Au Bon Accueil

One of my first trips to Paris was with friends, in the winter. I remember we made our way to the Trocadèro and walked down to the Eiffel Tower and up the Champ de Mars to Les Invalides. It was beyond freezing, with a vicious wind and grim lowering leaden clouds. However, we were young and foolish and high on an exciting journey to the most glamorous city in Europe.

Yesterday, I retraced that walk with my friend Nicolas. We were in Paris to catch the Masculin / Masculin exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay and Nic had arranged for us to eat lunch at a friend’s restaurant near the Eiffel Tower. We got off the Metro at the Trocadèro to be welcomed by a sublimely beautiful winter’s day.

You just don’t get light like that in London - crisp and high-keyed and blindingly clear. The Trocadèro’s polished marble platform bounced it all around amazingly - heaven for two amateur photographers. In the distance, the tower shimmered like a mirage in the miraculously blue sky.
After walking down across the Seine to the tower we explored the bottom section of the Champs de Mars a bit before heading off to the restaurant: Au Bon Accueil - ‘The good reception’. And what a reception it is.

I was excited as although I’ve been a fairly frequent visitor to Paris I’ve never eaten at a smart contemporary restaurant at the top of its game. Au Bon Accueil has a deliciously lacquered maroon frontage onto the street, and is a calm refuge within - simple and luxurious textures of stone and wood enclose intimate spaces. One of the stone columns had been carved by a grateful customer - a Bacchus or vaguely Assyrian monarch surveys the room. Front of house staff were friendly and efficient - you just immediately feel in very good capable hands. We quaffed a delicious glass of champagne and consulted the menu.

It seems I have good luck with fish in Paris. On that earlier trip a waiter at La Coupole (of course) suggested a fish dish different to my initially ordered salmon. As it was cheaper I went with his suggestion but if my French was up to the menu I might have avoided it: I seem to remember it was mullet with red wine and bone marrow (??!) However, it came, and was totally wonderful. On my last trip - a work outing with colleagues - I was desperate to eat at the hottest, smartest place in town and spent the day trawling my trade fair consulting restaurant guides and barking instructions to Angela (who spoke French), to try to get a table. Sadly, everywhere was booked and when we got back to the hotel that evening the colleagues were too exhausted to go out, and suggested we eat at a place next door. This turned out, hilariously, to be a celebrity hang-out from the 1950s totally fossilised in its time. Our table was treated with disdain until we ordered a second bottle of wine. Jo didn’t want a starter and I fancied two on the menu, so ordered tuna tartare for her for me to eat. It came and it turned into a tuna stand-off, it was so delicious.

But my salmon starter at Au Bon Accueil trumped all: a generous slab of salmon fillet, briefly seared (basically, sashimi). Breathtakingly gorgeous - a real work of art, with delicate dabs of different sauces, condiments and vegetables arranged as if by a florist or a jeweller on the plate. Lovely textures and flavours, really leaving me wanting more: a perfect starter.

The arrival of our poached and roasted chicken breast main course was heralded on our table by a culinary implement I have not seen before: a “pelle à sauce” (sauce shovel). This is something I can get behind! Especially when the sauce in question was the unctuously smoky mashed potato accompanying the chicken.

Again, achingly beautiful composition was backed with flawless execution: the chicken was tender, flavourful and juicy, with skin crisped to perfection by the roasting. A drift of blanched brussels sprouts leaves across a smear of sweet potato added a touch of wit and colour to the plate.

For pudding I fancied the brioche perdu, which Nicolas informed me was French comfort food (he went for the chocolate tart). My brioche was lovely, a squidgy yet fluffy square of caramelised eggy goodness, punctuated by the sharpness of mango and passion fruit. It came with a separate jug of caramel-topped whipped cream. So perfect.

We ordered from the lunch menu and both thought it offered excellent value for the price. Although we both felt that nowadays one can find similar quality food in London, it typically comes at three times the cost. Also, in my experience the lunch menus in London tend not to be as generous or imaginative.
After this wonderful meal we said our goodbyes and hurried off to the Musée d’Orsay for Masculine / Masculine. All I can say is the quality of the reception at Au Bon Accueil is mirrored superbly by the quality of the food. I’d love to go back.

A London Weekend

However long you live here, London always throws up something new, surprising and fabulous. It’s diversity doesn’t stop at having the largest number of foreign communities resident - every Londoner’s specific interests are catered to in depth as well, allowing for wonderful crossovers, mashups and discoveries.

So this last weekend was a bit of a London mash-up for me. It started, as all good weekends do, on Friday evening. A friend treated me to a play at the National Theatre: This House by James Graham. This is not the sort of play I am usually interested in - contemporary, and about 70’s politics and House of Parliament procedures. My usual theatrical interests are Classics (deep!) and Stars (shallow!) - I recently took in James McAvoy’s Macbeth, covering both - so This House was completely off my radar until I saw a trailer for it at the cinema. It looked amazing! It turns out that it’s a National Theatre hit and had returned for a second run at the larger Olivier theatre.

We were lucky to get great seats in the auditorium. The staging has a block of parliamentary style benches on stage, and some lucky audience members get to sit on these - the blocks are on two of the Olivier’s revolves and swivel round for scenes set in the House for parliamentary votes. Most of the time they are flat on and the front of the stage becomes the Whips’ offices as they plot and scheme (Tories) or desperately try to keep things afloat (Labour).

The play covers events from the fall of Ted Heath to the rise of Margaret Thatcher, through the eyes of the Whips. The Tories are blasé, urbane, worldly, and have seen it all before. Born to rule. Witty, but prone to bullying their newbies and snobbish. They become increasingly nervous of the top dog as Thatcher entrenches her leadership (initially portrayed as a weird fluke they expected not to last).

The Labour side show mainly working class types and accents (and the only women MPs in the play). The men swear like sailor’s parrots and then apologise to the women, who get annoyed by the apologies. Wilson’s government had a wafer-thin margin and was expected to fall within weeks - however, it lasted 4.5 years, and the play shows the desperate lengths the Labour whips went to to keep it all together (and the lengths the Tories went to to take them down). It’s all very funny and engrossing but one is aware that Thatcher wins in the end and changes everything (the play ends with a recording of her famous victory speech in 1979).

We repaired afterwards for a debrief and cocktail at Skylon’s bar. I’ve not eaten in this restaurant in its current incarnation (I did before when it was run by a celebrity chef) - the room itself is so much more beautiful and glamorous now after the Royal Festival Hall refurb. It also benefits from the fifties revival trend. We quaffed fab cocktails, surrounded by Italians - so many of them around in London at the moment. Our discussions turned on the Parliamentary news of the moment - the spectacular and catastrophic fall from grace of Coalition minister Chris Huhne and his ex-wife Vicky Pryce, dubbed “the Clytemnestra of Clapham”. Indeed this is a greek tragedy, with both parties being sentenced to a jail term for perverting the course of justice today (over a speeding ticket in 2003!), but all their family dirty laundry has been fully aired in the press over the last few months. The Huhnes’ marital home was actually quite near to me, I’m familiar with their street in a “would love to live there’ kind of way. I also lived for many years with someone who went back and forth to Europe frequently, and would no doubt have known the stretch of road Huhne was caught speeding in (luckily, my housemate had a driver to ferry her to and from the airport so speeding was never an issue).

So far, so usual for me but Saturday would see me yanked right out of my usual tracks.

My niece is in a women’s eights team (Cantabridgian juniors) and was booked to race in the Womens’ Eights Head of the River Race (WEHORR) on Saturday. I’m vaguely aware of the Oxford/Cambridge boat race at the end of March but it appears that the whole of March is a big racing month on the Thames for rowers. My knowledge of rowing is not extensive (I called them ‘paddles’ and was put firmly right by a rowing mother - they are correctly called “blades”).

I met my brother and sister-in-law at the Battersea Affordable Art Fair where they had just made a purchase, and we taxi’d to the finish line at Putney Bridge just as the first boats arrived.

There were around 330 boats taking part. A ‘head’ race means they aren’t all actually starting at the same time - they are let go in batches in number order, so are racing against the clock. Coxes and teams use “Cox Boxes” to monitor their progress. The race goes downstream from Chiswick to Putney (the Oxford/Cambridge race goes upstream but timed to start on an incoming tide).

There was a great atmosphere amongst the crowds of supporters, and the sight of all the boats on the Thames was magnificent. we were treated to watching them sprint for the finish line in front of us and then double back past us to where they disembarked.

It took hours though for them all to come through, and the temperature noticeably dipped throughout the afternoon. After my niece’s team sailed past (they did well and were rightly proud of their achievement in their first big race, even with a broken cox box), we supporters all repaired to The Duke’s Head pub for a very late lunch.

The Duke’s Head is a quintessential rowers’ pub, and makes the most of its prime position on the start line of the Oxford/Cambridge boat race with a magnificent dining room - soaring ceiling and massive windows on three sides overlooking the river - and racing paraphernalia as decoration. The pub nails its colours firmly to the mast with its walls a Cantabridgian light blue.

Lunch/dinner was a hugely welcome wild boar burger with triple fried chips and a bowl of “allotment vegetables” - chanterey carrots, savoy cabbage and french beans. I toasted my niece’s team’s performance with a glass of sauvignon blanc, even as said team was whisked back to Cambridge thoroughly exhausted from their 4 hours on the icy river.

Spring in Clapham

A brilliant display of crocuses out on the Common this February - last year the early Spring was so hot it killed them off early

Lambeth Council at work pruning the large Plane tree at the entrance to the Common

Very neat work!

Meanwhile, on The Pavement, Boulevard cafe life gets into swing despite Arctic temperatures

The council men cleaning up after themselves

Industrial wood chipper in action!

dizzy daisies

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Glorious sunshine across the capital all weekend! Woo hoo! Hotter than the Mediterranean, etc etc etc. I always love the festive crowds enjoying watching life go by on the Common; it makes the area round here feel like Clapham-by-Sea. Well, we have our ponds, I suppose.

Brrrrrr

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The photos of our garden above compare the snowfall of last February (top) with that of this week (bottom). Not impressed! Although it is definitely colder than last year (and the cold is lasting longer), we haven't had nearly as much snow. I am very disappointed.

However, the whole of Britain is covered with the stuff, as the magnificent Nasa satellite picture below shows. Apparently, our Gulf Stream has diverted to Greenland and the Jet Stream is too far south, hence the freeze. Actually, despite all the "Global warming! Ha!" comments this is exactly what was predicted by the man-made climate change model. Thank goodness for the massive extension of wind farms off our coasts - when they all come on stream they'll generate 25% of the UK's electricity needs.

This has been all over the internet and was actually trending on twitter yesterday, but it's so special I'm posting it too. Hopefully this icy scenario won't be repeating too frequently.

Refrigerate . . . Refrigerate . . .

Strange weather, huh?

Why now, though? Climate change? Ha! The unusual weather conditions have allowed the infiltration into our midst of our most terrible foes - the daleks, in cunning snow disguise!

The sneaky so-and-sos are taking advantage of the interregnum between Doctors, no doubt. Matt Smith can't arrive too soon.

Sightings have been popping up all over the intermawebs:

dalek by Doktor Watson
photo by Ian Applegate, dalek by Doktor Watson
photo by Rob Gough

photos and dalek by johntk256
photo: Warrington Guardian


uploaded by sophiethevegetarian @ flickr

Luckily, I think a spot of central heating (in addition to the usual stairs) will take care of these chancers.

Kiddies and Kitties

Well, it's been a wonderful Bank Holiday Weekend here in Clapham, with glorious weather, mostly, even (the angry jinx gods of Bank Holiday weather clearly didn't get the memo until almost too late).

To round off the weekend, and to keep the joy flowing, I am posting two cute videos. I mine the interwebs for cute, so you don't have to . . .



The above is a live streaming "kitty cam" set up by one of my twitter contacts, @jenblower (so I don't know how long it will be up; sorry if it's gone by the time you read this). The kittens were born on Eurovision night. How cool is that?

I teared up about 2.5 seconds into the next video - see if you can do better . . .

Newsflash: Snow in London!

Boz alerts us to the legal imperatives here, so I rush to comply forthwith.

This is state of play at 1am last night:




and at 8 am this morning:



This BBC weather forecast made me laugh:



Meanwhile, out in the garden:



And on the Common:




The Common erupted in a frenzy of snowman making:




I spotted two ambitious souls making an igloo on the paddling pond. I'll check to see how far they got tomorrow morning: I'm [supposed to be] off to Birmingham!

Floods in Kingston

Last year we had spectacular flooding. The last several months have seen Thames Water digging vast holes in the roads and putting absolutely massive pipes down, all in an affort to protect us from more flooding. But this morning there was still an expansive lake under the railway bridge - great fun watching motorists splasing through it.

The Parakeets of Clapham

I have finally seen these mythical beasts with my own eyes – a rowdy group of around 12 birds were squabbling over a plane tree trunk outside Holy Trinity, Clapham – a most exotic sight and sound in the current deep freeze. The birds seemed completely undeterred by the weather: they have obviously acclimatised well.

Of course, nothing exciting can happen in the UK without being attacked by zombie bureaucrats – the poor parakeets are under sentence of death because they are too foreign. Are parakeets Brazilian? Avoid the tube!

Bah! Humbug!

I am turning into a recluse – really must get out more. This weekend was a complete washout, in more ways than one.

Saturday turned into a duvet day – I barely made it out bed. I snuggled up with a book and copious mugs of tea. Usually, duvet days invlove packets of Sainsbury’s Belgian chocolate chip and hazelnut cookies but mercifully for my diet not this time.

The duvet day stretched into Sunday.

Basically, the most exciting bit of my weekend was washing my woolly jumpers and bleaching the bathroom. Actually, bleaching was exciting – who knew how effective bleach could be? Only one mold spot left standing and that is slowly being worn down by liberal applications every few hours.

It’s not as if I lacked options – I was invited out to dinner on Saturday (but passed) and even more excitingly was offered tickets to the Arcade Fire gig at Alexandra Palace on the Sunday.

Now Arcade Fire is my favourite band of the moment and I actually tried to get tickets earlier in the summer – all sold out. So I should have been really excited and grateful that the universe had opened its bounty to me. But not. Sorry, Universe.

So, instead of having an exciting write-up on the Arcade Fire gig, I am blogging about bleaching the bathroom.

Sad, sad and sad.

under the weather

If I were Michael Fish, I would reconcile myself to the fact that my name, unlike the names of lesser weathermen, would live forever – admittedly not in the most glorious context imaginable, but hey. No-one can seriously blame Mr Fish for the hurricane of ’87; he was just the face on tv reporting the information he had been given. But unfortunately, he did make that comment:

"Earlier on today, apparently, a woman rang the BBC and said she heard there was a hurricane on the way... well, if you're watching, don't worry, there isn't!".

His claims now that the remark was made about a potential hurricane in Florida, that he wasn’t on duty *that* day, that the whole of Britain and the news media have gravely misremembered the actual situation, are just so embarrassing, pathetic, and demeaning.

live blogging from Kingston

Back from lunch now. Got as far as the first major puddle before giving up on trying to reach Kingston. Couldn't bear the idea of a service station sandwich for lunch, so settled in at Cafe Rouge for a nice poulet facie avec saute potatoes and spring greens, washed down by mineral water and cappucino.

Meanwhile, back in Clapham, our ridiculous 18th-century drains managed to keep the flood at bay. My neighbour Septimus cleared a few leaves out of the back one and it was fine after that but the front is very slow despite all efforts to clear it and the water level rose to the top of the front door step. Yikes!!!! - get contents insurance fast!!!! - a couple more inches and my little nest would be inundated.

Hoping the rain will keep off for a while - I'm sourcing portable water pumps, sandbags, etc even as I blog.

live blogging from Kingston

Rain much eased, but still falling. Water level has fallen on the London Road. Our basement is full of yucky oily brown water. Most cars seem to have been evacuated.

More importantly - what a day to come to work in old leaky shoes and have to go to buy lunch!!!

live blogging from Kingston

- rain easing off a bit.

- Emergency services' sirens iall around!

live blogging from Kingston

An apocalypse of water! The deluge is here!

- and the fire alarm has just gone off. Everyone is ignoring it.

- a pallet has just floated down London Road and into our carpark. Stuck going down to the Underground car park.

- people are photographing the Niagra down the steps into the underground carpark.

- our colleague L has just taken off her shoes and gone downstairs to rescue her car - before the carpark is completely underwater!!!

rain, rain, rain

All those annoying know-it-all voices claiming we were on track for the hottest summer ever have gone a bit quiet. I’m just saying.

no news roundup

I had a newspaper-free weekend! So no news snippets this week. I suppose the big news was the absolutely apocalyptically bad weather. A Bank Holiday classic - brilliant sunshine Thursday and Friday; clouds appearing Friday evening; Saturday miserable with intermittent showers all day; Sunday - rainly and cold all day; Monday - ditto; Tuesday - sunny, just in time for the working week! Blah! My theory is that the collective thoughts of the 60 million inhabitants of these islands somehow affects the weather - we fear it so much we actually make it happen.

Headed out this morning at 8.10am and was surprised by the sight of an amorous drake determinedly stalking a duck through long grass. An unsual sight on our side of the common - the duck pond is over on the south side. I don't know whether she was trying to throw him off and just wandered over our way, or else the ducks felt the weather had enlarged their normal habitat considerably. Personally, I missed my normal trek across the Common this morning because I didn't want mud all over my shoes.

Snippets

What I learned today:

1) A glass bottle keyring filled with coloured sands in pretty patterns bought at Johannesburg airport is not a practical idea.

2) Should have booked a cycle service earlier, before the good weather brought all the summer cyclists out of hibernation :-(. The cycle shop can only do me in two weeks time.

3) Focus! In a past time of major life changes, I simply lost everything that wasn't physically bolted to me. It looks like this is happening again. I left my keys on the till at Sainsbury last week, and on the till at M&S today. This time I twigged only when trying to reenter my front door. I had to walk back across the common.

4) Which wasn't bad, as it's a fantastically gorgeous day - London is truly at it's best on a perfect May day. Fresh greenery, tall blue skies, ambient temperatures, fresh breezes, sunbathers, picnickers, kite fliers, dog walkers, young mums with baby buggies, cyclists - the common was awash with neighbourly joy.

5) Global warming alert!! - normally, I start my hayfever medication the second week of May, but this year I started today - and it felt like it was in the nick of time! The botanists are saying all the plants are two weeks early, and my nose agrees!

6) Off to the Opera tonight! ~ Satyagraha at the ENO by Philip Glass.

trials and tribulations, cont.d

I'm just back from Johannesburg, South Africa - been on a mission of mercy. My poor father has been diagnosed with multiple myeloma and is already in a fairly advanced stage: he's been in hospital with a severe bout of pneumonia and septicaemia. He was initially expected to pass away over the Easter weekend, but a change of meds pulled him through.

So, I have been resident for the last few weeks in my parents' retirement home - with no internet access and therefore no blogging.

Of course, I was out there last year aound this time, for about three months. He had had a stroke and a fall and broke the C1 vertebra. The hospital he was admitted to - a very zooty northern suburbs one - did not diagnose the stroke or the myeloma. I learn from my reading now that fractures are a primary indicator of myeloma (and advanced age and maleness), as are opportunistic infections of the lungs and renal system (both of which he contracted in a big way immediately upon entering the hospital for 'tests' - he was in their ICU for 8 weeks). So it is not comforting that they missed it, but of course we can't really complain as the condition is incurable anyway.

So. Poor old mum is not accepting the prognosis at all, so that was difficult. But on top of all this she was served with a court summons from last year's doctor alleging non-payment of his bill!! So I had that to sort as well. Luckily a close friend in Johannesburg is an attorney.

The SA medical system has given me a new-found respect for the NHS. SA is completely privatised, so everyone has to have medical insurance. Every medical practice handles their accounts differently, and the practices sometimes claim directly from the medicial insurers and sometimes don't, depending. Neither speaks to the patient, and if you ring the insurers it is typical call-centre hell. Chaos!

Anyway, we gritted teeth and dug deep and discovered Dr M had in fact been overpaid by the medical aid - significantly so. And my mother, confused by the doctor's accounts department badgering, had paid the patient portion three times over. Taken together, the bill was paid literally twice over. And now Dr M is trying for a triple!

One doesn't know whether the good doctor is trying his luck with an elderly and confused patient, or whether his own accounts department is up to something - unfortunately, I gather neither scenario is unheard of. I have compiled all our evidence into a summary of payments and our lawyer is taking to their lawyers.

It's all just beyond belief.

Jo'burg was looking good - had a look at the inner city and felt it was very clean and spruce. The municipality's regeneration project is clearly taking effect. We still had heavy thunderstorms in the afternoons, a typical summer weather pattern for Jozi but very odd for autumn.