It's food Jim, but not as we know it

Dining at the Fat Duck
An odessey in one part
By Brock Mills

Present:
Mrs Michelle Mills
Ms Kirsty Smith
Mr Steven Bennett
Mr Rick Green

Apologies:
Ms Leesan McLeish (ill)

They say it's not the best restaurant in the world, which quite frankly defies comprehension to think that a dining experience could be better; as far as a meal goes, this was the whole box and dice and batteries and whatever else you get with board games these days.

Since we came to the UK, Michelle and I have had very little in the way of responsibilities and lots of disposible income. Now for a younger man or woman in a city like London this could be a recipe for trouble, but we are grown up and adult like so instead we have found ourselves spending money on things like holidays and fancy meals. Not that we didn't treat ourselves occaisionally back home, but in London we have taken it to the next level.

The Waterway in Little Venice does an excellent Rib Eye Steak and a excellent Corn Fed Chicken Risotto. Terroirs near Trafalgar Square is routinely excellent, with very nice duck scratchings a selection of petite plats that are all good, even the ball of anchovies. Hotels in Mayfair are pretentious but deliver the goods and we even happened upon an excellent Ethiopian restaurant in Kentish Town one evening where they serve curries on a big pancake thing. We had a tasting menu at a restaurant in Stockholm, not for any special reason, but just because it sounded nice. Michelle has even begun to appreciate red wine! As with any amatuer who thinks they can keep up with the professionals we decided to try our collective arms at a true fine dining establishment and, when you are talking Michellin stars, why settle for 1 or 2 when 3 are on offer. So we decided on taking on Heston Blumthal and The Fat Duck. I'd floated the idea with Shell and Steve and Kirst, who all agreed it would be good, so I decided to just book for as many as we could and back fill the spots with whoever was will to come along and shell out for the not incosiderable tarrif. This is our story.

I shall start with the reservation. You can book 2 months in advance of the day you will be dining, which is to say exactly 2 months beforehand is the only time you can reserve a table. I booked a meeting in my work calendar so no one else would expect me to do anything and spent an hour on the phone trying to get through to the reservations desk. It was like trying to get tickets to a music festival, I just kept ringing and ringing and finally got through, only to sit on hold for about 15 mins listening to someone narrate a story about Humpty Dumpty, no doubt designed to ensure only those who really want the booking stick it out.

Finally I got through and requested dinner for 6. No worries, but 9pm is the only sitting we have available she said (The lady may not have actually said "No Worries" but you get the idea). There's basically a contract that you have to sign in blood to actually make the booking, including a holding fee of £100 which they sort of refund off your credit card when you confirm the reservation. Complex and involved but it gave us something to look forward to. I raised the flag to the potential diners who all accepted the invertation enthusiastically, especially Steve whom I suspect had been researching the wine list and had a strong buy recommendation on the good wines.

Dining that evening we had Michelle, Steve, Kirsty, Rick and Leesan. Leesan went to school with Pieta and we are all mates from Uni and Rick is another Aussie from down the pennisula somewhere who is engaged to Leesan. Leesan couldn't actually make it since she was close to death with the flu, which actually caused a bit of a ruckus as we tried to fill the empty seat - one does not let these reservations go to waste - but in the end just cracked on without her. As we met at Paddington station, the rest of us were as keen as a certain brand of mustard.

The restaurant itself is in a small village called Bray which is about 40 miles from London, so we headed out on the train to Reading where we booked some cheap rooms at the Novotel, about a 20 min drive from the village, and prepared. Michelle and I had spent the day cleaning up and finishing off moving out of our flat, so we had been a little bit stressed out earlier in the day. We had got all of our tasks finished though and it was hoped that dinner would turn a productive day into a great one.

Heston Blumthal has a pub in Bray village across the road from the restaurant so the plan was we would cab it out to the village about 7, have a couple of cheeky ones beforehand and then make a grand entrance for out 9pm sitting. That is what we did, although somehow we managed to get the bar tab to 50 quid in one and half hours for 5 people. Finally the hour arrived and with a few photos underneath the sign out the front, a knife, fork and spoon shaped from duck parts - clever! - we entered. The building is one of those ancient wooden framed jobbies they do so well in UK that was probably built in the 17th century and is all sagging beams and crooked walls. It fitted the theme of the night. We were all in very high spirits and keen with anticipation, partly because we'd worked ourselves up with how cool are we going to his place and all that, partly because we knew we were up for a fortune and partly because it was genuinely exciting to be eating there especially after we watched a couple of documentaries/reality style tv shows starring Heston and his cooking.

So we were completely in the thrall of celebrity and wern't we all very excited about it. The rule on cancellations is that you pay £100 per no show, so we hadn't actually informed them we were one short and on getting there we had to wait a little while as they reset the table for 5. We sat down and were introduced to the maitre'd, our waiters that would look after us; there was 2 of them and they alternated courses unleses the maitre'd was required for a particularly complicated peice of serving - I've a feeling he was the only one qualified to cook with the liquid nitrogen. That wasn't to mention the servers who would not say anything and clear the dishes en masse. Oh and then there was the young Frenchie sommilier who was in command of the wines.

So we sat down and they served us some bread and still water, which is usually bad idea as they sting you about £10 a bottle. But we were all still a bit over awed and got it anyway. The bread was very nice and they provide 2 types of butter, salted and unsalted, made in the kitchen of course. No little foil wrappers on the butter here! We all became butter connisuiers for 15 minutes as we analysed the different types and ate more butter on 3 bits of bread than I would usually eat in a month. The consensus was the salted butter was better. It is quite funny how much more attention you pay to something when it is served with a refined french accent and a description on where it came from and how it was made.

Now when dining on a Saturday night at this sort of place you dont really get to choose what to eat. They only serve the tasting menu which is a fixed cost, £130 per head, but where you do get some choice and the chance to show a little individual flair is the wines. There was a wine list book the size of the Times Atlas containing some extraordinary wines matched by extraordinary prices. Or, if one is so inclined, you can take the degustation option which consists of the good wines - £90 per head - apparently matched very well but not A1 quality, or the really good wines: > £90 per head. Now this may seem a lot, but there was 13 courses ahead of us and it was 1 glass of wine to every 1.4 courses. Generally the wines were not what you would expect. There were Pourtugese reds, a Bulgarian tokay, a Kiwi white and other assorted bits and peices.

Prudently, we all went for the good stuff.

So finally we got to the food. The first course was for the cleansing of the pallate with "Lime Grove". Old mate the maitre'd rocked up with his little wooden push cart trolley thing that would come to hold our attention like a tennis ball holds a dogs. On it this time he had a whipped cream dispenser, you know the sort with the little co2 cylinders that we used to set off as bombs, filled with a lime mousse, and a metal bucket filled with liquid nitrogen. He squirted a bit of the mousse mix into the nitrogen and sort of stirred it for 20 seconds. He then dusted it with this bag full of green powder that turned out to be green tea and served it on a plate, instructing us to put it in your mouth and kind of swallow it before it dissolves. The final piece of theatre was a spray of a lavender scented perfume thing in the air in front of your face just as it was eaten. But eaten isn't really the right word for how it is consumed. It was really cool - both literally and conceptually. This thing - a little frozen ball of deliciousness - just kind of vanishes in your mouth with a bit of freezer burn and all this cold smoke coming out of your nose like a dragon. The pallette was cleansed. It was tasty, fun and of course there was a wine that perfectly complimented the taste.

The next course was a sorbet, eaten with less excitement Lime Grove but it did allow us to relax, settle in the swing of things and treat it as a meal.

The next 4 hours was filled with more of the same, food presented in a way that you wouldn't dream of. Licorice poached salmon, fois gras, an unbelievably good wood pigeon with black pudding that was more like a delicate sauce than stodgy chunk of charcoal sausage. We ate truffle toast! The truffle toast was superb, even though it was the size of a stick of wrigleys chewing gum. It actually got to the point where you would think "well this particular dish is amazing, but I'm glad it's only the size of a 50 cent peice since to eat more of this would mean less of something else that might just be so good that I will lose my mind altogether, rather than just partially and temporarliy as is happening right now"

The sensory overload was something else. The tastes, smells and textures all conspired to deconstruct expectations and desires until you were at the mercy of the restaurant. And then, when you came to accept and appreciate the food, the wines stepped it. Now I am not afraid to admit I am hardly a wine connisuer, however much, on receiving a bottle of the second least expensive wine on the menu, one may make a scene of gargling and swishing, considering the tanins and generally making the waiter wait whilst ensuring the wine I had just ordered is up to my expectations. I do this, not for the exacting quality I have come to expect, but as a bit of show for my fellow diners or as a warning to the serving staff I am know my stuff and am not to be trifled with. I could probably pick a red from a white in a blind taste test. Once in Cuba, I almost sent back a bottle of wine that had just being opened (In the end we drank it after I decided that it wasn't corked or faulty from some production process, just of very poor cuba standard quality). I do, however, know what I like.

I liked the stuff we were served at The Fat duck. We drank a Hungarian tokay that smashed apart dessert wine expectations ingrained through years of Army dining in nights, which is to say not great expectations, in one mouthful. A portuguese red that was soft like a nerf ball, yet strong like a gorilla. A Marlborough Chardonnay that broke down years of predjudice to oaked Whites. A sake that tasted like sake, despite the waiter assuring us of its high quality "although traditionally served warm, we serve it cold so you can actually taste it". Oh well, they couldn't all be loved. If I were a bit more educated I could probably quote some poet or monk on the nature of wines and their ability to improve life or something, but I can't. All I can say is the wines certainly added to the enjoyment of the entire experience. And they assisted in getting us drunk which was a added, if not entirely unexpected benefit. 9 glasses will do that.

"So what was your favourite?" I hear everyone ask. Well there are 2 dishes that are forever burnt into my memory. The Not So Full English Breakfast was ace. In keeping with the theme of never matching a preconceived idea, breakfast was served for dessert. It began with a bowl of cereal that looked like cornflakes but was in fact parsnips with milk that wasn't milk. It was nice, but the real treat was the Egg and Bacon ice cream. Jaques, or whatever the Frenchie Maitre'd's name was, rolled his trolley over again. We all sat, rigid, eyeing it off and waiting to see what would happen next. He again produced the liquid nitrogen cooking bowl, but this time he had eggs with him. Accompanied by a little spiel about the special fat duck chickens and their special diet and methods of rearing etc etc, he cracked the egg into the nitrogen and sort of pushed it around a bit for 20 seconds or so. He then served in on a plate with some French toast with caramelised pancetta. It looked like ice cream. The texture was like ice cream, but it tasted like Bacon and Eggs! I knew this was coming up and thought "I wonder what bacon and eggs tastes like when it isn't actually bacon and eggs". The answer my friends was right here on the plate. Unfortunately the best description I can come up with is that it tasted like bacon and eggs. I loved it. Shell thought it was a bit strange.

The second one was name Sounds of the Sea. The serving staff attacked en masse, this time with two plates: on one sat a large conch shell with some headphones hanging out of it, on the other was what can only be described as the beach. There was sand. There were those funny seaweed things that spurt water when you squash them, There were peices of fish and, just to make it complete, foam that looked just like the froth left on the sand after a wave has broken and water retreats back into the ocean. Left alone by the waiting staff, we all put the headphones in, which was just a soundtrack of waves and seagulls squawking, and started to eat the beach. The sand was made of tapioca and tasted sweet. The fish was bits of white fish, perhaps smoked, or perhaps not, I can't really remember. The foam was delicious. I have no idea what the seaweed thing was made out of but it was tasty. It was quite surreal as we all sat in silence, listening to the waves crash and the seagulls carry on as we ate the scenery.

It was very, very good. If it sounds like I am carrying on a bit or perhaps laying it on a bit thick, which I am, it is deserved. This place really is like nothing else I had ever experienced as far as eating was concerned. And like a Beatles best of it was hard to pick a favourite, because each courses had some defining characteristic that made it memorable. Everyone enjoyed themselves immensely, so much so we hit the cheese board and got another bottle of red for good measure. When the time finally came for us to leave, which was 1:35am, we were very content. And then to top off the perfect night the minicab driver couldn't find our hotel and I got to have a vigorous debate about his knowledge of where he was in the world, his personal hygiene and many other interesting topics. It was the icing on the cake, where the cake was a beach and the icing looked like seaweed.

The Menu
TBC

References
www.fatduck.co.uk

Havana Nights (and other cuban tales) - Part 1

I would not vote for the mayor. It's not just because he
didn't invite me to dinner, but because on my way into town from the
airport there were such enormous potholes.

Fidel Castro

And nor would I vote for Fidel, on the strength of the pot hole argument alone. It is also a fair bet that neither would 11 Million Cubans, given the chance. But, earlier than usual, I digress. The two things they do properly in Cuba is cigars and pot holes. The cigars are, provided you go for the good ones such as Cohiba or Romeo y Julieta, excellent. With the pot holes there is no need to be discerning; they are world class and they are everywhere.

It was a cold and pretty miserable March day in London when we set out for the tropical communist paradise of Cuba, to enjoy a well deserved 2 week holiday of sun, sand, rum and 30th Birthdays. With my 30th brithday bearing down and Bennett's following 5 days later we thought it appropriate to bring in the new phase of life with a bang in Castro's Cuba. Steve had organised a group of 10 inteprid travellers and Steve's girlfriend Kirsty organised the trip (Cubatour!), Shell had booked the flights and I had organised a month off from work

Brock to boss: "I'm taking a month off, I hope that's ok..."

so before I knew it Michelle, Steve, Kirsty, Paul (Divey from here on in) and I were sitting in bland high street chain coffee shop at Heathrow waiting to get on a plane. 2 other friends from University, Jo and Marie, were already in-country and Todd and Zoe were flying out the next day. Damo was the last of the group, joining us 4 days later mid tour in Cuba. We flew via Paris and after a long arduous flight, with only 1 meal I might add, we finally arrived in Havana.

Cuba is an interesting place. Muy, muy interesante, as the locals would say. The largest island of the Caribbean, a world power in the production of sugar and women's volleyball and a thorn in the side of US politics constantly for over 100 years. They have one of the world's highest literacy rates, a highly advanced biotechnology industry and a average monthly wage of about $20. The entire country is steeped in history, especially so in the exciting bits of yore, with towns ravaged by pirates, a US cavalry charge, a government effective controlled by the Mafia and finally a communist revolution that gave rise to the "New Man".

I like the concept of the New Man. Che Guevra's raison détre, it drove large parts of the revolution, especially after the military victory. It was a typically flawed socialist ideal of a worker who toiled for love of the state rather than personal gain, with typically socialist results of people that didn't love the state nor do any work; predictably ending up in widespread economic depression and politcal repression.

As the revolutionary fervor passed and Cuba entered the long dark reality of centrally planned economies and never ending 3 year plans, the rich and varied history became a homogenous lump of failures - the 10 million ton sugar harvest, artificial trade supports - Huge amounts of Soviet money for whatever crap the Cubans could churn out, and failed revolutions elsewhere in the world - over 450,000 sent to fight, 10,000 dead in Angola! Angola for goodness sake! Why would Cubans need to go anywhere near Angola? I understand the need for the communists to search build new markets for their revolutionary fervor and soviet arms however the very idea that Cuba would need to fight a war that in terms of manpower was about twice the Australian commitment to World War 2 does boggle the mind and lead us to ask - are these people insane?

Before I search for the answer to that question, I shall recount our travels which I hope will convey my impressions of what Cuba has become in the modern world since, as the saying goes, the proof is in the all inclusive, repetitive and stale pudding.

Flying into to Havana was exactly what I was hoping for - Sunshine, warmth and friendly enough immigration control who didn't seem to mind our handwritten visa's. We managed to get from the Airport to our first hotel with out too much trouble. Except for getting cash, that was a bit of trouble. Cuban money is fraught with problems and beset with trouble. The root of our present problem were, as with lots of things here, of Fidel's doing. Cuba, being a managed communist economy, shares much in common with other managed communist economies. Deciding on a value of their currency right at the forefront of the issues faced. Since the government manages, or at least attempts to manage, the prices of everything they can retain a vice like grip on the domestic value of the peso, in the case of the Cubans the Peso Moneda Nacionale (MN) or as I will refer to it from now on, the Worthless Cuban Peso (WCP). Since the WCP can't really be exchanged for goods or services no one actually wants any of these. They do get around though as all salaries are paid in the WCP. Oh sure you can purchase stuff with it; the following list is what I saw available for sale

• a burlap sack with some rice in it,
• a very cheap flight from Santiago to Havana (subject to availability: current waiting time about 3 years)
• some tinned food including black beans and white beans
  
• counterfeit cigars

Unfortunately for the Cubans, that is a comprehensive list. And whilst US$1 will get you 24 WCP's or so the fact you cant buy anything you want with it makes the peso functionally worthless, especially when they deal with foreigners who are certainly not interested in the beans and rice, and only marginally interested in the conterfeit cigars. This led the Cubans to introduce a new parallel currency (masters of financial innovation!) for people with real hard currency (US dollars, Pound Sterling, Argentinian Peso, you know stable money) to exchange - the Convertible Peso (the CUC). The convertible is pegged to the US dollar at about CUC$0.92 to US$1 and can be used to buy things: Dinner was generally about CUC$10; we bought a round of Mojitos in a crappy bar in Havana for CUC$5 each; a 750ml bottle of olive oil can be purchased for about CUC$60. With the notable exception of Rum (CUC$3 for a 750ml bottle) and Cigars (about CUC$2-4 each) Cuba is very, very expensive.

But I digress. We were at the airport and needed some cash - any sort would do - to get into town. We'd done a bit of research before leaving and I'd found a couple of websites saying that there were lots of ATM's in Cuba and they worked well as long as your Card wasn't issued by a US company such as Visa. We'd bought some pounds just in case (about 500) but were planning on using the ATM's for most of our purchasing needs. So we found the cash machine at the airport and I tried my card (RBS). No joy. Shell tried her card (Barclays). Nope. Hmmmm, we started thinking. Steve tried his card (HSBC, Premier account no less). No. Divey tried his card (NatWest), and lo and behold money magically appeared from the machine, with us none the wiser as to why our cards failed. We found a taxi driver, negotiated a price in spanish and we were on our way.

Havana was just like I'd imagined it. Ancient cars spluttering along highways bereft of clutter such as line markings or traffic signals, a bus that was well beyond full, beautiful sunshine and all sorts of people taking it easy. Our first night was spent in the rather salubrious Hotel Parque Central, one of the newer and better hotels in Havana, notable for it's rooftop pool with excellent city views. We hit the pool to try and wind down after the long flight and, after a shower, met up with Jo and Marie who had arrived from Australia the day prior. We had a refreshing Mojito and admired the views and enjoyed the warmth. The city is like nothing else you can imagine. There is the huge Captitolo building, built in 1929 and modelled on the US Congress, but bigger and with more bits falling off. The rest of the city was a visual cacophony of ancient buildings that were either in the process of or had just finished collapsing, nasty 60's style 6 storey concrete horrors that were stained with age and neglect and occaisionally a lovely old buildings such as the Telegrafo Hotel that had been looked after and restored.

We headed out for dinner and found, with the help of a tout, a rather strange restaurant on the 2nd floor of a old building that looked like a construction site from the outside but turned out to be quite a nice place inside. I had a smoked pork loin, Shell had something really garlicky and the general consensus was that it wasn't too bad, if a bit more expensive than we had thought. The next morning we had a nice hotel breakfast and day to explore the sights of Havana. We set off walking around the Capitol building, found an old Cigar factory and wandered around marvelling that a place like Havana can exist in 2009. I can't really do it justice in description, it needs to be seen, smelt and tasted. The roads are in a terrible state, families live in apartments in buildings that would be condemned in Cambodia. But still there are shops selling popcorn and ice cream and we even saw an Adidas store. Later on we found out that we had been walking through Havana Centro, a nasty part of town which is pretty much last on the list of Havana suburbs schedule for restoration. We still had fun walking around, trying to dodge the rubbish and gigantic old cars that tore up and down the streets.

We found a small bar along some back street and thought let's get another mojito. We walked in and caused a rucus! Such excitement, people running all over the place babbling in spanish trying to get 7 chairs sorted out for the gringos. Getting caught up in all the excitement, no one really asked how much a drink would cost so we bought them for anyone that would come and sit near us. It was actually quite a lot of fun. They spoke no english, we spoke very little spanish but we talked. Everyone was in good spirits until the crusty old guy Divey and I had been trying to talk to - me gusta cerveza! - decided it was time for us to go and meet his cousin to buy some cigars, much cheaper than at the shops. We weren't really interested, which got him a bit agitated and then he started carrying on a bit. He eventually settled down but I'm sure he tried to put some voodoo curse on us or something. At the very least he got the bar owner to charge us about 10 times the value for the drinks; the bill showed $40 CUC for a round of 8 mojitos, which worked out to roughly $85 Australian dollars. A bit annoyed but putting it down to the fresh tourist tax that all must pay, we cracked on.

Eventually we found some hotels that had a restaurant attached and had lunch that again wasn't bad as long as you didn't get fancy. I wasn't too hungry so I thought I'd get the Bread with Tomato, Ham and Cheese. I've no idea what I was thinking: I guess I wanted a bruschetta sort of thing with some nice bread, fancy proscuitto and good cheese and perhaps some olive oil, who knows? We already knew that nobody goes to Cuba for the food. Read it a million times. It's usually the first thing people say when you mention you are travelling to Cuba, but I'd forgotten all that, and ordered the Bread with Tomato Ham and Cheese. Imagine you asked a 10 year old who had never seen a sandwich to get you a plate with bread, ham, cheese and tomato. That's what I got. A plate with a bit of bread (stale) on one side, 3 half slices of the standard evil cheese of cuba - it's a bit like kraft singles but more processed and plasticky, half a sliced up tomato and cuban ham. For all their acheivements, one thing they do not do well in Cuba is food. And among the things they do worst with respect to food is ham. It looks bad. It tastes bad. I doubt it is made out of pig at all, or if it is the pigs must lead a hard and unpleasent life. They must be especially punished and tortured to really ruin the animal before it goes to the ham factory. Or maybe there is only one ham factory for the whole country and they don't have a very good recipe. Whatever the causes one thing is for sure: if word got out to the cuban population at large about the sort of ham you can get in the real world there would be civil unrest, coups and revolution. It is that bad.

And there it was, my $5 CUC lunch staring me in the face. A peice of bread, half a tomato, cheese and this ham. Not really what I was expecting but exactly what I had ordered. Abd you don't go to Cuba for the food, do you? Shell got homestyle chicken which was ok, Steve got fish which he said was good so I must have just been unlucky I thought. But I did learn an important lesson - our expectations on the food would need to change. On the flip side, the beers were good, the company good and the taxi we got back to the hotel only broke down once and ran out of petrol once so it was all looking up.

We got back to the hotel, and although we had actually checked out as we were staying in a different hotel that evening, we went for a swim anyway and had another drink on the rooftop bar! Some guy asked us if we were staying at the hotel - of course we are. At least we were.... Anyway we needed to find the new hotel so I again got to employ my newly aquired spanish language capabilities. Picking one of the few hotel employees that wouldn't speak spanish I wandered up and said

Me: "Excuse me, where is Hotel Plaza?"
Him:

Maybe I should try a yes no question

Me: "Is it far?"
Him: "No", which I understood. And then he started laughing a bit with his mate
Me, brandishing a very poor map: "Where?"
Him: "It's next door", of which I kind of picked up the gist
Me: "In front of this?" - I don't know how to say next door in spanish
Him: "Yes, just left" - but I struggle with the word for left. I am, however, good at the word for right
Me: "No right?"
Him, still thinking this was all very funny, walked out the front so he could point it out to me: "There"

And it was across the road, perhaps 12 metres away. But at least I'd found it. Finally Todd and Zoe arrived, we checked into the new hotel which, was a bit more "real" insofar as Cuban hotels would go, and we headed out for some Italian, which was ok with the exception of the ham. After dinner some of us headed out for a drink whilst others conserved their strength because tomorrow, with our travelling group almost complete, we were ready for the next phase: The tour!

Coming up in Part 2 - The Tour we meet Carlos, Mike and the bus and we head west to find the real Cuba!

Parisian adventures with Aunty Libby and Alex

My Aunt Libby and my cousin Alex stayed with us in London for a few weeks in February, we all headed to Paris together for an amazing but cold long weekend.

I'm not being lazy,but I have decided to publish my Aunt's account of our weekend, as I think she has summed it up better than I could have. Also its nice to hear it described as seen through the eyes of someone who's not at all sick of looking at European churches and likes pastries almost as much as we do!

Paris, what can i say, it is the most magical city. It's streets are all cobble stones and narrow, there are patisseries on every block oozing with all their wonderful pastries and breads. We went to Norte Dame and the Louvre on the first day.

Notre Dame is a peaceful place, although there would have been 200 people in there looking around at the time there was still an amazing sense of peace and calm. There is no talking allowed when inside so even though it was full of people the silence made it even more special to reflect on the feelings you felt. I again lit a candle for my family and friends and a special one for Tash and her family. The Notre Dame is still a running church where it has small services everyday and it's traditional one on Sunday's.

We proceeded onto the Louvre, again what a place! It is big big big, we covered a lot of ground but really you need the whole day there if you want to see it all, maybe 2. We visited the famous painting of Mona Lisa and many more interesting paintings, statues and jewels. Not only are all the art works on display amazing but the building it self is worth the look.

In Paris everywhere you look they have amazing statues, lamp posts with statues, you turn a corner and look up and there is a building holding statues covered in gold leaf or green copper. The history in Paris is everywhere. I am glad we were there with Michelle and Brock, Alex and I can not speak French let alone read it, Brock and Michelle could read a couple of words and say some phrases, the waiter was very helpful. (Finding somewhere to eat dinner was an interesting experience, but we picked somewhere that was full of locals and were well rewarded)We had tea and called it a night (Exhausted, I have to add - ed).

2nd day in Paris, we went on a walking tour of the village of Montmatre, on the north side of Paris up the hill. The girl who was our guide was an excellent story teller. She took us to the house where Picasso, Toulouse-La Trec and Van Gogh , and told us of their lives. On the tour we started in the middle of hill and worked our way up.

As we walked up the hill over the cobble stones and through the narrow streets, our guide talked of all the history of the place. When we reached the top there was yet another church - the Sacré-Cœur, the hordes of people as promised by our guide, tourist stands with all the cheap tourist crap and a view of Paris that was fantastic. We worked our way down, this time 'til we came to a street full of strip joints, where the Moulin Rouge is. It was horrible and seedy. It was amazing how a little hill on Montmartre can hold 3 different kinds of lives!

Next stop was the Eiffel Tower (which i was calling the Leaning Tower all day daaaaa!). We took the lift up to the 2nd level as the top was full...

I am glad we only went to the 2nd level, I found the lift ride quite scary i had to close my eyes. Once we were out side on the level it was OK. It was now night fall and the tower lit up as did the city, what a spectacular view! You can see all of Paris from every different angle. You could even see down the long stretch of the river right up to the Sacré-Cœur on the hill in the village of Montmartre! On our last day in Paris we walked the famous road of fashion, a lot of beautiful stuff but with a big price, I took some photos of some shoes to show Xenia the fashions, even if I could afford to buy any they are much to nicer to anything in Tassie! The Parisian food was as good as you would expect, the pastries even better. People in Paris seem to all have dogs they take them every where, there is a lot of dog poo on the footpaths but you learn to watch your step as you are walking. Paris on a whole is a beautiful place, I would highly recommend it to any one."

We all had a great weekend in Paris, it really was cold, snowing even at one stage. It was great to spend time with Libby and Alex seeing as she has now returned to Australia(for the time being?). Brock loves France, I think mainly for the food, but you know what they say "the way to a mans heart is through his stomach". I think both the city of Paris and I have that under wraps!

Random musings on the United Kingdom

When one considers the United Kingdom is the country that gave the world the Magna Carta and the Beatles, the current achievements lead me to think there is something rotten in the state of Denmark. With Denmark, of course, being the great UK.

London is presently my favourite manifestation of the national misadventures of the UK. Truly one of the worlds great cities, pockmarked all over with structures that pervade both my conscious and sub conscious; Westminster, Tower Bridge, Piccadilly Circus, Buckingham Palace: places that you have been and seen before you have even been there. And it's not even the big tourist icons, it's things like the view from Primrose hill or the curves of the Thames. There's all this stuff that you know because, as an Australian at least, culturally, your culture demands that you recognise.

The really cool part of that cultural memory bobs up when you walk up Regent St and admire the grand Victorian buildings, or perhaps wandering among the bars and restaurants around Soho. Standing in the shadow if St Stephens tower while Big Ben drowns out the latent city noise it's hard to escape the achievements of British civilisation. And, for me, that compounds the, well not constant, but pretty frequent stream of dissapointments, inconveniences and generally being let down by the British service industry and the damned propensity of the people of this country to put up with second best.

The past civil achievements are magnificent. Londoners managed to construct the Circle Line Tube, right underneath some of the most expensive real estate on the planet. Underground, using futuristic mass public transport methods that had only just been invented they built an amazingly effective and useful system that worked so well they replicated it over and over until the city was riddled with underground train lines. All this in 1854 when Melbourne was a smaller city than Ballarrat. Then when they invented electric trains, they installed them and put the entire fleet into service in 11 days. A fairly impressive achievement and no doubt an indication as to why Victorian Britain was the greatest civillisation the world has ever seen.

Now lets zoom forward to 2009, where it is taking 18 months to replace 15 escalators at Bank station. Basically you can hardly move around the station if an escalator is involved. My engineer friends assure me that escalators are a tricky business and that they are much easier to build from scratch than replace etc etc etc.... They are replacing 0.8333333 escalators a month. This strikes me of a lack of will, or organisation, or who know what. Sloth perhaps?

But it's not just the tube, although living with it daily means it is always near the top of the complaints list. No, London has other problems. Fly tipping, for instance. Basically people put their rubbish on the street quite a bit. Why anyone in a modern soceity would think it is ok to just dump your rubbish on the kerb is quite beyond me, but Londoners love it. My guess is they know they can get away with it, which segues quite neatly to the general standards of service. On my scorecard it's a poor to very poor. Anyone who has opened a bank account, got a mobile phone contract, talked to any service provider about anything will know what I am talking about and this experience invalidates any argument that a larger market and more competition improves customer service. They are all as bad as each other. The list of gripes grows ever larger:

* sunday shopping hours

* the false outrage against Bankers' Bonuses from MP's committees

* The fact that 1 guy (the Duke of something or other) owns Mayfair

* Flood Plain insurance subsidising people whose house is guaranteed to get flooded every 5 years

They just aren't doing as well as they have in the past. In Melbourne when there is a total lack ability to do difficult things, such as fix the public transport system we make excuses - the city is too big, there is no real cost benefit, it's just for rich inner city residents yada yada yada there's a hint of truth to the excuses. Here they try to do all the great nation building things but just cock it up. It's good to be somewhere where the nation is willing to have a go at the hard stuff, but the results are just so disappointing.

But then the sun starts shining, U2 play a secret rooftop gig on Regents St, You go out in Covent Garden on a Saturday night, see a West End show (the Lion King - excellent!!) and all of a sudden it's not so bad. In fact London is really cool. Sure they can't make the tube work and the nation is not what it once was but you know they still do a brilliant city. For all its failings London is a place that people want to be. And if you get a bit sick of it, Paris is a 3 hour train ride away!

I love Paris (but not as much as I love London, which is less than I love Melbourne, which is marginally less than I love Richmond)

Shell turns the big 30 in style, Tignes, Espace Killy, France

After a festive period of over indulgence we headed to France to perfect our snowboarding. Potatoes cooked in goose fat were a highlight of the festive season for both of us so we thought that post New Years something needed to be done to rectify the fattening side effects of these.

It was luck that the lovely Ainslie (a colleague of mine at GOSH) had very drunkenly at our house warming party invited us to Tinges in France for a week of snow adventures. I really didn't want to be at work for my birthday and Brock really wanted to get to the snow this winter so we jumped at the chance to get away with a bunch of her friends (detecting a theme here). In the end a few of my friends jumped on the band wagon as well so then there were 10 of us which made for a pretty good contingent. Out of 10 of us we had 6 radiographers and one radiologist, a research scientist who is trying to get into medicine and a token computer nerd and an accountant just to even things up a bit.

We made the interesting and in hindsight questionable money saving decision to catch the bus all the way from London Victoria bus station to Tignes. We departed after work on Friday and arrived at lunch time on Saturday. It would have been better if our seats actually reclined, the DVD played worked and if Tweedledum and Tweedledee our drivers could have sorted out the air conditioning. I won't complain too much as it was no where near comparable in length or painfulness to our Laos to China bus ordeal of 2008. In the end I was just thankful that the toilet stops actually involved real toilets and that there were no leeches. However we did spend more money at a service station on two sandwiches than we did the entire week were in Laos on all our food (slight exaggeration but it was pretty outrageously expensive).

So we made it to Tignes in one piece but quite tired. Tignes is in the wonderful part of the Southern Alps that is Espace Killy. There is a glacier there that you can ski/board on all year round and more runs than you could actually ski in a week. We stayed at the UCPA which was simple hostel style accommodation with rooms of four and a shared bathroom, so Kylie and Sheida were lucky to get a glance of Brock in his underwear at least 2 times a day. The UCPA was pretty simple but proved to be excellent value as we had all our meals, lift tickets, a whole week of lessons and accommodation included. The food was a sensation considering they were catering for 250 people. I shudder to think what we would have been served up in the equivalent place in the UK. We all embraced the fresh baguettes, pommes frites, drinking our morning coffee out of a bowl and most of all the cheese. I think I might have actually been a chance of loosing my Christmas lard if it wasn't for all the cheese!

We took ourselves out boarding on the Sunday just to check and make sure that we hadn't over shot the mark by telling them that we could actually snowboard green runs and the odd blue run. We had plenty of tumbles but nothing too spectacular and managed to sort ourselves out so that we didn't look too foolish in our first lesson. We were pretty amazed at how fast Ainslie and Pete could get themselves down the mountain on their boards, we could only hope and dream that we would be that good by the end of the week!

Monday saw the start of our lessons and we were in the improver group, as we certainly needed some improvement. There were two improver groups so we all headed out together bright and early to sort out the boys from the men. I basically fell over a lot and couldn't keep up with half the people in the group. That wasn't really a problem as Brock's self taught technique was so bad that he got put in the boys group with me along with our travelling companion Rick, who embarrassingly for us has taught himself to snowboard the day before. We also had Helen a lovely young English girl in our group and Fred the French guy who got sick of our English speaking and didn't make the lessons after Wednesday!

Once we got put into the easy group Denis, our French hero of an instructor, took us up the mountain to "slide" and rectify all our bad habits. Our lessons weren't really very much like lessons at all, it was more like having a French mountain guide take us to where he thought the snow and conditions were the best and then we would "slide" and then "keep sliding" while he would give us pointers on how not to fall over so much, go faster and look cool as well.

Ainslie demoted herself from her advanced boarding group after getting a dose of "the fear" on the glacier and decided to join our crew. She was far better than any of us in our group but it was great to have four of us all in the same group and it was much easier for me to try to keep up with her than the boys!

So the week went on, our days consisted of "sliding" from 9am till 12pm, lunch from 12-1.45pm and then we were back on the piste for some more "sliding" until the lifts closed, we were too tired to move or we had concussion.

Thursday was my 30th birthday so I got to chose what we would do for the day. I chose for us to spend the day at Val d'Isere which was next door to Tignes and also part of Espace Killy. I had also requested for it to snow so that we would have fresh powder and my request was granted. We headed off in the morning up the lifts and down the piste until we made it across to the Val d'Isere area where the snow was brilliant. Denis found a fantastic area to hone our off piste skills and we did a few runs down the mountain in powder that was so light and deep that you couldn't see your board. We all boarded like heroes mainly due to the fact that when you fell in the fresh powder it didn't hurt nearly as much as on the groomed runs, and we had now been boarding for five days we were actually getting good at it!

We made it to Val d'Isere for lunch in a small restaurant, Denis produced birthday candles from the pocket of his ski jacket for my dessert (that Brock ate) and I had happy birthday sung to me, it was nice. We had a long lunch and Denis produced some of his homemade digestive (spirit concoction made of pure alcohol with flowers soaked in it) from another one of the pockets of his ski jacket and we had a bit of a tipple before hitting the slopes again to make our way all the way back across to Tignes. I have to say again that I was pretty chuffed to get birthday candles even if there were only three and not 30 of them!

By the time we made it back to the UCPA we were all extremely tired but we managed to down a few bottles of champagne (the real stuff of course) and head out for a quiet drink after dinner. I have to say it was one of the best birthdays that I have ever had. I got to spend it with my lovely husband, my friends, a very cool snowboarding instructor and the snow and scenery was phenomenal.

I have to admit (sadly) that by the end of the week I was pretty much broken (don't worry my dodgy knee was fine), snowboarding is pretty hard on the old body especially when its 30! I had a massive bruise on my derriere which would make for a very uncomfortable bus ride home, bruises all over my legs, an eggy on my forehead from headbutting the piste and a nice gash across both my shins from Helen and I stacking it up together. We did accomplish a lot though, we could both go really fast, ride switch (Brock was far better than me though) and Brock even managed to pull off a few freestyle moves until he fell and tore a muscle in his shoulder! Never fear though dear reader we both made it back to London in one piece and if the pound wasn't so pathetic compared to the Euro we would be back at the snow right now.

The Orphans Christmas Dinner

It is cold in England during the winter. It gets dark early. Everything freezes. The high street stores have their after Christmas sales before Christmas and Australians either get the hell out or else gather together for a proper orphans christmas in the country. It was thus that we found ourselves away with friends in Somerset for Christmas in a really big, old, cool (but well heated!) country house.

One of our friends, Deverey, had thought it fun to escape the traditional London shutdown over Christmas (no cabs, trains, buses, shops or fun) and had done some excellent googling and haggling to organise a large old house in South West England that could sleep about 30 people. As we knew we would have not a great deal on over Christmas, we jumped at the chance to get out of town and see some of the countryside. Knowing only Jo Jo, Magnus and Dev we said "yep" to her offer and on the 23rd of December hired a car and set off for our first big trip out of London.

Tonedale house was an old country house built by a some guy that built a mill during the industrial revolution and, in good industrialist fashion, built his trophy house attached to the mill. Located in a small town called Wellington in Somerset it had about 50 rooms with a really big lounge room, games room with a pool, table tennis and blackjack table, a totally excellent kitchen and a gigantic formal dining room. It was a good house. The kitchen was the focal point for the house with a BIG oven and a nice table making for a great spot for eating breakfast, reading the paper and generally hanging out with all of our new friends.

We arrived on the evening of the 23rd and set about meeting everyone, playing pool and drinking some beer. The next day we started on the bacon (2.5 Kg of streaky, 2.5 kg of back rashers) for breakfast and did a reconciliation of the food purchased for Christmas dinner. Mags and Dev had organised Christmas dinner and it was a feast, the likes of which would have enough mores for Oliver Twist and us telling stories about it to anyone who would listen.

But before we got to that, Magnus had organised some Clay Target shooting at a nearby farm for Christmas eve, so Michelle and I, Dev, Mags and one of Dev's friends Kate, Mag's boss Scott, his wife Fabi and Scott's two sons Liam and Seamus, a couple of small animals, the gameskeeper from the local African wildlife park, three 19th century boot blacks and a couple of others (those last few might not have actually come along, but it did seem like the car was awfully full) headed off to blow to the crap out of some clays.

It was fun. Shell didn't have a go because she was afraid of not hitting anything but I stepped up and didn't hit a thing with my first try. I later top scored during the competition round (although my team still lost) but got to have a crack at the fast clays and even managed to hit a few of them!

After lunch we went and got some supplies for Christmas day (another few cases of beer) and went to the pub for dinner, and spent the night playing blackjack. Fun but all just designed to kill time before the main event - Christmas dinner. Mags and Dev had procured some excellent produce for the big meal, the piece de resistance being an 11kg bronze turkey that was easily going to fill the industrial sized oven. Despite never having actually cooked a turkey, Magnus bravely had assumed responsibility for the bird and spent Christmas eve researching recipes and techniques for the perfect succulent turkey.

"Make sure there's butter under the skin!"

"Stick an orange up its butt!"

There was no shortage of ideas on how to prepare it, but few actual hands on deck at 6AM when Mags got up to put it on. We got up about 9 and made ourselves a nice cup of tea and some more bacon and eggs whilst we planned the cooking of the ancillaries. Cheese boards, pancakes with salmon and cream cheese, goose fat roasted potatoes, parsnips, carrots, pumpkin, brussel sprouts with bacon and salads were all planned, and mostly peeled where necessary thanks to Jade, Amy and Dev the night before.

But the food wasn't going to cook itself, so with apron on, a wooden spoon in her hand and a gleam in her eye that said "I was made for this moment" Michelle took command of the kitchen. With Magnus taking care of the bird, Shell organised the rest with a willing team of assistants. Orders were issued, Trays were greased, sprouts boiled, potatoes par boiled, vegies roasted, pancakes cooked, turkeys basted, hands, shoulders and fingers burnt, salads prepared, cheese boards set, drinks drunk, dishes washed and generally lots of activity around the place until the bird was taken out, rested and tested.

An intake of breath.

A deep cut in the thigh.

The juices ran clear. It was cooked! At least thats what we thought and Mags began carving. But then on the carve, the juices seemed a bit red. Not cooked through, even though it had spent 6 hours in the oven already. "Bugger it" we thought and wrapped it back up to go into the oven again for another hour and a bit. At this point everything was ready to go and we had to put all the vegies etc back in the various ovens around the place whilst we finalised the bird.

Eventually it was all cooked and we tested it again. Cooked! Despite a small downgrade, from absolutely perfect to almost perfect, the bird was pronounced ready. With that there was a flurry of activity whilst everything was served and in no time we all sat down with a glass of champagne and a plate of the best Christmas dinner one could ask for.

It was a great day and we managed to fill in the rest of the week with plenty of walks in the countryside, drives through the countryside, shopping at the Christmas sales, a proper Devonshire tea in Devon in the shadows of the cathedral at Exeter, plenty of Blackjack ("Monkey!!!!!") and, on the way home a visit to Stonehenge, which I was pretty excited about. Unfortunately I didn't get to back into the stones a la European vacation but it was still one of those great things about the UK where I got to see in the flesh things that have been a part of my consciousness since I can remember remembering. We also went to the Avebury stone circle which was also quite cool but it was so very cold that we retreated to the pub for lunch.

And with that we headed back to London after a great break with new friends and a christmas dinner that will be spoken about for years to come!