jaunts of a hol­i­day nature

Oh, we’ve been busy. The orna­ments from the glo­ri­ous Matt McGhee shop on Christo­pher Street in the West Vil­lage are on the tree, I have my tra­di­tion­al copies of Agatha Christie’s The Adven­ture of the Christ­mas Pud­ding and Ngaio Marsh’s Tied Up in Tin­sel at the ready, we’ve been watch­ing our favorite Christ­mas movies, “White Christ­mas,” “Elf,” and “The San­ta Claus,” and are wait­ing for a new Eng­lish-friend­ly copy of “Christ­mas in Con­necti­cut” just to make us home­sick. I’m busi­ly amass­ing presents on a chair in my study, but of course a lot of it is being done online, I’m sor­ry to say, to avoid hav­ing to ship. Still, it’s fun to shop, even in the vir­tu­al world. 

I bought a cou­ple of sweet things from the Christ­mas Fair at the dar­ling lit­tle Jesuit church around the cor­ner, across from the glo­ri­ous Con­naught Hotel, and real­ly enjoyed eaves­drop­ping on the con­ver­sa­tions of the church wor­thies who were man­ning the jel­ly and book stalls. How won­der­ful it would be to have been born Eng­lish, and have that mar­velous iden­ti­ty. The Vic­ar. As Lord Peter Wim­sey would say, “Oh, jol­ly good. I col­lect Vic­ars, and this is an espe­cial­ly fine specimen.”

Walk­ing around the neigh­bor­hood try­ing to find the entrance to the church (yes, I can get lost even with­in three blocks of my home, don’t wor­ry), I was remind­ed so much of our ear­ly days here, when I first dis­cov­ered these gar­dens at Mount Street, where they filmed an episode of “Spooks.” I kept my eyes peeled for Matthew Mac­fadyen, but no joy. No, I may have to find a new crush. I have an actu­al can­di­date in the wings, a cer­tain Irish come­di­an called Dylan Moran. OK, he’s scruffy, he’s on the edge, but he’s smart, and there is that accent. Come on, Matthew, are you jeal­ous? When was the last time you sat on chat-show host Jonathan Ross’s leather sofa and gave us some­thing to think about, huh? Nor­mal­ly I am a great fan of all things Scot­tish, and our var­i­ous adven­tures there have been encour­ag­ing of that predilec­tion. But Ire­land is beck­on­ing in the form of Mr Moran, so I have some catch­ing up to do there. He’s just hilar­i­ous. And the hair does­n’t hurt.

Well, I’ve had my first iffy Lon­don restau­rant lunch. You know how I dote on my lunch­es with my friend Twig­gy. We chat, we gos­sip, we look for famous peo­ple, and nor­mal­ly we real­ly enjoy our food. Twig­gy is a veg­e­tar­i­an and so it is nec­es­sary to find a good menu for her. I am going to men­tion our adven­ture on Fri­day only because the loca­tion was absolute­ly gor­geous, a glit­ter­ing and charm­ing hide­away in May­fair called Lan­cashire Court. The restau­rant itself, called Hush, was over­crowd­ed, loud, the wait­staff nonex­is­tent and the food noth­ing to write home about. They put parme­san on Twig­gy’s risot­to and she does­n’t eat aged cheeses, and the dish was list­ed on the veg­an menu, and as far as I know, no veg­an eats cheese, so points off there. Then the sal­ad was noth­ing but ice­berg let­tuce (I did­n’t know they even made it any­more, frankly), and and slimy red pep­pers. I had hal­ibut which was com­plete­ly for­get­table, and scary lentils. Ah well, the gos­sip was good and I will go back to the Court.

Twig­gy her­self lives in an area of Lon­don that I would real­ly like to vis­it, called But­ler’s Wharf, in St. Kather­ine’s Dock. Very sort of urban, lofty, per­haps a bit too much like where we’ve come from. But we’ll go vis­it them soon and see what’s up with that. Mean­while, of course, real estate con­tin­ues to con­sume a vast por­tion of John’s atten­tion. He’s deeply attached to a Grade 1 List­ed house in Bed­ford Square, with its air of decayed aris­toc­ra­cy. We took our friend Vin­cent with us to see it last week, and then today we hung around West Kens­ing­ton, again with Vin­cent, to see some more housey hous­es, and with­out the restric­tions on build­ing that would apply to a list­ed house. Today we looked with long­ing at sev­er­al falling-down hous­es in Oxford Gar­dens, so I’ll keep you posted.

I have to say, the tree makes all the dif­fer­ence in our liv­ing room! It’s very cozy. And just so you know, the place to buy a tree in Lon­don, unless you have a car big enough to bring it home (in oth­er words, not our car), is Home­base. Now, I know what you’re think­ing, how bor­ing. But love­ly Aus­tralian Michelle helped us out, and there was a big selec­tion, and they deliv­ered. So there. Sorted.

We’re ready. I refuse to be hur­ried over Christ­mas, my favorite month of the year. I would have to say that the sight of the movers’ box­es full of orna­ments brought back unpleas­ant mem­o­ries enough! Oh last year was such a hash. And yet, there was the mem­o­ry of Rol­lie and his tree farm, and all the wreaths, so love­ly, such won­der­ful Con­necti­cut mem­o­ries. I won­der what Rol­lie’s up to for Christ­mas this year…