Winter – Page 2 – slightly weird

28th December 202113th January 2022

Christmas in London 2021

Monday, 27 December, 2021

There are just so many photos. This year I thought I could get into town and look at things and I suppose I did better than I thought, but not as well as I hoped. But at least I did get out a bit, worried every time about being in the bus and then encountering crowds.

In the interest of having something to look back on, I’m creating this blog. Last year we went into the west end at Christmas time and there was no one there. We had the streets mostly to ourselves, the buses were quiet, the shops were closed. This year things were quite different. I don’t think the numbers with Covid were smaller, but there was no lockdown, no real restrictions, and people were seemingly unworried as they crowded together on the buses, the trains, in the shops, and in the streets. It was all a bit mindboggling.

There was a cool light display at Guildhall. I’d never actually been there so it was a good excuse to go along. At first I saw that there were no booking slots left, but then Krish found out that they accepted walk-ins, so we decided to chance it one fine evening.

The show was called Borealis. It was inspired by the Northern Lights and achieved by laser lights and vapour over the Guildhall yard. We enjoyed the fact it was outside and something different and entertaining.

We also did a trip to Covent Garden one day We looked around Seven Dials, Neal’s Yard – which was lacklustre compared to other years – and went into the Piazza to check out the Frozen display. It promised ‘snow’ once an hour so we timed it as best we could and caught the very nice smelling scene there.

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From Covent Garden we walked along the Strand and past the Savoy, where they were queuing for Pretty Woman. We headed straight towards Somerset House to see the skating.

Although we’ve had a laugh over the rink at Somerset House, somehow it’s become a Christmas tradition to go along and take a look. I remember the years of watching the skaters slosh through the water that collected on top of the ice. We’d have a giggle wondering how they were doing that. We still had a giggle this time watching how many people simply can’t skate and thinking back to the rinks in Toronto where everybody was confident on the ice and some even managing some fancy jumps and other moves. This year people were doing a bit better and the ice was quite solid. I smiled at the people with the funny little pushy things they were using as new skaters, but then I can’t skate at all, so can’t really be too smug. All in all, Somerset House at Christmas with its colourful lights on the rink is quite pretty.

I also did manage to get to the Museum of the Home Christmas Past exhibition. The rooms were slightly different this year with some additional ones. I’m not including those here but this is their lovely atrium Christmas tree.

Thinking about last year’s peaceful Boxing Day, we went into the West End on the 27th. What a difference. See for yourself! There were people everywhere. We started on Oxford Street, headed over to Liberty to see their nice but not very Christmassy display, checked out the Lavazza store, headed down Carnaby Street, walked around and across Piccadilly Circus, back up to Shaftesbury Avenue and through Soho to our bus home on Oxford Street again.

It was a somewhat quieter day when we headed over to Leadenhall Market to see their tree. The rest of the walk was also very quiet, through to Broadgate and home on the train.

Hackney isn’t a very illuminated borough. The only decorations and light are by the Town Hall. The tree this year was very full and made a lovely sight after dark.

As for our Christmas at home, I made six little gingerbread houses and this year’s wreath wasn’t bad. On the day we had a couple of grazing plates at lunch time with a steak and mushrooms for dinner. We had a house theme in gifting, which was fun. Then on Boxing Day I made a pork tenderloin, apple and mushroom stuffing, mashed potato and cranberry sauce – not the most photogenic meal but delicious nonetheless.

There really are more photos but let’s leave it at these. Happy 2022!

1st February 20212nd February 2021

Vaccinated!

Monday, 1st February, 2021

Today was historic for me. I had my first Covid vaccination. I’ll confess I hadn’t wanted to be one of the first in line for it. It feels too new and untested, but I also knew deep down that I would probably be just fine with doing it when invited. My invitation came by text on Tuesday, I phoned my doctor’s office on Wednesday morning and they offered me today (Monday) at 12:10pm. I was on!

If you’re still waiting and want to know what it’s like…Pictorial essay follows!

Bocking Street Vaccine Centre — I had the choice of two vaccination centres. I chose Bocking Street, which is at the back of Mare Street Market. The building didn’t inspire much

Queue for vaccines — There was a short queue waiting to get in. We were met at the door and asked the usual health questions and had our temperature taken and hands sanitised. We then went through a second check. I asked if Krish could get a vaccine as my carer and was told to try when I reached the window. They were very nice, but said ‘not today’

Waiting room — Inside the centre, I got a seat among others with plexiglass between each one. I had an entry ticket number that they jokingly referred to as my raffle ticket. Krish was allowed in with me all the way

Vaccination Centre Cleaner — There was one person doing cleaning at the centre. She diligently cleaned every chair, in every area after each person, seldom resting. Hats off to her!

Waiting room, Vaccination Centre — We waited on our chairs, plastic shields between each one

So what was it like, getting the vaccine? I was sent into the main room which had many cubicles. They told me walk straight ahead where I saw a doctor waiting, masked. His badge read ‘Declan’ and he told me his name, which I sadly forget.

Declan explained to me about the vaccine and asked me a few questions. He then asked me if I had any questions of my own. I told him that, despite everything, I always worried somewhat about having an allergic reaction and he reassured me that if I had never had one, it was extremely unlikely. He explained things as if he were doing it for the first time – simply and warmly. I appreciated that. He prepared the syringe and stood beside me and I waited for the ‘sharp, short pain’ he promised. Then he said ‘OK, it’s done.’ I was actually shocked. I hadn’t felt anything at all and thought I hadn’t had it yet. I told him so and he said ‘It’s not about skill. It’s hit and miss if I hit a pain receptor spot.’ I thanked him and headed off for the assessment waiting room, where I would wait fifteen minutes.

Post vaccination waiting area — After getting our vaccine, we waited again for fifteen minutes to make sure we were well enough to leave. Note the cleaner again (on the right)

Continue reading “Vaccinated!”

28th December 2020

Sneaking out of the house – Christmas Lights 2020

Sunday, 27 December, 2020

Well, here it is, almost the end of the most unusual year ever – the same year I’d anticipated back in January, thinking that 2020 must be perfect after all (a reference to vision).

We are now in our third lockdown and this is the most serious, serious enough that they created a whole new label for it – Tier 4. This means ‘you must stay home’ but it seems like quite a few aren’t listening. This is no big surprise.

Last weekend I did a lovely virtual Christmas lights tour with Look up London and really enjoyed it. I did this tour because I thought I wouldn’t be able to do one in person. However, yesterday it was a dry day and I had the idea that maybe with lockdown in place and no Boxing Day sales, just maybe I might go down and see some lights for myself. So off we went.

The bus wasn’t busy and we felt pretty safe. It was the first time I’d been into the west end since last year at Somerset House. Along the way, I was trying to remember the way – what were we going to pass by and see on what would a year ago have been a familiar journey. What follows is a great many photos, I think, with some narrative.

There were very few on the bus, with the traffic lights lending a Christmassy feeling

There was a very light rain so things were shiny and sparkly and, with not much traffic, and not many stops requested, we sped to Tottenham Court Road in a little over 20 minutes.

James Smith & Sons umbrella shop marks the approach to Oxford Street

My plan was to get off near Fortnum and Mason, back over to Piccadilly Circus, up Regent Street and into Soho, Chinatown and home again. It’s much less than I’d really like to do but it’s important to allow for the journey home and not need a rest or the toilet.

To get to Fortnum and Mason, you have to go through Piccadilly Circus, and Piccadilly Circus is just about the busiest intersection in London – that and Oxford Circus. It was less quiet and busy than usual, but still bustling compared to elsewhere. They’ve put in extra walking space and there are more bicycles than I usually see but just as many buses in the same London-narrow space.

Fortnum and Mason is a very posh place. It’s been here since 1707, and it stands for luxury. Hugh Mason ran a small store and met an entrepreneur called William Fortnum, whose family were high class builders reinvigorating Mayfair in the wake of the Great Fire. The partnership evolved. When I can get inside again, I’ll say more. For now, I’ll just say that it’s Christmas eye candy.

This extraordinary year F&M are featuring windows from their 313 years . And most splendidly, the front of their store has become a giant advent calendar. I find the whole thing magical.

Piccadilly Street itself has the same angels that it’s had each time I’ve visited. They’re looking over a grand street in an afluent, fashionable area called Mayfair that takes its name from the May fair held in Shepherd’s Market in the area (a fantasticvstreet for another day). Here are fashionable arcades and fancy boutiques and also the Royal Academy founded in 1768 by a group of 40 artists and architects who became the first Royal Academicians. I love its gates (now closed) and courtyard.

Behind Fortnum and Mason is Jermyn Street. This area dates from 1661 and often looks the part. Sir Isaac Newton, William Pitt, Sir Walter Scott, William Gladstone; and W. M. Thackeray have all lived here. The shops along here are exclusive – mostly it was quiet, even quieter than lockdown Piccadilly today.

At the entrance to Piccadilly Arcade is this statue of Beau Brummell, an iconic figure in Regency England and for many years the arbiter of men’s fashion. I asked Krish to pose the same way behind him

This video shows the Piccadilly Arcade entrance from Jermyn Street. Very elegant.

A touch of Europe – Corner window, Piccadilly Arcade

Shoe lasts — An impressive display of shoe lasts at Joseph Heane’s show store on Jermyn Street

Continue reading “Sneaking out of the house – Christmas Lights 2020”

13th March 202013th March 2020

Battling germs and fear in the days of COVID-19

Wednesday, 13 March, 2020

I live with someone who has OCD – well, it’s OCPD but that’s another story. Germ-phobia is something I also battle. Not everything bothers me and I wouldn’t say that I worry too much but definitely more than some. I don’t have OCD but I do wash my hands quite often and am grossed out by things like ‘double-dipping,’ picking up food that’s dropped on the table (let alone the floor), people using their own forks or spoons to dip into a serving dish, humans cleaning up after their pets – inside or outside…

It goes further with Krish, who won’t suffer shoes in the house or even stored in a room other than a hallway, changes completely out of outdoor clothes when arriving home, and washes everything that arrives from the shop before storing it away, even when it isn’t food. I could go on…

However, the threat of novel coronavirus has revved things up a notch or five. I’ve always been amused at the things Krish calls ‘disgusting,’ since I now am feeling quite the same way.

With the usual sensationalist and alarmist media verve hard to dodge, I’ve considered this – what if (terrible words!) I’m sitting comfortably today, amused at the hysteria and scaremongering, and next week I’m witnessing the zombie apocalyse. In fact, had I been keeping closer written track of things daily, I’d say this isn’t so very far-fetched. Each day I wake up to new situations, hearing increasingly difficult stats and facts, needing to face my personal decisions, just in case. As a somewhat recovered agoraphobic, those italicised words are ones that I’ve spent a lot of time eliminating from my thoughts but now they are creeping back in…necessarily?

Esmeralda lives in Bologna. She’s sent me videos of empty streets, the usual rush hour with hardly any people and no more than a few cars. Italy is in lock-down and there’s nothing anyone can do except wait it out and hope. We’ve talked about it and she feels that Italy has over-reacted. The more I read, the more I think it was the right reaction but maybe not enacted quickly enough.

I follow a Turin blogger, Sonia, who has been posting photos. Last night she posted a good story on how things have progressed. You can see this here . I messaged her to tell her how informative her story was and she asked how I was. I told her about London and how I felt and she let me know she had had to post her story very late that night since she didn’t want her children to hear what she had to say.

In London, things are going on as normal. We haven’t had it as bad as Italy. There aren’t as many cases here. I doubt that will last very long. This is a densely populated city with millions travelling around, crowded together, and these Londoners love to gather in packed pubs as often as they can. Handwashing has become an art, hand sanitiser essential and I’m looking sideways at everyone who sneezes or coughs on the bus.

Last week I went out and was a bit worried about all the bus travel. I sweetened the deal by visiting a new restaurant for lunch. I went to Three Uncles, which serves Cantonese barbecue. It’s been ages since I’ve eaten like that. I chose the noodles with wonton and char siu pork and enjoyed it. I was wondering if the place might be quiet, based on the Sinophobia I’ve been hearing about but trade was brisk.

More rain as I walk along the narrow street to Three Uncles

Inside Three Uncles 0 it got busier — Inside Three Uncles – it got busier

My lunch! Char siu pork and wonton lo mein

On the way home, I started noticing that no one was coughing…anywhere. I put this down to people staying home if they were unwell, or perhaps being afraid to cough for fear or reprisal.

This hasn’t lasted long, though. I’ve been in the bus with people with awful coughs, rarely covering their mouths and touching everything in sight. On the weekend I went to Tesco. The toilet paper was completely gone from the shelves, there were a few paper towels left, and just a few, more expensive, soaps – liquid and otherwise. Hand sanitisers are nowhere to be seen. Almost every person in the queue had a shopping cart filled to the brim and I waited almost half an hour to pay for my small basket of things. Panic buying had set in.

Soaps — All but the most expensive hand soaps disappearing quickly

Grab those antibacterial wipes while you can

At the bus stop, a small boy was playing around the seats and eagerly sucking his thumb, a man in the bus was rubbing his eyes vigorously. I clutched my bag close to me and tried not to look.

Krish and I went out. A woman who looked visibly ill, coughed long loose coughs, in the seat across from us, her nose was red and she looked anxious. I tried not to worry too much. Unless we don’t go out at all, there’s no way to avoid all of this.

Yesterday I went to a class on fermentation. I considered not going but thought I was being silly so off I went. My germ phobia had to be put in the back seat or I couldn’t face it. I went back to the Dusty Knuckle Bakery school classroom and this time there were nine of us. I was at a table with three men and everything was shared. We chopped together, threw our vegetables into a communal basin, used our bare hands to chop and to mix.

Apart from an initial mandatory twenty-second hand washing, things got pretty loose. I had decided not to use my phone to take any photos, despite wanting to. The guy next to me took his out frequently. Each time he did so, I cringed. When people came back from being outside the room, only I and another woman washed our hands again. And the guy next to me was the one who wanted to mix the basin of cabbage for sauerkraut with his hands. I tried again to look away.

Later, though, when we were all encouraged to taste the kimchi before it was jarred, his habit of taking a piece and licking his fingers before digging in again broke the dam. I started to feel threatened and upset. When he left the table I begged the other two men to continue with the mixing and not to let him put his hands back in. They smiled at me indulgently. I tried not to panic.

Funny that I remember more of this stuff than what we did and learned. However, I do know that fermentation is what happens when you pack fruit or vegetables, salt, and other ingredients together and allow the main ingredients to be broken down naturally. We made three ferments: A red and white cabbage sauerkraut with caraway, a spicy kimchi, and a beet and carrot dill pickle. My hands were stained with red cabbage and beets – lurid.

I was freaked out but the men were drinking beer – four or five each that night – and not caring much about anything. How do they do that?

We sat and ate together. For the second time I put up with the dreaded puy lentil soup except this time I asked to serve myself and took only a little. There was one big loaf of sour dough bread to go with it and we got to taste some of the ferments the teacher, Adam, had on hand. There was one that had a blue film on top and a truly nasty smell. Adam showed it to us so we knew how funky a ferment could get and yet still be safe. I was the only person who didn’t want to taste it after he scraped away the mould. So unlike me to not be adventurous with food but my phobias were settling in!

We packed a large jar of each mixture to bring home. They weighed a ton! More coughing and spluttering around me on the bus but I made it home and put my jars down.

Today, one of them had overflowed despite being tightly closed so tonight I loosened the lids to let some gas out and tightened them up again. We had to clean the table the jar had originally been on and put the three jars into a plastic bowl under the sink so there wouldn’t be any more messy accidents.

Tonight the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic. It’s hard to think of much else. My germ phobia has come to the fore. Not happy about that. I’m reluctant to go out but sure I will. Chances are things will become easier, that we’ll get on top of this and beat it, until the next time.

(Have I told you about my hypochondria?)

26th February 20201st March 2020

Vegan baking

Wednesday, 26 February, 2020

I belong a site called Nextdoor. It unites neighbours in areas around the world, sort of like an updated BBS. It’s so useful for finding things like local tradespeople, events, sales and free stuff and so on. (There’ll be one in your area too!) Some time before Christmas I saw this:

Katie Cross,
NEW VEGAN CAKE SHOP OPENING IN DALSTON
Hello everyone, I am a vegan baker and I am opening my bakery CAKE OR DEATH every Saturday until Christmas starting tomorrow 10am – 3pm. It’s in Dalston on the corner of Dalston Lane and Martel Place E8 2FR. I’m a small business – just me baking – and I make delicious cakes, brownies and cookies and everything is vegan. Do pop down if you’re in the area – I’d love the support! Best wishes, Katie www.cakeordeath.net

Now, veganism isn’t for me but I do have two vegan friends and Hackney is pretty much Vegan Central. Every bakery has a good selection of vegan cakes, some are strictly vegan. When I go out with Lisa, I let her choose somewhere that’s vegan because it’s so much easier than her finding something on the menu where I usually go. I didn’t get to Katie’s bakery, Cake or Death, though.

Then Katie started to advertise classes at her bakery. I still didn’t go for those, until she had a sale. I couldn’t resist, even knowing this would mean…cake!

I arrived at the class and there were nine of us- eight women, one man. There were also no baking spaces other than Katie’s kitchen area and a big table.

We watched her make lemon cup cakes. She made the batter, then worked on the icing. She whipped broad bean water from the can until it stood in stiff peaks, then added in icing sugar and lemon. She also made a lemon curd, which is a normal recipe but with Flora ‘buttery’ margarine instead of butter.

We then made our own carrot cake, measuring and mixing and pouring the batter into tins to bake. Again Flora is used and also unsweetened soy milk. And a lot of oil! It smelled good.

Once that was in the oven, we all had a part to play in making sticky ginger cake. I stirred the huge bowl of liquids – Flora, soy milk, treacle, muscovado sugar, and golden syrup, all melted in the microwave and ready for the dry ingredients.

Our last baking effort was at the end of the class. We each made our own peanut butter chocolate chip cookies – seven large ones. They went into the oven when the other things were ready or almost ready to come out.

The whole place smelled great. The participants were friendly and I chatted a bit to the other two locals that were there – a couple. I should have got their details but I didn’t. Maybe I’ll see them around. Even though we didn’t have our own cooking stations, things worked well. Katie’s helper gave us each a huge box and I put in my cakes and cookies and balanced them all the way home.

Then the eating. The only thing we haven’t tried yet is the carrot cake. It’s in the freezer, cut into three pieces. Everything has been delicious. Nothing tastes like it should be labelled vegan. I’m ready to host my vegan afternoon tea party!

Next, the photos! Continue reading “Vegan baking”