London Lives

We’ve started frequenting some new pubs, having discovered them on a blustery sunny day after Christmas.  I say ‘discovered’, but they were always there, waiting and unknown until the day you decide to step inside.

We found them after a jaunt around Regent’s Park, lunch in Marylebone High Street and a potentially dangerous visit to the marvellous Daunt bookshop.  And last week we made a return visit. These ‘new’ places are in a long-favourite area, Marylebone, and attract the rag trade, media and publishing crowd.

The Yorkshire Grey is long and narrow with the beautiful features and stained glass windows of a Sam Smith’s pub (known to us as a G&T pub as the wines in them aren’t great. We stick to gin and tonic). There’s something decadent about a mid-week day off work, sipping G&T by a roaring fire, with BBC radio sound engineers chatting around us. Then on to the Crown and Sceptre (with a special wine offer on Wednesdays! Just the thing when a nice glass of Rioja is often six quid.) A nice buzzy bustle in this larger pub.

And I’m thinking about new places too: dipping a toe in, taking a leap into something new work-wise. It feels like standing on the precipice and attempting to make focussed choices.

It’s been a while since I was out and about in Covent Garden on a Friday night (and after posting that I don’t often do Friday night pubbage…)

We had some great Prosecco in the Globe, which was thronging with a pre-theatre crowd. The streets outside were busy with people heading to theatres and restaurants. Buzzy, busy and full of purpose. It’s good to get that feeling of ‘going out’ in the proper sense. I think when you go out after work in London, you are often quickly freshening yourself after the day and heading out. Being off work this week, I had time to soak in the bath, potter about doing domestic stuff while drinking cups of tea and just get ready to go out in a way I don’t have when I’m at work.

In Loch Fyne, I had potted shrimps, which I’ve never had before. They came set in mace butter with crusty bread on the side. Really lovely. Then the salmon with a mushroom, whiskey and horseradish sauce. Unusual-sounding sauce, but it didn’t disappoint and none of the ingredients overpowered one another and the dish came with new potatoes (very grown up!). My pal had the whitebait followed by the mussels.

Back to the Globe for a brandy to finish, then we walked back to the Tube, among the chill, the striding people and the rickshaws.

To a Friday rendezvous at my friend’s local in east London, catching up on the week’s gossip over gin and tonics. Friday after-work pubbage is a rarity these days; I’m more likely to be cooking something or eating out. Anyway, good to see some regulars, catch up on my friend’s news and chat to one of her friends too.

There had always been a plan to fit food into the agenda and it was never going to be difficult to persuade her into the the local Indian for a sit-in and natter. We had prawn biriyani, side dishes, and Goan haddock with pilau rice. They have quite an extensive fish menu which we’ve promised ourselves we’ll work through. Biriyani always sounds bland, but I think it’s a very delicately spiced dish, that matched the chilli and lime of the fish. All very lush and for once we didn’t over-order. All of it was eaten.

A quick swish around the supermarket was needed (alcohol, milk, breakfast things). Then we linked arms and trundled home among the blustery streets. We’d been warned about fairly wild weather this weekend and it was starting with bits of squally rain and serious winds. Near the Tube station, a man who’d been walking ahead of us suddenly turned and handed us pieces of paper. We muttered thanks and each of us knew they must be religious tracts. Upon inspection, we were right. “What’s Your Burden?” it asked.

Wandering to my friend’s house, the wind was gearing up. Under the street lights there were piles of enormous leaves, blown flat to the path by the wind and  kept there by numerous sheets of earlier rain. We stood for a while under the light, watching a beautiful tree as it writhed in the wind.

At her house, we sipped Amaretto liqueurs and played with her beautiful cat Phoebe. She is quite adorable. Caught up with music on Later with Jools Holland. He always has someone interesting: Steve Martin playing the banjo (Steve Martin – who knew?) and a great band called Delphic. I must look them up on iTunes.

Overnight, I was snuggled asleep in the living room, but the cat-flap was swinging so much that Phoebe kept cantering to the kitchen to check no other creature was invading her territory. The wind and rain were ferocious.

I got my hair done today and had to venture out among all the wind. The hair is great, veh slinky. I am very pleased with it. I bought nice shopping on the way home with a view to battening down the hatches this evening.

Salmon and mash planned  for dinner. Tomorrow I am supposed to be shopping for a proper winter coat. Weather permitting.

Salmon chowder followed by Autumn fruit crumble

I seem to have made enough of the chowder to last tonight, tomorrow night and Sunday. Salmon fillets, Maris Piper potatoes, leeks, spring onions, vegetable stock, crème fraîche and a few chilli flakes. Very, very lush and warming.

The fruit crumble was from chopped Bramley apples and frozen berries, with crushed Amaretti biscuits in the crumble, with Green and Black’s vanilla ice cream. It smelt gorgeous  while it was cooking.

All of this came together in about an hour. The kitchen looked like a bomb-site just after the cooking: I think I’d used every possible implement, plate and bowl. Thankfully a few bowls of washing up sorted that out.

I sorted out some lovely flowers I’d bought and put them in the living room and bathroom. Then I hung up some washing (including about 8000 pieces of underwear. How does that happen? I did a load of washing last Saturday).

London Lives has been living a Rock.And.Roll lifestyle this Friday evening, clearly.

ON EDIT: I’ve remembered that while I was cooking there was a fabulous firework display in the parkland at the back of the house. Or, it was in someone’s back garden near the parkland. If so, someone has spent serious money on that display.

The Harringay Food Festival was excellent, a really splendid local event. There was plenty of baklava and great food to try and buy (and ‘traditional’ things such as apple and cinnamon cake and some jams and marmalades). One stall, amusingly, was piled up with cans of Stella Artois. There were also community stalls and the Met were handing out goodie bags.

Outside the Yasir Halim patisserie, a klezmer band was playing and girls from the local shops were out dancing. Some of the men joined in and were moving round in larger circles. The crowd was enormous and a community police officer was pulling people in from the crowd. I stood for ages watching this.

Great pictures capture the mood of the festival here. The men on the penny farthings were ace! Local sources are saying 10,000 people turned up. Brilliant!

Later I went to east London to meet a friend and see Dorian Gray at the cinema. We had pizza beforehand and then took some wine in to the film with us. Excellently done (you can’t beat Oscar Wilde for a great line) and a good cast. Interesting to see Colin Firth as a baddie. I’ve always loved the story and how Dorian sells his soul even if you don’t quite see the deal being struck. I am also intrigued by the idea of a devil existing quite ordinarily in human form and moving among its peers (and equally the idea of angels in the same guise, particularly guardian angels).

The painting of the portrait itself was sensuous as the paints were squeezed onto the palette and applied to the canvas. Dorian was appropriately beautiful. As the painting festered in the attic, there were interesting nods elsewhere to the passage of time: from Hansom cabs to the motor car; swords to guns; portraiture to photography; the appearance of the Suffragette. And at the end, as I hoped, the picture reverted to its beautiful former image.

The National Theatre is broadcasting All’s Well that Ends Well to the cinema, so we’ve booked to see that, which should be excellent.

At Euston Station, a woman was singing an operatic version of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ on the main concourse. There were people with collecting buckets. It was unexpected and oddly beautiful. An emotive song, it seemed poignant for it to be sung in Euston, when so many of its trains head to Liverpool.

The tube was hot and packed, unusual for a Friday evening. People are usually stopping at pubs and restaurants to meet friends, giving the Friday journey home more of a loose and staggered feel. Not tonight, though.

At King’s Cross, a very tall woman (easily 6′ 2″, possibly more) got on. She wore a long thick plait and had an intense look. I remembered that she was behind me in the queue in Waitrose yesterday. I am still, after a number of years of living in London now, intrigued when I see regular ‘faces’ on the Tube, particularly if they have popped up in a different context before.

Okay, I am now busily eating some more kedgeree, which I’ve just made. There are mounds left to eat over the weekend. There is a loaf baking in the oven. My attic kitchen may be small, but I am producing good things in it.

Off to the supermarket to pick up things for dinner later (I’m grappling with pastry again for the first time in years…) This took me past the utterly splendid St Mellitus Church, a big beautiful and civic-looking building that rather emerges  from nowhere on Tollington Park. Further down this road is another smaller-scale lovely church and then we get to the Big Houses. These are big slightly shambolic-looking terraces, all red brick , numerous storeys and roomy. Lovely. In the autumn, all the leaves gather in nooks around the gardens and the chequerboard paths, then swoop back out at you, making you feel as though you’re in a street near the end of the world.

For the second time is as many days I have seen (different) women with a butterfly wing tattooed on each breast. Presumably the wings come together depending on how she wears her cleavage. It looks foul.

I’ve remembered that yesterday Mark Gatiss from the League of Gentlemen sat behind me on the No 19 bus, getting on at Charing Cross. I loved those splendid dark series and his work on Crooked House, shown on the BBC last Christmas. The recent Psychoville was hilarious and dark and captured much that the third series of LoG didn’t. I would still love them to make a prequel to the first two series, though.

And ON EDIT (20.59): the pastry dishes turned out a treat. I am v chuffed.