I've had a really crummy week, so yesterday T.Middy and I decided that the Scudder Road Circus needed its first-ever Christmas lunch - "in the manner," TM observed, "of the British." So we went to the Bothy, a very cozy place off Byres Road, and (joined later by numerous office groups, all dressed to the nines) stuffed our faces with roast turkey and hot puddings.
Afterwards we slid as best we could along icy, hilly streets to go to an exhibition at the Hunterian of Whistler's drawings and paintings of the Thames - very useful for the novel I'm writing at the moment, as a lot were of Limehouse and the docks in the 1860s. (The Hunterian has a major Whistler collection.) It was also very distracting, as exhibitions always are. Now I want to start reading all I can on Whistler's lawsuit against John Ruskin, especially as it implicates my old friend Edward Burne-Jones.
We didn't have a Christmas tree this year, as we'll be away, and all our decorations are in our Tardis-like storage unit. We've made the best of it, I guess. These are taken in our kitchen, the easiest room to keep warm.
My story, "Red Christmas," will be broadcast on Radio New Zealand National this Tuesday (December 21) at 10.45 AM. Red Christmas is an Icelandic idea: it means a Christmas without snow. We have one of those in Auckland every year.
In a week's time we'll be in St Louis, where it will almost certainly be a white Christmas. But by early January we'll be in New Zealand, where we're hoping for summer, summer, summer.
T Middy looks very smart, gosh Paula, great photos. Hope we can catch up when you are home, Merry Christmas to you both,
Posted by: Bookman Beattie | December 18, 2010 at 06:52 PM
Oh that lunch looks just lovely.
Posted by: Trina | December 22, 2010 at 05:17 PM