This is London calling!

Instead of a list of resolutions that will undoubtedly feature a decree to binge-watch less TV and to throw away empty cartons of my beloved ‘The Tonight Dough‘ ice-cream (instead of back in the fridge whence they will remain until I angrily discover them at the next instance of an ice-cream craving…),  I have chosen one word, to inspire and recentre me throughout 2016: Balance. A word that seldom features in my internal vernacular, when my natural tendency is to move at the pace of a child after a handful of chocolate.

Ahhh, handfuls of chocolate – possibly my favorite pastime during our stay with Tammy and Mil in London over Christmas. One of the lesser-known but ever-enduring advantages of Mil’s Masterchef career is the surefire access to industrial bags of couverture chocolate. That poor Callebaut Dark Chocolate hidden under the kitchen table never stood a chance…

Christmas. Right. It was only 20 days ago and it feels like a lifetime since we touched down in the unseasonably mild London. (London and New York: Scarf optional. San Francisco? Gumboots and thermals. #ElNino4eva).

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Non-snowing weather aside, the UK was a beautiful place to spend Christmas. While George worked from the company’s London HQ, I got my bonding time with my sister, Tammy and her best friend, Mil. Tam really appreciated waking up to find me staring at her (lovingly, I say!). Or random bouts of hugging her in public.

It’s the sisterly bond that even 8 months apart, on opposite sides of the world, just can’t break. My nose, on the other hand, T-Dev was pretty close to breaking when I tried to hold her hand at the theatre. In my defense, it was still the least weird thing occurring in The Book of Mormon theatre. Sadly, I can’t even recount anything that happened in that brilliantly offensive, incorrect and just plain wrong piece of theatrical history, because I have no desire for this blog to start appearing in Google when people type in the phrase ‘I’ve got maggots in my…’.

(Additional grimacing time provided here for your convenience)

Pre-Christmas shopping, markets and preparation – including a hazy jet-lagged journey to an Ikea in the middle of The English Wasteland (the lesser-known cousin of The English Countryside) –  culminated in an Australian Orphans Christmas hosted by Tammy and Mil, featuring incredible food, litres of mulled wine, handmade chocolate decorations, a brilliant Secret Santa gift-swap (where I scored Aesop’s famous Post-Poo drops.) and the obligatory hideous Christmas jumpers. The girls were the consummate hosts to the 12 orphans who descended on their east London home. Yet, no matter where you are in the world or how you celebrate the festive season, there is a quaint universality about sitting down at the kitchen table at 11pm on Christmas Night, after your guests have gone and the frivolity is over, to have a go at thirds of the gravy-soaked turkey.

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Devastatingly, even my honed advocacy skills couldn’t convince everyone to wear their jumpers on our post-Christmas family road-trip to the English countryside. You haven’t lived until you’ve endured a photo shoot in an 18th century graveyard, whereby Mil climbs into the base of a hollow tree – all in the name of ‘farshun’.

Yet even then, nothing quite throws your composure off-kilter when you’re trying to seem even a little knowledgable in Stratford-Upon-Avon and your travel companions keep proclaiming  ‘It was the best of times. It was the worst of times’ (Nope. Dickens.) or observing that Anne Hathaway looks really good for her age, considering she married Shakespeare…  (Wrong one.)

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After a day of exploring Stratford and the Cotswolds, we bid adieu to the girls as they caught the train back to London for work the next day. George and I enjoyed a cozy night in Cirencester before spending the next day exploring more of the picturesque, quaint Cotswold region and then, we arrived at the Nerd Mothership: Bath.. for Mr. Darcy! (The capitalisation makes a big difference to that sentence, otherwise it’s about to get very personal).

Bath is an incredible, breath-taking city which lives up to its World Heritage Site listing. But let’s be clear, I was there for The Jane Austen Centre and scones in the parlor, under the tortured yet soulful watch of Mr. Darcy…

Much like Elizabeth and Darcy on their long arduous journey to Pemberley (and true love, if we want to be metaphorical about it), we got stuck in 3.5 hours of traffic. But as much as time slowed to a halt while stuck in English peak-hour, time went far too quickly as our holiday and family reunion were soon to be over…I managed to hold back tears when giving Tammy one last hug (but that may have been because it was 6am, and my eyeballs were still dry) before we made our journey home on December 30.

In Short, London Favourites

• Restaurant: Yotam Ottolenghi’s Nopi in Central London.
• Dessert: Emelia’s Poached quince and marscapone pavlova on Christmas Day.
• Beverage: Bottomless chai at DiShoom brunch
• Laugh: ‘Farshun’ shoots in an 18th century churchyard, while a farmer drives past on his tractor.
• Cry:  Reuniting with Tammy after 8 months apart (Happy tears) and… Discovering I don’t have enough room in my suitcase to do more than 1 shopping trip to Primark (Sad tears. Very very sad tears).

We rang in our first Californian New Year fast-asleep on the couch at 8pm – setting a brilliant precedent for the next 365 days, as we succumbed to jet-lag like the closeted senior citizens that we are. Either that, or Jenny McCarthy and Ryan Seacrest’s NYE coverage was as awful as I anticipated…

Missing you all very much during the festive season but we hope that the new year brings our family and friends prosperity, health, happiness and adventure. And our sofa looks forward to hosting you in 2016! (Don’t let Ramon’s lugging the couch up 4 flights of stairs be in vain! Think of Ramon and his friends…!