We weren’t quite sure how jet-lagged we’d be when we landed in London on the morning of Saturday, June 11th, so we kept our plans simple. We’d limit ourselves to wandering about the area near the our hotel (Sea Containers, right on the Thames’ south bank, just west of Blackfriars).
Within this limited zone was the London Bridge shop of Whisky Exchange. Anitra found it while doing her usual diligent pre-travel research, and being whisk(e)y aficionados, we had to go take a look.
Tap to view at full size.
If you get the chance, go there — it’s impressive. Their selection is large and beautifully laid out, the staff are friendly and knowledgeable, and how can you not trust a place like this in a drinker’s city?
Tap to view at full size.
We chatted with the expert who was stationed at the desk in the back of the shop, asking for something that would be interesting, local, hard or impossible to get in the U.S. and was under £200. His recommendation: Filey Bay Yorkshire Special Malt Whisky’s Special Release Double Oak #1. There were a mere 2,000 bottles in this release, and yet it was well under the price limit we’d given.
Here’s a video review of what we bought…
…here’s a Japanese whisky enthusiast’s tour of the shop…
…and here’s a CBS Saturday Morning piece on the Whisky Exchange:
My move from Toronto to Florida — a little over eight years ago now — forced me to really apply a rule I try to follow: If you’ve been hanging onto something and never use it, let it go. Sell it, give it to someone who really needs it, or toss it. I’ve had to use this rule more since moving from Toronto to Tampa, as the move required me to take only what I could fit in my old car, and because I didn’t want to treat my mother’s basement in Toronto like a free storage place forever.
In spite of this rule, I’ve hung on to one piece of clothing that I’ve had since the very last days 1999 and that I almost never wear. It’s a grey zippered sweatshirt, which you can see below:
Me in the “Dad Sweatshirt.”
There’s nothing terribly bad about it; I like the color, but the cut’s all wrong, it’s a little too big, it has ridiculous snap-straps all over (in the photo, you can see one of them around the neck).
While it’s perfectly serviceable, I don’t like it enough to keep it under normal circumstances. It would’ve ended up at the drop-off of a Goodwill or some other charity ages ago. Still, I keep it, and I only get it dry-cleaned by professionals. Why? Because it’s a special gift from my dad.
Late December, 1999
In 1999, my former high school classmate André Fenton was doing neuroscience research at the Czech Academy of Sciences and decided that he wanted to ring in the year 2000 by throwing a big New Year’s Eve party in the nicest place that he could rent somewhere near Prague.
He found a great place — Zamek Roztěž(although these days, it’s marketed as Casa Serena Chateau and Gold Resort). It’s a “hunting castle” originally built in the late 1600s in the village of Roztěž, located in the Kutna Hora district, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) east of Prague. I was invited to the party, and while there, had a grand old time:
Upon hearing that I would be staying at a castle somewhere in the central European woods in the dead of winter, Dad decided to surprise me by buying me something to keep me warm. That thing was the zippered sweatshirt, and he gave it to me just as he dropped me off at the airport to catch my flight to Amsterdam, and then Prague.
“I got this for you. I don’t want you to be cold when you’re in that castle.”
I thanked him for the sweatshirt, gave him a big hug, wished him a happy new year in advance, and told him that I’d send photos that I’d take with my still-newish digital camera (1024 by 768 pixels in super-fine mode!) to mom via email (he never had an email address).
It’s not really what I would’ve bought, but it’s big and warm, I thought, and it served me well on the flight, in the castle (which wasn’t all that cold — they’d been doing a fair bit of renovating), and especially well on a hike around the castle grounds with some lovely company on the night of January 1st, 2000.
Twenty years later
Because I am a big ol’ sentimental softie, not only have I kept this sweatshirt that I don’t really like all these years, but I take it with me whenever I go someplace cold, as a sort of comforting tradition.
I wore it walking through the streets of Prague. I had it on the slopes at Whistler while trying to figure out how snowboarding worked. I wore it when I was conducting mobile technology assessments in the bitter cold of Athabasca’s oil sands. As I drove through the snow-covered hills of West Virginia on those chilly days of March 2014 as I moved to Tampa to be with Anitra, I had it on. I bring it with me on our trips to Toronto in winter. I last wore it earlier this year when the temperatures in Tampa dropped to freezing and I had to cover the tropical plant in the front yard.
When I need it, it keeps me warm — not only in the physical sense, but also in the way that it reminds me of his kindness and generosity.
Dad died at the end of February 2006. But thanks to this sweatshirt that I normally wouldn’t be all that crazy about, I have a little bit of him that I can take with me when I’m cold and far from home. That’s why I’ll never part with it.
Last night was just a tropical storm and not a hurricane, but Nebraska Avenue south of Sligh — not a tiny road, but a main thoroughfare — flooded so much that a number of cars had stalled out there. It gave me serious Philippines deja vu, where flooding often happens after a typhoon.
We flew home from Toronto yesterday, and fortunately, we landed about 20 minutes before the storm hit. I took the photo above from our ride.
I rather like the encouraging message printed on the side of the box for the microphone stand I ordered (it holds two mics — one for voice, and one for the accordion!).
Four years ago today, I was flying into Washington, DC to both attend and give presentations at RWDevCon, a conference for mobile app developers.
The winds were high that day, and as the pilot made their first attempt at a landing, the gusts hit the plane with enough force to make it obvious that we’d have to do a go-around.
On our second landing attempt, the gusts were still there. There was a nervous vibe throughout the cabin, and one of the flight attendants decided to lighten the mood by making an announcement over the PA system:
“If we need to do another go-around, I’m getting the accordion man to play us a song.”
To celebrate our seventh anniversary, we took a a Thursday-to-Sunday road trip to St. Augustine.We had a great time, mostly because we had each other for company, but also because we brought this lucky charm, which made for an interesting Saturday night:
We’d lucked out with our early reservation and were able to get an outdoor table with a view of the fort, river, and partygoers wandering (or stumbling) down the pedestrian-only St. George Street.
“What do you want to do now?” Anitra asked after we finished dessert.
“I figure we should walk around and see where the night takes us,” I said.
With that, we got up and started making our way out of the restaurant. We was starting our way down the stairs when someone called out: “Hey, you with the accordion!”
It turned out to be a table of eight, two of whom were celebrating their twentieth anniversary. We told them that we were celebrating our seventh, and it was congratulations all round.
“Here, let me play something for you,” I said, playing the first fitting song I could think of — Praise You by Fatboy Slim. It got applause not just from the table but the rest of the room, and the couple insisted on giving me a $20 bill by way of saying thanks.
“Looks like they covered the first round of drinks!” Anitra said as we walked out.
Bagging a discount
We started walking southward on St. George Street and saw that Cotton St. Aug was still open.
“Do you want to take a look?” Anitra asked.
“I’d love to check out their aloha shirts.” I replied, and we walked in.
We were greeted by the manager, Bridget, and struck up a conversation. Of course, the question came up — “Could you play me a song, please?” — and I went with the crowd-pleaser, Britney Spears’ Baby One More Time, which she recorded on video with her phone.
After the performance, Anitra started checking out their sizable selection of Anuschka hand-painted leather handbags. She picked out the “Lighthouse” design pictured to the right. As Bridget rang up our purchase, she looked at us, said “for the entertainment”, and gave us a discount.
“We’re on a bit of a roll tonight,” I said. We continued on our way south.
Turning music into free drinks
As we walked past Casa Monica (pictured above), a guy came up to us and talked about a friend of his who played classic rock on the accordion and asked if I did the same. I answered by playing AC/DC’s You Shook Me All Night Long.
A couple overheard the performance and asked if I could play it again so that they could capture it on video for their friend. I obliged, and they invited us inside to buy us a drink at Casa Monica’s lobby bar, the Cobalt Lounge:
Here’s the text of the poster, with all its oddly abitrary capitalization (a growing phenomenon) faithfully recreated:
THE BATMAN
Movie
This is a Dark Movie and will
have a lot of Dark Scenes.
We will Not Issue any Refunds
or Re-Admission Tickets due to
DARKNESS as the Studio
informed us this will be a Dark
Movie.
Of course, you can’t properly mention “Batman” and “DARKNESS” without this playing this tune:
