Taste of London!

Oh, I wish you’d been there with me! I don’t mind going places by myself (John is always mys­ti­fied that I will go to lunch by myself, his idea of sheer tor­ture, but the peo­ple watch­ing is good!). But some­times when you don’t just go some­where, but you’re filled with enthu­si­asm for the place you’re going to, it’s a shame not to have any­one along to gur­gle with. I had hoped to go with Vin­cent, but imag­ine this: he had to WORK. Hon­est­ly, I have got so spoiled with Vin­cent being between jobs, and my hus­band being between jobs, that I nev­er imag­ine going any­where on my own. I felt ashamed that I had noth­ing bet­ter to do with myself than traipse around the Taste of Lon­don, but that’s what I did. I could­n’t think of any­one else obsessed enough with food to accom­pa­ny me, so there you go.

I don’t know what I was think­ing, arriv­ing at 2 o’clock and know­ing I had to be at school pick­up at 3:20! First of all, nat­u­ral­ly, I got lost. Well, not lost as in did­n’t know where I was (all right, a lit­tle that) but as in could­n’t find the fes­ti­val inside Regen­t’s Park. I wan­dered until final­ly I saw lots of posh-look­ing peo­ple com­ing toward me car­ry­ing plas­tic cham­pagne glass­es and realised I had struck pay dirt. Once I was in, I don’t know how I could have missed it: it was enor­mous! The whole set­up of posh peo­ple, taste­ful wealth and white tents remind­ed me of noth­ing so much as the Hamp­ton Clas­sic, last sum­mer. There were portable rub­ber paths set up in the expec­ta­tion that the occa­sion­al­ly black­ish pur­ple clouds over­head would see fit to emp­ty their con­tents upon our hap­less food­ie heads (it sprin­kled a bit but that was all, in fact).

I had no soon­er arrived, bought my lit­tle “crowns” (the tick­ets that enable you to “taste” the chefs’ cre­ations) than I looked at my watch and thought, “Holy *&^%, it’s prac­ti­cal­ly time to get Avery.” Where­upon my phone rang and it was my saint­ly, impos­si­bly per­fect friend Becky (except that she can be count­ed on for a nice gos­sip and a lit­tle friend­ly cat­ti­ness when you need it). “Lis­ten, why don’t I pick up Avery and take her to my house, the girls can do their home­work, and then you can come bring her sleep­over stuff and I’ll take them to Eliz­a­beth’s?” Done! Sud­den­ly near­ly two hours stretched out in front of me, and I could only wish I had not eat­en lunch. What was I thinking?

Let’s see, where to start. I did­n’t feel that my lack of appetite jus­ti­fied spend­ing tons of mon­ey on “crowns” for sam­pling the famous chefs’ wares, so I tast­ed just a few things. One, a glo­ri­ous thing called a “prawn pome­lo with peanuts on a betel leaf,” from a Thai place called Bus­a­ba Eathai. Love­ly and fresh and so exot­ic: noth­ing I could pro­duce at home.

All right, I must con­fess; if I don’t post this now, I don’t know when I will. More tomor­row, but I did­n’t want you to think I fell off a cliff. Life is busier than I can keep up with, this week…