An Early Thanksgiving Celebration

Tuesday, November 25, 2008
London

My day began with a visit to my physiotherapist who says that she is very pleased with my progress. What she says does not please her is my impatience at wanting to get "back to normal" again. She tells me that it will be a while before I am back to normal, whatever that means. As long as I am not in pain, can go about my day with no discomfort or alternations in schedule, she says that I should consider myself well. The occasional tightness in my feet is a result of many factors, she explained. My posture, primarily, even when I am seated might have an impact. The nerves are a strange entity, she says, and while inflammation is subsiding in the tendons, the nerves may play up and cause me to feel twinges of pain or a bit of discomfort or tightness. All of this, she tries to convince me, are positive signs and not all pain should be construed as a negative thing.

In keeping with her advice, I am trying to focus on my progress and not on all the strange symptoms that seem to change daily. Meanwhile, she has changed my exercises and wants to me to do all kinds of contortions that involve a loosening of the muscles in my knees, thighs and butt as all of these affect the nerves in the foot, she says. Meanwhile also, she informs me that she is leaving for a two month vacation in her native New Zealand and wants to put me on to another physiotherapist in her absence. When I suggested a podiatrist instead, she was not enthusiastic, though she did not dissuade me either. She told me that if I simply continue all the exercises she has recommended, I will definitely get better provided I am patient and stay positive. I have now decided to find a podiatrist within my medical insurance network.

Right after my appointment with Megan, I took the bus to Trafalgar Square and spent an hour in the 20th century section of the National Portrait Gallery which I found the least interesting epoch in the gallery. Half of the section was closed anyway to accommodate the retrospective on the work of Annie Liebowitz for which the Gallery is charging a hefty entrance fee of 11 pounds. I decided to pass as I am bound to see her work in the States.

I got home instead to transcribe another interview I did with Doreen Samaroo and to rest before I started off on my evening's jaunt.

When I told my English friends in Southport, Connecticut (John and Diana Thomson, William and Caroline Symington, for instance) that I was headed to London for a year, they put me on to their contacts in London to enable me to create a small circle of friends with whom I could socialize once I arrived here. The Thomsons' contact, Janie Thomson Yang, and I have become good friends and have already done a few very exciting things together (the opening of a new art exhibition followed by dinner in Mayfair, dinner in Primrose Hill when Llew was here, Syon House and Park) and yesterday, I spent a lovely evening with the Symington's contacts, Robert and Caroline Cummings.

Robert Cummings is, in fact, the Director of Boston University's Study Abroad Program in London--a position he took on 4 years ago. He is himself an art historian (and, for my docent friends who are reading this), once taught Thomas Campbell who has just been appointed as Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in the place of Phillipe de Montebello. Robert is exceedingly proud of his former student's new appointment, by the way.

Anyway, Robert sent me an email, a couple of weeks ago, inviting me to a music recital at 43 Harrington Gardens, a lovely mansion that is called Boston House. Supper, he said, would follow "in someplace inexpensive". I accepted the invitation immediately, thinking what a great idea it would be to mark Thanksgiving in some concrete fashion (though I do intend to accompany my students tomorrow to the special service at 11 am for Americans at St. Paul's Cathedral. This will also allow us to take in the monument to the fallen Indians in the cathedral--including thousands of Anglo-Indians--who served in the British army in India.)

The bus ride was one of the most excruciating things I have ever taken and I have promised myself not to take them during peak hours and when I have to make an event at a fixed time. Also with night falling so rapidly and the freezing weather showing no signs of abatement, it is no fun looking for bus stops from which to take connecting buses, especially since I am unfamiliar with the routes. So, back to the Tube it will be for me in such circumstances.

I reached the concert late but managed to catch enough of the program to realize that these BU students are hugely talented. They presented a program of chamber music that included a variety of composers and instruments in a setting that was gorgeous. First of all, the interior of the building has been recently refurbished and glows with a colonial splendour. Secondly, the room in which the concert was held was recently wall-papered (was that a William Morris design I recognized?) and the old wooden panelling shone in the light from the brass chandeliers. The program of music ended with the community singing "Old B.U.", a song that Robert found on Ebay when surfing the web. It is an old college ditty that was 'lost' to time until it surfaced on Ebay! He had a group of students rehearse it, distributed photocopied sheets and invited the audience to join in a stirring rendition. It was a load of fun.

Cheese and wine and tiny pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting were served in the hall during the intermission and at the end of the program during which time Robert introduced me to his guests, I met a number of lovely people (which was the whole point of my attendance--I really am eager to make friends) who immediately included me in their circle and told me they must meet me again! I was pleased to see that they joined us for supper when I got to know Robert's wife, Caroline, a horticulturist by profession who designs residential gardens. I asked her if she was familiar with the English mystery series called Rosemary and Thyme and she said she had not, but would make an effort to see it. This series features two female landscape designers and gardeners who run their own business together and end up solving a murder mystery in each episode. Their knowledge of plants and gardens in some shape or form leads them to the main clue that helps them crack the murder. In addition to designing gardens, Caroline is also a independent movie buff and runs an indie film club close to her home in the country in Buckinghamshire. Needless to say, we had a LOT to talk about during dinner!

Dinner, by the way, was in a lovely restaurant (the "someplace inexpensive") called the Langan Coq D'Or (which translates from the French into the Golden Rooster of Langan!). Apart from Robert and Caroline, there was the lovely Swiss lady from Geneva Marilyn Rixhon (with whom I clicked immediately) and her Belgian husband Phillipe with their 13 year old daughter, the truly delightful Emma-Louise. There was also Loulou Cooke and her mother Helen whom I only got to a know a little bit during our ride home on the Tube as we were seated too far away across the round dining table.

I enjoyed every bit of our dinner. A few of the folks at our table ordered 'starters'--Caroline passed around her Beef Tartare with Celeriac Remoulade as a sort of amuse bouche--it was superb and according to Marilyn, flavored with truffle oil--ah, no wonder it was so good!). In keeping with the Thanksgiving theme and since I will not be eating turkey tomorrow, I decided to pick something from the menu that I thought came closest to American turkey--English partridge!! Indeed my dish was called Pan Roasted Partridge with Bacon and Chestnuts and it was superb--a sort of partridge au vin. It had been simmered in a rich gravy composed of red wine and roast drippings and the bacon gave it the richest flavor--throw bacon into anything, I always say, and it tastes fantastic!--and the whole chestnuts had a very unexpected texture indeed. Despite the fact that it was so delicious, my portion was so huge (somewhat unusual again for London, isn't it?) that I could only eat half of it and, since I am told that requesting a doggie bag is not kosher in the UK, I did not. Well, there went half my partridge and it broke my heart that it would be consigned to the rubbish bin. But when in London, eh?

Before we left the restaurant, Robert presented me with the business cards of the restaurant that featured paintings by David Hockney--it turns out that he and the Langan who opened this series of restaurants scattered all over London, were very close friends. The cards are tremendously eye-catching and will make a nice addition to the memorabilia that I am collecting for my scrapbook based on all my doings in London this year.

On the Tube on the way back home, I got to know Loulou and her mother Helen a little more as we had little chance to chat during dinner. Loulou is involved in a number of charities. Her husband, she informed me, used to date Caroline during their years together in Cambridge and remained friends over the decades. She has a home in Farringdon, not far away from my flat at all, as well as a home in the country where she resides most of the time. Her mother Helen specially came down on the train from Labor, North Yorkshire, where she lives, for the concert and a bit of Christmas shopping and, of course, to spend a day with her daughter, Loulou. By the end of our Tube ride, before I hopped off at Holborn, Helen told me that if I ever re-visit the Yorkshire Dales which I told her I loved so much, I must come and see her! Loulou and I made plans to meet for coffee while Marilyn and I said we would definitely get together before I depart for the States for my own winter break.

It was a glorious evening and truly put me into the Thanksgiving spirit. Llew has informed me that close friends of ours from Toronto, Canada, Tony and Sylvia Pinto and Trevor and Loretta D'Silva will be visiting us in Southport, Connecticut, over the Thanksgiving weekend. Llew has decided to make his signature dish, "Turkey Indian-style" for them. Chriselle will be spending Thanksgiving weekend with Chris and his family, the Harrises, in the Hamptons. I, of course, will be here in London where there is no sign at all of any Thanksgiving festivity but I will be at the service at St. Paul's, then will go out to dinner in the evening with my American colleague Karen and her husband Douglas who, I hope, is fully recovered from the annoying bug that the two of them picked up in Turkey. We should find a typically American restaurant that will serve us roast turkey and stuffing with gravy and cranberry sauce and corn bread and pumpkin pie but...I guess if we're looking for something traditional tomorrow, we might have to settle for good ole' English pub grub instead.