So there I was earlier this week, walking alongside the large dock in our neighbourhood when I heard a strange sound. A thwap! And then another thwap! I looked up and realised it was the sound of two large slices of white bread belly flopping on to the water.
Two people walking ahead of me had clearly gauged the size of the water life in the dock, and thought they were ready to handle bread in slices. The flying bread drew the attention of ducks, birds and swans alike and a splash-filled scramble ensued.
As I looked closer, I saw that most of the chubby little quackers were not actually swimming. They were sitting in speed boats, causing waves and trying to beat each other to the spoils. The aqua population of our dock has become so overweight they can no longer swim.
I wondered if the ducks had also grown fussy now. After feasting on chips ( see my earlier post Stop quacking and eat your chips) maybe they’d prefer something like a toasted sandwich? Burrito, perhaps?
It made me think of the time a few years ago when we stopped at our local cafe to buy a few things on the way home. A scruffy homeless guy, reeking of cheap alcohol, stumbled over to me and asked me for some money. I told him I was going into the cafe and would buy him something to eat. I came out and gave him a bag of bread rolls.
He took the bag, grabbed a roll and tore off a hunk of a bite. He looked deeply disappointed. I asked him if something was wrong, and he said, “Why didn’t you buy me a pie?”
I climbed into the car and said to my family, “That guy was rude.”
One of my sons said, “Yes, he was, mommy. He was speaking with his mouth full.”
So back to my neighbourhood and my walk. My thinking wasn’t far off. I turned the corner at the edge of the dock and saw a pizza delivery girl at a duck’s nest. This duck family had given up on the boring diet of bread and chips. In exchange for a pile of pizza boxes, Mr Duck gave the delivery girl a few notes and said, “Keep the change, thweetheart. Buy yourthelf thomething pretty.”
What next, London? What next?
Sunshine shaking her head and signing off for today!
So yesterday evening I went to my wonderful Zumba class at the gym. I had my blinkers firmly in place, because I thought, “I-can’t-blog-about-this-class-again-I-can’t-blog-about-this-class-again.” And then it happened.
Who would have guessed that there would be someone in my Zumba class who had the moves of The Office’s David Brent? More than this, I will not say. Big Blogger’s watching me.
I love it when we have friends staying with us. I realised this past weekend that we’ve had more people stay with us in London than anywhere else we’ve lived. London’s like that.
We had a friend staying with us over the weekend and planned a full weekend for him. While not everything went according to plan, it was just how it was meant to be. Life’s like that.
Our plan for Friday night was to go to one of our favourite restaurants next to Tower Bridge. It is right next to London’s City Hall, a modern and interesting-looking building that was added to London’s skyline in 2002.
London's City Hall designed by architect, Norman Foster
So our destination was London Bridge. We stood at the bus stop where the buses all head off in the same general direction. We discovered (actually we knew, but weren’t thinking) that the bus we jumped on gave London Bridge a wide berth. We decided to stay on board and travel to Waterloo and walk back along the South Bank to our final destination. The walk took us about an hour.
We walked the route I described in my blog post last week – Come and walk along the South Bank with me – but without the buskers, the book market and daylight. It was dark and cold, but still a wonderful walk, always with so much to see and soak in. The view of St Paul’s on the far side of the river, lit brightly against a dark, autumn sky, is always breathtaking. We walked past the working replica of the Golden Hinde, the small flagship that unbelievably took Sir Francis Drake around the world in 1577. We walked through, past, alongside and underneath amazing culture and history – I always wonder what the walls have seen and what they could tell us.
When we saw Tower Bridge in the distance, and the Tower of London on the far side of the river, we knew we were nearly there. We got a table upstairs at our favourite Italian restaurant, with the brightly lit Tower Bridge as the backdrop to our meal.
The view from the restaurant
Our delightful young Italian waiter, two months new to London and here to learn English, smiled awkwardly at us as he tried to make sense of our strange accents. English must be bad enough to understand. Saffa English? Heaven help the boy.
We ordered our meals from the menu bursting with Italian delights. Our friend wanted to impress the waiter, so he squeezed in a “Paolo Nutini” with his order, just to sound Italian. That was really funny!
Saturday morning and we headed east to Bethnal Green, to our favourite breakfast spot: ePellicci. Not only is the restaurant itself Grade II listed for its wooden art-deco interior, but it is an experience I would recommend to anyone visiting London. A true East End caff, ePellicci combines the wonderful, witty banter of the East End with the food, hospitality and kind community-mindedness that is typically Italian.
The best caff in London
The restaurant was started in around 1900 by the Pellicci family when they moved to London from Tuscany, and has been run by the family ever since. Mamma works in the kitchen (she is the daughter-in-law of the original couple and was sadly widowed two years ago; a framed photograph of her late husband hangs proudly on the wall), and her son, daughter and nephew run the show, with help of a few young waiters.
It is a tiny restaurant and I would imagine, at capacity (at which it operates constantly) seats about 35 people. The first time we went there, we walked in and were greeted warmly by the daughter who said to me, “Are you stoppin’, young lady?” I was sold.
They fill chairs, not tables, so you will always be seated with other people. The breakfast is a jolly good, greasy, fry-up for a fiver and if you leave anything on your plate, the staff feels bad because you could have substituted what you didn’t like for something else. They don’t want you to lose out – I loved that. Service is good and personal, they introduce people to each other, they have regulars who eat there daily or weekly, and plenty of people who travel from afar to experience Cockney Italian hospitality at its finest. On Saturday they showed us their photo album, which is filled with photos of celebrities – local and international – who have eaten there.
On our first visit, Nevio Jnr insisted on giving us – “guv, and the young lady” – a taste of the bread pudding his mamma made. He wrapped two slices of it in tinfoil for us, told us it was a taste of heaven and asked us to let him know, next time, what we thought of it. Generosity, community-mindedness, good service, personal touch and good, old-fashioned, tasty nosh – I thought you didn’t get any of that, anywhere, any more. ePellicci gives it to you in spades.
I’ll save the rest of our weekend for another post. I wanted you to enjoy a little Italian with us. Music and markets for another day.
I am fascinated by “only in London” moments. Like overhearing a bunch of Catholic priests, on the tube, discussing the merits of Alice in Wonderland in 3D. And then discussing what Johnny Depp is like in real life: is he weird or is he quite normal?
Yesterday, as I walked alongside the large dock next door to our little dock, I noticed a woman arrive at the water’s edge with a large bag of what I thought were Maltesers. She ripped open the bag, took out a smaller bag from within, and proceeded to pour the contents into the water. She then continued to do the same with packet after packet. As I approached her, I said, with some bemusement,
“I thought those were Maltesers you were throwing into the water.”
At this stage, there were about a million ducks, seagulls and swans frantically flapping around and stabbing at whatever it was she was chucking out for them.
“As if I would throw Maltesers into the dock? When I eat them myself?” she said.
She then told me her son had gone to Asda (she rolled her eyes as she said this – perhaps she prefers our local Tesco to this other supermarket chain?) and bought the wrong kind of crisps (I call them chips, some of you might call them potato chips).
“No-one will eat them, so I thought I’d give them to the ducks,” she said, as she threw the contents of the final packet to the screeching and now-hyperactive water population. Thank goodness he hadn’t bought the wrong brand of beer.
I heard on the radio this week that obesity in the UK is seriously on the rise. Watch out for the ballooning weight of the duck population in south east London too, if they survive the preservatives. What was she thinking?
Sunshine in London 