to the hoes who hardly wear any clothes
HASHTAG BROCCOLI
On April 1 I told Twitter what I was cooking for dinner. (Why? I do not know.) Then I decided to tell Twitter what I was cooking for dinner as often as possible for the month of April, a move that on the one hand seemed like a dumb self-indulgent overshare (LIKE TWITTER IN GENERAL) but on the other resulted in several adults-with-family-cooking-responsibilities telling me that they appreciated another source of input on the meal planning front. In retrospect April was exactly the wrong month to try to be a completist about reporting my dinners, since my family and I spent a week of it in London for spring break. We ate dinners in London, but I did not cook any of them. We ate fish and chips and excellent pizza and roast chicken and some surprisingly great gnocchi at a pub in Chelsea. Also, in an airplane over the Atlantic I was served a delicious hot sandwich. I was actually a bit freaked at how much I enjoyed it. What’s the deal with airplane food, indeed.
London is a great food city now, but food is still not really the point of it for me or LT, and certainly not for the kid, who views all food in terms of grams of protein and units of energy to turn into more doorframe pull-ups or whatever. Our London consisted of a few predictable tourist things, like the Tower (hello ravens)* and Hampton Court,** and a few more out-of-the-way things, like Greenwich*** and Hampstead**** and my beloved cholera pump.*****
*A sign on their aviary said that the ravens’ favorite treat is a “blood-soaked biscuits.” Honestly: same.
**It was a beautiful day and Cardinal Wosley King Henry sure had a beautiful castle, but man were there a lot of crabby children and screaming toddlers there. I would not have been surprised to hear that some of them were parentally abandoned in the hedge maze. Good luck, you ungrateful moppets! Happy navigating!
***Reached via new (to me) high-speed water taxi! I may just be a whore for boats, but I thought it was a fun ride and it works with the Oyster card.
****Another beautiful day and a paradise for (a) cute dogs and (b) people like us who like to look at cute dogs. Also, Keats’ house! He only lived in it for two years but probably contracted tuberculosis in that very house, so that’s cool. (Wait, no it’s not. I forget that not everyone is as fascinated by infectious disease as I am.)
*****Speaking of: cholera pump! We took a special detour on a hot afternoon so I could see it in person. The cholera map (don’t drink the water!) is probably the most famous “Figure 1” in epidemiology, curiously not reproduced in the eBook, but available in a cool interactive version here.
My favorite bit of the eBook are the pages and pages of publisher advertisements for other books. Thirty-seven pages in all! Including Mr. T. J. Ashton’s blockbuster, “On The Diseases, Injuries, and Malformations Of The Rectum And Anus,” which was blurbed by The Lancet AND The New York Journal of Medicine! That is a must-read.
NOT CONTAGIOUS
We stayed in a cute, if insanely overheated, Airbnb apartment near University College London (a name that Aaron found amusingly redundant, and that led to the coinage of similar names like “Market Shop” and “Stadium Arena”). It had a balcony, but that was rendered unusable by the presence of a pigeon nest and two juvenile pigeons inside, as well as a large quantity of bird poop and the comings and goings of a nervous mother pigeon. On the plus side, the sliding glass doors turned the life journey of these pigeons into a private-showing nature documentary, and by the time we left the babies were standing up and stretching their wings more often than not. Bon voyage, air rats!
The only other notable things that happened in London were that LT accidentally (I hope that doesn’t need to be said) slammed my hand in the car door of an Uber. It hurt like hell and I am sure I frightened the driver with my tears and colorful oaths, but there was no lasting damage. I will revengefully injure LT at a time of my choosing. (Just kidding.) Also I got to see my friend from college, she lives all the way out in Brighton and I sent a (I hope) politely worded email saying that we really were not planning to visit Naughty Brighton on this particular trip, but if she wanted to make the journey to London we would happily take her out for a meal. We had to dodge Extinction Rebellion protests when she arrived at Marble Arch but soon were settled in an Iraqi restaurant sharing a bottle of wine, and then at a pub full of overdressed chavs and chavettes sharing another, so I am very glad I reached out.
BESIDES THE GOOD SANDWICH
On the way home the plane seatback entertainment was showing Hard Knocks, that HBO show about an NFL team’s training camp and preseason. I love this show because (a) I am a sucker for behind-the-scenes stuff and sports documentaries in general, and (b) because many of the big giant football guys are very quotable. There was one bit where the team was playing a nighttime preseason game and a tight end looks up, notices the sky, and says:
“All right, the moon. I can draw energy from it. [pause] That’s dope.”
I kind of can’t stop thinking about that or saying it. I looked this guy up and he is no longer playing football professionally but has retired to pursue “spiritual healing and his passion for crystals.” OKAY.
—mimi smartypants conveys in an agreeable and epistolary style some most important truths.