Whitebait

Monday night I went out with a ladyfriend co-worker to see a band recommended by an American ladyfriend. The fact that a man she fancies (note use of British colloquialism) is in said band may have been the primary factor in her telling us to go see them.

Anyway, we had a lovely time at a lovely pub called the Slaughtered Lamb, which would have been even lovelier had their sewage pipes not been backed up and in the process of being emptied. The entire pub, drinking and performance space, smelled disgusting for most of the night.

But the grossest part of the evening was my decision to order whitebait. The menu listed it as "whitebait, with tartar and lemon sauce £5, with chips £7". So I order with chips, thinking I'll get a nice piece of white fish with a sauce and some chips.

Nope.

For those of you who don't know, like I didn't, whitebait is THE WHOLE LITTLE FISH - FRIED. It's like baby fish, sardines or something, and its fried whole - bones, eyes, tails, everything. One pops it into one's mouth like a fish stick.

Gamely, I ate about half my bowl. My co-worker ate all of hers, and at one point we discussed how disgusted we were by the meal. She is from New Zealand, and whitebait there is served mashed into little patties, not literally just fried fish. Obviously the only thing we could do after eating such delicacies was drink some more beer, and sit outside to escape the stench.

(PS: We bailed out before the band even played, thus making all of the torture for naught!)

The final countdown to luxury bedded bliss

It is officially 1 week until I move into my new apartment. I cannot WAIT! I don't think I've ever anticipated the passing of 7 days so strongly before.

In preparation for moving, I've started acquiring household goods and necessities. Obviously "necessities" means "needs" and maybe I didn't really NEED the tea towel (dish towel) that has the words "I had a very nice dream about Daniel Craig" printed on it, but surely it will make my new flat a home. But really, the one gross expenditure was on luxury organic cotton bedding.

Let me preface this by saying that for the past eight years, I've been sleeping on the same three sets of sheets and using the same four towels in rotation. Even my mother, the thriftiest of homemakers, questioned the absorbency of said towels and my father noticed that all of them were unraveling at the edges. The sheets were a combination of sale items and a set that my mother bought in 1975 designed by Princess Grace of Monaco. BEFORE she died.

These facts, coupled with the very harsh reality living in the outskirts of town for the last six weeks, led me to justify spending the most exorbitant sum of money that I have EVER spent on myself, on bedding. Don't think I didn't consider other options; I went to the posh linens store and touched all the samples, then walked down to Oxford Street and went to John Lewis and Debenhams, the nicer department stores, and fondled their linens. There was no contest. Once you know what camembert tastes like, why would you eat string cheese?

It physically HURT to hand over my credit card to the shop girl. I was NAUSEOUS while signing my name on the slip. But back in the office on Monday, I submitted my expenses and it all went away, replaced with the anticipation of getting into the nicest bed ever on the evening of 18 June. Sigh.

The Holy Grail

It exists... I never thought the perfect museum could exist.

I will visit it soon and give a full report. Until then, the MOBPA has renewed my faith in humankind.

"Cheers" = the English "Prego!"

In Italy, the only word you really need to learn in order to get around is "Prego!" It means, simultaneously, thank you, you're welcome, goodbye, no problem, excuse me, and see ya! It's sort of like "yo." In England, the word for all of that is "Cheers!" "Cheers" is often a conversation closer; for instance, when you buy something at the store, the cashier will hand you the change and say Cheers, often in addition to Thank you. If a person knows you, they might often use your name as well, as in "Cheers Danielle." It's slightly disconcerting at first, but one gets used to all the cheeriness.

And, of course, "Cheers" happens at the pub, too, when everyone gets a new drink.

My one month anniversary

Yesterday, June 3, was my one-month anniversary of my arrival in London. One month is not enough time for me to start writing dates "3 June" instead of "June 3" - old habits die hard.

To celebrate my anniversary, I took myself on a date to the Sir John Soane Museum. The Soane was recommended to me by one of my favorite people in New York, and on further investigation I realized I studied it briefly in graduate school. It is a house museum of an 18th-19th century architect and city planner who was responsible for major development in London. He was also an avid collector of antiquities and objets d'art who displayed his collections in a specific, if somewhat nutty, method of organization. As a former colleague put it, visiting the Soane Museum is "like a visit inside someone’s brain." I found out that every first Tuesday of the month, the museum is open from 6-9PM and lit by candlelight.

I arrived at Lincoln's Inn Fields at 6:15PM and proceeded to stand in line in the sometimes steady rain for about an hour and half, sandwiched between two goths and two yummy mummies. Once inside, the house is amazing. It remains unchanged from when Soane was alive, and it's fascinating to think about him collecting all of these objects and hanging them in his specific manner. The strategically placed pillar candles illuminating grotesque and gorgeous objects was a great plus. I didn't spend much time in the museum, as it was crowded (they only allow 50 people in the house at once, and I can see why - the passageways are so narrow and the doorways so tiny that even with ten people inside it feels tight) and the lighting was so dim one couldn't examine any of the objects adequately. I highly recommend the evening viewing, though, if only for the atmosphere and mood. I'll definitely go back during the day for a proper visit.

After the Soane Museum, I treated myself to dinner at a Thai restaurant around the corner, which was disappointing and expensive. Despite the poor food, however, it was a pretty great anniversary date.

I never realized how good the lowly boxspring really is.

Boxsprings are the ignored and unloved half of a bed. Everyone talks about how great their mattress is, how soft their sheets are, how cuddly their pillows. Let me tell you something (oh God, that made me sound like my grandmother...!) – your boxspring is the FOUNDATION OF YOUR SLEEP, and if you don't have one, you will yearn for the days that you did. Like me.

Since arriving in Britain 29 days ago, I have not slept on a normal bed. By normal, I mean having these critical and necessary components:
- bedframe
- boxspring
- mattress
- mattress cover (sometimes plush!)
- fitted sheet
- flat sheet
- blanket
- duvet OR comforter
- 2 firm pillows in pillowcases

Instead, Brits have these ridiculous beds that are platforms with a shitty mattress on top. The mattress is covered in a fitted sheet, and then there is a duvet. This duvet is all you get ... sometimes there is an extra afghan-type blanket, but not much more. And the pillows... the pillows are sacks of feathers. If you fold them three times, they might be supportive for a few hours, but you wake up and your head is barely lifted from the mattress.

I'm cool with the duvet... it makes making one's bed in the morning easy-peasy. However. My shoulders and back are really crying out for some support. I have a permanent pain under my right neck/shoulder blade assembly, and I constantly wake up over the course of the night. My biggest joy will be this weekend, when I go to the John Lewis department store and try out the pillows in the bedding department - I heard they have beds set up so customers can try out the different firmnesses of pillows and mattresses. I should probably take someone with me, because at the rate I'm going, I'll probably pass out when I find the right pillow for me.

Deep breath: 16 days until I move into my own apartment and have my own pillows and duvet and (hopefully!) a boxspring. It won't be a moment too soon, though; it's so bad, the best sleep I've had in three weeks was Saturday night on a PULL-OUT COUCH.

Are treats the way to your client's heart?

Brits love their treats – salty or sweet, crisps or biscuits, they love to snack. Today the BBC reported on a survey that, apparently, the better the cookie you serve your client, the better your business will be. You can read it here.

I don't think this is a uniquely British phenomenon; I had clients in New York who eagerly looked forward to the Francois cookie platter, and were shattered if it didn't appear. It's a cross-cultural phenomenon that cookies are universally appealing and put people in good mood. You're not human if you don't like cookies.

And, my personal favorite British cookie is the HIT. Mmmmmm!

Movie review: Sex and the City The Movie

I never thought I'd say this, but I think I've outgrown Sex and the City.

Maybe it's because after living in New York, watching four women live a completely unrealistic "New York" lifestyle garners an eyeroll. Maybe it's because the gratuitous name/label/brand dropping that goes on throughout the movie is ludicrous, and no one I know actually owns a "Louie," wears Manolos, or would ever dream of wearing a Vivienne Westwood wedding gown. Maybe it's because I now live in London, and watching a movie about life and love in New York is, well, foreign.

I agree with all of the reviewers who said that something was lost when they expanded SATC from its snappy 30-minute episodes made for a small screen to two-and-a-half hours on a big screen. Sort of like when a very crisp clear photograph gets enlarged to poster size, and the pixels blow out and the clarity and definition are lost, SATCTM was a less-than-perfect representation of itself. I really wanted to see the movie and be happy with it, but I had mixed feelings about it in the end. The dialogue was great, as usual, and some of the situations were classic craziness that made the series great. But some of the ancillary storylines were just that - unnecessary, and extra baggage. The "plot twists" that everyone knew about from the trailer were things that would have happened over an entire season, and let's be honest - Sex and the City the series had a happy ending, so of course Sex and the City the movie had one too.

One thing I was glad about was that the writers didn't shirk away from the fact that this movie takes place at a critical point in these characters' lives - they are older, want to be wiser, but the movie doesn't pretend they are still 25. Samantha turns 50 at one point in the film, and yes they're still dressing like young sluts, but at there are several points in the movie that you see them looking, well, old. On the beach, they wear more flatteringly cut (read: mom style) bathing suits. They have jiggly parts, crows feet, and wrinkles. But they also still have each other and their men (whether or not they are speaking to them), and that's a great thing to see in a movie that values superfluous wealth and sophistication.

In the end, I am glad I saw it; there was no way I wouldn't see it. But it didn't make me miss New York, it didn't make me wish I were there, it didn't make me wish I had a boyfriend, and it didn't even make me wish for my college apartment when the opening notes of the SATC theme song (do-do-do, do-do-do-do!) were enough to pull five warring girls from all corners of the house to sit together for hours and laugh hysterically. Sex and the City tightly defined New York and its women in a very narrow time period of hope and prosperity that somehow doesn't seem to fit anymore. I prefer to keep my warm and pleasant memories of that moment when anything seemed possible if you had your lady friends and fabulous fashion locked into the series, with its perfectly imperfect ending, rather than knowing what its creators thought happened five years out. I know what happened to New York five years out, because I lived it; these four women seem to still be in that fantasy, and the bubble has literally, and figuratively, burst.

Drunken fools

As of midnight last night, it is illegal to drink on public transport. Obviously, one was never allowed to drink on the subway in New York, but here it was always legal until the newly-elected mayor decided to clean up London's public transportation system. To "celebrate" the ban, thousands of people decided to host a party on the Circle Line, the yellow subway line that circles inner London; people were going to hang out on the train, drinking, riding around in circles until midnight.

The tube in London does not run 24-hrs like it does in New York, so the party had to end at 12:30 when the last trains departed. However, the celebration apparently got messy and tube stations had to be closed because of the melee. CNN has a good run-down of the ridiculousness here.

Thank god I stayed at Ashley's... if I had tried to go home on the train last night, I would have gotten caught in that nonsense, and I don't suffer puke on a subway quite well.

Week 4: A blur

Well! I can't believe I'm sitting here writing this again - it feels like I wrote last week's "Week in Review" just yesterday. It was a short week this week - we had Monday off here, for Bank Holiday, and work was pretty intense Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Friday I spent in Amsterdam with my client on a whirlwind, one-day trip for sixteen hours, and then all of a sudden it was the weekend again. It was kind of like being back in New York - getting to work early, working late, running, repeat. I'm grateful for the uptick in work, because at least I have something to keep me occupied until I move into my apartment on June 18.

Speaking of June 18, I spent this weekend doing a lot of recon for my new home. After sleeping in on Saturday and doing my run, I headed into town and saw Sex in the City the Movie with Ashley in my new neighborhood (review to come). After the movie, we ate at a nice Indian place half a block from our new place and checked out a few pubs in the 'hood. Angel Islington is a pretty happening neighborhood, and there is no shortage of good restaurants and pubs to help us do some damage.

Sunday, after sleeping on Ashley's host's couch (as per usual), Ashley and I ventured east to Spitalfield's market and the Columbia Road flower market. Spitalfield's was disappointing, because we were looking for vegetables to cook with, but the Columbia Road flower market was great. Lots of flower sellers yelling about 2 lavender plants for a fiver and selling flats of impatiens for £1. The shops along Columbia Road were also fun - lots of good antique and design-y houseware places. Ashley and I did a lot of window-shopping and planning for our apartment's decor - planters with red geraniums for our balcony, herbs for our kitchen, and cool things to put on our walls and shelves.

Since we didn't get vegetables ("veg") from farmers, we had to go to the next-best-place - Sainsburys. Note to self: do not do a big shopping trip on Sunday, because so is everyone else in Angel Islington. After about 25 minutes in line, Ashley and I went back to her flat and cooked traditional Sunday roast. Who knew it took 20 min per pound to cook a chicken... and that said chicken was weighed in kilograms. Despite that little hiccup, the chicken came out awesome and the sides (the "veg") were good too. Another note to self: when roasting fennel, set timer, and do not forget that the fennel is in the oven while your friend cracks you up at the dinner table and you allow the fennel to burn to a crisp. Sigh.