merry christmas

tis the season

christmas merriment has begun. i had my last ever day at my job on friday and sam finished work for a two-week break. on sunday we had a pub christmas lunch with cousins and siblings and friends and went to a carol service at our church in the evening, preceeded and followed by mince-pies and mulled wine... truly in the yuletide spirit now.



wednesday we'll pick mum and dad up from the airport and drive down to Dorset to spend 10 days with family there - tri & toby and matt & anna and the kids joining us on christmas eve. looking forward to some cold cliff walks and lots of food and rest and cosy fires.

rob and soph united

lovely soph and rob were wed on saturday in a beautiful ceremony in Christ Church Spitalfields followed by much food and celebrating at Gray's Inn. what a special day. here also is beautiful bridesmaid Clare and her lovely Pieter-Bas.

london lights

not long ago we went on one of the trips that we love to make up to Baker Street (where sherlock holmes lived) to visit the other london Joneses - tom, anita and adorable eddie. we explored the recently lit christmas lights along nearby oxford street and the dazzling window displays, including the particularly impressive selfridges wrapped model of london...

robert plant

tom and i went to see robert plant on tuesday night. it was totally great. i always enjoy live music, but there was something so wonderful about this gig. i think it was the energy of the crowd (old rockers etc), and that of plant who maintains his status as a rock hero, and the music was fantastic. just before they came out a roadie came on stage with loads of incense sticks which he stuck around the stage, and replenished throughout the show, so there was a slight feeling of being in someone's living room! plany wasn't ashamed to admit he and the band were basically a cover band doing old zepplin stuff, but great to hear that stuff live! they did it really well too, adding a new edge to classics. it was weird hearing his voice, which still sounds exactly the same. he is a really fun performer. his new stuff we good too, highlighting the fact that zepplin were really breaking new ground when they were at their peak. ending with a whole lotta love was the ultimate climax!

thanksgiving

we went to beautful hampshire this weekend for some countryside air and family fun .. seeing my brother and sister-in-law and their three delightful children. we celebrated thanksgiving together with an enourmous turkey and an incredibly rich and delicious pecan pie, in honour of our americaness.













we had the privilege of staying in the large home of Anna's grandfather (98 yr-old Colonel), sleeping deeply, waking to silence and looking out of the window to a field of sheep...










sam and i felt pretty sore on our return, being city-folk and not used to all the running around and walking outside. the weekend included wide-games on the "humpy-dumps" - great to be able to share with sam a favourite spot of ours when we were young. and it has inspired sam and i to get fit so we're going for runs now.. very short ones but its a start!:)













it was a delight to experience the still, quiet beauty of the countryside and to spend special time with lovely family... for whom we are very thankful. and we were very impressed with Vivi's new and ever-so-cute and gentle animal noises and Joseph and Eliza's dances!

the magical land of hyde park

we took the day after our anniversary dinner off so that we could sleep in and enjoy a day together in london. we started with brunch at a diner in harrods. i had phoned earlier in the week to find out if they did pancakes and bacon, and they did. so i took becca there as a surprise. to my horror they were out of pancake mix til thursday, and it was only tuesday. i was quite annoyed, but they brought us waffles instead, which were actually just as good.

to burn it all off we went for an enormous walk through hyde park. it was such a glorious day, with a big blue sky, crisp wintry air and crunch red and orange leaves. hyde park is fantastic, and its here in our own city. we walked around the serpentine to the princess diana water fountain. it is an amazing design and engineering wonder, and now a mecca for PD fans worldwide. there weren't many there when we went, just us; an elder, trigger-happy japanese couple and mother and daughter from the states - lots of solemn faces, and a mood slightly disturbed by our silliness! we then crossed over the bridge and walked up to the italian gardens and then around to peter pan. finally we stopped off at the serpentine gallery which is a fantastic little place where ilya and emilia kabakov have been commissioned to do an installation and have come up with The House of Dreams - a really cool, open and surgical space focusing on our bad sleep patterns and the need for more rest and sleep. we had to wear little bags over our feet. most refreshing and disturbingly peaceful. another wonderful day spent with my lovely wife (who is now washing up after our delicious organic salmon, potato and broccoli feast.)

21 may 2005 = 6 months ago

6 months ago becca and I got married. amazing. time flies. time goes slowly. abstract. it has been the most amazing 6 months of our lives. filled with wonderful moments every moment. love growing. laughter flowing. depth expanding. we went out for the evening to the oxo tower restaurant to celebrate (thanks mike, emily, loui, mette, vidar and arnie!) what an amazing experience that was. we were pampered and preened with culinary delights and beverages to match. the oxo tower is on the south bank of the thames opposite the inns, overlooking everything from westminster to st pauls. at least until a fog set in over london just as our evening was drawing to a close. i love becca with all of my heart and have fallen more and more deeply in love every day of the past 6 months. what a blissful time we have had.

narnia

triona's house had a very fun narnia party on saturday. sam had by far the most impressive costume..tho a little hard to dance in! i went as lucy.




we're very excited about 'the lion, the witch and the wardrobe' movie coming out on december 9th. it looks wonderful with the same special effects and creature people as lord of the rings and a director who seems sensitive to the responsibility of not ruining the books for millions of kids. we're reading the magician's nephew in preparation :) if you're a narnia fan, click here and you'll find yourself in a narnia world - with movie preview, beautiful original illustrations from the books and much more.

sugarcubes

this past weekend sam and i went to the incredible installation in the the turbine hall of the tate modern which inspires both wide-eyed awe and a strong urge to run around playing hide and seek.

the mammoth towers are made of plastic waxy casts of the inside of cardboard boxes and create a city of giant sugar cubes.

we then enjoyed the calm cozy retro warmth of Scooterworks - a fantastic retro scooter shop and cafe where i had the most amazing drink made of thick ooozing italian chocolate and espresso. luscious day in lovely london.

fireworks

despite having to work this weekend, which is rubbish, it was quite an exciting weekend. we didn't make it to see any official firework displays but we ended up getting a pretty good show out of our living room window.

perhaps my reluctance to see proper fireworks is because it was actually my ancestors (robert and thomas winter) who hired guy fawkes to blow up the houses of parliament. their plot was all a bit weak and they got hung, drawn and quartered as a result. maybe i've been left with a subconscious familial sympathy for their cause. i probably shouldn't write that on the internet or the authorities will be on to me. i might add that i loved making guy fawkes effigies growing up and buiding big bonfires to burn them on.

most excitingly (which we like to pretend the fireworks were for) is that triona (my sister) and toby got engaged on saturday!! and are going to get married in august. a very lovely surprise. they came for dinner on friday night and toby gave nothing away when we asked what his plans were for the weekend. i think he cooly said he didn't have any. little did we know he was plotting to whisk tri down to hampshire and propose to her in a field and then return to London in time for the fireworks. nice work toby.

thursday

its thursday. sam and my weekends are not coinciding this week so i'm home alone:( i gave in my notice at work yesterday to leave my job mid-december. i'm trying to get motivated to look for a job but feel more like spending my "weekend" relaxing

my final blood tests were all clear - horray - kidney and liver are functioning properly. i feel so very relieved to have all of that behind me. i'm still sore and tired on busy days but have much more energy now. it is so nice to be able to engage with life more - to go to parks and parties and markets. last weekend sam and i revelled in having the weekend together. we went to a murder mystery party where i had to dress up and play the part of snobby Jaqueline Dupree. sam was aussie Bruce "Skippy" Jonson who turned out to be the murderer! and here's our friend John loving being a woman for the night.













on sunday afternoon we went to lower marsh road, waterloo to catch the very tail end of the french market and see the stall owners packing up their whares, having driven over from france for the weekend. beautiful smelly soaps and cheeses and french accents glided through the dimming light











it is a fun little pocket of london - we explored a great vintage store and wished the prices were comparable to vintage gear in the U.S which is properly cheap, and a lovely second-hand bookshop with the books layed out on marble slabs left over from the shops former life as a delicatessen. the sky turned beautiful as we wandered home and it struck me as funny and great that we have an enourmous ferris wheel in the middle of london.