A London Some'ting

...or the great pork tour of 2016.

The Dotytron and I celebrated 15 years of jungle love this year.  15 years is not nothing. It's kind of a big deal.  We've been through a thing or two, and we wanted to celebrate in some grand, fiscally irresponsible fashion.  Originally the plan was New Orleans, for a extra-long weekend bacchanalia of jazz and beignets and crawfish and brass bands.  Then the Dotytron stumbled upon the 10 year anniversary of Rupture, a promotion company in London that's been pushing the breakbeat heavy sound that we love, that I really pushed when me and C64 were in the promoting game, that has been my heart and home.  For their 10 year anniversary they put together what can only be described as a "punishing" line up (very technical term).  So we did what any other jungle-crazed ex-ravers would do, we looked at each other and calculated the costs, and the time difference, and the fact that with the Dotytron's work schedule we'd only be able to spare like, 3 days in jolly old England, and the ridiculous exchange rate, and we said, "F**K IT, IT'S ABOUT TO GO DOWN."  And we did it.

The logistics of leaving all three at home were not triflin'.  They were something else. We drew up a master schedule, we booked our caregiver to come in on the weekends, we set up contingencies and play dates and made food so it was all ready to go.  We sent emails, we left health cards, and even still, I was a ball of stress and nerves leading up to it.  A neighbour asked me before we left if I was excited and I was just like, "I'm too freaked out that something is going to go horribly wrong. I don't think I'm going to be excited until I get back to Toronto and find out that nothing happened."  (This turned out to be a bald-faced lie, since outside of a quick hello Facetime video shortly after arrival, I didn't worry/think about them once).  The wonderful grandmas (one of whom is effectively deaf and the other one who has major joint issues) conducted themselves admirably and we owe them the world.

We left on a Thursday night red eye.  Arriving at 9am the next day.  Now, I don't know if you lot know this about the Dotytron, but he is a terrible traveler.  His comfort zone consists of a razor thin slice of equilibrium - he can't sleep on planes, he gets sick, he's tall and awkward and uncomfortable.  It wasn't looking good for him, because even despite duping our family doctor into giving him a prescription for sleeping pills, they didn't do squat.  I on the other hand, am an exemplary travel.  Being used to functioning at a high level on little sleep is a point in my favor.

On arrival.

Our crash pad.

We dropped our bags, showered, and then hit Borough Market for a roast pork, applesauce, and crackling sandwich, and a sausage, arugula (sorry, rocket), and stilton sandwich.  The Dotytron also had one of the best cups of coffee of his young life at Monmouth coffee. It's coffee where people wait in line for about 25 minutes for a cup.

Then we did something we've never done before...we split up.  Usually, we're glued to each other, but he wanted to meet up with some Toronto crew to go record shopping, and I would've rather eat a bag of barf than follow around a bunch of DJs on a crate-digging expedition, so I went to the Tate Modern.

I **think** that's St. Paul's Cathedral, but we are always the worst tourists in the world, so I can't be sure.  Pretty picture though, right?

I hoofed it to Ottolenghi Spitalfields and picked up a bunch of goodies to tide us over the next day when we knew we'd be crunked.

After a long, luxurious, deep nap made all the sweeter by the subconscious awareness that there was no way I'd be woken by a little body climbing into bed and kicking me in the head, we posse'd up and headed to the venue, which was conveniently located about 100m from our apartment.  Good planning, us, good planning.  I have to be honest, I slept so deeply that I almost didn't want to go to the party.  It was also hectic because the promoter's had promised the Toronto contingent (about 8 people made the trip to London for the party, including our two buddies who were DJing) paid guestlist tickets available at the door.  Anticipation for the show was so intense (people were selling counterfeits??!  For a rave?!) that the promoters told us to line up by 10pm, or else they'd hit capacity.  It was kind of annoying (like seriously, you're not going to prioritize the people who you promised tickets and who crossed an ocean to be here?), and it was kind of fraught, but we got in around 10pm.

Skanna - aka the love of my life

Ummm...what is there to say about this party, except that it was LIFE AFFIRMING.  I felt like I was home, in a very real way.  Among my tribe of people (aka weirdo junglists).  The party was oversold like crazy...three sweaty, grimey rooms PACKED with a throbbing mass of people...one of those parties where you can't even dance because it's just a constant rotating shift of people squeezing by.  Was I uncomfortably skin-to-skin with some white dreads at some point?  Yes. Was I thoroughly grossed out by the tacky feeling of their sweat-slicked bodies against mine?  YES.  Was I worried that one wrong step and I would be trampled?  YES.  Did I get hit on?  Yes (still got it, Lagerfeld).  Eventually, in the main room, during what was billed as the "Alliance of Science" set (Equinox, BKey, and some other shacker) I was dancing up on top of some benches lining the main room.  This sound...this breakbeat heavy choppage...this tsunami of thunderous, sequenced, programmed amens, this chest-rattling bass...nothing does it for me like that.  I never get to hear it.  I never get to be surrounded by people who love this sound like I do and will brock out.  I never get to be around my people.

The thing is...people still CARE about jungle in the UK.  There's still a scene...and not just that, but a bit of a revival going on.  People were calling out "Insiiiide" and shouting "boh" for rewinds and I was like YES YES YES, A THOUSAND TIMES YES!  Dotytron of course came back all fired up to rebuild the scene here but we all know that Toronto is a provincial backwater...a tertiary, staid, conservative town and if it wasn't the case that almost everyone I love in the world was here, I wouldn't stay.  I was like, you're almost better off saving the money you'd spend bringing Equinox here to play to 100 people (MAX), and going to London once a year for a weekend of Rupture.

It was beyond magical.  I danced from about 10pm-5am (jah bless the time change and our arrival working in our favour...it felt like we left the party at midnight).  I was sore and grungy and covered with a thin mist of rave rain and it was like a benediction.  We fell into our usual party rhythms...the Dotytron flitting around, socializing, me eking out a little square of space by the bass bins, throwing elbows to maintain it, reconvening at various points but otherwise, blissfully on our own trajectory, but near enough so that our orbits overlapped.  I want to go back.  I would go back in a heartbeat.

The next day our big outing was the Harry Potter Studios tour, in Leavesden.

We hit Borough Market again the next day for breakfast which was a duck confit butty.

So, you take a hour-long bus ride to the studio lot.  They usher you into a theatre, and they show a video of Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, and Daniel Radcliffe reminiscing about their time on the studios filming the movies.  At the end of the movie, the three of them turn away from the audience and open the door to the great hall at Hogwarts, and say something to the effect of: "Follow us now," and then the screen of the theatre rises up and the doors to the Great Hall at Hogwarts is there and everyone turned to each other and went, "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!" and people were like, bursting into tears and screaming, and it was truly, truly, the best.  So funny and dorky and amazing.

It was a big day for us.  For our splashiest meal, I made us a reservation at Fergus Henderson's incredibly influential restaurant, St. John.  When he opened the restaurant, he was one of the only people doing nose-to-tail eating and elevating so-called "humble" cuts of meat and returning to classic British cooking.  The food was a revelation.

Oat crusted mackerel with bacon and brown butter, potted crab toasts, and the iconic bone marrow dish.

The Dotytron had liver and chard and I had lamb's heart with rutabaga mash.  It was heavenly.  The heart had a texture like pork cheeks, but slightly more tender, sapid and blood rare in the middle.

The next morning we had breakfast at Modern Pantry, Clerkenwell.  I had a pecan frangipane croissant, and a shakshuka type thing.  The Dotytron had a benny with a yuzu hollandaise.  

We spent our last full day record shopping, regular shopping, and milling around.  Pretty lowkey and chill.  I had plans to check out a classic Sunday roast dinner, but because the seat of the Empire turns out to be a provincial backwater (is anyone surprised?  Not I!), we found that a lot of restaurants right in the core (Picadilly and the like) closed after a lunch service.  Da hell?  So we wandered around, peckish, Finally, we arrived at a Spanish restaurant with a crowd of people outside, waiting for one of the coveted seats.  There was no order to the crowd, so there was the general sense of unease in the air, subtle jockeying for position, mental headcounts of the people in the mass outside cross-referenced with the number of seats inside.  The Dotytron and I were the last pair to snag a set of bar stools and felt like we'd won the lottery for it.

Croquetas

Tuna Tartare, which our Run Lola Run server insisted was her favorite dish.  It was okay.

Spanish tortilla

Fried baby artichokes with hollandaise

Octopus a la plancha

Fried zucchini blossom served drizzled with honey

Beef cheek stuffed piquillo pepper, fried

Spanish flan and an olive oil cake with some weird trail mix served on the side

Two lovebirds, in love

Two lovebirds, homeward bound

It was such a good, fun, trip.  Although, 2 months later, it seems like a distant memory.  I'm hungry to go back.  

The thing is: 15-odd years ago, I made a choice to spend my life with this Tally McGoo from my high school.  I didn't know what I was choosing at the time.  I mean, how could I?  I was a half-formed lump of clay.  I'm still not even a fully-formed lump of clay.  Yet, every day, for the past 15-odd years, I've gotten up and continued to choose this life we've made together.  I choose this guy, with his big, pure, open heart and his ability to make me gasp with laughter. I choose his sentimentality and sensitivity and empathy.  I choose his silliness and his ability to be a goof around our children and his endless patience as a parent.  I choose our ups and downs, I choose our squabbles, I choose our brocking out in a car together, I choose our shorthand and our finishing each other's sentences.  2001 me, goomba that I was, turned out to be pretty smart, guys.  I don't know what life is going to throw our way.  I don't know what our struggles are going to be.  I don't know how low the capriciousness of fate will bring us.  The only thing I know is that there is an alchemy between we two.  As a team, we are magic.

Fin.

The Days Are Long...

but the years are short.

Have truer words on the subject of parenting ever been spoken?

Five years ago, I brought home this alien-fingered, round-headed, fat Chinaman of a baby.  I turn around, and 1825 days have passed and I have a goofy, irrepressible, sweet, risk-averse, bit of a scaredy-cat, loved-up five year old on my hands.  One that still wakes up at an ungodly hour and will sneak into our bed.  One that implores us to "make the blankets flat!" every night when we tuck him in.  One that will ask, "will you lie with me for a bit?" still, even when he's on the brink of being asleep.  One that has (unfortunately) adopted my deplorable habit of using "stupid" as a modifier.  One that told me last week that I was the "stupidest dumb mama ever."  One that makes me go berserk.  One that makes me scoop up all his Legos into a plastic bag and hide them out of sight in a fit of berserk.

Sigh.  Parenting is a trip, man.  I'm not sure that I'm getting any better at it, but I am a little dismayed that I've already f**ked up five years.  THE YEARS BEFORE FIVE LAST THE REST OF THEIR LIVES!  I need a do-over.    The fact that I get to do it with Dotytron from high school is another trip.  Last week we celebrated 14 years together.  FOURTEEN YEARS!  Look at what babies we were:

Look at us now:

We went to a newish restaurant, Dandylion.  It's a big, rustic-industrial space - exposed HVAC, marble-topped tables, lots of plants (a bit of a rarity in restaurant design).  That particular rainy, cold, drizzly night it was warm and cozy and intimate.  Despite all the exposed brick and hard surfaces, it wasn't too loud.  They have a very pared down menu.  Three appetizers, three mains, three desserts, and a beer list that's about as long as the wine list.

They started us off with warm, house made sour dough bread and fresh cheese (think, the best boursin you've ever had), with shallots and black pepper.  We were rather unseemly with the speed at which this was consumed.

Smoked scallops (I'm DEFINITELY going to be throwing scallops in my smoker, now), tender and juicy and briny with a celery root remoulade, with sea asparagus.

Raw red deer tartare in endive with horseradish and breadcrumbs. This dish was outstanding.  The scattering of ragged toasted bread was delicious toasted texture against the clean, almost sashimi-like protein of the deer.  It's so much nicer than your standard steak tartare with the toasts.  I loved this dish.  It was so delicious. Unlike steak tartare, which is usually mixed with all the standard accoutrements, you could really taste the clean, slightly tannic wildness of the meat.  

Pumpkin miso risotto.  This bowl was the epitome of earthiness.  The umami of the miso, against the sweetness of the squash - each bite punctuated with barely cooked pieces of bouncy, meaty mushrooms - the deep round flavours highlighted with the grassy notes of the sprouts.  It was like eating the forest floor - in the best possible way.

Duck, pear, and roasted kale. Tender roasted pear pieces, perfectly cooked, sapid duck, with kale that is the essence of kale-ness contrasted with crunchy, popping bits of roasted buckwheat.  

The balance of flavours and textures at this restaurant is so advanced. The chef eschews heavy sauces in favour of a really nuanced, concentrated balance of flavours and an attention to texture that you don't see in a lot of restaurants.  The cooking is very focused, and inventive.  This is a chef who has the vision and skills to practice restraint.  I loved this place and would go back again.  I loved that it wasn't that hyper-masculine "more is more" style of meat-heavy, and just plain heavy-heavy cooking that was in style for a long time.  I loved that this chef had a voice and really focused on the food without gimmicks and without overloading the plate.  The trick was that the cooking is elevated enough so that you feel like you're being treated, without being overloaded with a "concept."  Highly recommend.

We went to visit my sister on the weekend, after a visit to the ER to get Quincess' head stitched up.  The twins convinced me to let them sit on our regular dining table chairs instead of their high chairs, which resulted in first, Lindsay soaking Quincess's upper half with the vinegar-water cleaning spray we use to clean off their highchairs.  Then, halfway through their lunch, I was in the kitchen and saw Quincess fall off his chair.  In Quincess fashion, he of course went head-first and I picked him up and he had a gash on his head.  A small one, but it was deep.  The ER doctors decided to use the glue instead of stitches to put his head back together, because stitches are "traumatic" for the kid and the parent.  In retrospect, I would have gone with the stitches because my kids are very chill when it comes to doctors.  Exhibit A of Quincess falling asleep on the table as they were gluing up his head:

They glued it, plastered it with steristrips, and then because I warned them that his "twin brother is a maniac" they added gauze and tape. Cut to two hours later when we're in the car on the way to my sister's and the Quincess has picked ALL the bandages off and opened up the cut and has blood streaming down his face.

   

   

  These two card sharks learned how to play War this weekend. 

 Anyway, we had a lovely time and hung with my family and celebrated my nephew's birthday.  The 

children's museum there, which is the best that I've ever been to, was having some kind of Star Wars-themed thing that weekend so we went on the first day.  The Big Yam and Little Little Cuz totally got into the cosplay and there were a bunch of photo ops with various figures.  Quincess at first said, "No, thanks" to meeting Darth Vader but then later, when a Stormtrooper waved at him and reached out his hand for a high-five, the Quincess misinterpreted the gesture and put his tiny little hand in the Stormtrooper's.  It was friggin' adorable.

We were standing off to the side of this meet and greet and unbeknownst to me, Quincess was quietly doing an open-close hand shy wave to the characters.  They waved us over and we got to jump the queue for this photo.

The wind machine is so key. Such a classy touch. LOL!

It feels frivolous to write a post like this in the aftermath of the coordinated attacks in Beirut and Paris.  I was up late on Saturday night, my mind spinning after an intense debate with my sister, outlaw bro, and the Dotytron on what has been happening on the campuses at Yale and Missouri.  I was thinking about my family, my children, about the chubby guy in his homemade Han Solo costume, about the joy and creativity in this pretend world of absolute good and evil, of empires and rebels.  And yes, while it is frivolous in the face of the atrocities perpetrated by humanity and against humanity on a daily basis, to say nothing of what these events do to reveal the ignorance, fear, and violence that simmers just below the surface of so many (I had an active day de-friending bigots on Facebook, and it was very satisfying), I was also heartened by this frivolity.  Playing dress-up, sincerity, investment, laughter, silliness, and the multitude of tiny moments that combine to make up long days, collected in a blur to make for this rapid succession of short years, is what we're all striving for, and what life is made of.  People will prevail in making and living those tiny moments, and the knowledge of this is profoundly comforting in a world that can seem at times, to be without reason.

Fin.