Julie's Boggle

As I write this, we are freshly back from our holiday in S.A. and bracing ourselves for the next upheaval in our familiar routines.  The form that this particular episode will take, is the uprooting of our little family – from the cosy basement flat in London that we have occupied for 9 years – to a whole new environment and lifestyle in Durham, 500km to the north.

One imagines that there can’t still be many people for whom this is news, but if you haven’t had the latest updates: Tom has been accepted by the Church of England to train for ordination, which involves going back to university to study for two years.

This has been in the pipeline for slightly more than two years but it couldn’t really be made public until Tom had been officially accepted and let his current employers know of his plans to move on.  So I didn’t get to blog the interesting road trip we had in January visiting Durham, Bristol and Cuddeston (near Oxford) with me 5 months pregnant, and Jon in tow.  But we got through it (and Tom went off to see Cambridge by himself), and having weighed up the various options, Durham definitely seemed the best choice.

What all this means is that as of the 3rd of September, we will no longer be residents of the UK’s heaving capital, but will be inhabitants of the frozen north (as it is semi-affectionately known in our household).

Our flat in Shepherds Bush will be rented out while we move into the college’s “married student” accommodation, the bulk of which is located in a small cul-de-sac about 15 minutes walk from the college.

So all very exciting and daunting at the moment, but we are looking forward to exploring Durham, and setting up a new life there as part of the college family.  It’s wall-to-wall busy for the next two weeks but I’ll do my best to keep the updates coming once we move.

It’s our second last night in Durban and Julie and I managed to beguile the grandparents into looking after Jonathan while we snuck out for a date night (with Jessica in tow on account of her requiring Julie’s milk apparatus).

We selected The Gazette in Florida Rd because we were after Italian and it looked cheap and cheerful.  “Cheap and Confused”, though, would probably be a better description.

Our initial greeting was by a casually-dressed chap who had been sitting at the back and who looked about in apparent mild panic before sauntering tentatively towards us.  He vaguely waved us in the direction of a table and then disappeared.  Shortly after he reappeared to take our drinks orders.  When we asked for the Chardonnay on the menu, he muttered something about not having Chardonnay and that he’d find out what other “sweet white wines” he did have to offer.  Cue several rounds of coming and going before we settled on the “dry” house white, which turned out to be a not-unpalatable fruity white with an interesting syrupy after-taste.

Having scanned the menu, we settled on a focaccia to share (covered in mozzarella and Roquefort according to the menu) and we both requested gnocchi for mains.  Julie’s was to have a tomato, bacon and cream sauce, while I plumped for the Roquefort sauce.

About this time we mysteriously graduated to a waitress who was dressed the part and seemed somewhat more table-savvy.  She proceeded to bring us a vast (about 40cm) focaccia dressed simply with garlic.  Not what the menu said, but happily a little closer to what we’d been wanting anyway, so hey-ho.  Along with the focaccia came a miscellany of condiments which included but was not limited to:

• A bottle of malt vinegar which had the vague incantation of “balsamic” mumbled in its direction.
• A bottle of what looked, tasted and smelled like sunflower seed oil.  (Extra-slapper olive oil perhaps?).
• A cup of mysterious green paste.  Not pesto by the smell, but we ventured no further.
• “Balsamic, garlic and olive oil” salad dressing which tasted strangely savoury.

By now the table was feeling distinctly cluttered, as though someone had emptied the pantry onto it while searching for something right at the back.  But it did liven up the focaccia to combine it with so many different flavours.

Next came two giant servings of gnocchi.  Julie’s was almost as promised, but was missing the cream she’d been looking forward to.  This was rectified within a few minutes, after some referring back to the menu in consternation.  Mine wasn’t too bad, although “Roquefort sauce” might have been a slightly optimistic description; better might have been “white sauce but the chef thinks very hard about Roquefort while stirring it”.

We decided to leg it after the gnocchi, feeling faint just at the thought of the Bar One cake and white chocolate cheesecake which were listed as dessert options.  Still, all in all, we left quite full, not poisoned and for the definitely cheap total of R148.00 (£13.05).