Recalling London

Day Eight - More shopping, around Seven Dials

Another stop at Villandry for pastries. It was definitely a habit now. We swore that we could stop eating those pastries any time we wanted, but knew that was more than just a little bit of denial. The held us in the vice of their buttery goodness.

Speaking of our vices, Tuesday was another shopping safari. Luckily our base camp was conveniently located in the West End. We planned to hunt Oxford Street, Seven Dials, and Covent Garden again, but first we wanted to visit Habitat, Heals, and Purves & Purves. (For those readers who aren't familiar with these stores, they are like Pottery Barn and Crate&Barrel, with IKEA and Chiasso thrown in for good measure.) Once again, a Terrance Conran creation came up a bit short in our minds. His Habitat store wasn't really on the same level as Purves & Purves. We shouldn't judge too harshly, though. We weren't really in the home design zone, since our home was an ocean away. Emerging unscathed from all three stores, we set off in search of some stores with stuff that we'd actually buy.

Orcs NestAs we were dashing home Monday, I had noticed a shingle hanging on Earlham Street, just across from Cyberdog. It depicted a big, gnarly orc's face, along with the words "Orcs Nest" on it, and could only be a store for nerdski players like me ("nerdski" being secret code for fantasy role-playing games). We returned there now, and I told Kerah that I would just be a moment, in the same way that she does when she's heading for Nordstrom's shoe department. Not believing me in the same way that I don't believe her when she says that, she headed over to peruse one of the local street vendor's wares while I got my nerd on. I pawed through the shelves of obscure RPG texts, fondled the racks of die-cast miniature beasties, and finally emerged having purchased a black longsleeve t-shirt emblazoned with the orc's face.

To balance out our shopping karma, Kerah went to a bunch of x-treme grrrl stores in some tiny Neal St. mall. Luckily there was some decent music and enough of interest to keep me occupied while Kerah gave a bunch of stuff the ol' "Is this just cute, or is it super-cute?" In the end, it turns out that only two items that made the cut were from Accessorize. She netted a groovy blue scarf that she wears all the time, and a black studded belt that I have never seen her wear. I think she must've got sucked into a nostalgia field generator or something. Believe me, I know what that's like. (What am I going to do with all those 8-track tapes, anyway?)

With the balance of shopping karma restored, we ventured once more to Covent Garden and the Doc Marten store. We still couldn't find the proper combination of funk and fit, and ended up leaving for a second time without any Docs. We were starting to get hungry, though, so we grabbed some pasties and a couple Yorkshire ales. We luckily found a roof garden from which we could watch a juggler perform in the square below. He really played of the audience, and did some pretty good juggling while perched atop a rather tall unicycle. That provided a nice spot of entertainment, and put us in rather good spirits as the evening settled in.

Hamleys ToyshopOur good spirits were sorely tested by the crush of rush hour holiday shopping traffic, but we finally made it to Hamleys toy store. Once inside, we realized that the people on the sidewalk were a babbling brook compared to the torrent of people buying gifts inside. We slowly swam upstream until we found what we were after -- Cranium. It's a game that combines many popular party games like Charades, Pictionary, and Trivial Pursuit, with a few other types of question thrown in for good measure. Other friends had introduced us to it the New Year's Eve prior, and we thought that it would make a nice thank you gift for John and Tess.

To cap off our adventures, we stopped at Soho Wine Supply (John's recommendation), where we picked up some absinthe and black vodka for gifts and for ourselves. Earlier in the day, we had scored some really nice Sauce Guides, chock full of tempting cocktail recipes along with equally tempting photos of the completed drinks. They were the perfect complement to the booze and Cranium game. We also got some absinthe and a Sauce Guide for our friends Brian and Barbara, who were feeding our fish back home. When we gave them to Brian, he said that he had never received a gift that was so unexpected and thoughtful all at the same time. Maybe that was the booze talking, but in any case we were pretty proud of ourselves for putting the pieces together.

It had turned out to be a really fun day of shopping, which is something I don't say all that often. As if the gods had to even some cosmic scales, I suddenly felt kind of woozy, as if battling the early stages of a nasty bug. Came up on me like a Kansas twister, it did. Turns out that all I really needed was dinner at Pizza Express and a rousing game of Cranium to make me feel all better.

CraniumAs we settled in to play Cranium, we realized that it was the UK version, with questions geared toward British mainstream culture. As three Americans and a Canadian, we were woefully unfamiliar with some of the references, and had to throw out a few of the charades cards because none of us knew who the people on them were.

There were some things that we had picked up about British culture, though. The funniest example of this was during one of the Pictionary-style questions. Tess and I were both supposed to draw an item that was listed on the card. It was a British food, and Tess and I both knew what it was, but weren't sure whether John and Kerah would know it. We finally agreed that they probably both knew it, since it had come up in conversation earlier in the week. We started the timer, and John immediately said, "Spotted dick!", before I even had the chance to draw a polka-dotted phallus. John said that he knew what it was from the way that Tess reacted to the question. She got all blushy, and we had a good laugh. Spotted dickYou see, spotted dick is a fairly common British dessert. It's like a cake with raisins in it, but some people still get embarassed about it. A couple weeks later Tess sent us all an email with a bunch of spotted dick links to help raise the bar a bit on our spotted dick dialog, but I think we're all pretty much stuck in the gutter. Despite losing that question, the ladies prevailed after fending off a late charge by the men. Our brains and funny bones properly exercised, we turned in for some well-deserved rest.

> Day Nine - London Eye, Buckingham, Camden >