Sunday, June 28th, 2009
Our present for Rosie and Olla on the event of their glorious marriage was a bespoke cocktail, the Rosie and Olla.
25ml Russian Standard vodka
25ml Mandarine Napoleon
10ml (2 tsps) Rose syrup
5ml (1 tsp) lime juice
10ml (2 tsp) pomegranate juice
Splash of soda water
Shard of cinnamon (garnish)
Twist of orange (garnish)
In a cocktail shaker, add plenty of ice and measure out the vodka, Mandarine Napoleon, rose syrup and pomegranate juice. It’s important to get the proportions exactly right.
Shake well, and strain into a large chilled Martini glass. Use a large wine glass if you don’t have one. Top with soda water.
Cut a length of orange peel, and wrap around a chopstick to create an attractive twist. Take a cinnamon stick and with a sharp knife carefully cut off a shard along the whole length of the stick.
Push the shard of cinnamon through the orange twist. Secure the sharp end of the shard by piercing it through one end of the twist.
Immerse the garnish in the cocktail, and serve.
Knock it back and think of the happy couple!
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Sunday, April 26th, 2009
We were up in Flitwick yesterday for Alberto and Victoria’s wedding. Very handy for us, it being up the northern Thameslink line.
The ceremony was in a small cosy catholic church, a modern brick building with chairs instead of pews, and presided over by a very droll and deadpan priest, who conducted the service alternately in English and Italian.
A re-purposed shiny red London Routemaster took us all to the reception, which was in another cosy venue, a modern village hall. We drank lots of London Pride, punch, fizz and wine, mixing more and more indiscriminately as the night went on. The speeches were good fun, in English and Italian, so for the Italian ones I just enjoyed the rhythm and tones of their voices. It’s always nice to take a well earned break from discerning lexical meanings and to attend to the broad emotional outlines instead.
After dinner, we all danced to a ceilidh band, though many of the Italian family members sat on the side wondering why the English are so weird. “We don’t have this kind of dancing in Italy,” as Luca explained to me at one point. The ceilidh band were especially fast. It was more like bluegrass ceilidh, and indeed they occasionally sang snatches of classic American songs like Oh Susanna over the top of whatever ceilidh dance they were playing.
On the train on the way home, a young man got on board at Harlington and announced to us that he’d fallen behind all his mates, his phone had died, and he needed some help because he was a total country yokel. He hailed from a 1000 acre beef farm nearby, to prove it he even showed us his working farmer hands and where his finger had been lopped off in a closing barn door. All he wanted was reassurance that he would be able to cope in the Big Smoke. He needed to get to The Egg nightclub, so we gave him directions from St Pancras, and assured him that the bouncers would let him in.
It made me think of London in a different light – I suppose it is a big city, and could be daunting for some people, even those who live less than an hour’s train ride away.
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Sunday, November 18th, 2007
Matt and I were at Lauderdale House in Highgate for Tom and Emma’s wedding yesterday. Lovely going to a wedding that’s five minute’s bus ride from the flat! And what a sweet venue. A grand sixteenth century house, but quite petite and cosy too, a real winter wedding venue.
We had a nice ceremony, then photos and drinks, then dinner. Tom made a really sweet speech for Emma. He’s so rarely emotional that it moved me to tears! Afterwards there was increasingly drunken dancing and hilarity till we all gathered outside waving hundreds of sparklers to see the marvellous couple off into the north London night.
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