Life in Dulwich

Today has been quite eventful after a very quiet week. When I went to work on Wednesday I had a two hour lunch at the Cumberland Hotel near Marble Arch so I could view the rooms and negotiate rates with them. In return for promising to spend a sizeable amount of cash there in the coming year, I got lunch at Gary Rhodes' restaurant. And very nice it was too. Scallops with a lime lentil thing, grilled halibut with pickled lime potatoes and courgettes and a monster helping of tiramisu for dessert. I do like being fed well.

Yesterday I slept off all the food. We had lunch at The Palmerston down the road. BB had the Barnsley lamb chop with anchovy sauce and I had salt beef with a beetroot and horseradish puree. It was pretty good but the savoy cabbage accompaniment was a tad mushy. It was also expensive we thought.

Then today, we went down the road for brunch at the caff for a third of the price of yesterday's lunch. In the time we were gone, some pig bastard vandals broke the wing mirrors of two cars on our stretch of road. Fortunately, our car escaped but I just can't understand how bored someone can be that they get their kicks out of doing something so stupid. It makes me mad.

Now, I've just come back from meeting Aric from Chinesepod, his friend, Lis (who is a fellow Malaysian) and all the UK based Chinese podders who hauled ass up to Chinatown to meet and talk things Mandarin. It was a very affable gathering and we ended up eating of course. Embarrassingly, quite a lot of the chat revolved around films and the like that I've been in. Still, it was fun and they all seemed very nice. I think I can safely say that I spoke the least Mandarin of anyone there.

Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention but my Chinese teacher has gone to Germany for THREE months. How am I supposed to learn Mandarin at this rate?

Merry Christmas everyone! BB has made a triumphant trifle and spent most of yesterday picking feathers out of the turkey with tweezers.

Today's menu will be roast turkey, brussels with bacon and chestnuts, sage and onion stuffing, cranberry and herb stuffing, chipolatas, glazed carrots, perfectly roasted potatoes, bread sauce, cranberry sauce, lashing of gravy and a triumphant trifle.

Then, replete, we will snooze all afternoon and maybe go for a little walk.

May everyone have as splendid a Christmas as we!

We almost have Christmas under control now. It surely has been frantic. Got all my cards sent off in time for everyone to receive some time between Christmas and New Year. Ah well, the sentiment is there at least.

I'm trying to find a nice carol service to go to in East Dulwich somewhere. There's a lot of choice but no way of telling what would be a good traditional service to go to. I may just go across the street to the one opposite the house as it means I don't have to find my way back at midnight from anywhere too far distant. Southwark Cathedral's would be nice but I think it's oversubscribed and I'm not sure how I'd get home.

We spent two hours at the Citylink in Lower Sydenham yesterday picking up a parcel from BB's sister. It seemed none too organised there. When we left, there were people there who'd been waiting longer than we had.

The queue outside William Rose's butchers yesterday at 08:44 (when we went down to get our goose) was ridiculous. It stretched past 5 shops and down to the Linedancing Club building. BB reckons there were about 100 people, though I think that's a tad of an exaggeration. Nonetheless, East Dulwich was a festival of queuing at the greengrocers, the Cheese Block and ED Deli. We went to Sainsbury's and got an organic turkey instead.

Unfortunately, later in the day (around 15:00), I walked past William Rose after having queued at above mentioned stores for a good part of the afternoon, to find that there was no queue and there were bucketloads of happily raised geese in the window. Which just goes to show that putting things off till the last minute is not always such a bad thing.

Labels: Christmas, east dulwich, food

Thank God the Christmas party is over. Hurrah, celebrations all round. We pulled it off and it was an unmitigated success. My friend, P, who is the best Chinese Elvis in town, was a huge hit. Everyone was singing his praises all day yesterday.

We managed to get all 145 presents to the venue and got all the lost ones back the following day. Not many people turned up for work yesterday though. There was salacious gossip in which the PR person got off with one of the board members (eugh), good food, plenty of wine, dancing till 2am and Secret Santa - all the ingredients for a classic office party. We even have a Ricky Gervais lookalike, but he wouldn't indulge us with a rendition of 'the Dance' from the classic Office episode.

Now, just the rest of work to contend with before everything shuts down for a week and a half...

The agent quandary has been resolved. The casting agent realised they'd boobed and told my sole agent that they couldn't deal with her. I'm just waiting for the nuclear fallout now as she lambasts me for having more than one agent. I'd been dealing with her assistant all along, who didn't seem that quick on the uptake, so I suspect my actual agent doesn't know yet.

Anyway, I got the job and start rehearsals in January for 3 weeks. Hurray!

Oh, it's gone horribly wrong. I have two agents - a main agent and, another, who is basically a friend who gets me work sometimes. My main agent likes to think she's my sole agent although she knows she isn't really. Anyway, I was put up for this murder trial show audition by my friend and did a pretty good audition, if I say so myself. Yesterday, my main agent calls up and says they were very happy with me and would like to check my availability.

Why?!!!! Why did they call the wrong agent? I'm completely nonplussed. This has never happened in 10 years. Morally, I think I need to tell my main agent that as they didn't put me up for the job it should be dealt with by my friend, but that will really piss her off (and probably the producers of the show, as well). I really don't know what's happened there. It's very strange and I don't know what to do.

Oh man, talk about being worked like a dog. Although, I've never seen any dogs working particularly hard, so times have obviously changed since that saying came about.

We're right in the thick of end-of-year type things - Christmas hoohah, budgets, range planning and stuff plus all the normal day-to-day meetings, travel, getting offices refurbed and so forth. I'm going to fall down dead soon. All they'll find is a little skeleton in my office where I've disappeared behind a pile of packaging, samples and leftovers from lunch meetings.

Also had to run out of the office in the middle of everything to do a casting for some new ITV show which revolves around a bunch of celebrities (doesn't everything these days) being a jury for a mock murder trial. I went up to play a forensic scientist specialising in DNA profiling. The audition consisted of improvising around the case as outlined in the breakdown. Went well, but bloody hell! I had back story and everything, but they didn't delve that deep. Thank God.

Met my mate, A, for dinner about an hour and a half late as I couldn't get away from the office. We ate at this small tapas place called El Dorado near Vauxhall which I keep seeing from the 185 bus on Kennington Lane just before it turns towards the Oval. I think it might be South American. The food was really very good. We had Spanish sausage with fabadas (beans), grilled marinaded pork, some prawns in white wine and garlic, patatas bravas, beef with crispy fried green plantain, salad and rice. With drinks it all came to a modest £17.00 each including tip. I shall be trying to drum up some business for them in future as it was almost empty. Very strange, as the service was excellent and the food delicious. Perhaps, the restaurant lacked a little in ambience but it was perfectly pleasant in every way.

Labels: acting, food, restaurants, work

Royal Mail has apparently given up trying to show any semblance of putting mail in the right mailboxes. Last week we received in one day, mail for next door, two doors down and about 100 houses down. At work, they have sworn blind that they delivered my new company credit card and it was signed for but mysteriously can't give us the name of who signed for it for 24 hours. Needless to say, no one in the company knows anything about it. And they wonder why people aren't posting things anymore.

Today, the Langham Hotel treated some of their London clients' PAs to a slap-up meal in the Memories Restaurant at the hotel. I was one of them. It was spectacular. Particularly because I wasn't paying.

We started with a complimentary Jerusalem artichoke cappucino. I had a mixed assiette of escargots with frogs legs fricassée to start. My main was a very beautiful monkfish with crayfish, pearl barley and a sheet of a ravioli type pasta. Dessert was a pineapple tarte with a coconut something or other and a lime sorbet. It was so pretty. I really wished I could have taken photographs but it would have been unseemly. The service was excellent if a tad leisurely. I don't get to eat like that often and I could definitely get used to it.

Labels: food, restaurants

Had a steak and chips from Black Cherry's newish menu yesterday. Medium, juicy and pink on the inside and slightly charred on the outside (the way I like it), perfectly seasoned. Came with a nicely dressed salad. Chips were okay. I've had better from them before. But on the whole, a pretty special steak, chips and salad.

If you are a bit of a greedy pig (as I am), probably better to go for the 'His' (10 oz) steak, rather than the 'Hers' (8 oz) steak.

It's been a good week for meat. I've found out that some enterprising person has started making Ngau Yoke Kon (or Chinese beef jerky) in the UK which can be purchased in select little packages from Chinatown. Pork is also available and they come in traditional 5-spice flavour or black pepper for that extra zing. I bought one of each - one for me and one for a friend. Ended up eating both packs. Whoops.

Labels: east dulwich, food, restaurants

Yesterday, in the Thai Corner Café on Northcross Road there was a whole table full of Buddhist monks having lunch. There's a sight you don't often see. I thought it would be rude to peer through the window and take a photo though.

East Dulwich was absolutely heaving due to pre-Christmas shopping frenzy. I notice on Southwark's planning apps website that Le Chandelier, a few doors down from Karavan, has applied for mixed use to include a café or something. Interesting...

I've taken to wandering up and down the streets of Dulwich looking for possible do-er, up-per opportunities or plots of land on which we can build. I suspect I'm not the only one. The estate agents windows seem to be full of ex-authority flats or dwellings with such dodgy floorplans, that you can't help thinking that no building regs were acquired when they were converted. And that's it! No wonder there's a one-bed flat which needs doing up on Blackwater Street for the rather princely sum of £250,000.

Also saw a rather bijou contemporary build on Lacon Road that is very nice. That's the kind of house I'd quite like to have. That one's not for sale though.

Labels: east dulwich, property

I can't believe I've developed some other weird tendon related disability. I've now got something called heel pain due to an overworked plantar fascia or something. All my tendons are giving up the ghost.

Read in some paper that scientists are teaching people who suffer from things like arthiritis to train their minds not to feel pain. I think this is the way I'm going to have to go or BB will be wheeling me around in a bathchair before I'm 50.

BB has a new job! He did some anxious to-ing and fro-ing, some tough negotiating and there was some counteroffering by his present company and the new one. BB didn't think he'd spark off a bargaining war, which just goes to show that he doesn't think people think enough of him. Anyways, he hands in his notice tomorrow and, soon, I hope to be able to give up working and live the life to which I could rapidly become accustomed.

The car has mysteriously acquired a dent on the passenger side fender. How could that possibly happen? I mean, are people kicking cars now? I swear the car has acquired more nicks and dents just being parked in front of our house than being driven around.

Downstairs neighbour has stripped the front garden bar. There's just one sad small shrub, grass and a row of bins to welcome us home. We thought they might get it replanted or hard landscaped or something, but no, it just looks a bit sad. Maybe, they're waiting till spring...

A tornado in London! I hope a tornado doesn't hit our little house. I'm pretty sure it hit right where my cousin, B, used to live in Kensal Rise. Bet she's glad she moved to York. Hope they don't still own the flat for investment.

Found dried beef, like Wing Heong makes it, in Chinatown yesterday. Hurray! My reward for having to walk from Selfridges to the gym for class because Regent Street had been closed down due to some emergency. That brought the whole of London to a standstill. Good thing the tube lines weren't flooded today.

All the trains going up North were cancelled too.

The London transport network is grinding to a halt.

Labels: food, transport, weather

My Mandarin teacher brought out a whole bag of those little pieces of dried beef wrapped in paper yesterday that we used to eat when we were little. Now, instead of being wrapped in little bits of pink and white waxproof paper, they come in gold and red foil. We scoffed the lot. That led into an indepth discussion into EU law and how importing meat (even in tins) into the EU was illegal. She didn't seem to bothered, which is a good thing, as it means more dried meat product for me!

Labels: food, politics, restaurants

One of my friends, S, was stopped today by the police on her way to work. She asked why and the policewoman told her it was because she was walking too fast and so they had stopped her under the terrorism act. ????!*"&$£"????!!!

S said that she was late for work - hence the walking fast. Although, frankly, in London you're more likely to stand out if you walk slow - unless you're a tourist. I'm speechless...

Mind you, I forgot to note on my return from Porto a few weeks ago, that the Portuguese check-in staff photocopied my passport. BB was highly indignant and belligerently asked why they were doing it. Apparently, the British authorities have requested that they take copies of passports of anyone of Asian origin going to Britain - even if they have a British passport! And this country masquerades itself as being a democratic country. Pah! They were very apologetic about it though, and a bit embarrassed I think. Unlike the policewoman who stopped S this morning, who apparently was obnoxious and rude in every way.

S is black by the way. However, she looks not dissimilar to Thandie Newton and styles herself on Audrey Hepburn, so is probably the least likely looking person to be perpetrating an act of terror. Whilst one should not be taken in by appearances, all I can say is, 'Come on! What are they thinking?"

On another note, finally, I have moved into my office. Wah! I have my own office at work! Like in Working Girl, but not so high up. I have a view of Manchester Square and the Wallace Collection which is leafy and green. I also have business cards! I've never had business cards in my life. I feel like a real grown-up.

However, my new office is so full of boxes of all sizes and descriptions crammed full of Christmas gifts, filing, shoe and bag samples, Christmas cards, envelopes and other paraphenalia that people often come looking for me, fail to see me and then go away again. Perhaps that's a good thing...

Labels: politics, work

Every single Clementine in my bumper pack from M&S has got just one pip. I'm torn between being amazed and being slightly disturbed by this.

BB has Zoolander on downstairs with Ben Stiller exhorting the world to kill the Prime Minister of Malaysia and Hannah and her Sisters is on upstairs in the bedroom with Woody Allen obsessing about having a brain tumour. There's too much information floating around for my brain to process.

Labels: food

Okay, what's up with this? Why can't you buy tinned dace and mui choi jee yook in Chinatown anymore? Spent yesterday evening trawling through the dwindling number of Chinese supermarkets in the area trying to find them but to no avail. I know about the EU meat import ban but I didn't think that applied to fish. Besides, you can still get sambal prawns in tins and luncheon meat imported from China. So what's happened to all the good tinned stuff? It better not be some stupid EU bloody thing - I mean how much mad cow or bird flu can you possibly get from a stewed to death, tinned meat/fish product?

It's just not right. First it was long yoke and now this.

Labels: food

Blummin' 'eck! William Rose butchers on Lordship Lane have already closed their books for ordering your bird for Christmas. It's only just the beginning of December! Maybe that's what people have been queuing all year round for - their Christmas turkey order.

We're going to have go further afield. Apparently, they'll be selling Christmas fowl without having to place an order, but we will need a back-up plan methinks.

Labels: east dulwich, food

Jerk Rock on Lordship Lane doesn't really do itself justice. The cooking is excellent - there's no doubt about that. The only problem is when you go in, unless you look like you're from the West Indies, they look a bit incredulous that you should have deigned to enter. Then, they never have any of the things that make me drag myself out of the house or get off the bus early because I really want to eat it, despite it being on their menu.

I always go in hopefully longing to have either ackee saltfish or fried fish or escoveitch fish or even callaloo. But they never do. So I always slink off with mutton curry - which is excellent but it would be nice to have something I actually went there to have.

If you like any combination of jerk-based food or brown-stew based stuff they always seem to have that.

Labels: east dulwich, food, restaurants