Finally: Portugal! Last weekend, Randi and I popped down to Lisbon to join Mike and Melissa for our first trip of 2024, and – given the comparative warmth and sunshine compared to London – treated it as a summer holiday even though all of the Portuguese locals were walking around in heavy duty coats as if it was cold. (Seriously, the receptionist at our hotel was genuinely concerned about my welfare in a short-sleeved shirt and asked her colleague to check up on my welfare/sanity the next day.) From our perspective it was lovely and sunny!
After arriving on Friday night – and admiring the efficient metro ride from the airport, naturally – we spent Saturday morning wandering through Lisbon’s gorgeous cobbled streets in the vague direction of the Alfama district. In the same vein as London’s double-decker buses, Lisbon is clearly very proud of their little yellow trams which manage to weave up and down the narrow hilly streets. Later, after coming close to passing ourselves off as Mike and Melissa to their Airbnb host, the four of us took a less magical (but still very good) modern tram to a fancy restaurant for dinner, at which I very much enjoyed my ‘private pie’ in addition to duck rice.
As an aside, we also became very fond of the ‘intern’ working at our hotel whose duties included staffing the little rooftop bar. He didn’t seem entirely comfortable with his duties – most notably asking Melissa if she wouldn’t mind opening our bottle of wine as he didn’t know how to – but he won us over with his apologetic charm and constant refrain about his difficult internship. Wisely, he was not trusted to run the hotel’s breakfast.
The next day we took the train to Sintra, a town about 45 minutes away which is a major tourist destination thanks to multiple palaces and natural parks. We were there for the hike to the Moorish Castle, originally built in the 8th and 9th centuries and later taken by the Christians during the Reconquista. It felt like the absolute perfect time to be there – great weather for exploring and beautiful views, but not so hot or crowded that it was ever uncomfortable. At one point someone behind me did complain about the lack of a railing, but I wasn’t brave enough to suggest that she take this oversight up with the Moors.
Rather than heading straight home at the end of the weekend I had already had the glorious revelation that a fair few of my colleagues at work are based in Porto, so it was of course totally legitimate for me to take the train up there on Sunday night and invite myself over to work from their office for a couple of days. Huge thanks to the team there for hosting me and generously acceding to my eccentric requests, including asking Vitor to record the Portuguese pronunciation of the letter R at the beginning of words to confirm Randi’s mind-blowing discovery of how different it is to the Spanish R. (R is a tricky letter anyway. Honestly it’s best to avoid pronouncing it at all where you can.)
My journey to Porto was incredibly smooth – both the long-distance train and the impressive Porto Metro once I arrived – and I was only momentarily thrown by the weirdness of the ticket inspection on the Portuguese railways whereby they aren’t interested in seeing your ticket at all, but rather your ID (in my case, my passport!) under which you booked. It’s a little odd that you can travel across the entire Schengen area from country to country without any border checks, and yet it’s harder to be incognito on a train from Lisbon to Porto!
I’m hesitant to say too much about Porto because I was just working from an office most of the time, and so I had to demur when eager Porto residents asked me to compare it to the capital. I was very excited when the team agreed to take me to have Francesinha for lunch: a “strange cheesy bread cheesy cheese thing” which Steve at work issued as a warning but I took as an absolute must-do. A dish native to Porto, the name means ‘little French woman’ for some reason and is clearly a hangover cure, served with chips and an optional egg. It was delicious.
On Monday night my teammates Vitor and Paulo kindly took me down to the historic centre so I could get a little flavour of the historical tourist bits, although being authentic residents they didn’t actually know the names of the famous buildings we walked past. I did love the amazing walls of the central train station, but was not as much of a fan of the scary Dom Luís I Bridge which I refused to venture very far along. (Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fine bridge, but I was maybe starting to identify with the woman back in Sintra who wanted more railings.) After surviving the bridge we did the obvious thing while in Porto and shared some glasses of port together, which I wasn’t sure about but very much enjoyed. Perhaps this will finally move along the bottle of port which has been sitting in our kitchen ever since Beth and Stewart lifted it from a hotel room in Cambridge.
My final reflection on Portugal – other than that I loved it, and would definitely go back – is that I quickly formed a deep affection for the café owner on the route between my hotel and the office. Randi had already admired the Portuguese culture of standing together socially at the bar, sharing a morning coffee, and after coming to terms with my need for tea he seemed genuinely concerned that I wanted it ‘tomar’ – to go – in a lonely Anglo way 😉
But wait- we’re nearly a month into 2024, so let’s quickly catch-up on pre-Portugal events. Similar to last year, Randi spent New Year with Catherine and AJ in Chicago, while this time I hosted Oliver and Abi at mine for New Year’s Eve along with Sarah and Kat. Kat turns out to be a massive fireworks fan, so after watching the central London display on TV there was a sweet moment when everyone came up to our loft bedroom and took turns standing on the bed and sticking their heads out of our loft windows into the night air to try and catch a glimpse of other fireworks nearby. We also played more Cobra Paw and Bonanza, a bean-themed card game which was delightful.
After a respectful number of bottles had been drunk, and successfully convinced Oliver & Abi to stay overnight before going home in the morning, I spent most of New Year’s Day up in North London with Andy and Bonnie. After a hearty pub lunch, we enjoyed a muddy walk through Highgate Wood during which I was genuinely shocked by Bonnie’s ability to instantly recall intricate plot points from any Agatha Christie novel. Definitely a Mastermind specialist subject.
Other January adventures included a wonderful Saturday in West Hamstead with Josh, Anna and Cora (after which I accidentally stole Cora’s cat – sorry!) and the successful execution of a paid deep-clean for our flat. I mention the latter because, embarrassingly, it took so much longer than expected that the company ended up calling me with a tone of “we haven’t heard from our cleaner in hours… is she alive?”. But she did an amazing job, and our taps were so shiny that I sent Randi a photo of my face reflected in them before ordering a pizza, eating it straight from the pizza box while sitting on the floor of the living room (too terrified of touching any surfaces in case I ruined them) and then going straight to bed so that Randi could still enjoy the results of the deep clean when she arrived back the next day.
Randi and I also had an impromptu walking day one weekend through Wandsworth Common and on to Battersea Park, finishing at the reopened Battersea Power Station luxury shopping centre thing (I expect they don’t like it being called a ‘shopping centre’) which I hadn’t seen inside yet. It is very cool, although we just admired the architecture and didn’t actually buy anything. We also had a very fun pasta-based outing with Reema and Esther and have also officially started watching our next series – The Bear – so I look forward to telling you what I think about it in 2028 when we finish. (I joke: we’ll try to move faster, since Randi has a temporary Disney+ subscription just for this.)
Merry Christmas!
A few weekends back I made my final trip to Scotland in 2023 for a festive one-two punch of the Midlothian Labour Christmas party (featuring a tricky Midlothian quiz and a brava bagpipe performance!) and then a Hannukah celebration at Kirsty and Roger’s with Katie and James (featuring Randi’s delicious latkes and an improvised solution to a shortage of candles). In-between, Randi and I went over to Katie and James’s flat for the Doctor Who special which I’ve been most looking forward to – The Giggle, with Neil Patrick Harris as a perfectly-cast Toymaker – and it was amazing.
The following week I enjoyed a really lovely end-of-year virtual boardgaming night with my team at work, at which we all learnt that Zirak is absolutely fearless when playing Incan Gold and there’s no competing with him. Randi and I also said goodbye to Alex and finally made it to The Perry Hill pub for dinner and drinks. This is somewhere which should qualify as ‘one of our locals’ but just isn’t in the direction we’d normally think to walk – but I’m glad we did, because it was very cosy!
However, in truth we were merely warming up the cosiness level because our real Christmas treat was a long weekend to the German town of Bad Wimpfen for the authentic German Christmas market experience. This trip was masterminded by Randi as a way both of seeing a different side to the country than Berlin (which we’d both visited already) but also exploring how far we can comfortably get across Europe without flying.
To that end we started our journey on Thursday night with the Eurostar to Paris, and then checked-in to a private room in a hostel a short walk from the station. The next morning we had time to enjoy a long breakfast with Reema, followed by a brief wander around the banks of the Seine, before hopping back up to Gare de l’Est (much nicer than Gare du Nord) for our train to Mannheim. Our *sniff* high-speed *sniff* train, on a network which France has been developing for decades… and perhaps the less said about this the better.
In contrast, Germany’s Deutsche Bahn has been in ‘permanent crisis’ (the words of Germany’s public auditor, not mine) for years, with record delays and cancellations, so we were a bit sceptical that our change of trains at Mannheim would go smoothly. And it did not! But since we were on holiday we secretly enjoyed the chaos (is this train going to the destination displayed on the outside or the inside?) plus the cheer which went up when it finally started moving. This delay also meant we were inspired to break for dinner at our final changeover station (a.k.a. schnitzel at Sinsheim!) which was delightful. And, in fairness, the rest of our DB experience ran smoothly on this trip. It’s important that the German railways stumble every so often, in order to provide hope to the others.
Bad Wimpfen itself was truly magical. I had imagined a cute German town with a fenced-off Christmas market somewhere in the middle, but in fact the market stetches out to cover the entire historic centre. The crowds (almost all domestic German tourists) circulate gently around the hilly, cobblestoned streets – glühwein or bratwurst or both in hand – pausing to appreciate the brass band playing from the balcony at city hall, the stalls selling homemade wooden toys or the merry-go-round at the entrance.
We were particularly impressed by the Feuerzangenbowle – or ‘fire tong punch’ – a mulled wine variant which is served alight, although for ourselves we stuck with the safer, less fiery variant. (Full disclosure: if you looked through our entire set of photos from this holiday I think we’re holding glasses of glühwein in at least half of them.) We were also delighted to re-encounter langos, last seen during our Austrian Christmas market adventure of 2017, which came in a smaller, denser variant here but were no less delicious. I persuaded the German man behind us in the queue to help me practice saying all of the fillings (sauerrahm, knoblauch, schinken and käse) so that I could buy the one with everything.
During the days we explored a little further afield, beginning with a beautiful countryside walk to the neighbouring town of Bad Rappenau for lunch. Along the way we admired Germany’s well-signposted rural walking paths, admired the extent of the railway system (because of course Bad Rappenau has its own station for a quick journey back) and – in Randi’s mind at least – decided that Germany was much more reminiscent of “the American Midwest, but with trains” than anywhere in the UK. Which makes sense, given the German influence on the Midwest!
The next day we went on a longer journey to Stuttgart. This was less successful as a destination, since by the time we finally got there Randi was starting to feel a bit sick (for legitimate reasons) and I soon joined her (because I foolishly experimented with the glühwein + gin combination at the Stuttgart Christmas market). As a result we didn’t see a great deal of the city, aside from the main shopping street (bland, post-war architecture), aforementioned Christmas market (fine, but not a patch on Bad Wimpfen) and a legitimately nice park. With all that said, what did make the trip legitimately worthwhile was our initial train from Bad Wimpfen, which opted to become a tram halfway through and took us on a street-level tour of all of the local factories. Since it was a Sunday they were all closed, and it all felt a bit like a movie set, but it was a very very evocative German ambience of “look at all the industry we have”.
I’ll save Christmas itself for my next post rather than cramming it into this one too – but suffice to say we both brought back bits of Bad Wimpfen for our Secret Santas!
It’s December already? Wow, OK. I guess I should have known this was coming once I reached 2023’s ‘first mulled wine of the season’ moment (this classic phrase thrown in especially for the dom.blog bingo players) at Beckenham Place Park a few weeks ago. Randi and I were admiring the autumnal scenes (as they then were) together with her brother Alex, who is staying with us in London for a few weeks and is giving us the inside track on what actually happens in the city after we’ve gone to sleep.
If you are playing dom.blog bingo (and if you’re looking for an excellent stocking filler there’s still time to order from the merch store) another phrase you’ll be wanting is ‘trip to Scotland’, so I’ll oblige: a few weekends ago I made another trip to Scotland where political activities included a very well-attended canvassing session in Penicuik followed by a warming round of hot chocolates with some of the other volunteers, an awful lot of handwritten envelope addressing and a group rewatch of David Olusoga’s excellent first episode of Union.
On Sunday, before catching the train home, I popped in on Katie and James’s brand new flat (so much space!) and enjoyed another classic Doctor Who screening: 1967’s The Moonbase. Knowing that Patrick Troughton was my dad’s favourite Doctor growing up always makes these stories particularly special, which was in no way diminished by the fact that two of the four episodes are animated recreations paired with the original soundtracks. (However, the archival-loving tendencies of the original fans who made audio tape recordings from the original broadcasts have my eternal gratitude.) Anyway, The Moonbase was the second Cyberman adventure featuring an attack on an international weather-control base on the moon. In a nice show of slowly putting the continuity together in my head, companions Ben and Polly (along with Jamie) are the same Ben and Polly introduced in The War Machines which Katie and I watched back in 2021. Polly remains very smart. Ben remains infuriatingly stupid.
A few weeks later I went to Amsterdam on a work trip for a couple of days, for which I managed to swing Eurostar tickets rather than flying. This is obviously the superior experience for many reasons, and – as Randi ruefully notes – is actually faster than the train to Edinburgh. The Booking.com event I was there for was really great, although I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that I didn’t even notice the potentially historic (and not in a good way) election day going on around me. If future generations ask me what it was like to be there on that day, I’ll have to tell them I was too busy ordering a large portion of chips (with house sauce ) from Manneken Pis…
And now with Christmas fast approaching it’s time for the usual festive preparations, including this year’s Christmas tree which is an absolute triumph if I do say so myself. Ever since moving to Forest Hill we’ve always bought our tree and then carried it home from the same Christmas tree seller behind the station, and he says that we’re the only couple who ever arrive where both people look enthusiastic for the task. Purists might note that we got a bit over-ambitious with the height and that it doesn’t actually fit the dimensions of our flat, but we regret nothing.
Other wintery adventures this month have included pizza and homemade gingerbread at Matt and Laura’s – during which we spent many happy hours playing “escape the monster” games with Cress, and I feel like Matt deserves a lot of credit for nobly agreeing to be typecast as the monster each time – plus a really lovely evening of drinks and catch-up with Jill at The Island (which always brings back memories itself) and, of course, the first two Doctor Who anniversary specials featuring the return of David Tennant and Catherine Tate. I count myself firmly in the “this is awesome” camp, and I am beyond excited to have Russell T Davies’s vision for the show back on screens again. My only complaint – and here is a mild spoiler for the first special – is that Donna’s daughter Rose, who had literally just saved Donna’s life and is totally old enough to be a companion in her own right, made a polite request at the end of the episode to see inside the TARDIS which was totally rebuffed! The #justiceforrose campaign starts here.
Finally, this weekend Randi and I were invited to Caroline and Josh’s housewarming party in Streatham. As per usual we arrived slightly aggressively on time (3pm on the dot) but redeemed ourselves by joining the speedy chair assembly team. We had a great time, but it was particularly nice to be reunited with the Whitstable group from last year including Hilda the dog! And talking of wonderful groups: on Friday night we assembled Oliver, Abi, Sarah and Kira for a Georgian evening at Kartuli. I was so happy we managed to get everyone together to share several bottles of sweet, sweet Georgian wine and lots of general deliciousness, but I also appreciated the educational value after discovering that Kira and Sarah share an uncanny affinity for obscure animal facts.
I realise these blog posts have fallen into a monthly cycle, which was never the intention! Last time I included a photo of us all at my mum’s house enjoying a farewell meal before she packed up and left for Exmouth… but as it turns out, there have been quite a few bonus farewells at my mum’s since then too. So, a roll call: The One With Beth & Stewart (plus Tash & Cormac as they were just about ready to leave on their amazing world travels), The Brunch One With Sharon (my beloved American adopted-godmother who was treated to lots of arguments over the US constitution plus a trip to the dump Brent Re-Use & Recycling Centre, which are two things everyone wants from their holiday) and last night’s The One With The Neighbours, at which we learnt simultaneously terrifying yet impressive things about how one of us (not me) once caught a rat using a safety pin and some blu tack.
Back in early October, Randi and I were also very excited to celebrate Cora’s third birthday at a rainbow/unicorn/cat-themed party, at which at one point I became the object of a hunt across the garden by an ever-increasing band of young children. That afternoon, Randi and I meandered back home via Brockwell Park (we miss you, Brockwell Park) in order to go back to the Turkish restaurant Saray (we miss you too, Saray) for dinner with Randi’s parents.
A weekend later, after Beth and Stu had jetted off to Spain and Portugal, I spent the Saturday visiting Exmouth with my mum to see her fancy new seaside home with my own eyes. Not only is it a lovely place – with amazing views! – but I also got a chance to chat to the current owner about the oh-so-casual fact that she was part of a world-record beating rowing team which rowed across the Atlantic.
Last month I also caught up with Matt and Clark at a pub in Hackney, where together we solved all manner of global problems before I managed to catapult a halloumi wrap into myself. I was also very excited to stay overnight in Chelmsford with Abbi (with whom I will always share wine and product manager woes), Rob (who cooked us all a delicious curry dinner and then breakfast the next morning) and Jack (who was super-fun to be around as well as patiently answering all of my Pokémon-related questions).
As a surprise one evening, Randi also took me to Immersive 1984, an immersive theatre experience based (obviously) on Orwell’s novel. There are many, many things to say about this. Firstly: it’s set in Hackney Town Hall and a large chunk of the performance took place with us sitting inside the actual council chamber itself, which was a great deal more majestic and impressive than I typically picture English local government to be. Secondly, it really sharpened my concerns that in a totalitarian state Randi is going to get us both killed with her stubborn truth-telling tendencies. And thirdly – without being too spoilery – there was an incredible moment of accidental hilarity near the end where the audience were all asked to volunteer to carry out a brutal and obviously immoral act. Most people sat uncomfortably, looking around at each other, but one guy stuck his hand high in the air with a self-knowing grin, prompting the woman he was with to put her head in her hands with embarrassed mirth. Thanks for taking one for the team!
But the highlight of October was definitely last weekend’s three day triathlon (© Robyn) of family events, kicking off with a big celebratory lunch for my aunt Carolyn’s very well-deserved CBE. It was especially wonderful to see the Canadian branch of the family (Josh, Cindy and Isaac) in town again, plus I enjoyed some great conversations over lunch with Advia, Tessa, Jackie, Sharon and others. Afterwards, Katie joined me and Randi’s family for an elongated wander around Kensal Green Cemetery (elongated only because one of the gates was unexpectedly locked!) before the four of us walked down to Shepherd’s Bush to see Elephant. This is a semi-autobiographical one-woman show about race, class and Empire, written and performed by an extraordinarily talented Anoushka Lucas who sings, plays the piano and gives a powerfully physical performance throughout.
Then it was back home to rest in preparation for the big event on Saturday: Alix and Adam’s long-awaited wedding! All of the people above – plus many more – were there in Hammersmith to cheer and dance and celebrate together – so hats-off to Alix and Adam for providing a ‘menu of people’ cheat sheet over dinner as a quick-reference to everyone else in the room. Everyone had so much fun together, and many of the people who couldn’t make this last-minute wedding (12 years in the making but only 12 weeks in the planning!) were represented in spirit in a big-screen video montage. Particular highlights for me included: the spectacular brass brand, the beautiful speeches, the saxophonist accompanying the DJ on the dancefloor and the very tasty Victoria sponge wedding cake.
As you can see, I hung around in North London for a bit after the wedding, staying overnight at my mum’s (really making good use out of it while I still can) along with Katie and our American cousin Sharon (but not the American adopted-godmother Sharon from earlier). This meant that Katie and I got to engage in some classic Worms Blast action in the morning – which I miraculously got running again on my laptop – before heading over to Carolyn’s official post-wedding Sunday lunch, where there was quite some variation in hangoverness.
I wasn’t hungover, but I was tired – and yet it was important to muster some energy for the afternoon because Randi, Beth and I had an important date in the diary: The Gunpowder Plot. This is another immersive experience running in London, which was a birthday gift from Tash & Cormac and takes place in the vaults beneath the Tower of London. I was both excited and a little nervous (there is such a thing as too immersive) so was relieved when our group included a boisterous set of kids who could take the lead on deciding whether or not to assist Guy Fawkes with his treasonous plot. Quite a lot of the script – which takes place across a mixture of VR and real-world actors while moving from room to room – aims to ignite an ethnical debate about ‘terrorism vs. freedom fighting’. Rest assured that none of the 8-year old boys with us had even a glancing interest in this question, and just wanted to blow stuff up as quickly as possible. Fair enough!
The VR stuff was fine – especially at the end, when there was a brief amount of full 360° immersion – but the in-person interaction with the actors was better. Also, I was very amused at the mum who suddenly realised during the ‘intermission’ at a seventeenth century tavern (contactless cards still accepted) that there probably wasn’t any minimum drinking age in 1605, but sensibly resisted trying to put this to the test. For me, the most daring piece of immersion was being forced to hide in a priest hole at a Catholic safe house – alone, and in the dark – while the King’s agents raided the place. For a piece of touristy entertainment with lots of families involved, they didn’t pull their punches.
Finally – this week, Randi and I enjoyed a celebratory Georgian dinner at Kartuli, while the night afterwards Randi cooked up a batch of cheesy pasta for Reema and Sam while we all drank wine and argued about the ‘right’ way to do trick or treating. (This year, as every year, I refused to give out treats until at least one child in the group was brave enough to ring the spooky doorbell with the dropdown spider and deep bellowing laugh. Those are just the rules.)
See you next month…? [Editor’s Note: Yes, of course there are more photos from the wedding. But if I waited to get my hands on them it’d be 2024 before I could post anything.]
We’re back from our summer Chicago trip! The last time Randi and I visited the Windy City together was just after Thanksgiving 2021, so this was the first time since leaving in 2018 that I’ve experienced the city in its sunny, joyful, everybody-doing-things-outside mode.
Digression: on the flight there I took Kira’s recommendation and watched Groundhog Day from 1993. I’ve used the term ‘groundhog day’ as a synonym for ‘ugh, here we are again, stuck in this never-ending loop’ for as long as I can remember, so it was weird to realise that this meaning (rather than the actual groundhog day tradition to predict the first day of spring) originated with this film and is younger than I am! Overall, it’s a really fun movie about a conceited and curmudgeonly weatherman who inexplicably finds himself repeating the same day over and over again, and it makes me somewhat nostalgic and sad to live in a world where it feels like these mid-budget films no longer get made. To somewhat balance this feeling out, it should be noted that the ‘sexual entrapment’ angle of this already quite sexist film gets creepier and creepier as you go along, and so I am glad that this mid-budget film would no longer get made today in this particular way.
Also, hats-off to the hilarious moment where the mere knowledge of what an ‘espresso’ or ‘cappuccino’ might be is used to contrast bougie, urban culture with small town, down-to-earth America. The hipster frontier is always moving!
Anyhow, back to the epitomie of boughie, urban culture that is ‘staying with Catherine & AJ and their toddler’. It’s always so much fun to be with these three, and this time we really got to appreciate their local park – Winnemac Park – as well as our traditional Channel 4 documentary viewing; this time we binged through Sixteen, a series about Year 11s in Dudley sitting GCSEs (kinda) in the middle of 2021’s Covid-era lockdowns. We also watched the first Republican debate, which was notable mostly for kicking off with a confusing and unnecessary indoor drone sequence.
Aside from an exciting tour of Jason and Carrie’s new home, followed by a very fancy dinner at Parachute (Korean-American, sharing plates, controversial cocktails), we left our other Chicago reunions for the second week because we had a very, very exciting long weekend planned: a return to the Minnesota State Fair!
Catherine has been to every State Fair that she’s been alive for, and surely a lot of this credit must go to her mum Juli (or mom, I guess) who very generously hosted us all in the suburbs of Minneapolis. (I’m not entirely sure how workable this is, but I think forming a book club with Juli is now a life ambition of mine.) While Catherine flew, AJ drove me and Randi up there in order that we could (a) revisit the authentic American roadtrip experience, (b) listen to some extremely violent conservative talk radio in the forlorn hope of hearing some Republican debate analysis (it was all about cultural Marxism instead) and – most importantly – (c) make a mandatory stop for burgers at Culver’s. Yay for Culver’s!
Anyway, when I wasn’t staying up until 1am discussing books, we spent a solid majority of our two days at the fair. I’ve evangelised about the Minnesota State Fair to so many people in the UK, but mostly to bemused faces. So, to repeat, you should go. The food is incredible, and the best things – the cheese curds, doughnuts and cookies – really do come in buckets. On top of that, we tried a bunch of the ‘new for 2023’ offerings, including the bagel/croissant ‘basant’ hybrid and some delicious crab fritters. But we also enjoyed the craft beer, seed art, prize vegetable displays, lumberjack & lumberjill competitions, high school marching bands and overall intensely friendly and welcoming fair atmosphere.
The other thing which really stands out to me about the Minnesota State Fair is the politics. As you can see, we had fun in the Democratic booth voting for our favourite Democratic Minnesotan policies with pieces of corn, but over at an entrepreneurial ‘Dump Biden’ stand other fairgoers were casting their own corn votes for their favourite Republican challenger to take on Biden in 2024. (Spoiler alert: the polls you read are all correct. They want Trump, again, and overwhelmingly so. I’ve seen the corn jars with my own eyes.) It’s not all happy-go-lucky; in fact, even wandering into the official Republican booth now feels physically intimidating, especially when it’s packed with t-shirts glorifying guns. But it’s precisely because the cultural divide is so stark that at least seeing Americans enjoy a fair together is so lovely.
Talking of cultural divides: on Friday night, the four of us celebrated the end of our first day at the fair by going to see Barbie together. This had been planned for a while and I’d deliberately avoided a bunch of spoilers, which was great because I really enjoyed seeing the film’s counterintuitive twists and turns through fresh eyes. This included the refreshing discovery that Will Ferrell’s Mattel boss character wasn’t just a straight rehash of Lego Movie boss, as well as the surprising unfolding of what the tagline (“She’s everything. He’s just Ken.) was actually all about.
It’s all very good, very funny and very meta, and the only thing which gives me pause (aside from a general observation that audience applause in a cinema is always cringe) is that Barbie, unlike the Minnesota State Fair, will never reach across the US political chasm. And I’m not saying that because I think conservatives should watch it “to learn something” (although perhaps they should). Barbie is at its best when its skewering itself, and in a better world Republicans who can’t stand American corporate culture would find a lot to love there! But in all likelihood they won’t, because either they won’t see it or they’ll only hate-watch in a way which strips out all of the movie’s nuance and humanity. (And let’s face it, nuance and humanity are not really in vogue with that crowd right now.) This isn’t Barbie’s fault. But it still makes me a little sad.
Back to the fair and my final story from day two: I had expressed some prior interest in riding the super-cool giant spinny thing (the ‘Skyscraper’, if you want the technical name) but these hints generated zero uptake from anyone else in our group. Nonetheless, Catherine in particular decided that she was keen to see me ride the super-cool giant spinny thing (which, in her words, might also have included the word “horrific”) so I paid for my ride tokens and joined the queue in the hopes that I would find another solo traveller. Happily, a young woman from Texas was also the only person in her group with an interest in flying through the air, and I was very, very grateful to be able to have someone to talk to during my least favourite part of the ride: the “be suspended very high in the air for an indeterminate length of time while new riders are loaded at the other end” phase. She also said she was pleased to have someone else to ride with, but had trusted that God would be looking out for her. Ah, America.
On our last night in Minneapolis I broke away from the others to spend the night with Jill, Nate and their three wonderful kids. Jill was a colleague of mine at Groupon back when I first moved to Chicago in 2014, and the person who I had some of the loveliest, most interesting philosophical conversations with in my life over Gchat (remember Gchat?) when we were supposed to be working. She’s also absurdly talented and a massive Sate Fair fan, not only winning the grand champion prize this year for her seed art but also a bevy of ribbons for her jams. I had the blackberry jam on toast at breakfast the next morning, and I can confirm it’s delicious.
It was so, so wonderful to be able to catch-up with her and Nate after all these years, and I was very pleased that my Cadbury Heroes and Jelly Babies made it over the Atlantic in one piece so that I could try and sell the family on British confectionary. (There weren’t many left the next morning, that’s all I’ll say.)
As a bonus treat, our drive home through Wisconsin gave me and Randi the chance to stop by Cat and Brian’s new home just outside of Madison. By this point we were yearning for a meal with some fresh vegetables, and Cat responded to our prayers with an amazing spread – combined with Brian’s homemade bread! – which we were very grateful for. We also got a tour of their home, which included the most adorable couple’s jigsaw set-up I’ve ever seen. Aside from the awkward moment when I almost drank out of Cat’s fox mug (and risked ruining our friendship forever) this was a wonderful playdate for me and Randi, and we were fully refreshed for the rest of the journey back to Chicago when our pseudo-dad AJ swung by to pick us up again.
Last year, after we got married for the second time, Todd and Carolyn sent us an outrageously generous quantity of gift cards for our favourite Chicago spots. So, for our second week, Randi and I spent our days making excellent use of them: Antique Taco, Open Books (one of those old-fashioned bookshops where you’re still allowed on the sliding ladders!) and Janik’s, one of two brunch places which will always be very dear to our hearts. The other one is Windy City Café, which – don’t worry – we also made it to. There I got my usual order of corned beef hash with added blue cheese: an underrated combination. Huge thanks to Toggolyn for our amazing gift card guided tour around the city!
During our second week here we also found time to walk around areas of the city where we each used to live, enjoy an impromptu beer flight at the bar where we had our very first date and cheer on the Cubs at a Cubs vs. Brewers game at Wrigley Field. Much to AJ’s consternation the Cubs won, but the rest of us were delighted. In the evenings we were so lucky to be able to schedule time with so many people we wanted to see, culminating in a big group outing on our final night to Improv Shakespeare. Long-time blog readers will know that this is our favourite thing to do in Chicago, and we were very excited to learn (via a chance conversation with the cast of Shamilton in Edinburgh!) that it was back in the city. This time the audience prompt was Sarah’s Wedding – presumably as part of an inspired bachelorette party – which resulted in a stirring tale of suitors competing for Sarah’s hand via the noble sport of jousting chess. Afterwards we sat outside drinking craft beer in the warm summer air with Todd, Carolyn, Jason, Carrie, Melissa and Rob… a perfect Friday night.
I could probably keep writing forever about how much fun (and weight gain) we had in Chicago, but seeing as it’s already a week later and I’ve had to lock myself away in my old childhood bedroom at my mum’s house to finally finish this blog, I’ll stop here. Huge thanks, as always, to Catherine and AJ for putting up with us while they were trying to work from home, introducing us to the whimsical doughnut guy at their local farmer’s market, taking us to Half Acre for drinks, showing us the best sandwich place in Lincoln Square and generally making us feel like we’ll always have a home in the city.
Also, as usual, I want to quickly note all the fun evenings I had in the run-up to this holiday which I never got a chance to blog about! So thank you to my uncle Andrew for drinks at the Waterside, to Angela for our late-night garden party (with improv dinosaur impressions) and Reema for sending us off the night before we flew with some amazing tapas near London Bridge. And our post-Chicago adventures will have to wait until next time…
Jeff DuBowe on Haarlem globetrotters: “One of our favorite spots. Super walking city. I think we were the ones who told your In-Laws about it…” Oct 14, 15:15
