Last night we got caught up on the shows we missed during the week. We sat down on the couch, and watched the new Sleepy Hollow show. Two episodes in, we are really loving it!
It was a cold rainy evening, which created the right Sleepy Hollow atmosphere, candles were lit and we feasted on popcorn and hot apple cider. What could be better for a cozy date night in?
The weather forecast originally said that it would be a partly sunny and a little bit of a warmer weekend. That is not the case, Summer might be fighting to throw in a couple more days before Fall takes over for good, but for today, she has not succeeded, the sky is a powder steel grey, the air has a bite to it, the tree branches are swaying to the rhythm of the wind.
Mr. Michie has a lot of work to do this weekend, so he is staying tucked away, busily editing his thesis, I am staying cozy in sweatpants, sweaters, slippers and drinking copious amounts of tea. It is a day for soulful, bluesy, jazz and my music of choice at present is the Home for the Holidays soundtrack.
I love the organ keyboard shelling out those sweet notes. It always makes me think of this great little restaurant in my hometown, it started out in a much smaller venue when it first opened before moving to a bigger place across the street. I liked the new place, but there was something about that older joint, it had character.
On Friday nights they would have a guy come in to play music, he was a bit eccentric for sure. He was normally half lit, he would sit at his keyboard, cigarette in his mouth, eyes half closed and his upper body was bathed in a smoky haze from his cigarette, forming plumes of billowy white vapor around him. You could ask this guy to play just about anything, and he would know the notes.
I could see him playing parts of this soundtrack, bobbing his head and shoulders to the music as his fingers tickled the keys of his keyboard. It’s music for a staying in kinda day, for baking pies, for contemplating, for reading, for stirring the turkey potpie filling, I have simmering away on the stove, a day just for being. So, that is what my Saturday will be, a day just to be.
To celebrate our first official week back at school, Mr Michie and I planned a Friday night date in London. He came to pick me up at my new school and after getting to meet and chat with my new colleagues at the staff barbeque we headed back into central London for cheeseburgers at Five Guys.
By the time we left the party at school and got back over to Covent Garden it was about 8:30 and there was still a huge line of people waiting outside Five Guys to get in. We only had to wait about 10 minutes, it didn’t matter it was worth the wait!!
When we made it to the front of the line, the manager in charge for the evening (or, the gentleman who we think was the manager, unfortunately we were not able to get his name) told us he would bring us downstairs to order, the only hitch was they we had to come back up to collect our food. No problem!
So, off we went and proceeded to order, this is when things started to go a little hairy. Their credit card machine had gone down earlier in the day and unbeknownst to them had not come back online downstairs. Our server was very apologetic, extremely smiley and was working very hard to try and rectify the problem. One of his colleagues came over to try and help and at this time the gentleman we believe to be the manager came to help as well.
Now, we continued to smile, because 1) we are pretty easy going and 2) we were going to eat Five Guys cheeseburgers, so it would all come out in the wash! Well we waited for a good five minutes while they attempted to fix the machine, we apologized for not having any cash on us and smiled at the people waiting in line behind us for holding up the works. We continued to wait a little longer and it was at this point that the gentleman we believe to be the manager printed out our receipt and told us that dinner was on the house!
We immediately protested and said, “No, way!”, that is not how we work, but he insisted and very graciously took care of us. I stayed downstairs as that is where we like to sit and Mr. Michie headed back up to get our food and they must have rushed us through because by the time he was at the counter our dinner was ready. He thanked the gentleman again who was helping us and we were lucky enough to catch him again on the way out to give our thanks for his fantastic business service, but again, since they are such a busy place we didn’t get the guys name! We wanted it, so we could tell Five Guys what a great job he did.
Now, my husband is British, so I feel I can say this, but you rarely get that kind of service in England. There is no way that if this situation happened elsewhere would they be smiling at us, apologize for any inconvenience and then comp our meal, if anything in another restaurant if this happened they would have said, “Sorry!”, closed the till and told us to go back upstairs to order. It is that great level of service along with the delicious food that Five Guys offers that makes us want to eat there.
So, thank you Five Guys for your wonderful business etiquette something that rarely exists inside of chain corporation these days (you have not forgotten your humble beginnings) and thank you for your delicious cheeseburgers, which made our back to school date night a lot of FUN!
Summer not only brings with it Wimbledon, but also, cricket matches. Mr. Michie, truly enjoys watching cricket. Over the years he has watched numerous matches and throughout those many matches he has attempted to explain it to me and I have done my best to understand it in return. Maybe I need to be trying harder.
Don’t ask me why, but I just don’t get cricket. Now, give me a good game of baseball and we’ll be talking. Now, for all the avid cricket fans that might read my blog, I am sure that you are cringing right now and screaming at your computer screens. Maybe it is the way he explains it, or maybe I need a “Cricket for Dummies” book? I don’t know! For whatever reason most times he has ended up explaining the rules to me, we are sitting in a pub, weirdly enough, it is usually this one particular pub in Covent Garden and inevitably he starts to draw everything out for me on a napkin and the more he sketches it out, the bigger the hand gestures get and the more passionate he gets over trying to make me understand it and somewhere in the middle my head is filled with creases and wickets and stumps and bowls and I just start laughing and we don’t get anywhere.
We watched a match being played at Lord’s Cricket Ground last night and heaven knows why but as I watched it all I could think of was The Fantastic Mr. Fox film. There is this wonderful scene where the coach explains the rules to “Whack-bat”. I think Mr. Michie might be explaining Whack-bat to me when we are discussing cricket. If he starts telling me they are bowling a flaming pinecone then I will know for sure, I’ve lost it!
This was my calendar page today:
It made me smile. When we first started dating, Mr. Michie danced with me in the moonlight in the middle of a Charleston street and we have had many more moonlit dances since. I hope we keep dancing under the moonlight until we are old and grey.
Have a wonderful weekend. The heat wave is continuing, so we are going to do our best to stay cool and I think eating lots of ice cream will be the perfect antidote to all this sweltering weather!
It is getting hotter and hotter here! Yesterday it was almost 90F. That is a little too hot for me, when I work in a cupboard with no windows and my fan was just circulating a mix of sickeningly hot air around.
I closed my eyes at one point and dreamed of being some place else. Mr. Michie and I play a game, where we ask each other, “if you could be anywhere, where would you be?”
If he had asked me that yesterday I would have told him, listening to good beach music, driving to Jack’s Cosmic Dogs for lunch, where I would have my usual, The Cosmic Dog and then head to the beach to cool off in the water. Then, home for cold beer and boiled shrimp on the back porch, where we watch the sunset over the water and pray for the first cool breeze of the evening to waft over us.
Now, that would have been a good day to me! A girl can dream….
As much as I truly embrace living here, having a little slice of home is always welcomed. I got that this weekend, as Mr. Michie took me out on a date to Five Guys!
They are one of my favorite burger joints from home. I have some great dive bars I love to go to for a cheeseburger, but this is one of those great burger chains that never seems to disappoint, no matter what state you have traveled to/through and stop by.
Their landmark restaurant in London, didn’t disappoint either! We waited about 30 minutes to get inside (the sidewalk was roped off) and order and get our food. We found a great booth in a niche downstairs, drank too much vanilla coke (it would have been even better if they had chocolate coke, but I’m not complaining!) and feasted on cheeseburgers and fries and listened to the good music pumping out of the speakers. It was the perfect Saturday Summertime date!
It was pure heaven. Now, we love The Diner, that is our hangout spot, but these burgers are different from that, so there isn’t really a comparison. This was just a bite of happiness in my mouth. It tasted just like home! Oh, Five Guys UK, I am SO HAPPY that you have come to London, you make living here, that much sweeter!
We feasted this morning on fresh homemade cinnamon rolls with lashings of cream cheese frosting, flecked with vanilla beans and sunbeam shards of orange zest. While the steam from our coffee cups oozed into our nostrils, tantalising our taste buds with the first perfect sip to come.
The weather is beginning to turn summery here as we sit on the last day of June. I long for my toes to dangle over the edge of a pool or feel the rush of the waves hit my ankles as I stand at the shoreline watching the horizon for the shrimp boats I know so well coming back into port. There will already be people waiting at Shem Creek to collect from the boats.
These are the days that I truly miss home. The slow steady heartbeat of the South, the pace of Charleston life, the long lazy Sunday afternoons that dwindle into twinkling candle filled nights. The sweat that has already soaked your collar long before you open the door to the humidity of Summer.
Today, felt like a Charlie Parker kinda day and that is who crooned us through breakfast and coffee. This week, the beginning of July, places me at a crossroads and shall bring about some new changes one way or another. Mr. Michie ever my sounding board stands by me as I take this venture. Here’s to good things coming and here’s to Sundays, may the hold all the promise of the weekend that has been and the hope for the week that is coming.
I had a truly wonderful birthday weekend! I got my wish: I slept in till 8:30 on Saturday, so that was a true treat! Mr. Michie had surprises for me when I came downstairs and he took me out to lunch and to see Man of Steel. We both really enjoyed it.
We came home, Mr. Michie made me dinner. Exactly what I wanted; a steak, a baked sweet potato (the gorgeous Evangeline’s from North Carolina) and sauteed sugar snap peas and asparagus with a hit of chili flakes, like we watched Ina Garten make the night before.
We feasted on cake for dessert. I was orginally going to cover it in icing roses but in the end, I decided to go for an old-fashioned looking cake from the 1950s. So it was pale pink icing, roughly frosted and white shells piped around the bottom. It was a white cake that was so light and a heavenly almond and vanilla laced frosting swirled on top to boot.
Before we headed out the door, there was a sharp rap and a package arrived from a dear friend. It was all so beautifully wrapped. I hated to undo any of it. Everything inside was lovingly picked and made my birthday even more special!
Yesterday, we continued with the celebrations and I made oven fried chicken and homemade pimento cheese sandwiches. The chicken had a hint of cayenne pepper and coconut flakes in the breading, so there was a spicy, yet somewhat exotic taste to it. It went really well with the sharp but sweet bite of the pimento cheese, on fresh white bread. The only thing missing was the sweet tea!
We ran some errands in central London this weekend. Someone, has a Birthday coming up this week (ermmm-hmmm!) and Mr. Michie needed to do a little shopping. So, we had lunch at The Diner (best cheeseburgers around!) and then headed off in opposite directions.
He went on a secret Birthday shopping mission and I went to the London Graphic Centre to buy some micron pens and a few Copic markers as I am starting to do a little zen-doodling in my sketchbook and I wanted to try out some things I had seen. I always doodle, so I find it slightly amusing that this is something that people are seriously going to classes for and studying, but hey, if that’s what works for you, run with it.
One of my mom’s sisters is an artist and she told my mom about going to a zen-doodling/zen-tangled class and my mom told me and that is what sparked my interest. I am always interested in discovering new artistic styles. I have learned some different patterning techniques and an entire train ride home was gone in a flash as I was so lost in what I was doing, so there you go!
We met up at Whole Foods after running our errands and needed a mini afternoon snack. We ran inside to pick up a few items and grabbed a bottle of water and a bag of cookies we picked out ourselves. They were delicious, like good Italian bakery cookie delicious. We sat outside in the sunshine at one of the tables and just took in the day.
Mr. Michie ate his butter cookie and I feasted on a little mushroom cookie, dipped in chocolate and covered in sprinkles. Happiness is….