Happy Thanksgiving!

Friday was our Thanksgiving. The Man went into work, but sent me various texts throughout the day letting me know that he wished he could be home with me on 'this, our day of Thanksgiving.' He had arranged to leave the office earlier than on non-Thanksgiving days, so I had his early home-coming to which to look forward.

In the meantime, I spent my Friday (I had taken the day off) preparing for the feast we had planned for the evening. My mantra to keep me grounded and calm throughout the day was, 'there will always be wine; there will always be wine.'

Knowing that our oven is as hot and uncontrollable as an active volcano, I was preparing myself for what was assured to be disappointment.

In London, I never made pumpkin pie. There are numerous restaurants and caterers - and now the Whole Foods in South Kensington - where Americans residing in London can buy pumpkin pie. I prefer chocolate chip cookies to pumpkin pie, so I normally baked the cookies (for taste) and outsourced the pie (for tradition) for all our English Thanksgivings. This year I had toyed with the idea of making the pie for myself. My decision was made when I happened to be in the 'Happy Day Bakery' in Malasaña (an American visitor was buying a cupcake; yes, the rage has reached Madrid) and noticed the cans of pumpkin.

How can I not?

So, Friday mid-morning was dedicated to pumpkin pie making. I learnt what 'blind baking' is, I rolled out the dough, I prepared two pie tins, and moved onto the filling. Only then did I realise that we didn't have a can opener in the rented flat. (Most Spanish tins come with pull-off tops; the tins of American-sourced, pumpkin puré did not.) I put my baking endeavours on hold and ran out to spend 11 euros on a can opener.

The pies required constant prodding and poking and wrapping in aluminum. They made me tussle and tug and bicker with the oven that wants to be a volcano. Finally, I turned off the oven and left the pies.

They're done enough. They're protected by aluminium. There is always wine.

The Man came home; we chatted; we napped; we started the cooking of the stuffing (unstuffed as the Turkey was being done across town at La Gamella). The stuffing is the pride of my family Thanksgiving. As such, we were more vigilant than I had been with the pies earlier in the day. The successful cooking (not overcooking) of the stuffing entailed a lot of turning on and off of the oven, opening it and closing it, and re-wrapping the stuffing container in aluminium. We used a lot of aluminium this Thanksgiving.

When we picked up the Turkey, we were a bit concerned by the temperature of the heavy turkey containers (the people at La Gamella had had to chop up the turkey to make it easier to transport, they had warned us). We had assumed that the turkey would be, if not hot, warm; and that we would have to figure out how to keep it warm once back at our flat. On the contrary, the turkey containers were cold. As we sat in the taxi, each with a turkey container on our laps, The Man and I worried about a possible mis-communication with the people at La Gamella.

"Did they know that they had to cook it for us?" the man asked.

"Of course!" I defended my communication skills. "I explained about our too small, too explosively hot oven. She had to know that I meant for the turkey to be cooked."

We wondered what the hell we were going to do if they hadn't cooked the turkey. We worried. We fretted. We finally tore through the plastic-wrapped, aluminium-wrapped outer layers of one of the turkey containers. The turkey, although freezing cold, was brown like a cooked bird.

Phew.

At home, we relit the oven for the warming up of the freezing turkey. We peeled white potatoes for mash; we peeled sweet potatoes for sweet mashed potatoes. We turned on two of the burners in order to boil water for the soon to be white and orange mash. The electricity went out.

Turns out, we can only have 1 burner going at the same time as the volcanic oven. Otherwise the fuses get annoyed and throw a tantrum. We modified our approach accordingly.

Guests began to arrive, and we began to drink wine in the kitchen whilst The Man finished the mashing. I had charged my camera's battery specifically to take photos of Spaniards eating pumpkin pie and sweet potatoes, but during the activity in the kitchen, I had put the camera up and out of the way of potential spillages, later to forget about it. I have no pictures of Spaniards eating pumpkin pie or sweet potatoes.

For a day fraught with so much risk, it came together nicely.

There was also lots of wine.

And the pumpkin pies! After a bit of surgical removal of charred bit, it was tasty!

Happy F*cking Thanksgiving!

Today is Thanksgiving.

I don't feel a rat's toenail of thanks today. I'm sat at my desk in my home office ...

oh, woe is me!

... and thinking about all that great smelling turkey and stuffing across the ocean. In the meantime, I am trying to dry out a loaf of bread to make stuffing for our belated celebration (we're doing it tomorrow ... the first time ever Thanksgiving will not fall on a Thursday for The Man and Me). The oven in our temporary dwellings has never been fixed. It is a temperamental and not to be trusted contraption. I put the loaf of bread inside; now a good portion of the loaf is burnt.

God damn it!

Our lease is coming up. I've been here almost a year. The Man wants me to negotiate with the landlord. We're over-paying, if the Internet is to be believed. Not by enough to uproot ourselves again, I think. Except for the fact that the contraption, which pretends to be an oven, is really just a piece of crap. The piece of crap oven could be the one item that inches me to negotiating with our mild-mannered landlord.

Get me a goddamn oven that works and you'll have us another year!

We're getting the turkey cooked and delivered from a restaurant that specialises in New York brunches. It's a punt. The brunch we had was poor value for money. We are desperate. Besides being temperamental, the contraption in the kitchen is too small for a turkey, even a baby turkey. The cook in the poor-value-for-money restaurant is American. She does a turkey dinner at her bistro. She's preparing turkey bits and bobs for us to bring home to serve to an assortment of guests (15 of them). Fingers crossed!

Oi! Landlord: make the new oven big enough to fit a god damn turkey, ok?!

It's not just the turkey dinner that has me out of sorts. I'm at the end of my tether with the lack of consideration of the general Spaniard in the street. Get ready: this is a whinge. It will pass. I will love all Spaniards tomorrow. This is all part of the process known as culture shock, so those of you out there who are want to read the words at face value, take heart, this is a whim. And if you are a Spaniard who is reading, well fucking take note:

It is inconsiderate to take up the whole fucking pavement with your old person pace with little regard for those behind you. It is inconsiderate to cut in line at the grocery store. It is inconsiderate to knock a person because you are keen to get the loaf of bread on which you have had an eye. Please, for Christ's sake, please country of Spain ... can you try to consider others around you?

Now, Spanish people, before you tell me to go home, I repeat ... I will love you tomorrow.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Wanting Strangers

The childless woman sat in her window seat and used her iPhone to look up the Spanish words that she had read but didn't know. She waited for the remaining passengers to board and the flight attendants to announce that all electronic devices needed to be turned off; in the meantime she looked up her words. She noticed it when a fat, swarthy man took the aisle seat next to her. He put his coat and reading material on the empty middle seat between them.

Why do men always do that?

She would have liked to have put her extra stuff in the empty seat as well, but she had been waiting to be sure no one was assigned there. When it appeared that the plane had been fully boarded, she took her laptop from the bag at her feet and slid it under the seat in front of the empty middle seat next to her so she could reach it easily. She had to wonder if, in a way, she wasn't showing the fat, swarthy man that she was entitled as well.

As it transpired, however, the flight had not been fully boarded. A handsome, swarthy man followed by a child walked down the aisle said something in a foreign tongue (Spanish didn't help the childless woman with these swarthy types) to the fat, swarthy man. The fat, swarthy man grunted and collected his things from the middle seat. The childless woman panicked; she scrambled to bend down to shuffle her laptop from the free-but-about-to-be-occupied foot space of the middle seat; and, in doing so, she clunked her head against the middle seat's tray-table. It fell open and crashed down upon her head.

"Fuck!"

She looked up to see the wide eyes of a small child, a boy of about 8, bearing down into her. She looked from the boy and up to what she deduced to be the boy's father, the swarthy, handsome man.

Oh, hello.

She pulled her laptop back to her seat, fumbled to close the tray-table that had fallen on her head, and tried to generally regain her composure. The stunningly good-looking man and his cute-enough-to-eat child took their seats next to her. She didn't want to be seen taking a good look, but she had to verify if this handsome man was really as handsome (in a swarthy, pirate way) as she had first thought.

She took a furtive peak over the head of his son. He was looking the other way.

God damn it.

She wondered if he was married; she looked to see if she could spy a wedding ring. The fingers of his wedding band hand were hidden under his son's jacket.

Hmmmpfff.

The handsome man of questionable marital status cautioned his son not to spill the bottle of water that he was trying to open.

The childless woman felt her heart turn to mush. The handsome-swarthy-pirate father spoke English to his son in a foreign accent clipped with the Queen's English. Most heart-mushingly of all was the soft timbre of the deep tone.

Oh my.

The childless woman imagined that the handsome father had looked her up and down out of the corner of his eye.

Oh my.

The childless woman tried not to be too obvious as she observed the father and son relationship. The handsome-pirate-father played with his son like a brother or an uncle would. Parental control only manifested itself when the son's level of excitement approached a level that might be a nuisance to society at large. They, son and the dangerously handsome father, played a game, a game they invented. The childless woman cottoned onto the rules. The two pressed their faces against the others. The objective was to kiss the nose of the other without letting the other kiss your nose. The childless woman appreciated the stress, the pushing yet pulling involved in the game.

The father repeated time and time again. "I love you."

The father got carried away by his love and pulled the son close and whispered in his masculine deep voice of sensitive, soft timbre, "You're such a puppy."

The childless woman fell in love (despite the fact that she was already in love, with her own, at home, somewhere else). She wanted to be part of the swarthy, pirate father's life. She wanted the puppy to be her son.

White Horse Revisited

On Sunday I flew out of Barajas. My final destination was a customer sight on an island more accessible from London than from Madrid. I had made my travel arrangements so that I would stay over in London two nights, giving me a chance to go into the office, catch up with colleagues, and possibly get a pint at my favorite pub, The White Horse, or The Sloan(e)y Pony as it is often referred due to it's relative proximity to Sloane Square.

No, no pint for you.

I am still working off a little belly I cultivated during the busy stressful month of August.

The White Horse serves a wider variety of lagers and ales than most pubs; it also only serves wine by the bottle or by one size of glass. Most pubs offer wine by two sizes of glass: either in a small (normal) sized glass or in a large (think carafe in the shape of a glass) glass. The fact that The White Horse only serves one size of wine glass speaks to the quality of wines served in this local establishment. They are good wines here; not the grape-y paint thinner consumed primarily by bleach blonde young antipodes for its inebriating qualities.

On Monday evening I find my opportunity to go to the White Horse.

I wonder if it will be crowded. The White Horse tends to get crowded on some nights, and I am in the mood for a seat at a table where I can eat dinner with a glass of good wine and work on my novel, which might suffer incomplete thoughts and misspellings thanks to my appreciation of a fermented grape.

The bar at the White horse occupies the centre of the pub around which the main drinking and eating area wraps. The pub is pleasantly full. The muted din of a Monday night attendance is pleasing, but I walk the full perimeter of the eating area and am disappointed not to find a free table. I remember that last year the proprietors of The White Horse renovated the second floor and reopened it with a bang. I make my way to the staircase that cuts up between the bar and the kitchen. I am in luck: I find a table upstairs and settle into my projects of eating, drinking, and writing.

Upstairs, The White Horse is reasonably full as well. I have taken the penultimate free table. At the table behind me is also a lone woman with a glass of red wine. She has ordered food. I glance to see how she passes her time whilst she waits for her food.

Ha!

She doodles around a Sudo(r)ku which may have got her beat, whereas I will be writing a novel.

Ha!

The table on my other side is an unlikely dinner meeting. A white haired woman is the customer. Three men - two younger, one older - try to wow her with ideas. She seems to want to collaborate with this team by brainstorming, but the eldest member of the wowing team keeps interrupting. He is a show off know it all*. He keeps making references to Finland.

"Do you know why the Finnish don't have any great tennis players?" he asks his young colleagues.

I don't hear the answer but whatever it is he thinks it is very funny. He laughs loudly while the rest of his table merely chuckles. I finally realize that the white haired lady is Finnish, hence all the references. I form an opinion of the elder man.

What a jack ass.

Three young, alternatively trendy men sit down at the table in front of me. Their upper crust accents call them out: they weren't bred to be so alternative. They speak of clubs and gigs and an untapped market. It seems these boys are potential entrepreneurs.

"West London Is ripe for a club where people can go without shoes."

I think I must have heard wrong, but I know I didn't.

*Last week I learnt that Spanish has the equivalent of know-it-all: sabelotodo.

Words Roll

I first heard about NaNoWriMo in 2002. I had a job, but things were slow. We (my company and I) were waiting for a big project to be agreed.

We (my company and I) had completed Phase 1 (which was later renamed 'Phase 0', which didn't make sense to me . . .

How can something be nothing? Zero is nothing. We did something!

. . . It was as if someone had gone into the past and erased our beginning because a new beginning had been deemed more worthy. I was insulted by the re-branding of our Phase 1 to Phase 0. I know I shouldn't take things so personally, but Phase-1-cum-Phase-0 had been important. Without it, we wouldn't have stood a chance at winning more business. The subsequent, final and conclusive Phase 1 would never have been.)

We (my company and I) spent a lot of time twiddling our thumbs whilst we waited on pins and needles. This was, of course, before the original Phase 1 had been usurped by the subsequent Phase 1 for which we waited on pins and needles.

We had finished Phase 0 (the previous phase 1) in August. We expected the client to make a decision to continue with further work (still a nebulous phase) in December.

Our (my company's and my) thumb-twiddling and pins-and-needle-waiting fell between September and December.

What better time to write a novel!

In 2002, I signed up for and completed NaNoWriMo. I've got a hard copy of the messy output stored in a box. I threw a glance across some of the pages when I stored it in the box where it is now stored. Some of the paragraphs weren't bad. I have not yet found the fortitude to sift through those not so bad paragraphs and put some structure to the thing. I don't know if I ever will.

In 2003, after having won the business, which became the definitive Phase 1, I again signed up for NaNoWriMo. We (my company and I) were still in the throes of the definitive Phase 1. There was no thumb-twiddling. There was no waiting, on pins and needles or otherwise. On the 2003 attempt, I didn't finish my novel writing. Just too much going on in Phase 1. The incomplete output of the 2003 NaNoWriMo is stored in a box with the somewhat more complete attempt of 2002. Again, from a cursory review, there are a couple of not so bad paragraphs; unfortunately there is no plot.

I'm hopeful for a better outcome in 2010.

Intercambio Appreciated

I was talking to my Intercambio over Skype, and I wasn't drunk or anything. I had had a hot cup of Horlicks, and finished it without spilling it. The Man was out, so I invited The Dog to sit on the sofa with me.

Shhhh. Don't tell.

In the midst of my asking about my Intercambio's children and his favorite sports teams and his opinion on the movie he had taken his wife to see for their anniversary ("To Eat, To Ask and To Loving' - close enough, Pedro, close enough -) I realised I am a very good conversationalist. Not that I'm particularly witty or anything, just that I can keep the conversation flowing and the Intercambio engaged.

I suppose it wasn't really much of an epiphany. My ability to listen and ask the follow on question is part of what makes me good at my job. Maybe that's why I tend to dread having to do it when I'm not on the clock. There are occasions when the thought of having to engage in a conversation fills me with dread. If there's booze around, sometimes I'll get drunk.

I didn't get drunk tonight. I didn't spill anything. I practiced my Spanish. I listened to a friend of a friend (whom I have not met in real life) stammer a bit in English. It wasn't bad. Truth be told, I like my Intercambio.

Intercambio: literally it means 'exchange'. In Spain it refers to the exchange of language practice. You find announcements for 'intercambios' all over bulletin boards of language academies. Swap 45 minutes of Spanish for 45 minutes of English. Not a sweet deal, but a fair deal.