Showing posts with label Summer Holiday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Summer Holiday. Show all posts

Saturday 26 August 2017

Leave And That...

Airbus A330-200 lands at London Heathrow Airport.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
So I haven't posted in over a month. Sue me.

We've been on leave.

I hate flying, much as I love EK. A380s rock, the films were awful. Kindles rock more than A380s. Except in turbulence which we saw almost not at all. Heathrow sucks lemons.

Drove to Wales to see me mum for a couple of days, she's fine, thanks. Bit shaky. She's over 90 now. Fierce independent lady. The office calls, can I come back early? No. I shipped our bikes from there over to Northern Ireland. Halfords think I'm a totes jackass. They're all hardcore bike freaks, we have two bikes we love to ride when we're home. I got a puncture a while back and took the bike into them. They're all, like, can't you fix your own punctures? And I'm 'No.' And then they're, like, it's a quick release wheel so you don't have to bring the whole bike in. And I'm, 'Sue me.'

They boxed the bikes for me. They still think I'm a nutter, but now I'm another store's problem. They're happy about that.

Back to London for a couple of days in a Premier Inn because the sister-in-law's house (AKA Twickenham Central) is full of neeces. We like Premier Inns, actually. We got a great night's sleep every night, which is their promise, after all.

Photon checks into a hotel. Receptionist says, 'No bags?' Photon replies, 'Nah, I'm travelling light.'

Lovely week, Hampton Court, Thames Cruise, shit service at Pizza Express at the O2 (just drop the express, love, and you're fine) and mad wannabe BBC 2 Children's Presenters at Hamleys Regent Street. We reckoned these kids are freebasing to stay that hyper all day. They're so over the top even the neeces think they're a bit, well, mad. The office calls and asks if I can come back early. Still no.

And then we're on the open road to Salisbury for three idyllic nights at the Beckford Arms, a truly magnificent pub. These people offer you Bloody Mary for breakfast. They're very likeable. We spend the days wandering castles and long walks. There's a Catholic cemetery nearby, packed with little snippets of social history linked to the area's immigrants. The barman at the Beckford convinces me to take black pepper in my Hendricks. Oh me, oh my, people. Black pepper and strawberries in Hendricks. This is the future.

Heathrow, crappy BA and then Belfast. Meet up with the neeces again and do much neecing around. Business stuff, solicitors, banks and accountants. Oh, joy. We did a 5k Fun Run in Rathfriland. The bloody town's on an enormous hill. The outward jog is downhill. It's only when we turn the corner that the bleeding obvious finally hits our dull monkey brains. Ouch.

Two men walk into a bar. Ouch Ouch.

Drives up into the Mournes, Camogie practice, Mary Margaret's pub and wandering along the seafront at Warrenpoint. The Green Pea Café and their insane BLT (Brioche eggy bread, smoked bacon and sundried tomatoes with rocket. Oh dear me) and then the Hotel at Hilltown - the Downshire Arms to you, mate - for Sarah's birthday. Scallops, steak and dancing. The office calls. I get the message. We rearrange flights and hop to Heathrow, do a night in Twickenham Central and take the all-day flight the next day. I love EK, but that flight doesn't suit us. Back in the office for Wednesday, wiped out but functioning.

The weekend's almost over and it's all a vague memory now. A frenetic, lovely charge around the place doing things and seeing things and meeting people and laughing fit to bust, drinking stuff and eating stuff and driving around and just basically living it up.

And now we're back. You know, that sort of what are we doing here feeling mixed with the sense that we're back home and that. Settling back down into things, taking a weekend drive around the place and getting back into the rhythm. I have my wallet back in my back pocket and have stopped obsessing about the car being nicked. I'm back on 24x7 broadband mobile access and not paying Vodaphone two bleeding quid a day for data.

Life's good...

Sunday 9 August 2015

Woah. Leave. Back. Ouch.

Español: ouch...
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
No post for almost a month. Golly, poor blog!

Dubai, London, Liverpool, Haverfordwest, London, Copenhagen, Belfast, Newry, London, Dubai.

What was that? That was your leave, mate. Welcome back 'in station'.

Looking back on the whirlwind that was, the start of it seems like months ago. Copenhagen was our annual attempt to spend some time together away from work and the hustle and bustle of the annual tour of the UK.

Funny place.

The Danes seem to make quite a deal about how free and easy and just, well, downright cool and inclusive and right on they are, but they'll stand on the margins of a totally empty road, yawning blacktop trailing endlessly into the horizon either side of them, waiting for the green light before they'll move. You can freewheel as much as you like, as long as you obey the  rules.

The hotel we finally selected (after weeks of clicking and mulling) was overpriced and packed with American tourists starting out on their Baltic cruises. Actually, all of central Copenhagen was packed with American tourists starting out on their Baltic cruises. Dinner wherever we went was inevitably taken next to Hank and Wilma yelling at each other as if they were still out on the prairie rather than in a cosy and intimate Yerpean restaurant.

We ate well, especially at funky new eatery Almanak at The Standard (a converted old ferry terminus) which we randomly discovered when sheltering from a sudden downpour. It isn't, despite the sound of the name, a Lebanese joint, but a new 'contemporary Danish' place staffed by people who've run away from working in Noma (the best restaurant in the world yadayada) and the food was grin-inducingly stunning. I laughed my way through the meal, my usual reaction to glorious food. And glorious it most certainly was.

We went back for a treat on our last night and watched in dismay as the service fell apart in a Hell's Kitchen sort of way, stacks of plates waiting on the pass, comped drinks all around as the floor staff tried to make sense of it all and failed. It was like the Keystone Cops of food. All it lacked was Gordon Ramsay screaming expletive-laden abuse at them as they tottered around getting everything horribly wrong. The food was still great, it just took three hours for them to get it all out to us. A shame, really.

We visited things. We walked a lot. We learned that cyclists are the new superpower and own both cars and pedestrians. Watching them beasting bewildered Japanese tourists who have wandered unknowingly into the cycle lane was astounding. The Danes don't talk about the Second World War very much, it's sort of missing from the historical narrative which we found generally to be patchy outside of the Christiansborg Palace, which is all very palatial.

We spent quite a lot of time trying to convince people that living in the UAE doesn't mean you have three heads, a close affinity with ISIS and a wife kept in purdah. We've never before been quite so keenly aware of how deeply ignorant people in general are about this place. Maybe it's us.

As for the rest of it, a whirlwind of nieces from both Heaven and Hell, the occasional nephew and many in-laws; friends, family, places and things. We bought a house, as you do. And then we found ourselves sitting in The Oriel at Terminal Three, waiting for the flight and wondering quite where the last three weeks had gone.

It was almost a relief to be back, except it is - as always - very strange to suddenly be plonked with a bump into our real life away from real life. Petrol's gone up, I hear. Other than that, we don't appear to have missed much. In a few days it'll feel as if we've never been away; it always does.

Hey ho...

Sunday 25 August 2013

A Taste Of Helsinki

English: Aerial view of Suomenlinna, Helsinki,...
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
We've taken to going to Northern Europe for a quick break every summer and so decided to follow our trips to Tallinn and Stockholm with a jaunt to Helsinki this year. I'd recommend the city heartily; there's planty to do and see there, from the insanely useless fortification of Suomenlinna (second only in historical uselessness to the Maginot Line) to the many museums and art galleries - it's a delightful place to spend a few days exploring. The hooch, incidentally, isn't as expensive as everyone insists - particularly if you're used to Dubai prices! The Finns' relationship with alcohol is similar to that of the Swedes and for this reason, Helsinki serves the world's smallest Martinis (by law they can only serve up to 4cl of hard booze at a time) - and you can only buy the good stuff from official booze shops, which is a little like finding yourself in a Baltic Ajman, if you know what I mean.

Everything else apart, we ate like kings. The food in Helsinki was glorious - the first surprise being the 'street food' in the central market, where flaxen haired girls handed out food cooked on massive griddles - the rickety plastic-sheeted tables under the orange awnings of their stalls packed with eager eaters. Each stall has a single dining-table sized griddle, split up into various foods, from sides of salmon and piles of whitebait to mixed vegetables and potatoes sauteed with smoked sausage and patties of minced reindeer. The piping hot food is piled into a cardboard bowl and slathered in garlic sauce and eaten with a plastic fork and a bottle of cold near-beer (those alcohol rules again).

At the other end, there are serious restaurants. One such is all-organic micro-restaurant 'Ask'. It had to be done, really. Ask is only about a year old, so it's not featured in the Rough Guide or other tourist maps and things you're given as you wander around Helsinki. The restaurant seems almost to encourage that understated status - you'd really want to know where it is because there's no signage on the exterior of No. 8 Vironkatu (a turn left off Mariankatu, which you'll pick up just past the Presidential Palace at the end of the market square). 

First things first - eating at Ask is a funfair ride, so you have to give yourself up to the experience. You get a four or eight course tasting menu for your 55 or 85 Euro respectively. Asking what was on the menu when I called, I was told 'We don't know - chef's still down at the market'. If you think that response is a good thing, you'll love Ask.

For another 50 (or 80) Euro, you can buy into the wine selection to accompany the menu. That's pricey, even by Finnish standards, but having gone through the wines I'd say it was reasonable value for money. One of our table of two doesn't do fish or game I explained when I booked. No problem, they told us and we chatted about what she does like. We pitched and were sat at a table for two at the back (great - the other one was near the door, which was open to a chilly, rainy August evening) in the almost starkly minimalist restaurant - tiny, with a total of 26 covers.

Drinks? A Vodka Martini ordered, only to find that we were in the grip of the Organic Police. No inorganic Martini although we could have an organic vodka and some wholesome fruit juices. Right, then - we'll take the organic champagne from Vertus instead, which was lovely. The four course menu, which most around us took that night, was brought out by the chef owner himself, with the efficient service from the waitress limited to explaining (at some length) and pouring the wine, clearing plates and offering bread. Each course was introduced, again at length. This is all part of the performance and the best thing to do is sit back and enjoy it.

You order your main and they do the rest. If you're frustrated by the limitation, don't play - you'll just end up angry and muttering. If you're willing to give it all up and go along with the game, fling yourself in with a whoop. An amuse bouche, a vegetable stock foam with herbs. Delicate, surprising and fun but served with clunky wooden spoons that somehow didn't suit the precision of the dish. And now we have a green salad, little leaves and flowers sprinkled on a cut glass dish with little dabs of a rich, creamy dressing and a spray of elderflower dressing pumped by chef as he chatted then sprayed over the collection. Our first wine, German and surprisingly dry for all that. The combination was sensational. One flower was a little camphorous, something medicinal in there, a hint of coal tar. What was it? Yarrow. Of course. Yarrow. Silly me.

The second course, a Riesling (if memory serves) - again, complex and drier than expected - accompanying, was 'egg, roots and buckwheat'. We're playing, of course, it's altogether more complex. A moment of fear from Sarah the fussy eater opposite as an egg yolk is spied sitting on top of the rich and meaty-tasting (but no meat involved) buckwheat porridge. She don't like runny eggs. But no, the sunset-orange yolk was cooked to perfection, just firm and yet tender and yielding. The roots, painfully young (it was a guilty vegetarian pleasure, a little like eating veggie veal. We were giggling about the idea that hard-core vegetarians would be demoing outside this place within the year about cruelty to young beets), were tender and their little sprigs crisp and salty - a parsnip and carrot (both the size of a delicate lady's little finger) along with a tiny beet and some crispy wisps of green and a drizzle of oil finished off the tiny dish. It was grin-inducing perfection, a variety of flavours and textures that absorbed and entertained. You'd almost ask for the Curly-Wurly at this point. A pause, some conversation. The rain started to come down hard and, finally, the front door was closed against the chill.

The main - chicken (rooster, in fact) was served across from me as a result of our chat on the phone. I had the wild duck. It was so wild I got a nice crunch of lead shot as proof. Introduced as wild duck, chanterelle and kale, the dish was a set of pink slices of rich duck breast cooked on the bone and served off, laid on a mild mustardy bed with fried kale and dabs of wild buckthorn. The plate could have been warmer, tell the truth. The rooster was perfection, served to the same accompaniments which didn't quite serve the lighter meat as well. However, a burned butter was poured over the chicken rather than the red jus with the duck and both were glorious. A Puligny Montrachet (organic, natch) with the chicken and a chilled French red - a Beaujolais as I remember, it was all becoming a bit of a procession of things by this point and I'm not quite pretentious enough to spoil a meal by taking notes - were both a welcome change from the German stuff and both were complex, fine wines that sat perfectly with the food.

We're happy and thoroughly relaxed by now, sitting back and chatting about the food. Because yes, it is all about the food. A wee dish of beetroot snow and red berries appears before little tulips of dessert wine appear followed by a dish of warm, crispy waffles surrounded by bilberries and sorrel leaves and topped with a scoop (chef allows himself a flourish by now as he serves it) of burned butter ice cream. Smashing - absolutely smashing.

Coffee (the filter system is introduced, the one time in a night of long introductions when I wanted to switch the patter off), Panamanian and organic of course. The cups are 1950s vintage Arabia porcelain (Arabia is Helsinki's premier porcelain factory and something of a national monument. And no, it's got nothing to do with Arabia Felix). Fine, but don't feel you have to tell us that, dear. By now the intros are wearing thin. The receipt for your bill tonight is printed on handmade organic paper using squid ink from outer Carpathia. Sorry, wandered into over-introduction reverie there.

Petits fours - a meringue, a little cream with a berry (a rare misstep, the cream was floury) and a tiny warm chocolate liquorice cake, the size of a thumbnail and reminiscent for some reason of one of Pierre Gagnaire's crazy little ginger biscuit with salt topping moments. A Finnish apple brandy for me and the evening rounded off by a walk home through the drizzle. I went to the toilet and came back to the brandy, thankfully missing its introduction.

So, in short, if you're going to Helsinki, book this restaurant. Pay the price. Go with the flow, sit back and enjoy the theatre. It's worth every penny and every second. They could pare back the introductions a tad, perhaps. But that's just cavilling - we had no complaints at all really. An altogether remarkable meal.

And if you're thinking about spending a week somewhere interesting next summer, give Helsinki a shot. You could do a lot worse, believe me.
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Friday 9 August 2013

Leave (ing on a jetplane)

Zahnkranzpakete
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Back from Wales, off to Helsinki. Well, why not?

We've been whizzing around Pembrokeshire on our new mountain bikes - they have silly names like Raptor and Vengeance Is Called Rex and stuff. It's not until you screw up the gearing hitting a hard uphill (the nice chap at Halfords, asked to explain how Derailleur gears work, started, "Right, then. I'll try to be polite but it's not easy...") that you truly appreciate why gym training people make you do squats.

Up until the point where I first skulked into a gym two years ago - and then spent the following week walking like a strychnine-poisoned octogenarian with the staggers - I'd thought squats were what happened when you ate out in Cairo...

The weather's been lovely, all cumulo-nimbus and sunny spells. It's summer and the hedgerows are teeming with life, the air is rich with the smell of cut hay and the buzz of bees. Most of which, I swear, have slammed into my forehead as we've been whizzing along those undulating country lanes.

And now to the Home of Nokia, expensive booze and, apparently, inwardly focused existentialist angst. So far, every arrangement has been made over email with responses so fast they've met our outgoing mails, Tangoed them and made it into our inboxes three seconds before our enquiries left.

This, then, is 'leave'...

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Thursday 29 May 2008

Evil


I don't know what it is with people and Modhesh. Last year one grumpy blogger even went so far as to refer to our cheery little yellow friend as a relentless tide of infinite-eyed, grinning evil! Some people have no sense of fun!

But the time is upon us again as Modhesh statues start to appear around Dubai. The endearing little chap is the mascot of Dubai's Summer Surprises shopping festival, although his ubiquity appears to annoy certain groups of irritable expatriates. Shame on them for being so grumpy!

Yesterday saw the official press conference to inaugurate this years' festivities and they're sure to include loads of wonderful Modhesh fun. And who could complain at the little chap's cheery ways as the thermometer hits 50C and we sweat our way through a summer of stop start traffic and construction-related mayhem?

Oddly, the press event appears to have generated less than stunning coverage: this government story didn't even make it to Emirates Business 24x7, which is simply amazing. But I'm sure it'll pick up soon enough.

He's got his own website, you know, although all the links appear to be broken...

Whatever, he'll be with us for the next couple of months... everywhere, everyday and in every way... Happy summer, friends!

Monday 13 August 2007

Gosh! Blighty!

Off to The Berkeley for a couple of nights to attend the nuptials of pals Jo and Carl. The Maktoums have taken the top floor. Knightsbridge is so Arab we feel totally at home. Breakfasts at Harvey Nicks are great: the organic cafe on the 5th floor with food that explodes after our normal diet of greenhouse-reared, air-freighted food. A spin over to Wales to Casa McNabb Senior. Awful weather predicted for the journey back tomorrow. Everything's green and terribly well off.
It's strange, this going home. Everyone's pleased to see you, you've saved up and you've got cash in pocket. You do things you normally wouldn't do, blow money you wouldn't normally blow: live it up a little. Home's home comforts abound. And then you start thinking you'd like to move back, a few dangerous moments before you realise that life back down home on the farm would be perhaps a little bit different if it were the stuff of everyday life. If you were ripping yourself out of bed every driecht winter morning to plod down to the tube: just another number in the jostling crowds of pale-faced anonydrones swaying with the movements of the train, staring up at the tube map, counting rivets. Anything to avoid eye contact.
Back to lotus eating, then...

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