Rounding out 2010

We closed 2010 with a film fes­ti­val, some fine din­ing at The Wolse­ley, a wildlife pho­tog­ra­phy exhibit and a week of gorg­ing turkey and trim­mings over Christmas.

Cinecity Film festival

In Novem­ber Brighton had its very own film fes­ti­val, which duly lead us to our favourite movie-place, the Duke of Yorks, for a num­ber of fan­tas­tic movies. The fes­ti­val opened with a packed out screen­ing of The King’s Speech, with com­pli­men­tary Jamesons’ gin­ger beer cock­tail (oddly tasty) and home­made car­rot cake. Colin Firth’s per­for­mance was astounding.

Next up, in another sold out screen­ing, we saw Mark Romanek’s adap­ta­tion of Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Never let me go” with the bril­liant Carey Mul­li­gan. An emo­tional, slow mov­ing and incred­i­bly intense tale of friend­ship that starts at an idyl­lic Eng­lish board­ing school. We talked and talked about this movie for days.

“The Extra­or­di­nary Adven­tures of Adele Blanc-Sec” was a refresh­ing com­edy with dinosaurs and Egyp­tians from Luc Besson, although its dis­tinc­tive French humour grew tir­ing at times.

To round off our cin­ema extrav­a­ganza we caught Sofia Coppola’s lat­est effort, “Some­where”. The atyp­i­cal Air sound­track was dropped in favour of a Phoenix offer­ing, but the sen­ti­ments were all very sim­i­lar. Sparse dia­logue and a focus on the minu­tiae (the old trade­marks) led to moments that sparkled, but as a whole it fell short of her pre­vi­ous mas­ter­pieces, namely Lost in Translation.

In between these screen­ings, our small screen view­ings also stood out. “An Edu­ca­tion”, again with Carey Mul­li­gan, and the dev­as­tat­ing Koy­aanisqatsi with its all encom­pass­ing Philip Glass soundtrack.

The Wolse­ley

As a birth­day treat I took Sam to the lux­u­ri­ous Wolse­ley in Lon­don where we enjoyed the finest Cham­pagne tea, our own small slice of deca­dence. Cham­pagne tea? Crust­less and exquis­ite fin­ger sand­wiches, per­fect pas­tries, home­made scones and jam (spe­cially made with­out fruit by request – there’s noth­ing Sam likes less than raisins in her scones!), two pots of tea (the Wole­sely after­noon blend and Sam’s favourite, Assam), and a glass of Pom­mery Brut Royal NV each. That’s one of Timeout’s 1000 things to do in Lon­don crossed out.

Before­hand we paid a visit to the Nat­ural His­tory Museum to see this years Wildlife Pho­tog­ra­pher of the year exhibit. After a short queue we entered a dark room where 3ft by 2ft pho­tos were mounted per­fectly along the walls. Back-lit, the sharp­ness and del­i­cate detail of the pho­tos and nature itself shone through. Our world felt fleet­ing, frag­ile and perfect.

A down­ward shot of a seabird div­ing from a cliff gave us ver­tigo and a majes­tic por­trait of a giant tor­toise amazed us. Lan­gurs cud­dled, look­ing out across the city, like a roman­tic cou­ple, and a baby ante­lope ran for its life, framed by the impend­ing attack of two cheetah’s, dust thrown up around them.

As an aspir­ing pho­tog­ra­pher, I left want­ing to travel, to build my own hide and to sit with patience, ready to cap­ture that all too rare wildlife moment.

Christ­mas



This Christ­mas we were in Banstead where Sam’s mum made us a deli­cious tra­di­tional turkey roast with all the trim­mings. Petra, the dog, ran around with her new squeaky toy, (thank­fully she’s now grown out of all the toe nip­ping and lace tug­ging) and ate up a cou­ple of fly­ing cracker toys.

After din­ner we sat in front of the roar­ing wood fire and shame­lessly sat back to endure a lit­tle Poirot, amongst the ad breaks and the cheese and crack­ers (all too full to really embrace the fine cheese). Amanda’s indoor heli­copter toy was care­fully manoeu­vred from the table to the ceil­ing, mak­ing sure Petra was out of sight.

The recent snow hadn’t melted and it was the per­fect white Christ­mas – crisp, white and snowy, but with­out the imme­di­ate travel chaos. With some Christ­mas cake wrapped in foil, and packed into an old Qual­ity Streets tin, we drove to Bris­tol on box­ing day, with some deli­cious smoked salmon and scram­bled egg on toast to keep us going.

In Yate, after endur­ing the obvi­ous M25 traf­fic jam, my mum and sis­ter treated us to dips, party food, and tasty nib­bles. Then the board games came out; a gift from Sam, we played Acquire first (a cross between Monop­oly and Car­cas­sonne), then, a gift from me to Sam, we all played Thurn and Taxis (sim­i­lar to Ticket to Ride). Of course, late in the evening we watched the foot­ball high­lights and the excit­ing Ashes series down-under, which we have now won emphatically.

We rushed about Bris­tol see­ing friends and fam­ily while we could, stop­ping at my aunts in Yat­ton for a bite to eat and a talk about the horses and cats, with ET on in the back­ground, muted. At my Grand­par­ents my Grandpa knocked up a deli­cious quick bub­ble n squeak from Xmas day left­overs, com­plete with the much needed pick­led onions and home­made quiche, and tri­fle for dessert. And we went to my old friend Gary’s for an evening, to see how he’s set­tling into his new house with fiancée Rachel; Sam’s Xbox skills were pushed to her limit as she played a run, jump and explode team­work game. Each day, and with each stop, we dropped off a box of our home­made truf­fles and Christ­mas bis­cotti, and some­times a plant or a bot­tle of mulling syrup (the good stuff from Sel­s­ley) too.

Back in Brighton, in the down­time before New Year’s, we found the per­fect oak bed from War­ren Ellis, com­plete with 55% + 10% off. It’s gor­geous, and the smell of new wood con­tin­ues to per­me­ate the flat. And that’s not the best part, the bed is high enough for us to see out the win­dow from our pil­lows, I can see the sea from my pil­low. My bed is my new favourite place.

At New Year’s Jo, Amanda and Vince came over for some games and a meal. We made lamb puff pas­try parcels with cran­berry (and a spe­cial trick to keep the pas­try crisp), with maple syrup and mus­tard roasted parsnips/carrots and brus­sels with wal­nuts. Served with red wine, and with one of Jamie Oliver’s 30 minute desserts – home­made mas­car­pone and rasp­berry cheese­cake. Yummy!

Games filled up the rest of the evening; scat­te­gories, a new back­packer card game, and then, late into the night, Artic­u­late, the party favourite. At the strike of mid­night we cracked open the cham­pagne and watched hun­dreds of Chi­nese lanterns float towards the sky.

Jo stayed for a cou­ple more days, and this was the per­fect excuse to play yet more board games, in between the “Fly away home” movie on TV and a spot of Sushi mak­ing (Sam also tried her hand at mak­ing tem­pura). At last we man­aged to squeeze in a round of our favourite game, Set­tlers of Catan.

Before too long, the hol­i­days were over and after round­ing out the hol­i­day sea­son with Toy Story 3 and the last mug of mulled wine in our Ger­man mar­ket mugs from Cologne, it was back to work, or uni­ver­sity in Sam’s case, for her final 10 weeks in Guild­ford as part of her masters.