a nice roast to wel­come us

We’re back. Gor­geous grey skies, calm chilly air, cats beside them­selves with hap­pi­ness to see us. Of course Keechie’s hap­pi­ness is most­ly in direct con­trast to her extreme mis­ery while we were away, mea­sured by the now-unus­able state of our sofa cush­ion. I think the feline child must have gone sev­en weeks with­out being touched by a human hand, fright­ened to death as she is by even some­one as famil­iar as our dear Dor­rie, the house­keep­er who stayed here dur­ing our sum­mer away. Well, I have my work cut out, as they say in Eng­land, replac­ing the sofa cush­ion and fix­ing what­ev­er is going on in Keechie’s psy­che. I’ll keep you posted.

We left behind a pear tree laden, LADEN with thou­sands of pears, and Anne promis­es she’ll har­vest some and send them to us FedEx. Take THAT, the push to eat locally!

But you know what made me feel the best about leav­ing Amer­i­ca? The one, sin­gle sign that the coun­try was in good hands and it was safe to return to Eng­land? (Keep in mind that Jon Stew­art was on vaca­tion for the week and so it had be some­thing I found on my own). The Sec­ond Avenue Deli is return­ing! Just a cou­ple of years after that icon of the Low­er East Side was forced to leave after its rent increased a tril­lion fold, and I was about to cry (even thought in my heart of hearts I’m loy­al to Katz), the Deli has found a new loca­tion on… Third Avenue! But it will con­tin­ue to be known, in that baf­fling tra­di­tion that savvy of which dis­tin­guish­es real New York­ers from fak­ers, as The Sec­ond Avenue Deli. It is the job of each and every one of us who have ever loved the city (espe­cial­ly my child who is the only bona fide born New York­er among us) to remem­ber why, and tell every­one so. Toidy-Toid and Toid it is. So there.

Well, enough New York­er patri­o­tism. We’re back! Unpacked, cats pet­ted, and in order to make us feel at home again, the ulti­mate ear­ly-autumn Lon­don din­ner. I love Amer­i­ca, but there is, sor­ry, NOTH­ING like British Pork. Wel­come home.

Roast Pork with Garlic

We’re home.