Ah phoque

Summer and the hair source...?Well it looks like my retirement is soon to be over.  Things have started hotting (Emma says this should read ‘hott’n) up on the job front.  I have interviews with a couple of consulting companies and resumes out with a few more.  Really just in time I don’t think my saving will last much longer, Christmas looks like coal all around…or I suppose I could make presents, maybe dog hair shirts for everyone…Cassie sheds enough.

As usual summer really arrived fully in mid September; it has been really nice over here, maybe not the summer heat you would want but certainly beautiful clear skies and lots of sunshine.  It really just makes the next 4 months of grey all the more depressing!

The last fortnight has been a bit more exciting so this won’t just be about the WaterRower ™ (I love the term fortnight, why don’t we use it back in North America?  If you are interested, from the old English foewertyne niht or fourteen nights, simple eh?  Funny that we don’t use sennight over here anymore as well).  One of my oldest friends Chris Eisses (nee Janse apologies to the French my keyboard doesn't seem to do French) was in London last week. I have known Chris since grade 10 (no idea what that is in the English education system, whatever the grade 14 year olds go to) but do not get to see her much.  This was her first trip to England and really her first trip anywhere outside of Canada in, I think it is safe to say, decades! I only hosted Chris for two day in Camden as she was visiting other friends as well, though we did meet up on another occasion for some socialising.  Whilst (another particularly English word) she was with me I tried to take her to all the main London tourist attractions.  The highlight for her however was a trip to a restaurant.  She had mentioned that the one thing she would really like to do in England is eat at a Jamie Oliver restaurant. 

I knew he had a restaurant (fifteen) in London but had thought his others were all outside of London and that the one in London was likely to be expensive and hard to get a table at.  Now, I am not one to let my friends down so I did some research via my iphone and discovered a Jamie’s Italian restaurant had opened in Canary Wharf!  This is a classic Italian restaurant which claims to be good food at good prices!  Amazingly I had never been to Canary Wharf and have been curious about what it is all about pretty much since I moved here…it seemed like a perfect opportunity to indulge Chris in some famous chef dining and me in exploring one of those mysterious underground stops (oh yes more about the underground in a bit) I have never been too.

Our home version of italian!So off we went, it was a Wednesday and we cruised into the restaurant at 1 pm, pretty much prime time lunch time for the zillions of office drones who inhabit Canary Wharf.  Happily the restaurant was full but we did not need to wait, the lunch crowd was turning over pretty quickly! The food was really good and I was amazed when the bill came, very very affordable!  3 glasses of wine, a desert, two side dishes and 2 small pasta mains ran us a light 40 pounds.  Trust me this is cheap for London!!!

I was so impressed that I dragged Emma there on Saturday for a repeat performance…though this time we had to wait about 15 minutes for a table and we managed to spend 60 pounds (more drinks this time I am ashamed to say).

Anyway it was great seeing Chris and I hope she had a great time (she ended her trip last weekend by spending the weekend in Paris before flying back to Toronto. I haven’t heard but I am sure, like all civilized people, she loved Paris.  I wonder which she liked more, London or Paris…it better be London.

So I mentioned the underground a bit earlier.  I have had a bit of an obsession with the underground for the last month or so and my trip out to Canary Wharf has proven to be a cathartic. Whenever I look at an underground map I always think how few of the stops I have actually been too.  I often wonder what I will find at the end of the lines, in places with foreboding names like Morden, lewd names like Cockfosters (teehee) or historic names like Wimbledon (ok I am pretty sure I know what I will find at Wimbledon).  Canary Wharf used to be just a name on the underground map that I only had a vague idea of what was there. Glass, steel, Armani and the odd Starbucks, that was the picture in my head. No more, for I have now been to Canary Wharf (twice!) and the mystery is gone.  Turns out it is a place of glass, steel, John Lewis (think Winners, economic crisis and all, poor little bankers) and Starbucks.  Wow.  The experience has left me driven to discover what the rest of these mysterious dots on the map are hiding!  Starting this week I am going to travel to ends of each of the underground, lines snap a few photos and then document what I find!  I am calling this adventure…The Underground Project…and I am giving it its own journal (and maybe even a photo gallery I haven’t decided).  Watch this space!

Emma thinks I have lost my mind.

Out there in left field, I tried to try lamb again.  Why does everyone but me love lamb (to eat)? Emma and I had a bar b que on Saturday and went for traditional hamburgers…only Emma decided she would eat lamburgers.  We spiced them up just so (the secret is parmesan cheese in the mix along with finely chopped onions and pepper) and ate them with Emma’s super delicious dijonaise potato salad (see recipe here).

I asked Emma if I could have bite of her lamburger, because hey, maybe I would like lamb this time…I took a tentative sniff before going in for a nibble…and retched.  I actually retched, how can you people eat that?  Forget that lambs are cute, cooked they stink, like faeces covered goat rolled in mink sweat…I think, I am not sure if I have ever smelled that but it is something bad like that, though not as bad as the time Cassie rolled in a dead rotting fish, that smells worse, still I wouldn’t (and didn’t) eat either one.

My sister too has developed a new hobby...err...obsession.  Click here for some funny pictures Christie has started collecting whilst she is living in Germany…for you French speakers they are all sort of the phoque/seal thing.  For example;

Keep well clear of this bus!

Phil, week four, still using the WaterRower (tm) it is so far so good.  I am up to 30 minutes and about five and half kilometers.  I am thinking of hooking it up to my computer so I can do virtual rowing too, keep it interesting and all...if only there were some sort of gun attachement so I could make it a first person shooter.

Comments

[Christie]

Nice! That bus is the best, I loved seeing that bus.....it just about makes moving here worth it.
XO
C

[pdean]

Cheap restaurant food? Can't say I've seen that since we moved to San Diego.

Enjoy Oz when you're down there. I expect pictures of you, Emma, and Emma's dad sampling wine :P