Christmas: Christmas day is utterly dead in London. The stores are all closed. I imagine that I could have found milk or bread somewhere if I’d had to do so, but I’m glad that I didn’t. In retrospect, it occurs to me that I should have gone over to Brick Lane to see if they stay open. There must be some equivalent tot he Chinese restaurants that feed the Jews in New York on Christmas day. The big difference is that there is no mass transit. Not a switch to a special holiday schedule, it is a complete shut down. That left us with no way to go anywhere, even if there was some place to go. Since this country is not especially Christian, I have to assume that this is all a reflection of tradition and maybe the power of the Unions to insist on a holiday for the workers.

Since we had nowhere to go, we slept in and had a quiet Christmas with the kids. Small presents under our little tree (see photo below). Each of the kids was incredibly thoughtful in picking the gifts they gave. Perhaps the limitations of size, weight and number force you to think a little harder about what to get. We had a nice dinner, featuring free-range prime rib, roasted purple brussels sprouts, glazed small parsnips and popovers that failed to pop. (See photo below.) We watched television, played board games, drank some wine and generally had a very nice family day.

The Royal Opera: One night, we went with Alex and Lucy to the Royal Opera in Covent Gardens. We saw Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin”, an opera which I was not familiar with. The theater was beautiful and I thought the singers were good (especially the tenor), although I’m not sophisticated enough to really judge. The plot is ridiculous, even for an opera, and, at least in this production, there was a certain number of ballet sequences mixed in. This meant that a number of the scenes had separate dancers and singers, sometimes on stage at the same time, which was a bit confusing at first. The Opera House itself seems to be set up with countless ways to take your money, with any number of special rooms where you can eat and drink during the intervals (and pre-order so it is there waiting for you). Maybe the coolest part was that when we got out, it was raining and everyone was scurrying around looking for taxis and hiding under umbrellas. I felt like running over to shelter under the Covent Garden colonnade and see if a flower girl would approach us. (“Look at her a prisoner of the gutter…”) Instead we walked over to a pub across the street, which was surprisingly empty (wrong type of crowd?), had some ales and caught a cab back to the flat when the crowds had thinned out.

James’ Birthday: On the 29th, James turned 23. He had been dying to see the new “Star Wars” movie, so we all went out to a big shopping mall in St. Johns’ Wood where there was big multiplex and saw it. (There really are no movie theaters near us. Other than the Barbican, which doesn’t show first-run movies, the closest is probably in Leicester Square.) We had a great time. It was designed for long-time fans like us, with the return of favorite characters and scenes, great effects and a good amount of humor. I guess you could complain that it was a bit predictable and I’m certain that you could find lots of holes in the plot, if you wanted to go through the process, but I found something joyful about it. James had been waiting to read all the web sites and chat rooms about the movie and spent a few hours being geeky and telling various tidbits that he had learned. Later in the day, we went to the Dennis Severs house, which is a block away from our flat. It is one of those little gems that people recommended to us. Designed by artist Dennis Severs over his lifetime, it attempts to recreate the lives of a Huguenot weaver and his family over a period from the late 1700s to about 1900, by presenting a series of rooms, each carefully composed to look like the residents had just left. We had been there with Ivy and Debbie and their kids and wanted to see the Christmas version. It isn’t one of those things that blows you away, but it is a fascinating work of art. After that, it was on to Koba, a good (and kind of expensive) Korean restaurant in Fitzrovia, as Korean food on birthdays is a bit of a family tradition. It was supposed to be one of the top Korean places in London, but the restaurants in Little Korea in Manhattan or the ones in Bergen County, New Jersey are better.

Shopping challenge: Judie had the brilliant idea of giving everyone ￡20 for Christmas, with the requirement that everyone go out one day and buy themselves a gift and we would then try to guess who bought what and say whether we would want to take it if this were a “Yankee Swap”. The phot below is the result.

High Tea and other Gourmet treats: As a Holiday gift, Ivy and Debbie treated us to a High Tea in the City. We scheduled it for the afternoon that Alex and Lucy returned from Scotland. They were late, but they finally made it. The tea was fun, with lots of sandwiches and sweets to go along with the tea. That night, we had a fabulous meal at Super Tuscan, which, along with the Rivington Grill, are our current favorite spots to eat. We have been to Super Tuscan enough that the owner came out and chatted with us. He convinced us to get a special dish made with shaved white truffles for Alex, which was delicious, and talked about his favorite restaurants in Paris. High Tea photo follows.

There are certainly more memories generated over the holidays, but I think it is time for me to move on with the present. Maybe I’ll have finished a painting by my next post!