…and sometimes you just want six-legged aliens, space chicks, and ray guns.
(Shop windows of Moe’s Books in Berkeley)
The Singing Branson
Found in the window of an outlandish and tacky gift shop on Piedmont Avenue the day we arrived: this colourful bust apparently representing a singing, guitar-playing Sir Richard Branson. They didn’t quite get the gap between his front teeth right, but apart from that….
We’re on holiday!
Countdown to holiday
We’re going down to Hexham in Northumberland for five days next week. It’s the end of my first three-month contract (which has been extended until the end of July–yay!), and the last month of Abi’s maternity leave, so we’re taking the opportunity to grab a little time away from home. At five days, it’ll be the longest period we’ll have spent away from home since, I think, May of 2002.
I’m looking forward to the break from routine, and the change of scenery.
The Plumed Horse
Abi and I were down at the Plumed Horse restaurant in Crossmichael yesterday, for a last short break before the new baby arrives (due in less than two weeks now). It’s a pity that our favourite restaurant in the whole of Scotland is about two hours’ drive away, but oh! the food!
I started with a smoked haddock and spinach quiche, with a roast scallop, and lemon dressing. My main course was fish again: fillet of brill, with crab mashed potatoes, a shrimp and scallop fishcake, and shellfish sauce. For dessert Abi and I both had the dark chocolate soufflé with apricot sorbet. The horse’s head emblem in the plate is actually a stencilled dusting of cocoa–a lovely little touch.
The soufflé reminded us of the other Plumed Horse restaurant, the one in Saratoga, California, where we enjoyed a fabulous meal at the end of 2000. We had dark chocolate soufflé for dessert then, too, with a dark chocolate sauce to go over it. Abi was pregnant with Alex at the time, though not quite as far advanced as she is now. And just as on our trips to the Scottish Plumed Horse, it was a two hour drive away, only then it was from Oakland down into the South Bay. We had Abi’s parents with us then, and Mick and Sarah, who had managed to stash young Thomas somewhere for the evening.
It’s an odd coincidence that the two Plumed Horse restaurants are located just where they are, and that they have become so closely associated with family, and particularly baby events. It means that it’s not just our stomachs, but also our hearts that keep drawing us back there.
Rome Photos
I finally got round to doing all of the photos from our Rome trip this year. Here are some nice ones! (There are more over in Alex’s pages, but your have to register to see them. Please feel free to register, but send me an email if I’m not likely to recognize your name or email address. We get a surprisingly large number of weirdos trying to register who get offended when we delete their logins because we don’t know who they are.)
