Two friends, five courses, one memorable evening

It’s been Visit Pam time in London these last few weeks.  First it was my sister and brother-in-law (they of last week’s Full English Breakfast), then close on their heels came a quick stop by Rob H (frequent blog commenter) and travelling companion Wes.  They were over to participate in the First Night Riders charity motorcycle ride in aid of The Theatrical Guild. (It may still not be too late to sponsor…).  Before the ride started Rob and Wes had one night in London which they decided to spend having fancy cocktails and even fancier food, and just to make things even more fun (or at least more fun for ME) they invited your humble blogger along.  As Rob said in his email, “There are 3 choices for most courses, so you see, we NEED you so we can just plain order everything.”  I was happy to oblige, though I admit I was somewhat intimidated when I saw that the place we went – the Gauthier Soho – actually had a Michelin star.  I was scheduled to meet the visitors after a full day of work, but had last-minute jitters about my wardrobe choice and almost decided to forgo the pre-dinner cocktails to allow time to get home and change into something more posh (not to imply that my wardrobe has a vast selection of “more posh”, but I did think I could muster something a bit more appropriate).  Then I remembered who I’d be dining with, and what they’d likely be wearing, and I relaxed and hopped the bus towards Liverpool Street to find the first venue of the night, a fancy cocktail bar.

Both the evening’s establishments had been exhaustively researched by Wes, the serious foodie in our midst.  The cocktail place was called Lounge Bohemia (go ahead and click on that link and tell me if you can figure out how to get in…).  It’s a place that specializes in a sort of molecular gastronomy style of cocktail making, meaning that while it’s possible to get a straight-up bottle of beer there, it’s much more fun to order something from the less traditional side.  I tried a relatively tame combination of stout, raisin vodka and something else which was pleasant enough.  Wes adventurously ordered some kind of tasting menu that purported to be a fresh take on old classics.  When I arrived he was working on something that included a pile cotton candy made out of Amaretto (or possibly some other unlikely boozy ingredient) that he was twisting onto a swizzle stick and eating like, well, cotton candy. He also had a “White Russian”, which ended up being a small marshmallow infused with White Russian-ness served in a spoon of (I think) vodka.  (Shades of “a single plum, floating in perfume, served in a man’s hat…).  And then there was the margarita, which arrived as a pyramid of small salty bubbles called “salted air” and an aerosol container of margarita foam, leading to the quote of the night: “I hate it when you run out of salted air before you run out of margarita foam.” Rough life.  And that was just the starters, we hadn’t even got to the restaurant yet.

Despite our late arrival at the restaurant, we were surprised to discover that our table was not ready.  We were also surprised to find out that the restaurant did not have a bar, or a waiting area, or even a corner in which to crouch, so the Maitre D’ actually asked us (admittedly with a certain amount of bowing and scraping) if we would mind wandering around the neighbourhood for fifteen minutes or so.  Instead, we hung around outside studying the menu and posing for photographs.

Hungry Canadians, out on the street.  Rob on the left, Wes on the right.

Once we were in it was magic.  Our table was in a small room all by itself, except for about a zillion bottles of wine lining the walls, which we all thought was auspicious, especially when Wes said, ”I was thinking we should start with a prosecco…” just as a waiter appeared with three glasses of prosecco. It was like the place was bugged.  Or perhaps they just give everyone a glass of prosecco when they sit down, especially if they’ve been forced to loiter in the streets while waiting for a table.  Whatever the reason, it was cool.  After the prosecco came a few tiny amuse-bouche, one of which was actually a foie gras macaron, and one which was a sort of layered dip with breadsticks, and one ceviche thing.  And there was the waiter who came in with a tray the size of a parking space covered in about eight different types of rolls and breads. And this was all before we’d even ordered.

And now we run into the problem that if I were to describe everything we ate it would take a very very long time - Rob and I each had five courses and Wes had the tasting menu of seven, meaning we had about 15 different dishes (there were one or two repeats, like the black truffle risotto) and that doesn’t even include the extra bits that seemed to pop up frequently, and the second round of the giant bread tray and so on.  It’s also slightly possible that you might tire of hearing the blow-by-blow description of each course, so let me just highlight a few of the, er, highlights:

• I tried sweetbreads! They were quite mild tasting, and not terribly organ-y at all.  The consistency was more like lobster tail than anything.
• I also tried foie gras for the first time.  Yes, I know it’s horrible for the goose involved, but I think trying it once is fair enough.  In fact, I found it so rich that it was almost like slicing into a slab of butter so I’m not sure I actually need to have foie gras again.
• There was a seafood dish that featured smoked sea bass and a langoustine that was so sweet and tender that it made me make that sort of disbelieving “Are you kidding me?” face, and then slice off a small portion for Rob to try, who also promptly made the “Are you kidding me?” face.  There was a lot of that going around all night.

Rob, NOT demonstrating the “Are you kidding me?” face.  I’m not sure what this face is, but he’s the one who kept exhorting me to put more pictures of people on the old blog, so he brought this on himself.

There were other things of course, and we all traded tastes back and forth so I got to sample just about everything on the menu.  And following the prosecco there were, um, three bottles of wine, so it’s just possible that we may have reached the “jolly” stage by about the third course.  That could be why I found myself taking a photo in the stall of the woman’s washroom.  Or it could be that I couldn’t quite believe how remarkably gay the photo above the toilet was.  And I don’t mean that in any kind of derogatory way, because really how else would you describe this?:

Flamboyant, perhaps? (Later on there was a problem with the Ladies, so I was directed into the Gents toilet where I can report that the artwork was, if possible, even more gay.)

The highlight, though, must have been when the waiters swooped in some time after the fourth course (pigeon), and the Maitre D’ introduced me to my new favourite word: PRE-DESSERT!  How can it be that I’ve reached 42 years of age and never been privy to the concept of the pre-dessert?  It’s so elegantly simple.  I mean it’s clear that if one dessert is good, then two dessert must be double good, so why not simply slide in a bit of pre-dessert before the main event?  It makes perfect sense.  My first-ever pre-dessert was a sort of deconstructed cherry crumble with sour cherries in a warm sauce sprinkled with bits of spicy crumble.  And that was before the dessert I’d actually ordered which was a chocolate thing (of course) that was so densely chocolatey that it was like a black hole of chocolate, which was then perched on top of a disc of crunchy praline.  With gold leaf.

I say that pre-dessert was the highlight, but really the whole evening was one big highlight.  As Rob pointed out: we could have had a cracking night just hanging out in a pub eating fish & chips and enjoying the great company.  Or we could have had an astounding meal with people who were annoying or stupid or just plain boring.  Instead the food and the company were a perfect match, which raised the whole thing to another level.  This meant that even though I had to be at work at 8:00 am the next day we lingered until the wait staff were hovering and trying not to get caught looking at their watches.  We finally left some time after midnight and weaved through the West End towards Leicester Square tube station, where I ended up getting the last train home to Brixton and fell into bed in a state of perfect contentment.

A truly excellent outing. The only other thing I can say is: Thank you Rob and thank you Wes, for coming over in the first place, and for making the time to visit with me, and for inviting me along for such a memorable evening.  Come back again any time.  Next time the first round of thymus is on me.

GRUB!: The Full English Breakfast

I mentioned in my last post that I recently had a visit from my sister and brother-in-law who came over for an 8-day whirlwind tour of London (with a brief overnighter in York, just to spice things up).  They arrived on a Friday, which was an excellent excuse for me to take the day off work to show them the sights.  And since they landed at an ungodly hour in the morning it seemed only appropriate that we fuel up with a proper breakfast before hitting the town.  After fetching them from Victoria Station and forcing them to drag their wheelie bags through the Underground and up the stairs at Brixton station, I gave them the choice of two places for breakfast. (Note to self: making people who’ve been up for more than 24 hours and have just flown through seven time zones make decisions about where to eat turns out to be asking a bit much.)  The choice was between the traditional greasy spoon caf I ate at the morning I visited Brixton Market, and a place I discovered after waddling out of that caf and crossing the street, which seemed a fair bit more upmarket, and potentially interesting.  There was a bit of faffing around, but they eventually chose the traditional route, so in we went to the Phoenix Cafe for a Full English Breakfast. (Note: That’s not a spelling error above.  “Caf” is the correct colloquial abbreviation for the kind of down home place where you can expect to get a proper Full English Breakfast.  A caf is the UK equivalent of a greasy spoon.)

For those who have never had the pleasure, the Full English Breakfast (often abbreviated to simply the Full English) is an artery-clogging, gut-busting delight, best attempted when hung over or jetlagged.  Like its North American cousin, the Full English starts with eggs and breakfast meats but it’s the local variations that make it special.  Here are what I’d consider the basic components of a standard Full English Breakfast:

1. Eggs - usually two and always fried.  I have never been asked how I’d like my eggs when ordering a Full English.  I suppose it’s theoretically possible to have scrambled eggs, but I wouldn’t want to be the one to ask.  And poached? Well it just doesn’t seem to be in the right spirit at all. You might as well order the Vegetarian Full English which is a bastardization of the form I will not stoop to discuss here.
2. Sausages – normally the standard breakfast sausage variety, unless you’re somewhere posh where they will be artisanal Cumberland sausages made from pigs raised on a diet of truffles and sparkling water or some such menu-speak rubbish.
3. Bacon - it’s important to note that bacon in England is not like bacon at home.  It definitely comes from a completely different part of the pig and is more like what we’d call back bacon or what Americans inexplicably call Canadian bacon.  What we know of as bacon is here called “streaky bacon”.  In fact bacon in general, and the incomparable bacon sandwich (or, more properly, bacon sarnie) might possibly warrant a separate blog post, since it seems to be an entire food group over here.
4. Baked Beans – Yes, beans.  The kind that come in a can, traditionally with a blue label emblazoned with “Heinz”.  They are an indispensable part of the Full English Breakfast and form a sort of puddle that the rest of the items nestle in/around.
5. Toast – usually with a choice of white or whole wheat, buttered, normally served on a side plate, and never accompanied by anything so hospitable as a bit of jam or peanut butter.  You can often get some kind of sweet spread on request but often it’s best just to use your toast to sop up the beans.
6. Tea or coffee – In the case of a really traditional caf, the coffee will almost certainly be instant but is often served mixed with frothy milk that makes it quite tasty.

The items listed above are the cornerstones of the Full English Breakfast, which can come in different proportions (fewer eggs, more sausages, etc…) but I think it’s fair to say that anything that doesn’t include all of the above doesn’t properly qualify as a Full English Breakfast.  However, there are several additions that are not uncommon and worth mentioning.  In fact, if your Full English didn’t come with at least one of these items in addition to the above list, I think you’d be well within your rights to sniff dismissively and mutter under your breath, in a properly English display of displeasure.

1. Mushrooms – fried, of course.  Plain button mushroom, sliced and fried up.  Or in a more posh place, big whole mushroom caps.
2. Tomatoes – fried, of course. Either slices of tomato, or a whole tomato cut in half.  Sometimes put under the broiler (grill) instead of being fried.
3. Fried Slice – bread, fried of course.  I think it may actually be fried in the bacon fat.  Or possibly deep-fried.  I’ve only had it once, and that was enough.
4. Bubble and Squeak – referred to simply as “bubble” by those in the know. Bubble and Squeak is a traditional dish in its own right, composed of leftover mashed potatoes mixed with leftover vegetables, most usually cooked cabbage.  The variety at the Phoenix Café is an alarming shade of green, but really tasty.  Bubble in a Full English is normally pan-fried.  Of course.
5. Black Pudding – fried, of course. And yes, it’s sausage made out of blood, but give it a chance!  Black pudding is actually quite tasty and spicy, with a smooth-ish texture and a nice peppery kick. Served as a large round slice and fried (of course) so the outside is sort of crispy.
6. Chips – Did you honestly think that the English would let a meal go by without the opportunity to eat chips?

The Phoenix Cafe’s Full English Breakfast.  Note the Sea O’ Beans and the martian-coloured bubble. Also pictured: The Partial Canadian Sister. (On the issue of the Sea o’ Beans, I feel compelled to pass on this crucial travel tip for anyone planning on ordering a Full English Breakfast in Spain.  Apparently the wily Spanish purveyors of the FEB are known to overload on the beans in order to bulk up the plate at low cost.  Therefore the wise traveler will order his or her FEB without any beans at all in order to force the cook to serve up a proper amount of the really good stuff like bacon and sausages.  Thanks for the tip Patrick!)

 

In addition the these variations there are regional differences that crop up when you cross a border.  For instance, while black pudding is relatively uncommon in the Full English, the Full Scottish Breakfast would seem incomplete without it. White pudding also makes regular appearances in the Full Scottish.  Regional bread products are also often encountered, such as soda bread or farl (fried - of course - potato bread) with the Full Irish, or tattie scones north of Hadrian’s wall.  Apparently the Welsh even do some kind of pan-fried carbohydrate called laverbread which consists of “seaweed purée which is then mixed with oatmeal, formed into patties and fried in bacon fat” (of course).  Ahhh, those wacky Welshmen.

Pictured above is an Amsterdam Irish Pub/Hostel’s take on the Full Irish Breakfast, served to me on a bleary morning after an overnight train ride from Copenhagen.  Black pudding is pictured in the foreground, with a very unusual appearance by tater-tot style hashbrowns at the top of the plate.  And yes, that’s a half a pint of Guinness in the background.  What can I say?  It was a long night.

You may have noticed that almost all of the elements of the FEB are fried – beans and coffee being the only two ingredients that escape the pan with relative certainty.  For this reason a full breakfast is often called a fry-up.  (The Northern Ireland variety is known as an Ulster Fry.) 

Finally, I have to report on a particularly terrifying bastard child of the Full English Breakfast that I could not help but purchase when I saw it in a Sainsbury’s several months ago.  Behold, the horror:

Breakfast-in-a-can

The label says “Baked beans in tomato sauce with sausage, button mushrooms, chopped pork and egg nuggets with cereal and bacon.”  Shudder. The entire contents of the can are meant to be tipped into a pot and heated gently (“Do not boil”, it says, as if to imply that over-heating will ruin the delicate nuances of flavour in the egg nuggets).  But really, for the love of God, what is an egg nugget? And how can cereal possibly be included in the above list?  Even I, primary participant in the Steve’s Weird Food project at my last blog, have not yet mustered the courage or intestinal fortitude to open that can.  (Or perhaps I just haven't been hungover enough and house-bound enough at the same time).  Because in the end, the Phoenix Cafe is just a short walk away and I am perfectly certain that they will never, ever serve me an egg nugget.

Tourist Stuff: The Tate Modern

Bad but unrepentant blogger – another two week gap between posts.  This time my excuse was an eight day visit from my sister and brother-in-law which was most excellent, but the visit on top of the full time job left little time for blogging.  So mea culpa once again, and let’s just move on.

We had another Bank Holiday Monday recently, which caused me to recall a holiday not so long ago when I tweeted about being ever-so-slightly bored and got a quick response from JT in Toronto requesting that I take my bored self down to the Tate Modern for him and report back.  On the day in question I seem to recall frittering away my time uselessly, but when another Bank Holiday came up I decided I needed to make plans.  I think you all know how it goes – you live somewhere and somehow you never end up going to see the stuff that’s right on your doorstep.  This is as true for Winnipeg as it is for London, it’s just that in London the stuff that you’re missing is on a sort of blockbuster scale.  Like St. Paul’s Cathedral?  Haven’t managed that yet.  Nor have I visited the Natural History Museum or Hampton Court Palace or Kew Gardens or blah blah blah.  I’ve been trying to be conscious of this trap, and I think (despite the list above) that I’ve made a greater effort than most Londoners.  So, determined to have a go at another one on the list, I hopped onto the trusty #59 bus for a trip down to the South Bank. (Note here the term South Bank is capitalized since I’m not referring to just anywhere on the southern side of the River Thames, but in fact to the area called South Bank, which, not surprisingly, is on the south bank of the river, roughly between Westminster Bridge and London Bridge.)

The Tate Modern is a modern art gallery located in the aforementioned South Bank area, right across the river from St. Paul’s Cathedral.  It’s housed in the old Bankside Power Station, which was closed in 1981.  The conversion of the building into a gallery started in 1996 and the finished building was opened in 2000.  It is, according to Wikipedia, the most visited modern art gallery in the world, which surprised me until I realized this is likely due to the fact that, like so many of the great museums and galleries in London, admission to the Tate is free.  Well, most of it is free.  There are special exhibitions for which admission is charged, but if you just want to walk in and have a look at the permanent collection it’s completely free.  As is the British Museum and the National Gallery and the Victoria and Albert and on and on and on.  By contrast, the Museum of Modern Art in New York costs $20 to enter, so I guess it’s no wonder the Tate trumps MoMA’s admission stats.

So there really was no reason for me NOT to spend a sunny late morning walking along the Thames taking in the sights and wending my way to the gallery, which is exactly what I did.  The Tate’s permanent collection is displayed in four main areas and grouped into sort of themed areas - “Material Gestures”, “Poetry and Dream”, “Energy and Process”, and “States of Flux”.  Whatever.  I found these titles confusing and really unbearably arty, but I suppose they can be forgiven for the artiness part because, well, you know.  In any case, I selected the “Poetry and Dream” gallery, which is dedicated to Surrealism, and had a look around.
 
Some of you migrants from Go See Run Eat Drink might remember I have a little game I play in art galleries – something to help me pay a bit more attention to what I’m looking at.  The game, as explained in a post about my visit to the Museé D’Orsay, is this:

I like to wander around and think about what piece I would take home with me if the management of the Musée were to approach and say something like, “Madame, you are clearly not an average tourist, as evidenced by the fact that you have lingered for more than 4.2 seconds in front of this painting. Thank you also for not simply approaching, reading the tag, taking a digital photo of yourself with the painting, and then moving on to repeat this process with each piece in the room. Please, it would give us great pleasure to present you with a small memento of your visit. Perhaps this Monet? Mais non, we insist.”

The Surrealists, however, mostly defeated me.  Perhaps I was just not in the mood, but I struggled to really connect with anything.  In the end I found this one quite interesting, so I earmarked it as a finalist in the Gallery Game:

 “A Symposium” by Julian Trevelyan (1910-1988) 

And then what did I do? I left.  I’d been there for an hour at most, and I just wanted a break.  This is perhaps the most delicious thing about the combination of Living in London + Free Admission.  I felt no compulsion to see it all in one afternoon, unlike when I was traveling and knew that the next day I might well be on another continent.  It was really civilized. (Apologies JT, if this is simply rubbing salt into the wound…)  So I wandered a bit further along the riverbank and stopped at a café and had a nice café au lait and a pain raisin and I sat and worked on the crossword.

Thus fortified, I decided to give the Tate another go.  This time I opted for the “Energy and Process” gallery, which turned out to be just excellent. The gallery focused on the Arte Povera style of modern art, which I can’t possibly be bothered to explain here.  (If you’re actually interested, here’s the Wikipedia link.)  In any case, those Arte Povera types did some really interesting stuff, largely in the way of big interesting sculpture / installation sort of things, many of which were made from found materials.  I liked a lot of them, including this one called “Tree of 12 Metres” by Giuseppe Penone.  It started life as a tree which was felled and sawn into a big square chunk of timber.  Then Giuseppe came along and used chisels to remove the squared off bits and find the tree shape that was still inside.  This photo only shows part of one sculpture, but there were two, and, as the title suggest, they were up to about 12 metres high. I thought is was really clever.

There was also a video installation by Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky which I found utterly mesmerizing. Filmed over a two year period in Manhattan, it “traces the almost balletic movements of discarded remnants from an urban consumer culture.  Projected on a large scale, these seemingly random and insignificant materials are transformed, taking on momentary sculptural or architectural quality before they move fleetingly out of the frame.”  In other words, it was a 15 minute movie of garbage blowing around on city streets.  It’s hard to describe, but it was charming and funny and I have to tell you that watching an empty foam clamshell that once held a double cheeseburger skitter around on the pavement is oddly absorbing.  I watched the whole thing and I think there were moments when I laughed out loud.

But I think the piece liked most that day was “Staircase III” by Do Ho Suh, also in the "Energy and Process” gallery. I took several photos of it (all up at the Flickr account) but I must have been so taken with it that I forgot to write down any details.  Luckily, the internet is all-knowing and all I had to do was Google “red stairs tate modern” to be led to this excellent video of the piece at the Tate’s own website.  How cool is this?

Sadly, the people at the Tate did not offer to let me take “Staircase III” home, which is probably just as well, because even if Do Ho Suh made a specially dimensioned ceiling for the installation, it would still be somewhat challenging to live with the piece in a room that’s a mere 12’ x 13’.

Finally I have to mention one piece that I didn’t get to see at the Tate, but the story of the which is too fascinating not to pass on. The largest exhibition space at the Tate is the Turbine Hall, which I presume once housed the turbines of the old power plant.  It’s an enormous room - five stories high with more than 36,000 square feet of floor space.  It’s used to display specially commissioned work, and the piece that was on display last fall was one called   “Sunflower Seeds”, by Ai Weiwei.  The work got a lot of media attention, and rightfully so, since it consisted of approximately 100 million porcelain sunflower seeds, each of which was painted by hand. 


The seeds filled the entire Turbine Hall to a depth of a about three or four inches and at first, gallery-goers were able to walk around on the seeds.  You could feel them crunch under the feet and dig your hands down into them.  Then, after just 48 hours, the Elfin Safety Police descended declaring that the fine porcelain dust produced when the seeds broke “could be damaging to health following repeated inhalation over a long period of time.”  And the wankers closed down access to the exhibition, allowing viewing only from the side or from the gallery one floor up.  Thus, a work of art made up of things smaller than your fingernail could only be viewed from twenty feet away.  I tell you, it’s ‘ealth and safety gone mad.

I missed it because I was too lazy to travel the 45 minutes down to the gallery last October during the two days while it was possible to actually interact with the piece.  (In my defense it seemed like there was no rush, since the seeds were scheduled to be there until April.) However, there is an excellent video on a permanent loop in a viewing area near the Turbine Hall about the process of making all those sunflower seeds.  It’s a fascinating film, showing how the raw materials were mined and refined in the traditional way in China.  There are great shots of the enormous kilns used to fire the seeds.  And it shows the small workshops in the city of Jingdezhen where hundreds of local women sat hunched over work tables for months (or possibly years) painting each sunflower seed individually.  It’s a lovely little film. 

Sadly, the reason that it’s still being shown is as part of a protest by the Tate.  This is because “On April 3, internationally acclaimed Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was detained at the Beijing airport while en route to Hong Kong, and his papers and computers were seized from his studio compound. Ai’s whereabouts remain unknown and due process under Chinese law has been denied him.”  The Tate, along with other major galleries around the world have launched an online petition calling for his release.  Details on the petition are here.

And that was my afternoon at the Tate Modern: a little Surrealism, and little coffee break, a little sculpture and a little protest politics.  All for free, except for the coffee and pastry, which was £3.34.  And that’s a bargain no matter how you slice it.

Apropos of nothing

This is a catch-all posts that lets me cross a few items off my “Blog About This” list.  These are small things I’ve noticed that are odd or interesting or annoying, but also things that even I can’t churn out a whole blog post about.  So let’s launch another new tag for the sidebar and dive in.

On the Dickensian nature of locks and keys:

When I started work way back last September, I was issued a set of keys.  These are my keys:


I’m not kidding.  I have three skeleton keys on my ring for work (and one that goes with my keys for home).  These are not ancient keys passed down for generations that fit locks installed sometime when Victoria was still on the throne.  These are keys that were freshly cut for me, to open recently-manufactured locks installed in normal, modern doors.  And no one finds this strange.  I have certainly encountered more familiar keys, but they are no more common than this crazy Ebenezer Scrooge variety.

And padlocks? Many of them are equally charming / baffling / annoying.   Yes, you can get the kind of padlocks we North Americans are all familiar with: a heavy-duty rectangular body with the spring-loaded u-shaped thingy that pops up and open when you turn the key and can be snapped shut even if there’s no key present.  However, a significant percentage of the padlocks I’ve encountered over here have been like this:


First you have to slide over the little flap to reveal a big keyhole-shaped keyhole.  Then you insert a skeleton key which always fits very loosely and requires much wiggling to settle in properly.  Then you turn - which direction is anyone’s guess.  If you’ve chosen the right direction, the main bit flops away from the u-shaped bit in an unenthusiastic way that clearly indicates nothing as advanced as a spring is involved.  To close the lock you have to hold the whole thing shut with one hand, shove aside the little flap, insert the key again, wiggle wiggle wiggle, turn, no no turn the OTHER way, no no keep the thing held shut WHILE you’re turning, no no no… the OTHER OTHER way… and so on.  I mean honestly, what am I , Bob Cratchit?  The next thing you know I’ll be having to ask for an extra shovel-full of coal to make a spark of heat while I scratch away with my quill pen…


On the impenetrable nature of oven dial labeling:

So if locks and keys are so Olde Worlde then why is the oven so complicated that I – a reasonably experience home cook – have absolutely no idea how to turn it on in any kind of predictable way? I mean what am I to make of this?:


It seems that these symbols indicate different combinations of top element, fan, and bottom element.  So how come when I turn it to top bar – empty space – bottom bar, I can still hear a fan?  Is the fan always on?  Does that mean when you turn it to top bar – asterisk – bottom bar, the fan goes on more?  And if top bar – asterisk – bottom bar is the equivalent of “all engines on full” why does it take 30 or 40 minutes to cook a lousy frozen pizza when the same process took about 16 minutes in my primitive Winnipeg-based oven that only had a temperature dial?

And what about all those other symbols? Like that one at about one o’clock on the dial: “European Union Symbol Surrounding Black Snowflake”.  Maybe it’s a setting for producing EU-compliant licorice-flavoured Baked Alaska?  Then there’s the one at about 2:30 that looks a bit like a Tim Hortons sour cream glazed donut - that could be promising.  But what about five o’clock, that when rotated into the active position at the top of the dial appears to be tiny triangles suspended over, or perhaps falling into the symbol for the fan?  Huh?  I’m sure there was once a manual for the device that explained all these hieroglyphics, but it departed the house long before I arrived, so all I ever do is turn the thing to the setting I think of as “Full Whack” and hope for the best.
 
Oh, and it’s not even called the oven here, it’s called the cooker.  And it’s not topped with a stove, or even a range.  The bit on top with the burners? That’s the hob.

(Interesting cooker-related side note: Over here “grill” means “apply intense heat from above”, not “cook over an open flame / BBQ-like thing or otherwise apply intense heat from below".  Grilling something here means putting it under the grill, which is the top element in the oven – what we’d call the broiler.  So a grilled cheese sandwich doesn’t exist here, or at least not as we know it.)


On the parallel universe nature of stationery products:

Standard loose paper over here is not 8-1/2” x 11”.  It’s A4.  In fact, much of the rest of the world except North America uses the A(something) system for paper sizes (technically called the International paper size standard ISO 216, and “based on a single aspect ratio of the square root of 2”…whatever…).  A4 is slightly taller and slightly narrower than 8-1/2” x 11”, which seemed weird at first but now feels totally normal.  Now when I encounter a rare letter-sized sheet it seems oddly squat.

And you know the bog-standard three-ring binder?  No such thing over here.  Binders here have two rings, or sometimes four, but never three. 

And Liquid Paper is called Tipp-ex.  But just like Liquid Paper, it’s become a generic noun and a verb too.  At home, you liquid paper a mistake. Here, you tippex it.

And a ballpoint pen is a biro (“BUY-roe”).

And scotch tape is sellotape.

It’s like the whole universe of stationery in North American and UK  diverged very very slightly a hundred years ago, resulting in a completely familiar yet subtley different parallel system.  I mean it’s not like we’re writing with syringes of squid ink on 3D spherical pages bound into concentric onion-layered note-globes and housed in giant filing vaults shaped like gumball machines.  The differences are subtle but noticeable.


On the magical nature of the Belisha Beacon:

A Belisha Beacon (“buh-LEE-shuh”) is a particular type of pedestrian crossing marked by tall black-and-white striped poles topped with flashing yellow globes.  They’re named after Leslie Hore-Belisha, who introduced them in 1934 as Minister of Transport.  Belisha Beacons are the ultimate in road crossings because they require no action on the part of the pedestrian.  You don’t have to wait for a light or push a button or anything; they’re always on and the lights are always flashing.  All you do is step out into the street and any vehicles are required to stop.  And amazingly, they pretty much always do. 

Here is a rare triple-barreled Belisha Beacon in my old Arsenal stomping grounds.  Three crossings, meeting at a centre island.  Watch how the car just automatically stops for the guy!

Magic!

I might write more about pedestrian crossings in general some time, if only because there are so many different kinds and they have the BEST names: zebra crossing, pelican crossing, penguin crossing - even toucan and pegasus crossings. (Apparently it’s a zoo out there.)

Oh, and you know how traffic lights at home start green, then go yellow, then red, then back to green?  Here, they start green, then go yellow, then red, then yellow again, then back to green.  This gives drivers stopped at a red light the chance to rev up and get primed for the green light, so as to save precious nanoseconds on start-up (as opposed to North American drivers, who have to watch the lights in the other direction to achieve the same goal).


And finally, apropos of kind of everything:


On the nature of life in general as related to This Time Last Year:

On this day last year, May 31, 2010, I boarded a plane in San Francisco and flew home to Winnipeg after being away for 351 days and circumnavigating the globe.  An entire year has passed since my big trip ended and just like that year I can’t believe how quickly this one has gone by.  In some ways I feel like I’ve done so much less this year.  I mean I haven’t ridden an elephant in the last twelve months, or run on the Great Wall of China, or even spent the night wandering the Duty Free shopping concourse of the Dubai Airport.  I’m such a slacker.

Then again I have managed to set myself up in a completely new country, starting from scratch.  I came over nine months ago with a small-ish wheelie suitcase and a resume full of Canadian experience and Canadian references.  Now I’ve got a room full of stuff, and a proper full-time job in my chosen field, and real professional contacts that I’ve earned, and friends and routines and running routes and favourite tv shows and a working knowledge of the London bus system.  It’s all not nearly as exotic as an elephant ride, but it’s much more real, and more meaningful.  And when I think about it, I’m quietly proud of how far I’ve come.

Now what about next year?

Off the tourist track: Brixton Market

I slept in last Saturday following a Friday night of after-work drinks with a couple of colleagues that turned into far too may rounds of “just one more”, but was also really good for the soul.  I was immensely happy and relieved to hear one of my companions report that, though he’d only been back in town for a few days, he’d already heard some good things about me from others in the business, and reassured me that I’m doing fine and should just bide my time and wait for the right next move.  So I was more than pleased to while away four and a half hours in a genial pub with cheap drinks (£2.70 for a pint! In the West End! Unbelievable!) and lap up any words of praise or encouragement I could get, along with about five pints of beer.

So when Saturday morning rolled around I was very happy to sleep in and woke feeling only slightly fragile.  Somewhat dehydrated and definitely in need of refueling, I decided it was time to scout out a local cafe that had been recommended and was sure to serve up a proper Full English Breakfast (which will definitely be another post).  The Phoenix Cafe turned out to be exactly what I needed, and wasn’t even close to as full as I thought it might be on a Saturday morning.  Properly fed, and with the morning paper read, I was in a state of perfect contentment and decided to have a wander around my local market and blog about it.

When you think about the markets of London there are a many that are likely to show up on the average tourist’s list – Covent Garden, Portobello Road, New Spitalfields, Borough Market, Brick Lane, even Camden Market.  But you’d have to get quite far down that list to end up at Brixton Market.  In fact, I’d venture to say that all of Brixton is very much outside most tourists experience of London, which makes it lucky for you that your humble blogger lives in Brixton, and can tell you all about its charms without the knee-jerk reactions most native Londoners have to the place.  I promise you more on the neighbourhood in another post; for now, let’s have a stroll through the market.

The first cool thing about Brixton Market is where it’s located.  Just around the corner from Brixton tube station, the main street that runs through the Market area is this one:


Yes, it is THAT Electric Avenue.  The one we gonna rock down to.  The street was built in the 1880s and was one of the first streets to have electric lights.  It’s an unremarkable street now, but when I walk down it I hear that song my head and I get that sense of somewhereness that’s a lot of what makes London so special for me. 

But the market itself isn’t confined to one street.  Electric Avenue might form the backbone of it, but even there the shops that line the street – butchers and fishmongers and fruits and veg shops and such - are supplemented by temporary stalls that set up in the middle of the road, which gets closed to vehicle traffic.  Smaller streets run off to the sides too, and stretch over to the railway arches under the train line that runs through the area.

Fishmonger's daily wares.

Along with all those shops and stalls there are three different covered market arcades that house even more shops and restaurants with even more odd and excellent offerings.  The arcades are great – you wander into one and take a turn or two and get distracted and end up getting spit out onto the street at the end and have to take a minute to get your bearings before diving in to another one.

In 2007 two of the arcades were sold to a property developer, who intended to remove the existing structure and create “a 10 story privately owned residential tower block and private park, above a new market building” (Wikipedia).  Sounds charming doesn’t it?  Luckily concerns were raised, and a group called the Friends of Brixton Market, along with market traders and local residents, lobbied against the proposals.  Finally in 2010, the government reversed a previous decision and declared all three arcades Grade II listed buildings, meaning they can’t be demolished, extended or altered without special permission from the local planning authority.  Yay for Brixton!

During that time, the arcades enjoyed a bit of a rennaissance, largely due to a local initiative that helped fill many empty stalls with new small businesses.  This means that there’s been some renewal and a bit of the kind of gentrification that goes along with that.  There are still some empty shops in the arcades, but there are also new cafés and shops that have brought a nice mix to the place.  You can still get cassava root and papayas and other fruit and vegetable-like things I can’t identify.  And the arcades are still home to the first (and purportedly best) pizza joint in London.  But you can also sit and have a nice cup of café au lait or buy a loaf of gluten free bread.  You can even make your own toast!

Yes, there has been some gentrification, but Brixton Market still feels like a REAL place. Brixton’s huge Afro-Caribbean community colours the whole neighbourhood, and the market is no exception.  So while there is one stand selling Nutella-filled crepes made while-you-wait, there are probably ten selling plantains or halal meat.  And the butchers and fishmongers don’t hide behind their counters wearing boater hats – they’re out in the street drumming up business, like the fruit-stall guys who call you “luv” or “mate”. 

Part of the realness of Brixton Market means that, along with the usual suspects – apples, bananas, onions, chicken, blah blah blah – you can also find a frankly dizzying array of the kind of thing that doesn’t always show up at the local Tesco, and almost certainly not at your more touristy markets: hair extensions, fish heads by the pound, cheap luggage, bedazzled cell phone accessories, skin care products, area rugs, pig’s trotters, six-packs of boxer shorts, flatware, fishnet stockings, wigs, tripe, nail varnish, and goat meat.

Frankly, I thought that price was a bit steep.

Great for stocking up.  (Groan…)

Brixton Market is a real place.  It’s there for the people who live in the neighbourhood, not to entice tourists with a tidy, sanitized version of a London Market.  There’s nothing wrong with a turn through Covent Garden, especially if you’ve got souvenirs to buy or haven’t seen your share of living statues.  But if you’ve got a few hours on a Saturday morning and a hankering for something a bit different you could do worse than to have a wander through Brixton Market.  I’m not saying you should skip the Tower of London in favour of the DIY toast place, but just think about it, you know?  And if it all gets a bit too scary there’s a Starbucks right next to Brixton tube station and a 24-hour McDonald’s at the main intersection, so you know you’ll always have somewhere to retreat.  But first try the toast.

A good day to be English

First things first – I know it’s been approximately a decade since the last new post, but this has been one of those times I warned you about at the beginning.  I was a bit busy doing 140 hours of work in two weeks with nary a day off in sight, so you can understand that it was all I could do to manage to keep myself clothed and fed, let alone bang out a few thousand words for you lot.  Sorry, but that’s how it goes now that you’re dealing with a more-than-full-time worker and part time blogger.  Now on to today’s post:

I know it’s ancient history now, but you may have heard we had a little wedding over here a few weeks ago.  In fact I suspect 99.87% of everyone on the planet heard about it, the only exceptions being a few undiscovered tribes in the Amazon rainforest, and even they probably saw the sky-writing speculating on who designed Kate Middleton’s dress and were scouted as a possible honeymoon location.  Over here at the epicentre of it all the media saturation was total.  You could not move, blink or breathe without encountering some kind of Royal Wedding coverage, meaning that everyone in the UK had a choice to make on that day – to watch or not to watch.  I wouldn’t call myself a staunch Royalist or anything, but I do have a soft spot for the Royal Family in general and for William and Harry in particular.  After all, I saw their mother’s wedding on a tiny black and white tv in the dining shelter at the Pike Lake Guide Camp when I was 12 years old.  How could I not get out and try to take part when the next chapter was happening right on my doorstep (and in my time zone)?

So I told them I was taking the day off from work - yes, it was a Bank Holiday, but there was a lot of work to be done so there was a full complement on duty (“The show must go on” and all that crap…).  And I pored over the Evening Standard’s coverage of who would be seen where and when, and I made a vague plan. 

(Brief aside about the coverage of all that “who would be seen where and when” stuff.  It was really precise.  I’m just recalling this from memory, so don’t quote me on these times, but it was something like this:

10:44am: Prince William and Prince Harry depart from Clarence House for Westminster Abbey
10:46am: The car carrying Prince William and Prince Harry passes through the arch at Horse Guards
10:48am and 45 seconds: Prince William and Prince Harry arrive at Westminster Abbey’s Great West Door… and so on

As I was reading this I was thinking to myself, “How can they be so accurate with these timings? I mean the traffic around Parliament Square is always a nightm… oh… wait a minute… there won’t BE any traffic.  That car will be the only vehicle moving in about a 2 mile radius.  So yeah, I guess that would be about right…)

Anyway, my vague plan was this:

1. Take the tube to Green Park station (near Buckingham Palace). 
2. Walk around trying to find a spot to see something from.
3. Try not to get frustrated when this did not work out.
4. Repair to a nice pub to watch the whole thing on tv.

The crowds at Green Park tube were not bad, and I saw a few people dressed up including a whole gang of about ten women wearing the famous blue dress that Kate Middleton wore for the engagement announcement and dragging little wheelie suitcases.  And I bought myself a Union Jack flag to wave at appropriate moments (only £1! I was expecting to get fleeced for much more than that).  Then I started walking, trying to make my way towards The Mall (pronounced, bizarrely, to rhyme with the the diminutive form of Albert) (I’m not kidding), which was where all the comings and goings would be.  Of course the streets were blocked to vehicle traffic, but I was really surprised to see that they were also blocked to pedestrians as well.  Any access point to The Mall or Whitehall or any other street where important things would be happening was attended by police who warned that the entire area was closed off due to safety concerns because of the size of the crowd.

(Another aside: “safety concerns” is more commonly heard as “health and safety”, or with the right accent “elfin safety”, which always makes me picture a band of tiny sprites kitted out in hard hats and shoes with curled up steel toes.  There is much much much more to say about the Health and Safety culture here, and the sometimes crazy lengths it’s taken to, and the backlash that usually comes with these lengths which is always accompanied by at least one quote from an irate member of the public claiming that whatever he’s cross about is “Health and safety gone mad!”. But for now let’s just remember those sensible pointy-toed imps and get back to the wedding.)

With no other option, I was eventually funneled into Trafalgar Square, which turned out to be just fine.  Considering I hadn’t been even slightly interested in camping out at Westminster Abbey from Tuesday onwards to secure a prime spot, I knew that chances of getting to see anything live were slim.  So Trafalgar Square it was, and it was packed.

 This is just part of the crowd in the main section of the square.  The digital sign off to the left is counting down the number of days, hours, minutes and seconds left until the Olympics!

They had two giant video screens set up – the larger one facing towards the National Gallery, and a smaller (but still by no means small) one facing vaguely towards the Thames near the Waterstones bookstore (You know, by the Pret a Manger… no… the other Pret a Manger…) (Ok, that was a joke for Londoners only, I think.  North Americans please substitute Starbucks for Pret a Manger and you’ll get it).  I did a circuit of the square, noted what tacky souvenirs were on offer, made a few purchases, and scouted out a place to get comfy.  I ended up standing with a good view of the smaller screen and by the time things started happening I was content to just watch and listen with everyone else, and wave the flag (literally) at all the right moments.

Flags, the big screen, and the happy couple

So technically I ended up watching the whole thing on tv just like everyone else except the few hundred people actually inside Westminster Abbey.  But honestly it was much better than sitting at home watching.  The crowd was big, but everyone was happy and friendly, and there was a nice buzz in the air despite the grey skies.  And when they got to the part in the ceremony when the congregation at the Abbey sang “Jerusalem” lots of people in the square sang along (“And did these feeeeeet, in ancient tiiimes, walk up-on Eng-land’s moun-tains greeeeeeeeeen….).  Some people (myself included) even had a copy of the service to follow along to the lyrics.  And there was lots of cheering and flag waving at all the right moments. 

And then, at the very end, they sang “God Save the Queen”, and that’s when it really hit me.  There I was, in Trafalgar Square, in a crowd of thousands of people, and it was all about being English and being proud to be English and being happy to be there and to be celebrating such a simple, joyful thing.  I don’t mind saying I got a little choked up as I was singing.  I’ve sung “God Save the Queen” hundreds of times in my life, but it never hit me like it did that day.

I took some decent video that day, but it ended up being in some weird format and it’s not downloading from my camera properly, so you’ll just have to watch this Youtube thing taken by someone who understands his camera better (except for the part where he zooms in and loses the sound...).  And though it looks like there aren’t many people singing, it really didn’t feel like that.  It really felt very very cool.

I stuck around a while longer after the ceremony was over, but there was no way I was going to hang about long enough to watch The Kiss On The Balcony.  Instead, I made my way over to Embankment tube station, and bought a few more souvenirs, and then legged it home and watched The Big Kiss from the comfort of my couch, with a nice cup of tea.  And then I went off to celebrate the 2000th running of the London Hash House Harriers, which is most definitely another story.

Swots, boffins and anoraks: Words about people

More additions to the glossary.  This time, our theme is words describing people.

anorak = Yes, technically an anorak is one of those wind/waterproof jackets, but that’s not what you’re here to find out, is it?  Colloquially, an anorak is that particular type of person who pursues an odd and useless hobby obsessively.  Generally poor in social situations, trainspotters are classic anoraks.  Perhaps used thusly: “Gerard has got a complete set of milk bottle lid liners featuring all the characters from ‘E.T. The Extraterrestrial’  He cornered me at Janet’s party last week to explain the difference between the early edition Drew Barrymore lid liner with a typo and the later, corrected version, printed with different ink.  It took me 45 minutes to escape.  Christ, he’s such an anorak!”

nutter = just what it sounds like.  In North America we’d say “nutcase” or “nut job”.

white van man = a rude, aggressive driver.  Derived from the fact that many tradesmen such as builders, plumbers and electricians drive small panel vans commonly painted white to make it easier to put the “Joe’s Plumbing” logo on the side.  Stereotypically a white van man is an overweight, chauvinist, wolf-whistling, rude-gesturing, speeding, obscenity-hurling tail-gater with builder’s butt (a.k.a plumber’s crack).

git = a mildly derogatory term for someone who’s useless, annoying or troublesome.  Can also be used among friends in mocking derision, as in: “Quit your moaning you’ve just won the lottery you lucky git.”

wanker = literally, one who masturbates.  More generally it’s a catch-all derogatory term for someone North Americans might describe as a jerk (note the similar etymology), bastard or asshole.

swot = pronounced “swat”, like what you would do to a mosquito.  Swot is a term for someone who does well in school and studies hard.  Often used contemptuously by someone who does not do well in school and does not study hard.  Sometimes used, with typical English false modesty, by people describing themselves: “Yeah, I got 23 A levels in school.  I was a right little swot.”

Geordie = Someone from the area of Newcastle upon Tyne, in the north east of England.  Also, a supporter of Newcastle United Football Club.  Geordies tend to have a brilliant accent which, when laid on thick, is basically indecipherable to outsiders.  Here it is demonstrated in its milder form by a claymation mouse.  How cute is that?

And here it is, laid on thick:

bloke = utterly commonplace term for a male person.  Used the same way, and with the same frequency that North Americans would use “guy”.

toe rag = a somewhat out-of-fashion word meaning either a worthless, dirty, disgusting person or a sly,  deceptive or slightly criminal type, or possibly both.  Online sources claim that toe rag has mostly passed out of use in favour of terms like tosser and wanker, but I did hear it in the wild from a native speaker not too long ago, and I just like it, so I include it here.

slag = a derogatory term for a promiscuous woman. “That Teresa has a revolving door to her bedroom.  She’s such a slag.”

toff = refers to an upper class person, usually male, and almost certainly educated at public school.  (Note: a public school is exactly the opposite of what it sounds like.  Not public at all, they are, in fact, very private and very expensive.)  A toff is born to the title, and is likely to have a passing acquaintance with polo (not just the shirts), Abercrombie & Fitch and at least one woman named Tabitha.  David Cameron (the current Prime Minister of the UK) is a toff, though he desperately tries to distance himself from that label to the extent that he first claimed he would wear a business suit (not tails) to the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton.  Media reports claimed this was because of a photo that surfaced years ago showing him in morning dress (tails) as a member of the Bullingdon Club at Oxford, thus forever cementing his status as a toff. (from The Telegraph).

The famous photo of the Bullingdon Club.  Cameron is pictured second from the left at the back. Also pictured is a young Boris Johnson, current Mayor of London, seated on the right. Johnson is also most certainly a toff.  (Poor man, how could he NOT be, when his full name is Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson?)

geezer = A generic term for any male person, not just a very old one

boffin = Ah, the great British boffin.  It’s a term used to describe someone who is an expert in a scientific or technical field, often one that’s also somewhat arcane.  It shows up in newspaper articles when some new bit of technical wizardry is unveiled, as in “The boffins at Apple have developed the new iPed, a foot-controlled touchscreen device for use by the flip-flop crowd.”  I suppose it’s roughly equivalent to “nerd”, but used with more affection and even some respect, as if people have realized that boffins may wear pocket protectors, but they also built the space shuttle.  This doesn’t stop kids from using it as an insult directed at anyone showing a spark of intelligence.

punter = a generic, somewhat dismissive term for customer.  Punter once specifically meant someone who frequents race tracks and bets on horses (or bets on thing in general), and extended to mean a customer of a prostitute, but is now used more generically.  As in “We’re just giving the punters what they want.” 

tosser = Originally may have derived from “toss pot” which is apparently an old sailor’s term for someone who drinks a lot.  Now it’s used interchangeably with wanker, though it’s perhaps slightly less harsh.

Scouser = a person from Liverpool.  Also with a distinctive accent, The Beatles are probably the most famous Scousers of all time.

Jamie Carragher, a Scouser and footballer who plays for Liverpool, demonstrating a strong Scouse accent.  Thank you for the subtitles.

mate = friend.  Much, much, more commonly used than “friend”, mostly by men.

grass = not a term for marijuana.  Instead, a grass is a snitch – someone who tells on others, especially to the authorities.  Can also be used as a verb as in, “That little toe rag grassed on me to the headmaster!”

chav = also chavvy, pronounced with the hard CH like in “cheese”.  A chav is that particular type of aggressive teenager (or even their parents and grandparents), usually from a working class background, that wears a large, stiff-peaked baseball cap (often at a 90 degree angle), a track suit, and a bizarre amount of chunky, shiny jewelry.  Best known for engaging in anti-social behaviour, congregating on street corners, heavy drinking, drug-taking and general rowdiness.  Bizarrely, chavs have adopted the Burberry tartan as their tribal dress to such a degree that Burberry itself now only uses the distinctive tan, black and red pattern on inner linings and other low-key articles. (I declined to go out to capture a picture of chavs in their native habitat, because I am not stupid.)


slapper = another word for a woman who will sleep with anyone.  Any time.  Anywhere.

jobsworth = The kind of pedantic git you encounter in the workplace who adheres to rules with fanatical strictness, often against all reason.  Part “work to rule” and part jerk, a jobsworth is usually a low-ranking employee, technically untouchable (because they are, after all, just following procedure) and universally loathed.  A jobsworth will exercise what tiny authority he might legitimately have to the greatest extent possible.  The term derives from the oft-repeated phrase uttered by the common jobsworth: “I’m sorry I can’t let you do that, it’s more than my job’s worth.”  For fans of “The Office” (US version), Dwight Shrute is a classic jobsworth.