Livre d'Or

Three years ago, in the week between Halloween and cjwatson's birthday, I got together with him, and then with ghoti_mhic_uait, and then we decided that all the connections probably constituted a quad. It's also the week when both jack's and my mothers have birthdays. We ended up moving some of the celebrations a couple of weeks away from the exact calendar date, but even with that it's been pretty busy.

I counted the amazing Handel concert as my anniversary treat with cjwatson. The weekend after that, ghoti_mhic_uait and I had a really indulgent day in London. The excuse was the Scythians exhibition at the British Museum. It is very definitely worthwhile, lots of amazing stuff borrowed from the Hermitage about this pre-Roman civilization which covered a huge range across central Asia. They weren't literate, but they carried out their burials in the permafrost region of Siberia, so everything is amazingly well-preserved. Textiles 2500 years old, not just scraps, but whole garments with the colours and weaving and embroidery still clear. Wood and leather too. Amazing headpieces both for humans and horses, including masks to disguise horses as mythological animals. And quite a lot of really cool gold, imitating the styles of Persia, China, Greece etc, since the Scythians were in contact with pretty much the whole old world. There are also corpses. Not just unrecognizable human remains like mummies or relics, but dead bodies presevered even to the tattoo-covered skin.

While we were there we wandered around a bit, looking at the Korean and Japanese galleries and the Assyrian section which is particularly strong in the BM. We left out the Egyptian and Classical Greek stuff because those are at least a whole day's visit in their own right. The BM isn't the best place to see non-Eurocentric stuff, but small galleries with at least a few real treasures in made a good addition to the temporary exhibition.

Then we went out for dinner. I got quite nervous about selecting a place because I'm not very experienced with fine dining, and I wasn't sure how to pick somewhere that would offer an interesting meal to a vegetarian / carnivore couple I ended up reading loads of reviews, and lighting on the first place I found that looked exciting but not a world-famous place with a French chef I'd heard of. Namely, Mere. (Their website is terrible, but I looked at the words rather than the design and was impressed.)

This worked out really very well, just the treat I was hoping for. The venue is modern without being aggressively so, and really well laid out so that even when it was full it felt quiet and intimate. The whole ambience was definitely luxurious but not snooty. The food was really great, definitely more special than anywhere I've eaten before. Lots of new things and new combinations, but nothing gimmicky, everything was selected and combined to be delicious rather than clever.

It wasn't perfect for a veggie; in hindsight, I should have explicitly told them I was vegetarian, and I bet they'd have coped. There was no vegetarian starter on the menu at all; one of the options was mostly vegetables but with anchovy salt, which seemed kind of unnecessary. I decided I'd compromise and eat fish, but I should have been more confident about asking them to alter the menu for my requirements. Similarly the amuse-bouche was some kind of duck thing, like an amazingly posh version of a spring roll, and I didn't think to ask for a veggie alternative. (They seem to have introduced a vegetarian tasting menu since we visited, in fact.)

My starter was seriously amazing though, very well worth making that the one occasion in however long when I ate fish. It had smoked haddock with beetroot and the most incredible cheese dumplings. Both the components, and the combination, were really mindblowing. I was less excited about my main course; still definitely good, but it seemed like almost too much of the same thing. I had an onion tart, where they'd done something really brilliant with the filling so that it tasted like caramelized onions without the sweetness, and an incredibly light texture, but it was all one note. There were some root vegetables inside it which might have been better as a separate thing, and a side salad that was perfectly nice but mostly just some chicory with vinaigrette. ghoti_mhic_uait got on really well with her meat and fish dishes; based on her experience I would very highly recommend the place to meat-eaters but if you're feeding vegetarians and people who don't mind meatless dishes, probably Vanilla Black is better. We both had the same dessert, a sophisticatedly simple concoction of pear with caramel and dates, the last in form of a ridiculously delicious cake.

Service was generally lovely; the only minor complaint was that I had to repeat several times, no thank you, we're not drinking. It wasn't that they were pushy about wine and cocktails, it was that in such a fancy place as that I wouldn't expect to have to make the same request multiple times. And maybe it is just too weird to have a fancy meal on that scale without also drinking wine with it. We spent about £60 a head for three courses without drinks, which is a lot of money to spend on a night out but it was in the middle of London, and it was enough of a treat that it felt like good value for money.

Halloween itself, jack had a house party. Lots of lovely people, many of whom dressed up. I did the kind of boring default sexy witch thing, in a dress I don't get enough opportunities for, with a tight, sparkly purple bodice and a big foofy black skirt. OSOs and their children came as superheroes, which was really quite awesome. And we had good fun decorating the house with spooky stuff and eating themed foods. On the actual day, not at the weekend, the children came by ours for trick-or-treating, which was really fun too. I don't really like random kids extorting sweets from me, though I'll play along, but I did enjoy welcoming children I actually know who were clearly having a great time.

The weekend after that, we went to the fireworks on Midsummer Common, which is always a good display but they outdid themselves this year. Also it was unseasonally warm for November; usually Bonfire Night is really cold. Then to London on the Sunday for cjwatson's birthday. This treat was based around a trip to the zoo, and for various annoying logistical reasons jack and I weren't able to make it before the winter early closing time. But we went to Camden market and ate street food and were a little bit touristy; Camden is still Camden, but it's starting to show signs of gentrification, and met up with OSOs (including their eldest who came down from uni to join the celebration) and fivemack in the evening. We had a completely gorgeous dinner in Mestizo, which I've loved on every occasion I've visited, but it's even better with a large family party than for an intimate two-person dinner. Another part of cjwatson's birthday involved me babysitting the littles so that he and ghoti_mhic_uait could go out for dinner during the week, so that was fun too, and I was really please to be at home when they got back raving about an exciting meal.

My mother turned 70 the same weekend, and my brother Screwy came up for a spontaneous visit, and I was able to squeeze in joining parents for the afternoon, though it involved a bit of rearranging. P'tite Soeur sent us a package of actual Parisian Macarons with strict instructions to Mum to relax and let other people look after, which Screwy helpfully enforced by stealing the joint of meat planned for dinner and cooking it while Mum played Scrabble. Oh, and the end of my celebration weekend with ghoti_mhic_uait I went back to London to spend the evening with doseybat and verazea who kindly put me up so that I could easily travel to Chelmsford for work the next day. And as ever we had a wonderful evening chatting.

Which left only this weekend for celebrating the anniversary of quad getting together. fivemack most generously offered to babysit so that we could have some adult time for the four of us. We went to the wonderful Peacocks tea room in Ely, getting the really convenient train from Cambridge North. On the train we met a young man who informed us that the Flying Scotsman was due to pull into Ely just after our train did, so we waited for 10 minutes to see an unexpected bonus steam train. And we had just the perfect ideal afternoon tea. Just four small finger sandwiches, leaving plenty of room for two scones with cream and jam, and a huge slice of cake. I'm picky about scones, and the Peacocks ones are just right. And of course several pages of fancy teas to choose from, all of them excellent. I had a keemun which I loved to bits. jack had acquired the "Bible" edition of Apples to Apples as a joint present for all of quad, and we played a few rounds in the waiting room on the way home. It's kind of things from the actual Bible mixed together with slightly random stuff that seems vaguely Christian-related, like Handel and Galileo.

So yes, that's about four consecutive very full weekends to be able to celebrate all the combinations. I'm really enjoying how much easier it is when we all live in the same town, though! Three years means that my relationships with OSOs have now outlasted any of my previous relationships, and also we've been dating for more than half the time I've been married to jack. I'm really, really happy, partly because I've been having lots of fun with the noteworthy celebrations, but mainly because my general day-to-day existence within this wonderful network of relationships is so incredibly good for me.