A Rum Drink

It's been pointed out to me that I've been oddly unprolific lately. Here then is an update on what's been going on in my life over the last couple of months.

Back around the beginning of June I had a visitor from my home and native land -- a treeplanting buddy named Roy McKnight whom Vicki and I had earlier tried to set up via email with a friend in Lancaster. Sadly, the rat bastard was on a mission to break hearts and spent the entire week he was here in London visiting relatives and being a bad influence on me.

Vicki also popped down for the weekend, leaving the aforementioned Lancastrian lass weeping into her pint of bitter. After I finished work on Friday, the three of us met up at the scandalously exciting BBC Club at White City where we proceeded to dance like crazed elk to the music of DJ Jerry and the Juveniles. Then we tubed it over to Soho for some tapas and an infusion of London streetlife.

Defining Moment: Drunken lout facing traffic and pissing into a pile of garbage on Romilly Street.

Roy slept on our coffee table that night. Apparently, if you shove it up against the pink airtight armchair, and throw a couple of thermarests on top of everything, it's quite comfy.

The next morning we sauntered over to Holland Park for coffee. We'd heard that John Cleese lives somewhere in Holland Park so whenever we passed a particularly Cleesian mansion, we would shout up at it, "Hey, Johnny! John-Boy, are you up there? Come on down for coffee." But no one ever responded.

Defining Moment: Filipino woman in a maid's uniform walking an immaculately coifed poodle through Holland Park -- the Park (as opposed to Holland Park -- the opulent chunk of real estate).

After coffee, we wandered over to Portobello market which is the setting for the film Notting Hill. There is much kitschy junk and some cool fruit and vegetable stands here.

Defining Fruit and Vegetable Stand: One that sold olives and feta cheese. The feta was decorated with peppers and herbs and spices and sliced into perfect wedges like a birthday cheesecake. The olives were in small wooden barrels and there were about a dozen varieties. Each wooden barrel had its own round wooden ladle. The proprietor was a bit like an olive himself, smooth-skinned, dark in colour, very round, and very Mediterranean.

A few weeks later London had another visitor from Edmonton, a woman named Jean, who works as a receptionist at Tsuga. She invited Vicki and myself over to the house where she was staying for dinner. We expected it to be a bit posh as we heard it was a three bedroom house near Kensington Gardens with a terrace. We were completely blown away when we got there, however.

Jean's brother was house-sitting because the owner of the house was attending the 50th birthday party of the Crown Prince of Tonga.

Warning: Sudden break in literary style...

This message has been sitting in my drafts folder mocking me for over a month now. It shall mock me no longer. I have resolved to finish now it a violent, headlong rush. Beware!

Yeah, Jean's brother's friend's flat was big. It was huge. It was in the Bayswater area of London (lot of Greek restaurants there). It was a first floor terraced flat which means that it is one floor above ground floor. It also had its own little terrace (i.e. balcony, nothing to do with the adjective "Terraced" above) which overlooked a private park which our host had a key to.

Have I mentioned the place was immense? It was mind-boggling. The ceilings were so high, we couldn't actually see them. The walls just stretched away into darkness. Sometimes we'd catch sight of strange winged characters swooping and pinwheeling above us. All of the rooms were huge and crammed with all manner of amazing loot from the South Pacific. The Dining/Living room was larger than my entire flat and had a twelve foot long, somewhat worn, ebony table overlooked by all these crazy black wooden masks.

Everything was overlooked by Black wooden masks, actually. One of the ones near the door had a cigarette hanging out of its mouth. There was also a bust of a horse's head in the study that had a thick, battered cigar jammed in its mouth. There was stuff everywhere: huge, ancient,leather-bound tomes; wooden fertility figures jammed overflowing from the top shelf of a wardrobe; nasty, well-used-looking spears; impressively huge and subtly beautiful stretches of batik; just lots of really cool stuff.

We were invited for dinner which turned out to consist of scotch, rum, brandy, cheese, olives, and crackers. The Scotch was Bell's. The kitchen was immense as well. It housed the first dishwasher I've seen in Britain and North American sized freezer and fridge. And there was an upside-down Texas Mickey of Bell's strapped to the side of the cupboard with a fancy dispensing widget. It was empty, but Jean had thought to procure an only slightly smaller bottle for our arrival.

Jean's brothers were unique and slightly wonky characters and both very entertaining. One of them (their names have vanished from my skull, I'm afraid) presented us with a glass of what he said was vintage Armagnac Brandy from the absent host's private stock which was extremely delicious. Both Vicki and I thought it was by far the best brandy we'd ever had and gushed over it at length. The colour. The bouquet. The highlights. The intermingled tones and strength of character. Pure heaven! I was reminded of what Samuel Johnson once said:

Claret is the liquor for boys; port, for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.

This, despite the fact that it turned out to be vintage rum. Oh well. It was old. It was tasty. And it was some kind alcoholic amber fluid.

We did get to taste the Armagnac eventually. It wasn't bad.