“Existential crisis time: I don’t know what I want to do with my life.”
“Anything.”
“Encouraging, but unhelpful.”
– Cadence and Jeff
“And marbled clouds go scudding by
The many-steepled London sky.”
― John Betjeman
Not too bad, huh! The storage closet was the substance that sealed the deal, but I fully acknowledge that the view was the style.
If you look closely you can see the spire of Big Ben and the top of the Houses of Parliament in the middle left amongst the cranes. We’ve got the top of the London Eye as well. Further right of the Shard we’ve also got a view of the Gherkin, but it’s mostly obscured by council housing building projects.
“The secret of a happy marriage is finding the right person. You know they’re right if you love to be with them all the time.”
– Julia Child
Our anniversary is the first of July, but for the last couple of years we’ve delayed doing anything about it to celebrate it in London. My godparents started shuffling holidays around a few years ago to accommodate work schedules and coordinate the commitments of multiple families. At first it struck me as a bit strange to celebrate major holidays on random days, but I think there’s a lot of value to this method. As long as your celebrating what you want to celebrate with the people you want to celebrate with, I think wiggle room is a pretty good idea.
Don’t take this philosophy too far, though. People who put up Christmas decorations around Halloween still aggravate me to no end.
To celebrate went to the British Museum and took in their exhibition on Pompeii and Herculaneum. Most of the collection has never been outside of Italy before and it was stunning. It was set up in the dimensions and shape of a typical Roman household, showcasing the artifacts found in each of the type of rooms presented. The exhibition included many of the most famous mosaic fragments and frescoes from the site, as well as some of the plaster casts of Mount Vesuvius’ victims. Alas that photography wasn’t allowed! That sound you hear is my mother’s teeth grinding in jealousy!
After the museum we headed to Kopapa, our favorite fusion restaurant, and indulged!
The windows were thrown open, the weather has been absolutely wonderful for the past fortnight, and we people watched outside the Cambridge Theatre (currently showing Matilda).
May I recommend the elderflower presse for a gorgeous summer drink? Soda and cordial, absolutely loaded with crushed lime and mint.
Delightful menu with just the correct degree of weirdness.
And then we wandered around Covent Garden and introduced Jeff to Ben’s Cookies – since due to some shocking oversight he had failed to make their acquaintance when he was previously in London.
“I like the spirit of this great London which I feel around me. Who but a coward would pass his whole life in hamlets; and for ever abandon his faculties to the eating rust of obscurity?”
― Charlotte Brontë
It’s been a hectic couple of weeks, but we’re pretty sure we’ve taken care of all that can possibly be preplanned. Now it’s just time to roll with the punches a bit. Jeff starts work on Monday, I’ve got to wait around a few more days until our internet gets set up to get back to freelancing but I’ve already started looking for a new job. It’s equal parts exciting and scary. Here are your links, kittens, thanks for sticking around while we’ve hopped about getting settled!
Now that summer is winding to a close and people are desperate to get their last hurrahs in…
Huh! I admit, a bit of a paradigm shift.
Anyone hungry?
You make the call.
I find this picture of Queen Elizabeth and Princess Anne quite cute.
Excellent gallery! Also is it just me, or do retro photos always show our not too distant ancestors had really good skin? What gives?
In case you missed it the other week. Well done, Sister Suffragette!
You may have my undivided loyalty, but a wedding romper? J. Crew, you are drunk.
Do you know your Hitchcock? By the by, if you’re in London in the near future, see the stage production of The 39 Steps – hysterically funny and very vaudeville-esque, in the best way possible.
I think the fashion and modeling industries are oddly interesting, and Coco Rocha a particularly interesting figure in them.
I now have a lovely park a mere two minutes from my new building, well lit, plenty of highly visible and safe jogging paths, an Edwardian bandstand, lot of dogs, and gorgeous old trees. Excuses to not work out = effectively nill.
Though most accounts (and not a few ancient travel guides) have his corpse lovingly displayed in Alexandria, good luck to the team searching this site anyway. Though frankly my money’s on a carpark in Leicester – tons of long lost interesting people of history are turning up in those!
Need some Notting Hill Carnival in your life? Bon appetit!
An answer to this summer’s top question…
An excellent post.
30, not bad!
Tumblr find of the week.
Seriously, this made me snort laughing such that I nearly choked on a Cadbury’s nibble – a charming new take on my well beloved chocolate that is delicious, but also dangerous in moments of comedy. “How’s a brother gonna keep it real on the street with all these ethical and metaphysical uncertainties, my man?”
“I live in Notting Hill, you live in Beverly Hills.”
– Notting Hill, 1999
Notting Hill, one of the poshest bits of London, goes totally Caribbean for the August Bank Holiday. Since all the shops and businesses close down for the day (not a few actually board their doors and windows to keep some carnival goers at bay), Jeff and I couldn’t make any progress on our (lengthy) To Do list, so we threw up our metaphoric hands and decided to enjoy the last big hurrah of the summer.
This…
…turns into this. It’s glorious!
It’s one of the largest street festivals in the world, a celebration of London’s West Indian immigrant community. Groups dress in South American/Caribbean carnival costumes (emphasis on scandal), whole streets are dedicated to grilling goats and chickens bathed in spices, and the day drinking is out of control. And for all that, it’s usually fairly mild and brings thousands and thousands of people into the community to squeeze every drop of fun out of the holiday.
Monday was bright and gorgeous. British weather is notorious for a number of reasons, but I’ve always found that they can really get summers, brief as they tend to be, done right.
Nothing’s on fire, it’s just some some very serious barbeque. Also, that lovely lady in white looked a lot more put together than I could manage. In my defense I’m still living out of my carry-on.
The results of said barbeque, by the way, I heartily recommend! After stuffing ourselves with jerk chicken we decided to take in the costumes in all their glory.
Feathers, beads, and massive headdresses very much required!
Jeff is also living out of his carry-on, but he was much more photogenic. Watermelon and coconuts to end the day and steel us for the battle ahead of getting our utilities set up the next day. Wrangling the local Councils definitely requires a bit of reinforcement.
“Before you open the door to a potential flat, expect the worst. Envision seventeenth-century plumbing and eighteenth-century electricity. Picture a bedroom three times smaller than your college dorm room but with ten times less storage space. Any London flat that exceeds this expectation even slightly is worth considering. If your only problem with the flat is that the washing machine is in the kitchen, that the fridge is smaller than the TV, that there is no dryer for your clothes, that there is moldy carpet in the bathroom, that the bathtub has no shower attachment, or that the sinks have separate hot and cold water taps— then put down an offer immediately.”
– Jerramy, Fine The Regal Rules for Girls (a partially silly but mostly hilarious and occasionally useful book I read once)
Monday – flew in, practically had to beg for a cab because none of the cabbies wanted to go so far out of their way as we required, got to the house we’d rented (from the landlord Jeff had as a student) in the mid-afternoon. We hopped onto the housing sites we had found, narrowed down the flats we were interested in looking at and made a couple of inquiries.
Tuesday – Sent an email about a particularly promising flat only to have the estate agent call us seconds later and arrange a viewing for just an hour and a half after that. As advertised we find a one bedroom flat about 20 minutes walking from Jeff’s office with a great view, lovely lighting, and all the major appliances we were looking for. Also recently painted and wonderfully easy to clean. We made a rent offer. Two hours later it had been accepted. We said we’d be able to move in any time the following week if that wasn’t inconvenient. Landlady responded by asking if we could move in this weekend. Uh…’k.
Wednesday – Hurry up and wait. Spent our nervous energy wandering around the West End, completed our full Londoner assimilation by watching Channel 4 and eating takeaway in the evening in celebration when everything came through.
Thursday – Signed the contract and scoped out our new neighborhood a bit more.
Friday – Picked up the keys, made sundry lists of necessary house-setting-up-stuff, and bought a couple of cheap but necessary items to start. Made contact with the landlady who was completely lovely – praise Odin! Treated ourselves to The Woman in Black in the West End and gelatto to toast the occasion.
Never say the Small Dog team doesn’t get **** done. Fly in to flat in four days time. We’ve spent the last two days transferring things over and slowly building up the small but necessary household arsenal of things Responsible Grownup Types need to keep a place going – like shower curtains and wastepaper baskets. I’m now starting to tentatively comb through websites on the next great search: a new job.
Tomorrow though, since it’s the Summer Bank Holiday, we’re spending it being tourists for the last time and heading off to the Notting Hill Carnival for a bit before getting straight back to the work of settling in. Huzzah for a (mildly hectic but) kick ass week!
No links since this week we’re still traipsing about London sending things up, but I bring you something almost as fun. From a fabulous old book I found on the shelf called An Exaltation of Larks (here is an updated version ), all lists of obscure collective nouns! I already knew that a group of actors was called a grumble, but I did not know that the proper collective for princes was a state. Some of my other favorites…
“I would be the most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.”
– Anna Quindlen
In case you never believed me when I said we were nerds, I present you a snapshot of a typical bookshelf in the family lair:
“The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
While we’re off scrambling for more or less permanent shelter, here are some fun things from my parents house that I thought you guys might like.
If there is a theme for their decorating, Dad says it’s Anthropology. Dad’s family was in the oil business and Mum’s father was a contractor in Japan after WWII, and then Dad went into government/military service himself. We’ve spent two full generations moving constantly (I’m campaigning hard to make it a third with Jeff and myself, and one brother is going into the military as well). The result is that we have a rather nice collection of hodgepodge in the British style: we picked up stuff wherever we went and now display it on the walls. And floors. And wherever we have space, really.
Mum collects blue willow patterned antique china, so it’s all over the house. At the top is a Samoan (I believe) war club and to the left of the painting is a handmade birdcage.
Dad’s eyeglass case rests on an old Japanese wooden pillow with two Balinese baskets, a Chinese cricket cage, and a betel nut cracker in the shape of a horse, all on an antique obi. Betel nuts are common all over the Pacific and are chewed as mild stimulants, a cheap sort of drug since they literally grow on trees. Unfortunately they have a lot in common with chewing tobacco, especially when it comes to causing cancer.
Balinese mask in the shape of a frog.
Mum’s other collectable, antique pewter. These are a couple of antique farm hutches that sit in the kitchen.
A traditional Chinese folding screen. In our case it’s used as a wall hanging, although I think it would make a spectacular headboard!
“Go where we may, rest where we will,
Eternal London haunts us still.”
― Thomas Moore
Here it is, kittens, the last Friday links post in the US for some time to come. Cue the nostalgia.
I’ve neglected you, but I’m not particularly sorry since my other brother John is finally in town and the whole family has been hanging out for the first time in nearly a year. Mum and I did haircuts and facials yesterday (which I’ve decided needs to be the new standing ritual prior to all Trans-Atlantic travel). I saw Xarissa in DC the other day for lunch some much needed pseudo big sister gossip before we left, and Amy and Ryan are coming back down this weekend to join us in our expedition to Busch Gardens tomorrow – although the weather has decided to be early Fall-ish instead of late Summer all of a sudden! It’s been deliciously cool and clear!
I’m currently throwing some quick posts together to do my best to keep you entertained while we’re dashing frantically from flat to flat trying to find a place to live. We truly have no idea how this next phase of the adventure is going to go, it’s all being played very much by ear. Wish us luck, minions!
Sometimes it’s hard to remember that it’s 2013.
On a lighter note, Jeff found this – and oh, how we laughed!
Pretty watercolor portraits of some of literature’s most popular heroines.
Oldy but a goody.
This is a thing?
Here’s some oddness I can get behind on the other hand!
It is often wise to recall that the industry that tells us that whatever our current body shape, type, style, or method for controlling/dealing with problems related thereto is bad – is just about as old as time.
One Christmas my present was tickets to Swan Lake performed by the Russian National Ballet. It was gorgeous, but the memory that sticks out was one of the characters after executing a highly athletic combination of leaps received an applause less enthusiastic than he clearly thought he deserved. He made several insistent bows until he got the amount of accolades he wanted. Clearly he needed a team of these.
And, lest we all forget what’s coming up in about 48 hours…
Small Dog Syndrome 