dom.blog

Come on blog readers, you know the drill by now. Posts in late December are a whirlwind tour of food, drink and happy gatherings. Then there’s an awkward silence for a couple of weeks in January until I pop up with a couple of frosty photos from some long walks. If Randi was writing this blog, things would actually be a bit more interesting this year, as she spent the first half of the month hanging out in New York and Chicago. Instead, you’ll have to put up with my stories about lounging on the sofa and binging on the final season of His Dark Materials.

Spoiler alert: it was really good! The third and final series of His Dark Materials, I mean, although our sofa is also perfectly comfortable. They certainly didn’t shy away from the theology at the heart of the books, and it’s funny to think about how much of a fuss this might have caused in an earlier age. I did find the structure of the final episode very odd, although not in a bad way. All of the major story arcs were already wrapped up in the penultimate episode, leaving a whole hour for Will and Lyra to basically hang out and relax – with some very half-hearted jeopardy thrown in – before the plot turned up again and demanded their heartbreaking separation we all remember from the books. I liked it, and it gave the characters room to breathe, but “in my day” of linear TV I don’t think you’d ever have gotten away with that.

(On the topic of not shying away from theology: a guy showed up at our front door the other week, Bible in hand, and I think I must have out-talked him because after a while he just smiled absently, made his excuses and said he really must be leaving now. As if I had knocked on his door!)

Anyway, when I wasn’t either watching or working during 2022’s Christmas/New Year interregnum I was either frantically blogging (you’ve already read those ones) or at the Kiln Tricycle Theatre courtesy of mum to see Zadie Smith’s The Wife of Willesden, an adaption of Chaucer’s ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’ from the Canterbury Tales. The odd thing about this is that I should have loved it. I mean, it’s literally set in a pub in Kilburn, it’s Zadie Smith, and all of the performances – especially the starring role – were fantastic and full of life and wit. But, for me, I’m still just a bit limited by the underlying source material. I like my fiction to be a bit more narrative-driven, and that’s just not what you got in the 14th century.

I spent most of New Year’s Eve working longer hours than a typical workday to finish my annual book review, but then rewarded myself with a dash up the Northern Line to spend the night in High Barnet with Oliver, Abi and Robin. They had spent their evening’s energies on cooking a delicious lamb stew (much more useful than a book review) and we spent the night – and much of the following day – playing Love Letter, Splendor and some questionable rounds of Debatable. As usual it was also really lovely to see Oliver’s parents again – who manage to feel like parents I grew up around even though I only know Oliver from uni – as well as Abi’s sister Sarah, who came round to see us on New Year’s Day.

Of course, by “came round to see us” I really mean “came round to see Robin”, who is already so much bigger than the very, very little Robin we saw at our wedding. A few weekends later in January, after Randi was back in town, Robin was also the star attraction when the five of us travelled to Cambridge for a fabulous mini-reunion with Peter Mandler over a pub lunch. It was a perfect setting: warm and cosy, with plenty of space to sit and talk as we covered all of the major topics you’d expect and barely noticed by the time it was already dark outside.

I did promise a long walk, however, and January’s long(ish) walk comes courtesy of Erin, Antonis and Diva who invited me to join them through the Chilterns from Little Kimble (a station which appears to be an outgrowth of someone’s back garden) to Princes Risborough (bigger, but where the chippy is still closed on Sundays). I particularly enjoyed playing a classic game of #TeamHulme vs. #TeamKant on the train there.

Unusually, last week involved two separate day trips to Windsor for work reasons, so (naturally) I took the opportunity to compare the Waterloo train (for Day Trip #1) to the Elizabeth Line to Slough (for Day Trip #2). This was my first time really using the Elizabeth Line to its full potential rather than treating it as a very very nice Tube line, and it really is a gamechanger to be able to ride seamlessly all the way out from Whitechapel. Not only does it extend the beyond-London zone of places which still “feel like London”, but it also made me think of parallels with US intercity highways which go right through cities. If someone drove from out of town to our flat in Chicago, for example, they wouldn’t have to turn off a motorway until the last few minutes. This is completely different to driving in a city like London (from an airport, say) which quickly requires drivers to hit slow, residential streets.

The downside of building motorways through cities, of course, is that they completely destroy large chunks of it, either by demolishing it directly or through a combination of noise, pollution, neighbourhood severance and general ugliness. The concept of the Elizabeth Line feels like the public transport equivalent of a highway through a city in terms of speed and convenience, except through a tunnel which leaves the area above almost entirely unscathed. It’s so lovely. Can we build Crossrail 2 now, please?

When I wasn’t admiring purple roundels on these trips I was involved in a (pleasingly rewarding) focus group session on Tuesday, after which we had an opportunity to visit Cliveden House for drinks and a short tour. (UK politics shorthand: this was ground zero for the Profumo Affair.) I also had a great catch-up over Honest Burgers with Tim, who I always enjoy conspiring with.

Otherwise, Randi and I have been balancing work, honeymoon preparations (we’re all travel vaccinated up… even with the ones we didn’t really need!) and our unofficial second jobs for Kirsty’s selection campaign in East & Midlothian. With apologies to our local MP, Ellie Reeves – who we were delighted to meet recently at a local gathering alongside some very grown-up chats with our local councillors about road crossings – but our real campaigning hearts lie in getting Kirsty selected, because she is someone we really believe would make a positive difference in Parliament. To that end, we hosted an evening phonebank for volunteers (it being both thrilling and nostalgic to hear the sounds of voter conversations coming out of every corner of our flat) and travelled to Edinburgh last weekend for some old-fashioned door knocking.

After a very full and rewarding Saturday of campaigning, the two of us crashed at Katie’s flat for the night before spending some time with Katie and James on Sunday. While Randi was out running, the three of us hit up the National Museum of Scotland for their Doctor Who Worlds of Wonder exhibit, which feels like the latest in a long line of Doctor Who exhibitions in science museums which make a commendable effort to be educational (“guess what, your cells regenerate too!”) but are really just an excuse to admire the the TARDIS console and hide from monsters. We did also go and see Dolly the Sheep, though!

This week we’ve also had the pleasure of having Sam staying with us in the evenings… which just about brings this post up to the present (he writes, briefly looking up to offer uninformed opinions on Sam’s potential retro trainer purchases). And just in time, since – depending on when you’re counting from – on Friday night Randi and I leave for either our slightly belated or extremely belated honeymoon. I feel like we’ve been preparing ourselves recently by revisiting some previous holiday destinations in restaurant form (amazing Peruvian food at Tierra Peru, Georgian khatapuris on Holloway Road) although in every other way we are probably grossly underprepared. But very excited!

Belated Happy Thanksgiving! This year, we took advantage of Katie being in London to celebrate one weekend early, reuniting most of our 2019 Thanksgiving crowd for Randi’s menu of cheesy broccoli casserole, corn pudding and sumptuous mashed potato. And, in an autumnal twist to my ‘first mulled wine of the season’ ribbon-cutting moment, we also enjoyed a large pot of warming mulled cider as we gave thanks for things in alphabetical order and played some riotous rounds of Happy Salmon: the party card game where everyone plays (and yells) at once. My guess is that the playtesting of these games doesn’t consider first-floor terraced flats with neighbours in three of four directions – sorry! – but it’s Thanksgiving, and you gotta have fun on Thanksgiving.

Katie stayed with us for a few more days, including the slightly surreal working hours where we worked together from the same home office. (While we didn’t get a chance to try switching jobs and seeing if anyone noticed, I can confirm that we both adopt the same unhealthily hunched position in an office chair. Not sure if this is a Tash thing too.) Aside from work, we also redeemed the Monopoly Lifesized tickets which Katie bought me for my birthday, and I’m delighted to say that – together with our team mates Andy and Jade, plus our ‘Scotty dog’ human Monopoly token – we came second out of four competing teams! Although, if we’re being honest, our purchase of the Gas Company should have immediately guaranteed victory in these troubled times.

In case you’re wondering how Monopoly Lifesized is actually played: although in theory there are escape room-esque challenges to complete on each board square in order to build property, in reality they are all pretty easy and the predominating spirit is really ‘zany novelty fun’ rather than anything very competitive. I really enjoyed it, and our meal in the Top Hat restaurant afterwards, although it does sadden me that Hasbro insist on repeating the false ‘Charles Darrow invented Monopoly’ story even though the true origin has been documented over and over again for decades now. And the true origin – it was invented by Elizabeth Magie as an economic satire and had a whole ‘anti-monopolist’ second set of rules – is just much more interesting than “some guy made it up for no reason”.

But the original reason for Katie’s visit was to go see Ingrid Michaelson’s Christmas concert. Through bitter misfortunes Katie has waited maybe half her life to see Ingrid Michaelson perform live, and we were eager to join her after an eight-year gap. (Wait, eight years? Really? That’s frightening.) Despite the fact that almost everything Katie told us about the gig was a lie (we could not buy drinks, there was no standing section, and it was not exclusively Christmas themed) we loved the show, which alternated between Ingrid classics – including the song we chose for our wedding ceremony – and festive songs.

Recently we also hosted Randi’s colleague Daniela for a sleepover, while I had another pub meetup with my uncle Andrew and attended the 2022 Travolution awards with some colleagues from work. (Props to the comedian Rhys James for making the most of a corporate awards gig.) And last weekend, I was very excited to make a rare outing to the cinema with Randi to see Glass Onion, the sequel to 2019’s Knives Out in which Daniel Craig returns as master detective Benoit Blanc. Massive thanks to Katie for tipping us off that Netflix had begrudgingly allowed a tiny theatrical release, because it’s a wonderful film and we both laughed a lot all the way through. Bring on the next one!

Finally, a confession: this year we broke the rule that you don’t get a Christmas tree before December. In our defence, Randi will be out of town just after Christmas, so she wanted to maximise her exposure while she was still around. And all of the preceding events in this post had already put us in a holiday mood. So, please forgive us. It’s also a particularly big specimen this year, which we didn’t fully appreciate until we got it home and realised the top was firmly out of Randi’s reach…

There’s one thing which beats a weekend minibreak, and that’s a weekend minibreak where someone else has already done all the planning. A few weeks ago, Caroline and Josh invited us to join a small group for the weekend in Whitstable. Airbnb all sorted, Saturday’s pub lunch booked months in advance: all we had to do was hop on the 18.16 from London Bridge on Friday night and relax. So we did!

Describing Saturday’s meal as a ‘pub lunch’ is a little misleading since, in fact, the main motivation for going to Whitstable was the five course tasting menu at The Sportsman pub. Not being a foodie – at least, not being the kind of foodie who would gravitate towards a Michelin starred restaurant, or even know how to pronounce girolles from the menu – I was a little nervous that the setting wouldn’t be for me. But, at the very least, I was excited to build my appetite with a long morning walk along the beach, with gorgeous (albeit alarming, given that it’s November) sunny weather and just the right kind of sea breeze to clear my head after our generous stocks of wine the night before during Articulate.

Happily, once we got to the pub it turned out that the vibe was warm and relaxed, with a delicious set of options (but not too many options!) for each course and some unexpected bonuses, including a series of modestly labelled ‘snacks’ and the much fabled pre-dessert course, which stretched out over about three and a half hours. It was glorious, and very filling, and not at all what you’d expect if you just passed by what looks like a half-forgotten sports pub on the coast.

By the time we were done the sun was almost setting, so Randi and I popped back to the beach to watch and ended up chatting to a local photographer who needed a couple of volunteers to wander up and down the jetty and become silhouettes in the distance of his shots. We were happy to oblige. Back at the Airbnb, after learning a lot about the secret lives of architects, we settled down for a tense game of Trivial Pursuit, in which Caroline and I mostly failed to answer any of the history questions but, somehow, I could correctly name Run-DMC as the group which covered Aerosmith’s Walk This Way in 1986. (I have no idea how I dragged this out of my brain, but I’m still proud of it. Anyway, we still lost.)

Did you know that seagulls will run on the spot as a sneaky technique to disorient the worms in the earth below, and so luring them to the surface with the vibrations? Probably you already did, but I didn’t, and it was part of a long seagull odyssey on Sunday morning which included a pair outside Whitstable Castle devouring the remains of afternoon tea – their beaks covered in clotted cream – with the exception of one of those small jars of jam which they couldn’t figure out how to break. After enjoying this performance we all meandered on to a seaside lunch before meandering through Whitstable and making our separate ways home. Whitstable weekend complete!

A weekend earlier, although we didn’t leave London we did manage to traverse it quite a lot, starting with Friday evening when we made our way all the way up to the Harrow Arts Centre for a ‘surprise night out’ which Randi had planned, which turned out to be the very funny comedian Chris McCausland. It was an unusual structure (or maybe it wasn’t, but I haven’t seen many stand-up gigs in person) whereby the first half was what you might call ‘normal’ standup: a reasonably enjoyable series of jokes and stories which weren’t all hits, but contained enough hits to be enjoyable. But he switched gears in the second half, with a very personal monologue on his blindness, and how it impacts his relationship with the world and especially his wife and daughter, which was both moving and thought-provoking. (Also, shout-out to his warm-up act, Jon Long, for gamely singing songs at the beginning about working at a rubbish tip and the running app Strava. I enjoyed them.)

The next night was Bonfire Night, and so once again we headed up north – very, very north, in London terms – to a fireworks display at Abi’s parents’ house. It was very nostalgic to walk the route from High Barnet station which I remember walking many times during the uni holidays, and equally nostalgic to be back at a real British fireworks party in which everyone huddles in the corner of someone’s back garden and watches in nervous anticipation as the rockets explode (or don’t), the Catherine wheels spin (or get stuck) and nothing burns down (despite multiple attacks on the trees and hedges) because it’s gently raining the whole time. And when we weren’t enjoying the spectacle – or running for cover – we were catching up with Oliver, Abi, Kat and baby Robin, who is wonderful.

Thankfully on Sunday we didn’t have to go anywhere except the Horniman museum – for the very first time! – and then the Honor Oak pub for a Sunday roast with Matt, Laura and Cress. It was the perfect, chilled-out, we-can-just-walk-home-afterwards end to the weekend, made all the better by the live music at the Honor Oak that afternoon which really brought out what’s best about the right kind of pub. Where else can you finish off your Yorkshire pudding before migrating over to the comfy sofas, sit back and sleepily relax while the local two year-olds dance together (or, more accurately, cautiously alongside each other) to some American roots music? Not in your typical bar, restaurant or café, that’s for sure. Hurray for the pub, whether Michelin starred or not.

Over my adult life I’ve noticed a gradual maturing of our country’s leaders, at least in terms of basic competence and capability. It’s still normal to want a refresh every few years, of course, but nowadays the incumbent usually bows out gracefully into a planned retirement – with a seamless transition so that nothing gets dropped in the shuffle – rather than a hasty switch because suddenly everything has broken. It’s good. It’s nice. It’s maybe a little bit boring, but I guess that’s the price you pay for stable prosperity.

Here, you can see it in these numbers over the lifetime of this blog:

Oh, wait, sorry. Did I say leaders? I meant phones. Here’s the right table:

*shakes head sadly*

Anyway. Armed with a shiny new phone and therefore the potential to take slightly better photos than before (based on the table above, it’s probably been about a decade since my so-so photo composition became a bigger hindrance than any technology limitations) the main outing of the last few weeks was a family trip in Suffolk over what would have been my dad’s birthday weekend. My mum booked us all rooms in Bury St Edmunds – a place we know so well – and on Saturday afternoon we got mildy lost in Knettishall Heath before finding the perfect spot to scatter his ashes. I think he would have approved.

The next morning we played Sardines together in Abbey Gardens, which was an unreasonable amount of fun given that (a) I was stuffed with a breakfast fry-up, so running was a challenge (b) possibly as a consequence of (a) – at least that’s what I tell myself – I lost every time. Including the episode when I accidentally left the grounds themselves and ended up in the Premier Inn car park by mistake, which didn’t do much for my chances of finding anyone. Everyone else had to start doing louder and louder animal impressions to lure me over to the right place, traumatising several dogs and/or children in the process. Sorry, Bury St Edmunds!

Afterwards, since Randi and I were travelling by train, the two of us took advantage of the route home to hop out at Cambridge and bask in the gorgeous sunshine for the rest of the day. We wandered along the river, talked ourselves into Trinity (I mean, we didn’t lie, but the porters seemed to relax when I said I had gone to Caius on the basis that this was too obscure for a tourist to make up on the spot) and revisited the friendly Italian where we’d gone with her parents on our last trip before finally heading home.

Jumping back in time slightly: a weekend earlier, Randi and I completed our second London Loop rewalk (much prettier than the first, and definitely easier when you have a vague memory of where you are) while in the following days I went on a splurge of actual face-to-face work meetups. Highlight: lunch at the Duck & Waffle, where we shook off the waiter’s instructions to share our food and all ordered our own ducks and waffles. Lowlight: probably the moment I ended up throwing two scoops of a collapsing ice-cream cone into Mohammed, like an exploding hand grenade searching for a target. Sorry about that.

We were also thrilled to be able to spend time with Jackie & Jeff on their visit to London – not once, but twice! On Thursday evening they ventured down to our neighbourhood, where I got a little carried away trying to speed march everyone up Blythe Hill but (hopefully) redeemed myself with dinner at Sparsh afterwords. The following night, we headed to my mum’s for a big family dinner to celebrate our continuing Glamily bonds.

Having successfully persuaded my colleague Patricia and her husband Tarik to move somewhere within walking distance of us back in the summer, last weekend we reaped our reward by being invited over to play boardgames with them and some fellow Brazilians at their (really lovely) new flat. We started with Battlestar Galactica, and although we didn’t get very far I was excited to have been made a secret cylon (lifetime ambition achieved) and happy to bathe in nostalgia for the days when Katie and I would binge through season box sets and then stick competing BSG-themed posters on each other’s bedroom doors. Later we sped through many rounds of other bluffing games, Avalon and Coup, and I’m very proud of the moment when Randi and I were united in secret badness and successfully took down the group together. It’s the surest foundation of any relationship.

Continuing the nerdy theme, Sunday night was Doctor Who Special night and I thoroughly delighted in Jodie Whittaker’s epic swansong. The Power of the Doctor was filled with so much fan-based celebration that I’m not sure whether it really holds up on its own, but since – spoiler alert – we got to see a bunch of past Doctors and the greatest classic Who companion of all time (Ace, obviously!) donning her 80s jacket and dishing out the nitro nine explosives, I am really not complaining. Plus, Sacha Dhawan is just iconically good as the Master. He steals every scene that he’s in. This hasn’t been my favourite era of the show, writing-wise, but there’s always been a lot to like and I’m very, very excited about Russell T Davies coming back as showrunner next year.

(Tell you what though: nothing in this era was ever as bad as 1984’s The Twin Dilemma, the notoriously awful Colin Baker debut which Katie and I suffered through in our most recent Zoom-based Doctor Who Night. It’s not that it’s actually the worst-paced, or the worst-written, or the worst-acted. But, y’know, making the new Doctor a genuinely terrible person who tries to strangle his companion was not a good move.)

And a semi-related Doctor Who note: in an extreme installment of “Randi and I are very late to watch something”, we’ve just started watching the 1996 drama Our Friends in the North – starring Christopher Eccleston – after it was gifted by Randi’s former boss. It’s good! But intense. I’m not looking forward to the 1980s episodes.

I don’t think I’ve been that fannishly excited about Doctor Who on this blog for a while – because it hasn’t been on! – but in the meantime we’ll always have railways, and on Thursday night Randi and I made our inaugural trip to the long-awaited Bond Street station on the Elizabeth Line, which finally opened on 24th October. We were already drunk on pasta and wine by the time we got there – having stopped first at Padella to celebrate work things – but it was nice to see. “It’s OK… for London” scoffed a random stranger outside the entrance, whose opinion we hadn’t asked. “I mean, in comparison to the Northern line. That’s terrible.” Some real-life random comment trolling!