Merry Christmas - Happy New Year!!

OMG I got on!

It is the Saturday between Christmas and New Year, I have managed to get a library card and accessed the Internet through the Swiss Cottage library; which is fairly local. Still no Internet at home so things are just barely moving along. I never realized how much I did on-line.

Christmas in London was/is very beautiful. I didn't manage to get the tree up until Christmas Day, but the city had plenty of lights to make up for the lack of lights at home. I had two guests (E and J) for the week, so I spent a great deal of time doing tourist-y things. WE took the Big Bus tour, went to Greenwhich, British Library and several other nuseums of note, saw a Boxing Day movie and two plays. Exhausting just thinking about it. We had a great, great time. Lots of photos to be posted in the future.

The sun actually came out for a short while today. First time since the freezing fog that closed down Heathrow in the run up to Christmas. Its been grey but no to cold and no rain until today! Sorry about the weather talk but its what you do in the UK--discuss the weather.

Must get back to the errands I am running today. Its true what they say about London over the holidays, everything shuts down. So today is it for stores being open so I must go out and shop!!

Christmas lunch

Can you see the name on this awning? Its Llewellyn and its a fairly normal shop. I made my co-worker stand in front of it and look excited that we found it. Mostly, I am just thrilled to live in a land where my names are not TOTALLY weird.

This was the night of the "Christmas lunch" for planners in my office. A new experience for me - lunch began at 3 pm and as you can see carried on until dark (admittedly that's 4 pm this time of year) but it was after 6 before we left "lunch" to go to a pub for drinks. Pretty fun, I'm not sure if things stay this friendly but it seems they know how to have fun as well as work too much here in London.

Another great tree

Last week I was wandering around in my neighborhood and I saw these fabulous trees. Since they were without leaves you can see the amazing job the owners are doing of training the trees to wind into each other. (While you are peering at the screen please also note the TINY cars!)

Lots of great trees in London; especially in my green northern area. I assume they are London Plane trees. Perhaps a reading landscape architect will correct me if I am wrong. Many are pollarded, so they have that weird "knuckled" look but this one has been trained like a fruit tree - I think esplan-something is what its called. I am looking forward to seeing this tree-sculpture through out the seasons.


Really makes me wish I had some gardening skills to wrest some beauty out of the back yard of my flat. So far someone has come and cut back years of growth and exposed a lovely area that I am looking forward to inhabiting in the summer.

Sauces in the UK

They really like their sauces here in the UK. This is a small sample of the sauces offered at a local eatery. The big green one is mint sauce. Now I have seen mint sauce only occasionally and only at a house where some one has roasted a lamb, but here you can get mint sauce in a packet.

The next two are mustards-French and English. There is a joke in here about French vs. English but I will leave that up to you to fill in the blanks. Not sure if they have a mustard packet for "trailer-mustard" i.e. yellow mustard. But they do have a packet for "brown sauce"; which is something they put on everything.

What they don't seem to understand is that ketchup is not precious. They will only give you teeny-tiny small cups of ketchup. Of course they will put bucket-loads of mayonnaise on everything. Now I'm just getting crabby so I'll leave the sauce discussion at that.

Freud sits around

Apparent;y I live in the neighborhood that Freud lived in during his stay in London. This cold and mossy statue of Freud is found in front of Tavistock House, which is on a prominant corner south of Hampstead. He doesn't look happy; however I was very happy to find him becasue I had been lost and once I found him I could fine my way home. So, "Thanks, Freud."

Blustery - but not rainy - Sunday

I notice on my clever Google homepage, that the weather in London is not that different from San Francisco. It seems to be in the 50s most of the day here, just like San Francisco. Why, then, does it seem so blustery, sweater-snuggled, hot-drink-needing, curl-up-and-read, and fluffy-sock-wearing here?

In SF, I just threw on my leather jacket and was ready for the weather at all seasons. Here I find I need layers to wrap up/peel off; constantly adjusting my temperature. Today, I have moved around the stuff in the last untouched room in the flat. Nice to know where all my stuff is, I even found that last small bit that I had not been able to find since I moved. Unfortunately even though I carefully pruned my housing stock, I still have too much stuff and find I need to give away/sell more stuff.

I didn't leave the flat todayexcpet to take out trash and recycling. I did wander out into the garden to check out the rest of the real estate. Turns out there is a garden shed back there; but its dark and kind of wet so I'll explore more later - maybe spring.

Anyway, today while I'm re-arranging and hanging pictures and filing papers and getting rid of still more stuff, I decided was the perfect time to roast a turkey. So I did. Actually, it's a turkey breast but still, I finally am getting to have my Thanksgiving turkey only 10 days late -- roasted some veggies, had a nice salad and some Rojo. Bailey would be proud. It is not Thanksgiving but it does make the place smell all holiday-ish.

Speaking of which let us talk of christmas trees. They are disapointingly small here--I stumbled across a tree lot yesterday when out for a stroll. Not one tree was taller than me (I'm just over 5 feet). In fact, I towered over a couple of them. Hmm, so much for a gloriously tall tree in my reception for the first Christmas in London. On the plus side, it will be easy to get back to the flat with out a car!

Hope your Sundays are great, whereever you are.

My Viking

This week I was very sick - bad foreign cold. Actually a domestic English cold but foreign to my immune system. Started to get sick on Monday but gave up and just stayed in bed on Tuesday and Wednesday. Finally today, Friday, I am feeling better.

Rather than show you a picture of a giant pile of kleenex - I have chosen to show you a picture drawn by my friend Oliver. Its a picture of a viking (in case you are really dumb and haven't figured it out yet).

Thank you, Ollie, my viking made me feel much better.