a lit­tle sushi, a lit­tle Holbein

Pssst. Want a hot, secret nugget of wis­dom about the Tate Gallery here in Lon­don? Go on, you know that’s why you read “Kris­ten in Lon­don,” it’s for the hot, secret nuggets of wis­dom about just about any­thing in our fair city, stuff you can’t get from a guide­book. Well, here’s today’s lit­tle trea­sure: if you don’t have to cross the Thames to GET TO the Tate, you should­n’t cross the Thames to GO BACK HOME.

That’s right, I man­aged to top yes­ter­day’s Bar­bi­can Blun­der, and we got on a Num­ber 88 bus to come home from the muse­um and got all the way to bleed­ing Brix­ton. Went in the bloody wrong direc­tion! Just hap­pi­ly rid­ing along, both Avery and I exclaim­ing over the love­ly lights on the riv­er, “Hey, the Lon­don Eye is red! Must be for Christ­mas,” nev­er once think­ing that it was odd to have to cross the riv­er to get to… May­fair. From the Tate. Mind you, I’ve been to the Tate that is on the oth­er side of the riv­er. I can offer no expla­na­tion for my extreme stu­pid­i­ty. Be sure and say that with the prop­er posh Eng­lish “shtew-pid­i­ty” pro­nun­ci­a­tion. Avery said today, “It makes me slight­ly crazy the way the Eng­lish say Tues­day as if they were talk­ing about eat­ing. Chews-day.” Well, at least they don’t spend an hour and a half get­ting home from a major landmark.

Seri­ous­ly!

Any­way, we had fun. I need­ed a bit of cultcha because last night I made a real stab at see­ing an actu­al film in a the­atre, for some cultcha, and when I got there, they had mys­te­ri­ous­ly decid­ed to sub­sti­tute the film I want­ed to see with a Latin Amer­i­can Film Fes­ti­val. What? No one seemed very inter­est­ed in my whingey protes­ta­tions about accu­ra­cy on one’s web­site about what one is offer­ing to the inno­cent film-view­ing pub­lic, so I slunk out. By then the driz­zle had turned to a real soak­er, so I quick­ly decid­ed I need­ed to go indoors and would you believe it? The clos­est place I could find was… Nobu. Okay, not the clos­est, but the clos­est place that served yel­low­tail with jalapeno and cilantro in a ponzu sauce. Always makes me a bit home­sick, Nobu. I have no idea why they seat­ed me, in rat­ty jeans and soak­ing wet and in an orange pash­mi­na that smelled like a wet labrador, but they did. Bliss. A dou­ble order of the yel­low­tail, a nice chat with a Por­tuguese fel­low sit­ting next to me at the sushi bar who was miss­ing his kids back in Sao Pao­lo. Not for me the flir­ta­tious chat with some­one lone­ly on a busi­ness trip. No, we talked about our chil­dren. Sigh. That is so rep­re­sen­ta­tive of my life.

Home and to bed ear­ly, miss­ing my fam­i­ly. I was glad to run out to Kens­ing­ton this morn­ing and pick up Fifi from her friend Juli­a’s house. What an incred­i­bly eru­dite fam­i­ly Juli­a’s is. Her moth­er is Ital­ian, her father Pol­ish, and their house com­plete­ly beau­ti­ful, filled with Ital­ian con­tem­po­rary paint­ings and gor­geous piles of impres­sive art his­to­ry books on their (yes) cof­fee table, remind­ed me of the gatril­lions of equal­ly love­ly books that I own, now pro­vid­ing hours of edu­ca­tion­al enter­tain­ment to the bats and mice in the barn in Con­necti­cut. Some deci­sions I make are just shtew-pid.

So Avery was hot to see the Hol­bein showbecause of their study­ing the Tudors and the Renais­sance at school. And it was worth see­ing. We each got the audio guide because I know next to noth­ing about Hol­bein and Avery, while extreme­ly knowl­edge­able, allowed as how she might learn some­thing from an actu­al muse­um expert. It was fun to wan­der around and enter num­bers into the guide and have the nice Eng­lish lady tell us lots of things we did not know about Sir Thomas More, Jane Sey­mour and the like. I wish I had had my cam­era with me, because Avery’s out­fit was amaz­ing and she got lots of admir­ing looks from the oth­er muse­um-goers: robin’s egg blue tights, a fuzzy caramel-col­ored short skirt, a sequined pink vin­tage cardie, and a grey felt beret with the sil­hou­ette of a jackrab­bit on the bit that hung over her eye (the rab­bit had a crys­tal eye, just so you know). But John has the cam­era in Con­necti­cut, and I’m ashamed to say Avery actu­al­ly said she was relieved to have a moment in her life go undocumented.

She was a lit­tle melan­choly on the ride home, total­ly uncon­nect­ed to the fact that we saw most of greater Lon­don on the bus ride. “Mom­my, this is my first Christ­mas not at home. I mean, we are at home, but not… at home. And I know there are peo­ple who spend Christ­mas abroad. But we’re not that kind of peo­ple! And yet we are! Spend­ing Christ­mas abroad. And yet at home.” She sighed. “It’s very con­fus­ing.” Poor dear. She is also con­cerned that the famous Oxford Street Christ­mas lights are num­ber one, waste­ful of elec­tric­i­ty in these envi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive times, and num­ber two, real­ly tacky. At least she has her pri­or­i­ties straight.