent on inter-bank borrowing, looks set to collapse. The Bank of England does very little to alleviate the crisis, taking a traditional British laissez-faire approach. There's a run on the bank -- the first in the UK since the nineteenth century. Bear Stearns collapses, and the Fed reacts instantaneously to reassure the market. The UK government -- the same government that implemented sweeping reforms to the tax system in 1997 -- announces plans to scrap some of the keystones of those reforms. They will tax all foreigners living in the UK on worldwide income, whether or not it is ever brought into the country. The UK government also announces plans to raise taxes on share disposals by up to 80%. These measures, largely targetted at the very rich, and particularly at private equity, are the government's feeble answer to popular unrest at the gaping divide between the rich and the poor in the world's most successful financial centre. Unfortunately, the timing could not be worse.
With the UK economy slowing down, government spending increasing and tax revenues faltering, bitch-slapping entrepreneurs seems like a daft move.

So yes, I think we're in for a rough ride.

And how long will it last? Of course the wider global economy has a large part to play, but if we have any hope at all of avoiding a descent into unemployment and grinding poverty, the government (whether this one, or one which replaces it) will have its work cut out for it. This government did a great job in many ways, but it appears to have spent more money than it gathered in revenues for the last 10 years, during a period of strong economic growth. Any government which intends to do anything other than cripple the entire nation will have to be a government which is willing to make some very unpopular choices. Massive spending cuts would be in order.

I have no idea why this turned into a discussion about politics. I really intended just to welcome Sophia to the world (thanks for being born on my birthday), welcome Ben, Jaime and the girls to the UK (all this gloom probably means a better exchange rate), and to thank Mandy for putting up all of those pictures.

Oh, and to connect Mandy's picture of bad-ass Patches to Brad's blog:

http://wabasawki.blogspot.com/2006/04/patches-feline-cat-barely-alive.html

(Not pictured here)

Pictured here:

• Anne Marie in front of Notre Dame
• Central London at its best
• Dad and I trying to recreate Ben's Starbucks zombie pose
• Dad on Waterloo Bridge
• Anne Marie discovers pie in Greenwich
• Midshipmen Kessler preparing for their Lieutenants' exams at Somerset House
• Blackfriars Bridge (note the railings under water in the foreground)

Not pictured here: Susie










I'm back, and I brought pictures. After two and a half months of extremes, I'm anticipating a welcome return to the pedestrian. In the last two and a half months I've embarked on a whirlwind of romance and ... er ... work. I know it doesn't sound a likely blog topic. Oh well, too bad.

The truth of the matter is that I have just completed a deal which kept me up all night three times in the last week, and had me in all day Saturday and all day (and night) on Sunday. Although this was at the extreme end of my experience since New Year's, work has dominated. I'm getting fat from sitting at my desk all day. And it's been socially disruptive.



And yet I've had spells of bliss. Dad and Anne Marie came to visit a week or so ago, and I did everything I could to spend some time with them, despite an unlucky host of obstacles: I had to fly to Columbus at the last minute for Grandma Donnelly's funeral, and so when I returned I was exhausted and my 4-day weekend with Dad and Anne was suddenly a jetlagged day and half; and then it was all I could do to leave work before midnight to see them. On Anne Marie's last night in London, my client told me to go see Anne (she loved your card, Anne, btw) and so I snuck out from 9pm - midnight, before returning to the office.


The trip to Columbus, though somber, was a wonderful chance to catch up with family.

And then there's been my budding romance. But I won't go into that here. And I'm not including a picture, because she'd kill me. But I have a very nice photo of us in Paris, if anyone would like to see it....



I took the last picture last night on my way home from work at 4 am. London (in fact, all of England) was wracked by storms yesterday. Filthy weather. The Thames was at flood - the highest I've ever seen it. If you click the last photo, you'll see how the staircase down to the river is completely submersed.

I was late for work because I was detained at gunpoint by the police

Although this is not my usual excuse for being late, it is probably one of the more interesting ones I’ve been able to use.

So, I was walking up Southwark Bridge Road, having stopped in at the butcher for a chat on the way in to work (it’s all very Sesame Street in the Borough, baby), and I heard the familiar sirens of a police motorcade escorting prisoners to the Old Bailey. As the motorcade drew up level with me (at the crossing of Union Street), it stopped, because there was construction in the middle of the road. Now, I’ve seen enough action films to know that this is the moment when any would-be assailant would choose to tackle a convoy, and so I was impressed when the armoured Land Rover nearest me pulled diagonally across the intersection and a police officer with an automatic shotgun emerged from the vehicle to keep a close eye on everyone as the motorcade was stalled there. Now, my route would have taken my straight past the armoured people carrier, so I decided to stay put and observe the scene. There were police on all sides of the convoy, diligently scanning the roads, houses, rooftops, for ... er, outraged Somalis? It was a little bit Black Hawk Down, except no one got shot. And there were no helicopters.

Novelties gastronomiques

The title of this blog is a deliberate mix of English and French, to reflect the nature of the subject -- last night's feast (see the menu, left).

I'm back from my travels, and I'm beginning to work my way through a backlog of sibling blogs; but while I'm doing this, I thought I'd tell you about my day yesterday, which was about as unique and as enjoyable as a day can get.

Laura, Julie's cousin (so, kind of my cousin-in-law), needed to be distracted, so we planned to meet up in the afternoon. I decided that the best form of distraction would be to try to cook something extraordinarily difficult involving fish - complicated because I wanted it to be a proper distraction, and fish because I hardly ever cook fish, and I need to learn how to do basic things, like make fresh 'fish fumet' (see - an example of a phrase which uses both English and French), which shows up in almost every single French recipe involving seafood. So I spent the hour before we met up poring over The Silver Spoon (thanks Ben and Jules! but too easy) and Larousse Gastronomique. The latter cookbook is full of recipes which look easy, but which aren't, because each recipe cross refers to a billion other recipes ('poach X using a fish fumet, white wine and the juice of half a lemon, and use the reserved liquid to prepare a simple Mornay sauce' ... 'for Mornay add X, Y and Z to a bechamel' ... 'for bechamel prepare a white roux' ... 'for fish fumet, just take 5 lbs of fish heads and bones' ... anyway, you get the picture).

So I selected a fish recipe called 'fillets of John Dory Palais-Royal' because I've never cooked John Dory, and it involved all of these sauces made from other sauces.

So Laura came over to Borough at 1 pm and we went shopping at the market near me. This market is enormous, and is easily the best all-round food market in London, and it's a 7 minute walk from my flat. You can get just about anything you could possibly want. As we wandered around the market, our plans morphed so that by four pm we were planning a very posh 4-course dinner with 3 different types of wine. Laura begged me not to buy the fish heads (she was worried about getting fish eyes in her Mornay sauce), but the fishmonger was only too happy to hand over a pile of fish carcasses to us for fresh stock. How could I refuse?

We made the fish stock and then went to the pub for good measure, where a sort of blues-y, dixie band was rehearsing for the evening.

We came back and started cooking properly at about 6:30, I think, and finished at about midnight.

Here is the meal in pictures:

Foie gras d'oie with confit de figues au Monbazillac

Fillets of John Dory Palais-Royal with petit pois with Marlborough Reserve Sauvignon Blanc, Brancott Winery, New Zealand








Red partridge with parsnips Vichy and brussel sprouts with Spy Mountain Pinot Noir, Marlborough, New Zealand












Tiramisu with Comte de Bosredon Chateau Belingard Monbazillac