The Season of Squishing

We have a very tiny vinyard.  What it really is is one overgrown vine that is threatening to bring down the fence to which it is affixed.  Last year, Year of the Vine I, basically no grapes were harvested.  This may have been because we had a spell of very hot weather and the grapes instantly became raisin-fied, or it may have been that birds got all of them despite the netting, or perhaps the Vineyard Owner (VO) saw the grapes were ready but was too lazy to do anything about it.

For whatever reason, this year, Year of the Vine II, there is a bodacious quantity of little wine grapes.  The VO says maybe they are chardonnay grapes, but in reality he cannot recall.  We will be referring to them as chardonnay grapes to our pals, because it sounds fancy.  We brought in the tiniest proportion of the possible harvest, comprised of what could easily be reached when walking to the hose and pruning the buddleia slightly to the right of the vine.  This has resulted in three quarts of grape juice and an enormous salad bowl of grapes sitting on the table.

I am sort of following the procedure as outlined here, for making grape jelly:  http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/grape-jelly/detail.aspx.  I am deeply suspicious of the extra step of having to strain jelly, and all my produce in the preserve department last year was of the jam and marmalade variety.  But.  We have All These Grapes.  Something Must Be Done. 

The following things (so far) are worthy of note:
1) Squishing a lot of grapes with a potato masher is strangely satisfying.  It helps to think of someone you loathe while squishing;
2) Wine must have a tremendous amount of spider residue in it.  I washed the grapes three times and found more creatures each time.  I would imagine that this triple washing does not happen in real wine-making and it all just gets stomped up together;
3) Ew;
4) I am wondering if this is really what is meant when winemakers refer to "terroir."  Perhaps this really means the "je ne sais quois" in your winery's produce effected by the parts per million of spiderage;
5) Ew. 

The Wartime Trifecta

There are a few things that are useless about February, chief among them that it is Valentine's Day in it.  Normally, I think it's a month best spent chiefly hiding in the blankets, but in California the climate conspires against you:  It's been bright and sunny and often dry and windy, and no one has any sympathy at all for you if you've made up your mind to a little glumness. 

I've been staving off post-holiday letdown by a little homeopathic English movie treatment of my own invention.  MGM or someone must have recently acquired the Sidney Gilliat portfolio of films and they've all shown up on streaming video from Netflix.  This is just the thing if you are pretending to be a spinster in a garret and need a little accompaniment while you work on your embroidery (that is, if you are spinster in a garret...with a computer). 

First there was London Belongs to Me, also known as Dulcimer Street, starring a baby-faced Richard Attenborough:  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040548/.  Honestly a little strange in tone as it veers between comedy of manners as varying personalities rub along together in a boarding house, and kind of stressful gangster situation as there is an unsolved murder, and subsequent trial.

A complete winner, though, was Millions Like Us, produced during World War II, about a young woman, the slightly overlooked youngest sister in the family, who wants to be part of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force, but is instead pressed into service at a manufacturing plant.  There she meets an embryonic Gordon Jackson - remember him, Hudson the butler in Upstairs, Downstairs? http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0413561/ - and Romance Ensues.  This had, for me, the all-important World War II in England trifecta:
1) Blackout preparations;
2) Discussion of rationing;
3) Knitting on film. 

It's just enough to keep me going, here in my garret.

I Can Report the Following

I have been home now for a full week and I have the following post-trip updates:
1) There was an anxious moment at passport control when it appeared that the officers were requesting fingerprints of everyone.  You may recall that I had an injury to my right thumb, and while we waited in the queue, I formulated mentally my query regarding the presence of a Hello Kitty bandaid and its impact on anti-terrorist precautions.  In the event, my fingerprints were not requested;
2) We were inspected by, among others, a small beagle in customs.  Thankfully, the pear drops either escaped notice or were not included in the beagle's remit;
3) My Transport for London injury has fully healed;
4) Wodges of cake consumed since my return - zero.  A Certain Reader will recall that I did buy a brownie from the bakery the other day, but that is not cake. 

I Leave the City, Fruitcake-free

 It was another antiques market day in Islington.  Here's the Continual Browser:

Then to Piccadilly and lunch on the 5th floor restaurant at Waterstone's.  

We circled the main floor of Fortnum & Mason to look at all the delicious things that were either: a) too expensive or; b) too heavy to bring home (frequently both, and this includes the many varieties of fruitcake).

Hatchard's is the oldest bookshop in London, and has the royal warrants from the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, and the Prince of Wales.  I did not see any of them.  I did buy books.  They are lighter than fruitcake.

 Went to dinner at the National Gallery restaurant (CR: fish pie for me, calves' liver - if you can believe it - for JY, and cauliflower cheese, with sticky toffee pudding and bread and butter pudding for afters, respectively.) followed by this play:

http://www.clybournepark.co.uk/ at Wyndham's Theatre.  It was fabulous.  Sophie Thompson was just perfect and extremely funny.  She transmits her expression so clearly, without being clownish.  It was great, I thought, that afterward people were standing outside the theatre arguing about the play and also reading the articles posted outside - to see what everyone else thought.  Overheard, mother saying to her adult son: "The one thing I don't understand, is why they called it a comedy."  I am not sure what she thought of all the laughing all the way through. 

A propos of absolutely nothing, except for things I am fed up about, would the Great British Public please consider not canoodling in the following places (the management reserve the right to cite additional locations at a later date):
1) On the escalators in the tube.  I mean, really, everyone is in a hurry, everyone is trapped and can't get around you and can you really not wait?  An extra special chastisement to the woman who was nibbling on her boyfriend's ear while he was standing on the step below her.  Pehrleese;
2) In the fourth row of a theatre. This means you are plainly visible to the fee-paying customers in all rows behind you, plus the dress circle and balcony;
3) Whilst standing in front of works of art in museums.  I fully understand that you might be inspired, but you are also in the way.

Thank you. 

In Which I Require Medical Attention from the Transport for London Staff

 It started out fine.  It started out with my going to Exhibition Road with my dad to the Science Museum to see Babbage's computing machines.  I was being a good daughter:  I even suggested it!

The Science Museum was more interesting than I thought. There is a main gallery with collections of household, medical and veterinary objects as they were popularly used through time.  They had a cupping set, and a field surgery kit from WWII.  If you know me, you know I find this a little gruesomely interesting.  They also have quite an extensive collection of, um...well, objects used for, um, relieving one's person might be the term.  Quite a lot of human ingenuity and craftsmanship has had to be devoted to this.  Not to mention curating the collection.  "What's your specialty area?"  Probably it's someone who has an advanced degree from Oxbridge, poor thing.  This has nothing to do with that.  It's a needle case with a thimble that screws on the top, and the bottom forms a bobbin:

There were also many looms.  This was an unlooked-for bonus.

And cake.  You can get cake at the Science Museum. 

 

Then we went to the Natural History Museum to look at the new Darwin Centre.  This is built around a huge structure (7 floors tall) that they call the Cocoon.  You start at the top of the Cocoon and wind your way down, and the interactive exhibits talk about how they collect, classify, and analyze samples.  And there are windows where you can look into the labs.  With signs that say, "Scientists working. Please do not knock on the glass." Poor things.  One of the video guides is the museum's Beetle Curator.  I am not making this up.
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit-us/darwin-centre-visitors/cocoon/index.html

It was when we were descending back into the tunnel for the South Kensington tube that The Incident Occurred.  I caught my thumb on the banister and started bleeding profusely (i.e. there were three or four distinct droplets).  And it was my right hand, the hand that's on the side with the Oyster Card reader, making swipeage almost impossible! 

I got to the station itself by fashioning a kind of bandage out of a Boots the Chemist tissue (from a packet that has actually been the full round-trip now from London to the US and back to London - but see -  it pays to be prepared).  This was good because before I went through the barriers I was able to show the TFL agent a convincing-looking, slighty bloody and definitely haphazard wrapping around my thumb.  I figured, if they sheltered people Underground during the Blitz, they would be likely to have a first aid kit at least.

He said, "Go down to the end of platform two and they'll help you there.  I'll just tell them you're coming down."  And I he actually used that walkie-talkie they wear on their shoulder to send an alert!!  About my thumb!  At the end of platform two, I said to the next TFL employee, "I was told to come down here and you would have a first aid kit?"  And he said, "Right, come along here..." and I got to go inside the control room.  Woot!  *And* the man watching the bank of screens said to the TFL worker who let me in, "I can't deal with it now, we have an emergency on platform 1.  Can you take her into the mess?"  and made an announcement telling all the people on the train on platform one to get off the train and then took it out of service.  It was an emergency within an emergency!

So now I have a Transport for London sticking plaster on my thumb, applied by a TFL employee.  I'm sure you'll be a little bit disappointed to know that it's an ordinary pinkish color, and doesn't have a red and blue roundel on it or anything.  Still, I can tell it's doing me a lot of good.

This whole palaver, plus jam-packed trains because of rush hour Friday, put us rather behind schedule for getting to Dalston Kingsbury via the London Overground to see a play at the newly re-housed Arcola Theatre.  Mostly this meant we had to suffer by having noodles again at the closest restaurant so we could finish dinner in an hour.
http://www.arcolatheatre.com/?action=showtemplate&sid=453
We were there to see The Painter, about J.M.W. Turner, starring Toby Jones and Niamh Cusack.  I don't know what the Arcola is going to do when they have a play that is not set in an artist's studio, as the whole place is kind of artistically ratty.  It's a tiny little place, with folding seats and a balcony made up of something that looks like scaffolding.  The seats are unassigned, so there was a big squoosh as everyone was waiting for the doors to open.  Someone said, "Is this the queue?  Is there a queue?  This is very un-English." 

(For a Certain Reader:  There was paint mixing using oil, pigment, and a muller.  You know how much I like this.)

I have to stop now.  I have to rest my thumb.

Peace and Concord and Rasmali

Considerable kerfuffle on the tube today as a "customer had wandered onto the tracks" causing "severe delays."  I cannot say whether this customer might have been the same one from last night.

 While JY went on another part of his walk along the Thames, I enacted my plan for the perfect day and went to Marylebone High Street - kind of a poncy area with shops and restaurants.

 It has in it my favorite branch of Patisserie Valerie, which has decorative murals in pale green on the walls.  (CR: Croque monsieur and an eclair.)

 And it also has the best branch of Daunt Books.  Daunt has everything, but they specialize in travel books, which are contained in a two-floor gallery with a skylight at the back.  When I was standing at the till, buying The Fry Chronicles, a woman came in with her friend and she gasped audibly.  He said, "See??"  I have previously been around here mainly at Christmas shopping time, so it was a pleasant change not to be squashed in the whole time. 

I might also, I can't say, have gone to the Cath Kidston sale. 
http://www.cathkidston.co.uk/?utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=cath%20kidston&utm_content=38652125031&utm_campaign=Brand

Then I met JY at Westminster Abbey for evensong.  This is, without question, the coolest thing I have found to do for free in London, and he had never been.  Evensong starts after they have cleared the abbey of the paying tourists in the late afternoon, and so you go up to the gate and say, "Evensong?" and they let you in.  Since the last time I went, the clerics have progressed to using walkie-talkies to communicate with each other between the quire and the nave.  It's very funny to see them, in their robes and all, with the walkie-talkies.

Then, if you get there in time, which of course I do, they seat you with the choir,so that when the choir enters for the service, you are sitting right there next to them. 

I was happy to see a good representation, among the boy choristers, of my Chinese brethren. A good number of the boys wear glasses, and with their starched ruffs and choir robes and all, it's just too much.  There were also four very small boys, obviously from the choir school, who entered early and sat together, in their red robes but not the white surplices.  I speculate that this is like being red-shirted as a freshman in football. Possibly house mother at a choir school would be a good job for me, but I might be disciplined for too much squeezing. 

This service was conducted in the presence of the High Commissioner for India and his staff, if you please.  Also, there were special prayers commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz and for the relationship between the Jewish and Anglican peoples.  JY and I were happy to represent.

There was no mention of relations between the Anglican and half-Buddhist peoples.

Have I mentioned there were tiny snow flurries?  It continues to be very cold.  Since we did not have a theatre appointment, we went to Punjab in Neal Street for a leisurely dinner. There were more delays on the Jubilee line, this time because of a train that had broken down.  You can tell we are in England because absolute silence greeted the announcements:  There was no whining (CR: It's because of the war.) 

Punjab has continuously been in business at the same location since 1946.  It's my favorite Indian restaurant in London.
http://punjab.co.uk/
(CR:  Chicken madras for JY, acharri murgha for me, saag paneer, pilau rice, naan, and rasmali for afters.)
We considered pointing out that we had been at the service in honor of the High Commissioner for India and inquiring whether we might be entitled to additional pappadums therefore.

The Day Long of This Troublous Life

 One of the two escalators down to the Northern line that we take every day.  It makes me think of The Accidental Tourist every time.

 A shopping day today.  It's cold and wet - really feels like January, so all the other tourists seem to be somewhere else. 

 Lunch after watching a little busking, at Le Pain Quotidien, which has opened a branch at Covent Garden. (CR: Caribbean soup and ham tartine for me, chicken and mushroom pie for JY.)

 We split up for shopping, after procuring two Manchester United scarves for fans of our acquaintance, from the Jubilee Market. 

 See?  Cold and wet.  And pretty empty.  I suppose that sensible people were somewhere warm having some tea and wodges of cake.

This is the view from the steps of St. Martins, where we met up again for choral evensong.  A small choir of about 12, but a very big sound. 

A wodge of strudel at a cafe off Leicester Square before going on to the starriest performance for which we have tickets:  The Children's Hour with  Ellen Burstyn, Elizabeth Moss, and Keira Knightley.  You can tell it's a starry production because they had bag checks before they took the tickets, and there were a lot of stern warnings about using cameras.  As if I would ever.  Pehrleese. 
http://www.thecomedytheatre.co.uk/index.htm
A lot of Americans in the audience, and a lot of debate and snarking on the steps of the theatre after the performance.  The girl who played Mary, the one who tells the lie that propels the rest of the action, was a real standout:  You hate her from the very beginning.  She's evil, but believable. 

Dinner after the show in Chinatown.  Strings of lanterns are up across the streets in preparation for Chinese New Year.  (CR:  mah po tofu, hot pot of noodles with crab, Singapore style noodles - everything steaming and/or spicy because, did I mention, it's cold and wet outside?) 

On the way home, at the Euston station platform, we were accosted by a young man who asked if we were Portuguese.  Did we speak English?  And then he had a lot to say, loudly and generally to those on the platform, about the eventual downfall of the monied classes and either the rise or fall of the Arab nations (it's difficult to say which).  He told everyone that he had learned his style of declamation from watching Hitler.  Mostly I watched him back closer and closer to the platform edge, well over the yellow line.  I was wondering what would happen if he fell in.  You could tell most of the people exposed to this event were English, because everyone politely pretended it was not happening. 

Travel is so interesting.  You meet so many people.