dom.blog

It’s been a strange couple of weeks, and not in a good way. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has directly affected the lives of people I’m close to and care a lot about. They aren’t on the frontline, but they are affected all the time. At the same time, Randi and I finally caught Covid, although in my case I’ve had (almost) no symptoms at all other than a certain quiet satisfaction that, yes, at least I have been administering these lateral flow tests on myself properly all this time. Unfortunately Randi didn’t get off quite as lightly, although she is OK and is now fully on the mend. But the coincidence of these two things has resulted in a weird atmosphere of being stuck inside, worrying about people over WhatsApp and watching news reports of advancing armies and bombed-out cities.

Away from the war itself, I do recommend the documentary F@ck This Job, available in the UK on BBC iPlayer as Tango With Putin, as another angle into modern Russia. It’s the story of independent TV channel Dozhd (or TV Rain) which you may remember from the clip of its staff walking off set together as the station was shut down at the beginning of March. Its founder, Natalya Sindeyeva, is a fascinating leader and the documentary is worth watching for her alone.

We had planned to visit Katie in Glasgow – a city which I’ve still never visited – but for obvious reasons this was postponed. Instead, we have at least been escaping to Victorian London by getting into a nice habit of reading Sherlock Holmes aloud in the evenings. It’s extremely comforting when a character from the nineteenth century rides a familiar train from Norwood to London Bridge.

Before this current phase of isolation, we did have a few lovely get-togethers to write about. Abbi visited us two weeks ago for a Friday night sleepover, followed by a Saturday morning run with Randi and then breakfast together at the Lazy Chef. The next day, we travelled up to Golders Green for the triple delights of brunch with Josh, Anna and Cora at Soyo, a wander around Golders Hill Park and – of course – a trip to Carmelli Bakery to stock up on challah. I also had a much-needed night out in a pub with Clark and Matt, where we only spent some of the time talking about nuclear weapons, and even very briefly went back to the office (!) to link up with Jill and Lee on some work-related visits. (No no, don’t try and amateur track-and-trace this paragraph. I definitely got my Covid from Randi…😇)

Last night, my mum treated Tash, Cormac, Randi and me to a delayed Christmas outing to see The Book of Dust – La Belle Sauvage at the Bridge Theatre. This was exciting on many levels, not least because – discounting our immersive Time Fracture experience at Christmas – this was my first time back at a theatre since Covid began. But going much further back, I can still picture the library in the attic of my primary school where I first laid eyes on Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights, and there’s something special about being part of an audience with equally long memories of Lyra and Pan gallivanting around Jordan College. This production itself was also excellent, with Samuel Creasey giving an especially good performance as the bright, confused, hungry and heroic 11 year-old Malcom Polstead who protects the life of baby Lyra in his canoe during a great flood.

It’s much harder to imagine the second book in the trilogy, The Secret Commonwealth, being staged with the same uplifting energy given how much sadder and more melancholy it is. We shall see!

The last few weeks haven’t been that busy, but a few weeks ago we did gain a civic participation brownie point by attending a (virtual) Perry Vale community meeting. Ostensibly the purpose was to discuss the allocation of a pot of funding between a long list of worthy-sounding community projects, but – in a familiar problem – there’s no way I’m actually in a position to have an informed opinion about which projects are worthier than others. So we skipped this part, and joined instead for a presentation from Lewisham’s directly-elected mayor, Damien Egan, on the council’s overall budget and objectives. There are pros and cons to directly-elected mayors, of course, but at a basic level it is satisfying to have ‘a leader’ who can articulate in one voice what the council is doing. (Obligatory snarky comment about London boroughs: just maybe not 32 of them.)

At the other end of the democracy spectrum, Randi and I finally finished watching The West Wing after setting out on this adventure in (*checks blog history*) July 2017. Hey, that’s still faster than watching two Presidential terms unfold in real time! There’s a lot to love about The West Wing, and a lot to roll your eyes about, either because it’s based on completely false premises or (more prosaically) because whole characters and story arcs have a habit of vanishing into thin air. But I miss it now it’s gone. The other night, while Randi was out, I filled the gap by watching a few classic episodes of The Simpsons which I haven’t seen for years and years and was pleasantly surprised at how they can still make me laugh out loud, even something as simple as Homer making a phone call to Japan. (If you want to feel old, read the YouTube comments where the concept of an expensive long-distance telephone call has to be explained. )

We also hosted Kirsty and Roger at ours for a lovely evening of arguments about politics and culture, followed by a great Sunday afternoon at Matt and Laura’s in which I tried to suppress my envy that Cress still gets to have Calpol when she’s sick. Meanwhile our new tradition of Friday night food exploration has included sharing plates in Peckham (from a baseline recommendation of 4-6, we ordered 8), an amazing Georgian restaurant in East Dulwich and – as a reward for persevering through hail the night of Storm Eunice – The Herne Tavern. (Yes, obviously we stayed indoors for the red weather warning bit. Our fence, on the other hand, mounted an invasion attempt into the neighbour’s garden and is now a high-priority item to fix.) Last, but not least, we also tucked into an amazing pastry-crusted fish pie at mum’s at the latest London Supper Brunch Club.

And, yes, obviously we’ve kept walking the Capital Ring too. Recent sections have taken us via muddy Fryent Country Park (is it ever not muddy?) to Barn Hill – where my dad used to take us as kids all the time – and the Welsh Harp (much lovelier than Mr Birch’s secondary school assemblies about murder made it out to be) and later Highgate Wood (delightful, although Tash has since reminded me that this is where the worst dogs of our childhood appeared) and the wonderful Parkland Walk south to Finsbury Park. In case you can’t tell, I’m enjoying all of these North London bits, but the last one was especially exciting for being an old railway route, with the tracks now lifted, but which would be part of the Tube’s Northern line today had the Second World War not intervened.

December blogs are frantic while January blogs are chilled: that’s just the way of the world. We haven’t had any dramatic adventures so far this month, but 2022 did get off to a really lovely start when we hit the Capital Ring on New Year’s Day for fresh air, muddy trails and the familiar Grand Union Canal. That evening we settled down for Doctor Who’s Eve of the Daleks– romantic comedy plus time loops plus Aisling Bea plus Daleks, of course – which instantly became one of my favourite Jodie Whittaker episodes of all time and certainly one of the show’s most satisfying festive specials.

Otherwise we’ve mostly been staying warm and cosy indoors, watching the new series of Would I Lie To You?, cracking open the Dominion: Adventures board game expansion, making tremendous progress with the final season of The West Wing (the end is in sight!) and enjoying David Attenborough’s home videos of plants The Green Planet, albeit without entirely accepting the premise that time-lapse photography of aggressive water lilies can ever quite match footage of animal interactions. We’ve also continued to expand our repertoire of local food places which we love and cherish: from The Lazy Chef by Forest Hill station to Malaysian food near Crofton Park and (slightly further afield) sharing platters at Tupi in Peckham. It might sound obvious, but it’s funny to realise that the owners of the restaurants and cafés in Forest Hill all know each other, and London really is a huge collection of urban villages after all.

Last weekend, we also went over to Erin’s extraordinary time-portal flat by Hampstead Heath for mimosas and a delicious shakshuka brunch – courtesy of Antonis – before an invigorating walk around the Heath with the two of them plus Erin’s dog Diva, who it was a pleasure to finally meet. Even after we had collectively put the world to rights Randi and I still weren’t done with the walking, so we headed to Charing Cross on foot before finally catching a train home. It’s fascinating to be reminded, or perhaps discover for the first time, how the areas of London I’ve always known (Hampstead Heath, Camden, Euston, Oxford Street) actually link up together.

Finally, last night we attended Caroline’s ‘leaving party’ (basically just an excuse for a party, without any long-term ‘leaving’ actually taking place) which was lovely, and – in a way which feels like a novelty now! – an actual party where you quickly find yourself in a crowd of people you’ve never met before. Personal highlight: being momentarily taken aback when a guy leaned over and confessed, somewhat conspiratorially, that he was also a Labour party member. I’m not sure this has happened to me at any of Caroline’s events before.

Merry Christmas!

Now it’s time for me to ensconce myself on the sofa while Randi is working and begin the traditional flurry of blog writing before the year is over, starting with a catch-up for the rest of December since we got back from the States.

After receiving the all-clear from our let-us-out-of-here-already PCR test, and absorbing festive spirits at a warm and cosy pub in Deptford, the big excitement after getting home was hosting Josh, Anna and Cora for their first sleepover at our place. We had so much fun together, especially when Cora began showing off her brand new walking skills in our kitchen.

The next week we were unexpectedly joined by temporary flatmate Sam for a few nights as all of her alternative places to stay in London were eliminated as options one-by-one by omicron infections. Right on cue, this week also became mad-dash-for-vaccine-boosters-before-Christmas week. I have huge appreciation for the amazing staff at the Queens Pharmacy Vaccination Centre in West Dulwich, who delivered a shot of Moderna to both me and Randi with great efficiency as well as finally being able to provide one of those coveted “I’ve had my Covid vaccination” stickers. In fact, as we celebrated Randi’s booster at The Rosendale pub down the road afterwards, there was a lovely sense of community when both two fellow pub-goers and the woman serving us popped out for unplanned shots before the centre closed for the day.

Our next turn in the great game of pre-Christmas omicron dodgeball (™Tash) was on Saturday at Christmas at Kenwood, a smaller version of the Christmas at Kew event we did in 2019. Side-note: Randi and I walked across Hampstead Heath in the dark from Gospel Oak station to get there, and I don’t think I’ve ever walked across the Heath at night before. It’s magnificent, and quite muddy. Anyway, at Kenwood we were joined by mum, Katie and Tessa for a mulled wine-infused stroll through Christmas lights, fires and lasers before heading over to Willesden where – much to my surprise – everyone accepted my suggestion of eating at Beer + Burger.

Without any big Christmas parties, the other thing which really helped to stir holiday feelings was going downstairs on Thursday night for a mini-gathering with our neighbour Angela, her friends Louisa and Chris and some very excited young children who put on a play for us and reached a heroic peak of deibels. Randi also cooked a surprise dinner to celebrate our first anniversary of moving in, along with a selection of truly delicious ginger and chocolate cookies which lasted all through Christmas. Tash also popped in for an evening, I made my final blood donation of 2021 off a busy-but-not-what-it-was Oxford Street, and I also gave up trying to understand how our existing thermostat worked and replaced it with a fancy Nest device.

And before you know it we had packed our bags and set off up North(West London…) on Christmas Eve. Remarkably, everyone survived through the battery of lateral flow tests and we had all made it home together. Christmas dinner tasted particularly good this year, and games included Not Alone (organised by Katie, in which everyone else plays against Katie, and each new iteration of the rules seemed to favour Katie), Debatable (which arrived in my Secret Santa bonanza from Tash and was played with much emotion in the evening with Andrew, Bonnie and Susanna) and a reverse-Charades variant with lots of cheering and booing which Grandma was not pleased with.

On Boxing Day evening, continuing the theme of celebrating Christmas in smaller groups, we gathered beside the fire in Sally’s garden to drink wine (and polish off Randi’s cookies) with Josh and Cindy who miraculously made it over from Canada. Randi and I then hopped on a delightfully speedy night-time bus journey back home (thermostat primed for action in advance from the top deck, naturally) before the final event in this year’s Christmas schedule: immersive theatre at Doctor Who: Time Fracture.

Now, originally this was supposed to have been Katie’s birthday present back in July before it was derailed by flooding. And as Christmas approached, the idea that an immersive theatre experience wouldn’t be knocked out by infection seemed laughable. But the “we’re sorry, the show is cancelled” email never arrived, and on Monday afternoon Katie, Randi and I reported for duty at Unit HQ for an adventure through space and time.

Skip this paragraph if you don’t want any spoilers, but one cool thing about the show is that the audience goes on different journeys depending on where they happen to run after the first section. So, we ended up having an amazing time with Queen Elizabeth and William Shakespeare – including a scene in Shakespeare’s office where it was just us alone with these two – while others met different people in other places. We loved our interactions, while crouching from Daleks, running from Cybermen and getting cornered by Weeping Angels in the dark was genuinely terrifying. Plus, the intermission on the travelling spaceship/bar with live music made us feel like we were genuinely on an intergalactic cruise. An awesome experience and highly recommended.

After the show, Katie came back to ours for an overnight stay and kindly agreed to teach us how to play Citadels again. This was one of games which I was most excited about recovering from the back of Robert’s closet in Chicago, so I was very pleased to be playing again even if I still haven’t won a game. The next morning we took a leisurely walk to Beckenham through Beckenham Place Park (or BPP to its friends) before saying farewell to Katie and looking forward to the final few days of 2021: quiet, restful but – hopefully – high in blogging productivity. One down, two to go 🙂