Down by Nine: two first entries

FIRST, THE FISH TALE.

Randall tells me that I'm to photograph real Fish'n'Chips.  This was following his recent outing to Long John Silver's for the "New London Style Fish and Chips".   Reeled in by the lure of its buck ninety-nine price, his report was of a meal in the style New-London, Connecticut rather than in a London-Style, new to  Long John Silver seafood restaurant.  

But, I missed last night's opportunity.  The pub was crowded.  I'd have had an audience.  And, I chickened out when it came time to photograph the plate.  This is to say nothing of embarrassing David, who was with me at the time.

This may sound like a "One that Got Away" story; but, Randall, the fish was HUGE.  It was 14 inches long.  It had a perfect beer/doughnut batter, fried golden: so deliciously crunchy.  And, it was 2 inches wide, tapered at what must have been  near tail and head (parts not included).  In sum, it looked like a fish, and, the fish skin inside the batter most certainly gave it away as a fish.  Of course it wasn't given away.  At Seven Quid Fifty, that's a hefty $11.25 in today's U.S.A. dollars.  

The fish was a delicate white and at least 3/5ths inch thick over the bulk.  It was half the whole body: bones removed; and, the other half, on David's plate.  It was not dry in the least.  Not at all mealy.  The fish was floundering on a bank of golden chips.  Chips: that is British English for "French fries"; your American chips are "crisps" here.  Yes: floundering, laying flat in the style of the fish of that name.  Had the whole of its body been on my plate, it might have been said to be properly foundered.  But, the effect of golden fish on golden fries was definitely a flounder's act of camouflage.  

To assure the effect, the plate was filled out with peas.  Yep, peas.  They're traditional here.  Not coleslaw.  Peas: in this case the little round green bubbies.  Or, mushy - not mashed - peas in alternate, as desired.  David hates mushy peas- pronounced moosh-'ay [swallow the ay sound] pays in one of Cambridge's many accents.  Mushy peas taste of having been boiled to mush in water together with a huge ham hock.  I love them.  They remind me of my grandmother, who called her mushy pays "pea soup".  

Of course, no "pub food" would be complete without beer (pronounced be-'ah).  Last night's was a bitter, Dominion, a local micro-brew.  It was a mellow dark, slightly sweet, not all hopped up in the way of an American beer.  The half pint was one Quid fifty, which is what? $2.25 USD or so.  David had the whole pint at two Quid twenty-five.  I should have done.  Good beer!

AND NOW, THE WEATHER REPORT.

Yesterday was of note.

(I feel so self-consciously of my mother here.   You could always count on her letters to speak of two things.  First, who'd died.  I used to dread her calls for fear of hearing that she'd died and was calling me from beyond the grave.  Second, what the weather was like "back home".  I fear it means I've nothing better to tell you.  Perhaps I don't appreciate her weather reports well enough as written snap-shots: photographic variations of housewife who doesn't drive.) 

Cambridge (United Kingdom), 2009 January 09.

The day started off warm.  Spring-like, in contrast with recent temperatures.  Scotland and Antarctica, of late, have been warmer much than southern England.   An inversion, however, quickly brought the Chill.  I happened to be out on my bike - shopping errands - when it swooped in.  I felt the cold even through my Gortex-lined ski gloves.  But within two hours, hoarfrost had formed.  Now, hoarfrost usually forms over night rather than during the mid-day.  This, per the BBC Radio 4 broadcast that I was listening too, was considered unusual even by British standard.  

Within an hour though, while I was within the walls of Downing College, Cambridge, there was another inversion.  The hoarfrost warmed and a thick fog had formed.  It was as "dense as pea soup", my mother might have said.  I was witness to the disappearance of the whole of Downing College.  It was truly a wonder.  

No sooner had the fog thickened to obscure sight of everything, the whip-saw weather brought another inversion: the biting cold, again.  The fog that still hung in the air froze within sight and fell slowly, impeded only by its own density.  Vision measured a verticle field of slurry, glacial across the horizon.  I thought of pupeteers holding snowflakes at the ends of strings.  Their corpora fell as last light tried to pierce the cloud cover above.  A final inversion might have sent them crashing or given them to rise like so many souls on judgement day.

Knowing what the weather is like in Antarctica, by the way, is one of the benefits of living in Cambridge, home to the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).  The day's report from the BAS told tale of scientists playing a game of rugby on the permafrost, wearing shorts.  Very Australian of them, I'm sure.

I was in Downing College, returning from David's office.  I'd always simply passed through on the road that skirts the northern boundary of the College.  I'd never stopped.  Yesterday, despite the cold, if not because of it, I had been lured into the common.  Somehow, it made the buildings look stately, so British in their resolve against the cold.  

In the dying day's half-light, the College buildings took on a darkening rose and yellow patina.  They seemed to rise up out of similarly coloured gravel, as though they'd been recently chiselled from an outcropping of solid stone, or, as if the gravel had gathered its courage against the forest-lawn to form the fortress buildings that now stood stolid.  

Most of Cambridge University's Colleges have pristine lawns: verdant postage stamps of grass that look a tad like the cat-grass that one sees at the PetSmart checkout.  The lawns of Downing College were more natural and far more expansive.  And, whereas no one dare stand on other College lawns, here stood birch, paper-white on the forest-lawn.  Benches begged one cross the green.  A sun-dial, though it now stood silent beneath winters' clouds, could be read only following an intrusion upon the lawn.  Still.  And, because the cold was disinviting, no one dared an idle on the benches.  Perfect on their own, an idyllic English manor's landscape, I doubt one would venture out upon them even on warmer days.

It merits note that, on brighter days, the buildings of Downing College absorb the light.  They become white after the fashion of pink and yellow ocean-side buildings of Collins Avenue, Miami Beach.  They become Dover's cliff, inland upon a green sea, in the tempest of the fully leafed birch.  They are the more impregnable and uninviting than they are when standing in the cold.  On bright days, one need not know the founding history of Downing College to appreciate the buildings as monument and, by equal measure, tombstones among the forest-lawn.  

I suppose it possible to envision the buildings of Downing College as forming a harbour.  Possible, to view the birch-white masts of English vessels with their leafy sails open on the still water that the lawn becomes.  And, to find that the gravel is remade a beach.  I'll leave that for warmer days.

Outside my office window as I close this post, snow flakes are drifting toward a soft landing.  Meanwhile, the flak of ice pellets aims to shoot them down.  The weather, today, has gone all nineteen-forty.  My mother would appreciate it.

See photos of Downing College.