28 & 29 December

The 28th was a quiet day.  Bruce did a pub crawl, of course, but I chose to stay home and relax. Gandalf, the sweet kitty I’m sitting for, chose to serenade me with arias most of that night so I didn’t get very much sleep.  I was exhausted in the morning but had to pull myself together because we had plans that afternoon, the 29th. Bruce’s cousin (2nd or 3rd cousin twice or thrice removed) was having a little get together at her London flat to celebrate her daughter’s birthday and her own birthday.  Tracy lives in Cambridge, but still has the little flat she used to live in which is in a fabulous location quite near Bermondsey. We got the train to Waterloo then tried to find the Neuhaus store that’s supposed to be there so we could buy some chocolates for Tracy.  If you’re unfamiliar with Neuhaus, it’s my favorite brand of Belgian chocolates, exceedingly rich and flavorful.  Since Tracy is from Belgium this seemed like a good idea. Google maps kept sending us to roundabouts and dead ends so I suggested we look in the train station, since there are lots of stores in the stations here.  We hiked the main floor, the balcony and were about to give up when we saw another little shopping area below street level called The Sidings. That turned out to be the right place.  We walked into the store and took our place behind the two couples already there.  Rather than pre-boxed chocolates, Neuhaus let’s you choose your own from the chocolates on display.  That’s a wonderful thing unless, like the first couple, you are pathologically incapable of making a decision.  “What’s that flavor? Oh, that’s better than the last one we chose.  Can you remove the one we chose and put this one in?  Oh, and take our the first ones we picked.  I don’t think we want those anymore.” This went on for about 15 minutes and they weren’t close to filling the box.  In frustration, we decided to buy champagne for Tracy instead. So off we walked to the bus stop. After a short while the bus came and off we headed towards Tower Bridge. On the way we passed African wildlife and some great business signs.

Exiting the bus, we hunted down an off-license where we bought a lovely bottle of Bollinger, then passed a WW1 memorial dedicated to a local resident Able Seaman Albert Edward McKenzie who was awarded the Victoria Cross for conspicuous gallantry. At the bottom of the plaque it says "Our Local Hero". There was something quite touching about it.

We arrived at Tracy’s building and after some wrong turns, finally found her flat which was filled with her daughter Alex’s friends. We met Alex a few years ago and she was kind enough to give us a tour of Cambridge University when we were there last year.  (She was finishing up her doctoral dissertation in zoology.) She’s currently doing a post-doctoral fellowship at Texas A&M University.  I can’t conceive of two more different educational experiences than that. Anyway, we caught up with Tracy & heard about what’s going on with the family. Tracy is one of seven children so there’s a lot of catching up to do.  Her parents have hosted us when we've been to Belgium and we’ve become very fond of all the family. They are a family of high achievers and are a very close knit group, of which I’m quite envious. We had a lovely time, ate birthday cake, drank wine and passed a lovely afternoon. 

Bruce & Tracy

Bruce, Alex & me

We have a tradition that we have champagne and specific goodies on New Year’s Eve. One of those goodies is inexpensive caviar that we get at Whole Foods. When I say inexpensive, I mean it. It’s paddlefish caviar and costs about $30. This tradition started a number of years ago when my friend Yummy and one of her friends were visiting from Australia.  We lived in NYC at the time and I was working for Keith Richards’ manager. Keith and Patti had given me a magnum of Dom Perignon for Christmas, so we decided to open it on NYE.  Bruce was playing in the pit of Chicago and wouldn’t get home till very late, since they shut down Times’ Square on NYE and the musicians have to take a circuitous route to get home.  We waited as long as we could, but finally opened the Magnum and had a glass.  Or two.  Long story short, there was only 1 glass left in the bottle for Bruce when he got home.  But that was when we started our snacking tradition.  We were able to get the rest of the goodies, but the cheap caviar was proving problematic.  Well, it is New Year’s Eve in London, so what better time to splash out? So we made our way to Petrossian, the caviar shop.  No way would we find $30 caviar, and we didn’t even know what to buy since there are many different caviars on the menu.  The young man manning the counter asked us about our preferences (who knows?) and then proceeded to let us taste all five species of caviar. The cheapest sells for $77 for 3 ounces, the most expensive, Beluga Special Reserve, sells for $396 for 3 ounces.  We knew (and I think he knew) that we wouldn’t buy the Beluga but the dear fellow let us try it anyway along with all the other species. We eventually chose the Sevruga.  We hadn’t brought our mother of pearl spoon with us, so had to buy a Petrossian spoon that came with it’s own tiny carrying case. We also bought the tool specially made to open the can.  Our little can of Sevruga was packed into its own little cooler bag, along with a tiny ice pack.

We also purchased blinis which came with their own cooler bag and ice pack.  Petrossian is like a gourmet candy store: the above-mentioned caviar, several types of salmon, many different types of foie gras, even foie gras butter. (I’m picturing the most decadent toast imaginable.) Buoyed by this gourmet experience, we floated to the tube, then to the train station where we passed more African wildlife, then rode home to Ashtead.