Pooh Sticks and Monet

Bridge over Untroubled Water...

Walking through the park today, as I approached the little bridge over Dollis Brook, my knees instictively bent, and I found myself grabbing up a few twigs to toss over the side.  Pooh Sticks.  I couldn't stop myself!

Toss the twig on the right....

...run to the left to see who wins!

Do the rest of you remember playing this game? It involves throwing sticks from one side of a bridge over a stream, and then running to the other side to see whose stick is the first to be carried by the current to the other side.

The Dollis Brook is very slow moving, so even though this bridge is not very wide at all, I still had a few moments to wait, trying to guess which of my twigs would be the winner.  Well... i was playing by myself, so i did need to have more than one twig to add an element of suspense and possibility to the game!  ... though it was nice to find myself constantly winning the game (though i guess the corrollary to that is that I was also losing every game) 

I did check the web when I got home, to discover that not only does Poohsticks have its own wikipedia entry [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poohsticks], but that there is indeed a "World Pooh Sticks Championship! http://www.pooh-sticks.com/  Apparently, one of them is held on the River Thames!

Dollis Brook

The game of Poohsticks, directing my attention to the water, got me noticing how amazing the stream looked!  The leaves are also finding their way into the Dollis Brook.  The Brook is a shallow little thing... really, just deep enough for Kiwi to be able run into and lay down in.  But now that the leaves are starting to come down, as you keep walking the trail, you can catch many more glimpses of brook (often obscured by the thick foliage around it).  

Because it is so shallow and slow moving, it was also looking amazingly reflective today, mirroring back the trees and clouds, the movement of leaves on the surface just enough to give the reflections a slight watery tremor.  I couldn't help but think of wandering past the Monet canvases in the Barnes Exhibition. Sweet....

Leaves and sky in the brook

 ...and yet more leaves...

Trick or Treating in London

My mom said that there would be nothing going on for halloween here in london, so I shouldn't count on going out trick or treating. But then we found out my friend Oliver was going to go, so we arranged to go with him and his brother. They don't live close to us, so we had to take the bus half an hour to his house, but that was good, because there were a bunch of kids on the streets at his place. Dad and Alex said not a single trick or treater came to our house!

Here I am in my costume. It is half dracula and half werewolf. I know it is not all that great, but that is because we only had a day to figure out something that we could find in the local discount store. Still, i think the claws are pretty cool.

So, our first time trick or treating in London was good. But it wasn't as good as back home. The reasons for that are that no one's enthusiasm is as high as ours at home to get candy as fast as possible. They take their time, walk slowly, skip a LOT of houses, and then, just, well... go to one house, then walk back, wasting time you could be spending in getting candy or other stuff.

Plus even if you don't go trick or treating, you hear fireworks all night. Here, they are thinking that bonfire night starts five weeks early. In fact, we have heard fireworks at night every night for weeks.

Well, that is all for this blog post. I will try to get the next one to you as fast as getting candy on halloween, CANADIAN style! But will the next post be "Trick" or "Treat?"

Some things were just not meant to be...

Some things go together like magic: peanut butter and jelly, mint and chocolate, strawberries and cream, .... you know... stuff like that.  But there are some flavour combinations that just do not work so well together.  Of course, to some extent, this is a question of taste.  For example, I would say that garlic cream cheese (which I love) just does not work if you put it on a blueberry bagel (which I also love). Steve, on the other hand, sees no contradition in this blend.

The world of icecream is an interesting place to think about this problem.  Certainly, there are those that prefer their icecream to carry 'chocolately' flavours, and those who prefer more 'fruity' flavours.  My mother, for example, leans in the direction of chocolate, while I lean towards fruity (I suspect one of my siblings would add here that the statement is true of me more generally).  But whatever the declination, I would had said before tonight that there is no such thing as a bad flavour of icecream.  I have even, for example, tried Durian flavoured icecream (which is quite stinky and yet also interesting). 

So it was with surprise tonight that I saw at the grocery store FOUR different icecream flavours that I had not run across before: malaysian coconut and lime; prune and armagnac; chocolate and rosmary; and (wait for it...) mustard savoury.



Mustard icecream.... bleech!

 Well....  what else could I do?!   I came home with "Mustard Savoury".  The label on the side says "savory and sweet at the same time".  I suppose that, strictly speaking, the label speaks the truth:  it IS savoury and sweet at the same time.  But not in a GOOD way!  Indeed, everyone in the house has tried a spoonful, and we have collectively come to the position that there are just some combinations that should not even be imagined into existence.  Mustard and ice cream is one of them.



Saturday mornings on the High Road

yummy challah bread

 I think we are getting some of our Saturday morning rituals in place.  While the Bonnie Banks O' Loch Lomond suggests that it matters not whether one takes the high road or the low road (you will end up in Scotland either way!), Saturday morning here in North Finchley does take us down the High Road (indeed, I am not sure exactly where the low road would be?)   And for a perfect Saturday morning, you really need at least a couple stops on the High Road.  Alex's first stop is usually the weight room over at the fitness club at the end of the street.  But others in the family are a bit less pure.  For me, the perfect Saturday morning starts with a stop at Yosi's bakery where, if your timing is right, you can get your hands on a still warm loaf of challah bread.  They keep asking me if I want it sliced.  Huh?  No... i would rather just rip hunks right off it! It is like candy.... who needs butter or jam? 

A stopping point on the High Road



Mango Blaster heaven



The only possible 'improvement' comes by grabbing a set of soft chairs in the coffee shop, and supplementing a stolen fistfull of warm bread with a warm beverage!  Well... Duncan would disagree about the value of the warm beverage, since he has discovered the delights of the much colder (and slightly more expensive) Mango Blaster Smoothie.  And if one's parents, in a moment of weakness, authorized a stop at the local Computer Games store, so much the better. 

...oh yes, "Cool Hand Duncan"...

....ah... i forgot one more thing about our night out to see Cool Hand Luke.  That is, "cool hand Duncan", who, in the middle of act 2, reached over, took my hand, and without a word, deposited this little gem in it.  Cool as a cucumber.  What mother DOESN'T love getting handed a tooth in the middle of a play! I didn't even know the tooth was loose!   of course, if I had know, I would have loved to have pulled it out for him, but my kids are always declining my offers of help in knocking the teeth out.  sigh.   I guess the only question now is the conversion rate from dollars to pounds.... how much should I pay for a tooth like this?

Cool Hand Luke

Well, it is 'term break' here in London.   Quite a new concept for me, I will admit.  The wierd part is not the notion that you might have a break in the term.  it is rather the notion that, after only 6 weeks of school, the kids would get a full week of holidays.  A full week?!    And we get THREE of these things this year?!  

Christmas came early



OK.  So... what to do during the break?  Lots of the kids and their families went off to travel during the break.  But... having travelled a long ways just to get HERE, i thought we would just stay the course, hang out here in London and do a couple of things.  Monday was "XBox Day".  yes... after months of begging, Steve finally relented, and found a second hand XBox with a bunch of games. Many happy hours were thus spent by both boys, reaquainting themselves with the worlds of Halo, Call of Duty and Fable. 

Tuesday, we headed out to see the new Tintin movie.  What I learned from the experience is that going to see a matinee during term break is a psychotic parental choice.  The movie theatre does not hire extra staff, but every child in a 10 kilmeter radius was there:  I stood for 45 minutes in the lineup to get drinks for the boys.  A good thing we were there early, AND that they run at least 25 minutes of previews and commercials before the film starts. Crazy.  On the positive side of things, we all enjoyed the movie.  We also concluded that snowy and kiwi are kindred spirits... and that snowy even SOUNDED like kiwi.   that was fun.

Wednesday, I decided it was time for a bit of 'culture', so i got us tickets to see another musical, this time:  "Cool Hand Luke".  Yes, you heard me right.... Cool Hand Luke as a musical!  I grew up with the iconic image of Paul Newman in the movie version of this story (of the war hero who ends up on a Florida chain-gang), so was looking forward to see what would happen in the translation of the book to stage instead of screen. 

Dinner at Smollensky's


As usual, we met up with Steve downtown, and tried out a new restaurant on the Strand.  It was a bit higher end than many of the pubs we have been trying out, so it made me laugh that Duncan still chose his standard pub fare (bangers and mash)!  Still, we had fun.  We ended up being seated right by the piano player (who started her jazzy set about 10 minutes later).  We had a protracted discussion about whether or not it is better to have live music or less noise so you can hold a conversation.  

Covent Gardens at night

We concluded that the answer depended on how interesting the conversation was!   :-)   Since we were playing the word game at the same time (the one that goes "I'm thinking of a word that rhymes with..."), we concluded that our conversation was indeed fabulous, and that it would be best to keep the piano player, but sit a few tables further away!   I left the boys at the table for 15 minutes to pick up our tickets from a friend waiting over by the Covent Garden Tube station.  Twillight was firmly upon us, and the streets were slick from an early rainfall.  You can't quite capture it in the photo, but try to imagine the lights reflecting off the rain soaked streets, with the sound of a musician in the corner playing Lakme, from Madame Butterfly, but on an eastern (japanese? chinese?) stringed instrument of sorts:  both beautiful and strange.  

Marquis at the Aldwych Theatre

Aldwych Theatre

So, tickets in hand, back to the restaurant to pick my three men, and then we joined the theatre crowds milling around on the streets, heading for anyone of the dozen theatres in the area.  We wandered around the corner, past the Waldorf Hotel, to the Aldwych Theatre.  You can read about the history of the theatre at this link: http://www.musicals-in-london.co.uk/venues/Aldwych-Theatre-tickets/19

I will say that Marc Warren did a pretty impressive job of  being"cool".   I had worried a little about how musical numbers would work for this prison story.  Perhaps wisely enough, none of the prisoners sing.  The music was more in the nature of background commentary via traditional spirituals and religious songs (ie. sometimes I feel like a motherless child, Down in the Falley, etc). We had tickets on row B, so we were close enough to see the tonsils on the women who provided the music for this bit of theatre.  It was interesting.  They did a good job of capturing the florida landscape, the feeling of the second world war in germany (well... the bombs made ME jump, that is for sure!), and the lingering PTSD suffered by the soldiers.  And the scene where Luke wins a bet that he can eat 50 hardboiled eggs in one hour?.... that one was probably worth the price of admission.  :-)

Sky above the Waldorf

 


Walking down the Strand

The evening over, we wandered back home.  The streets were still wet with rain, reflecting back the lights from the buildings and cars.  The sky was a gorgeous grey, and the weather still tolerably mild (in spite of the light sprinkle of rain).  We are still trying to figure out what to make of the very ending of the play... what does it mean when "the Boss" takes off his sunglasses at the end?!   Is he changed or not?  Who knows? 




 




 



Death and Football (american style!)

Go on my own or not?...

Harold Pinter Theatre

This week, the big question was whether or not to head off to see Ariel Dorfman's play "Death and the Maiden".  Well... it wasn't exactly a question.  I have been teaching the movie version of the play for years in the law/film class, but have never actually SEEN the play version.  How could I NOT go?!  The question was really whether or not to take the kids along with me.  Well... the play (which is all about finding justice in the aftermath of torture) did have a "not appropriate for 12 and under" warning on it.  So... I got a ticket for the afternoon matinee, and just went on my own.  Actually, I think it might be the first time in my life that I have gone of to the theatre on my own.  Now that I have jumped that hurdle, I can imagine that it will not be the last time!  :-)

The play was great (and if you want to read a great piece on the film/play, check out my friend Orit's article, which you can find at http://sitemaker.umich.edu/Orit_Kamir/files/maiden.pdf It was starring Thandie Newton in the role of Paulina (you may know her as Libby in the film Run Fatboy Run).  Such fun to see how it played out on the stage instead of on the screen.   The theatre was also quite lovely. I was saddened by all the "no photography" signs in the theatre, but you can see a ton of pictures of the theatre on the Arthur Lloyd website!  http://www.arthurlloyd.co.uk/HaroldPinterTheatre.htm

Rembrandt at 34

Rembrandt at 63

Well.... after indulging the fan side of me in a matinee performance at the theatre, I thought I would stroll over to the National Gallery, and say hello to a few paintings before heading home. This time, I had fun moving back and forth between two of Rembrandt's self portraits, one of him as a man of 34 , the other of him at 63 (the two paintings are in rooms next door to each other).

Bears vs. Skeleton Pirates

Trafalgar Square Fan Day!

After that, I headed out the front door of the National Gallery, to discover that there were plenty more fans out for the day:  this time time, fans of the NFL. Yes... it was "fan day" in celebration of the upcoming football game between the Bears and the Pirates.

St. Martin's in the Fields

Most of Trafalgar Square was blocked off, and there was a giant inflatable bear set up alongside a pirate ship complete with skelton on the prow.   I will say that they seemed a bit bizarre mixed in with the more traditional view of the four lions and Lord Nelson atop his perch!  There was also a stage set up with live performers, and a large video screen to make sure that everone could get a good view of the musicians.  I guess the square was providing something for everyone:  the sounds of drums pulsing from the square, with St. Martin's providing a different kind of music off to the left!  :-)