My brother and his daughter came to visit and they wanted to visit Madame Tussauds. To be honest, visiting Madame Tussauds wasn’t on the top of my list of things to do in London, but I love my brother and niece and going anywhere with them is fun so I went along.

A visit to Madame Tussauds isn’t cheap, but it is a relatively good deal. One of the things to made me wary of going to Madame Tussauds was getting a look at the long line outside every time I was on Baker Street. When we went it was really crowded and I assume it is probably always like this. I wouldn’t recommend going to Madame Tussauds on a weekend or school holiday. We went during the week in the afternoon. We bought our tickets in advance for a certain time and I was impressed how the crowd handlers managed to separate patrons by their ticket time and managed to get the line to move relatively quickly.

My brother was quite the mensch and treated the three of us to our visit. The museum is set up as a series of rooms that you walk through. It was pretty crowded and initially there was a bit of a line just to move through the rooms but once we got into the first room the atmosphere was more like a crowded club and less like standing in line. In this first room they offered drinks and snacks so we stopped and had a beer and some Pringles. This room figures of Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, Marilyn Monroe, Beckham, and Posh Spice among others.

After the first room, Madame Tussauds is basically a self-guided tour of connected rooms where you can take your time walking through each room and stop and take pictures of your favorite figures. In one of the following rooms it was movie themed and they had a huge King Kong face that moved it’s mouth.

This room had a station where for a fee, you could get your hand cast in wax. My niece got a hand cast in wax. Her parents had a cast of her hand when she was a child so she was going to display the two different hand casts side by side. She had to wait in line a bit, but she seemed pleased with the result. They offered different colors of wax to personalize the cast. The people who made the casts were quite good and it was interesting watching my niece get hers made.

My favorite room at Madame Tussauds was the room with political, musical, and artistic celebrities. I took quite a few pictures in this room. The three of us spent a lot of time there.

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After this room there was a room that explained how the figures were made. We didn’t spend a lot of time in this room, which I regret. After this room came my favorite part of the museum, the ride. Prior to my visit, I had no idea that were was a ride in Madame Tussauds. The ride took us through a journey of the history of London featuring St Paul’s Cathedral, Shakespeare, the Great Fire, the Blitz, Winston Churchill and other significant events and people.

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After the ride we moved into several rooms that were Marvel themed. There was also a 3D Marvel presentation which was quite fun. Eventually we ended up at the gift shop. We spent about 3 and a half hours in Madame Tussauds so it was a good deal for the money. I don’t know if I’ll go again but I definitely recommend it.

I admire the engineers and designers of IKEA. I am a big fan of the furniture and the way they have managed to pack the pieces in a the their boxes and the entire organization of the assembly process. I even like the little tool they include with their furniture. I think they are brilliant. However, I think some of the pieces and steps in the process of assembling a bed are designed to make the engineers smile and the customer aggravated. It might be the IKEA equivalent of a program “Easter egg”. Something to puzzle the consumer and delight the designer.

When I googled how long it would take to assemble an IKEA bed quora.com had an answer that it would take approximately 1-2 hours. From my previous experience with IKEA beds I know that for me it is wrong.

My standard timeline for the entire IKEA bed process from catalog to assembled bed is 3-4 days of going back and forth to the web site, measuring and remeasuring the room finally deciding what bed to buy, selling a doll to pay for the bed and then spending the entire day it is due to be delivered checking my text messages and looking out the front window.

After anxiously awaiting the arrival of the bed pieces, I spend approximately 2-3 weeks avoiding the room with the bed pieces, resolving to assemble the bed the very next day, finding something critical to due which prevents me from assembling the bed, and repeating the process of avoiding the room with the bed pieces.

The next step is to be in a blind panic because the bed is needed for guests who will be arriving in a few days. Determind, I go up to room which contains the neglected bed pieces and start to formulate my plan. This takes about an hour to do. I stare at the boxes hoping that they will magically pop out and assemble themselves. I then proceed to pull all the pieces out of the box and count them per the IKEA instructions.

Next I have to assemble all my tools and lay them out. This will take about 3 to 11 trips up and downstairs. Once I’ve assembled my tools, I then proceed to follow the instructions in perfect order. While doing this I require a sip of tea after each step in order to fortify me. I would drink something stronger but then I would never get the bed put together. Assembling IKEA bed would however make a great drinking game.

Attaching the headboard and footboard to the side rails can be a bit tricky. The IKEA instructions dictate that two people (the two people pictured are men) are needed to accomplish this. At this point I laugh at the assumptions of the IKEA instructions and feel all powerful. With just four storage containers and myself I can manage what IKEA thinks takes two men to do. Never underestimate the power of a woman and her storage containers.

IKEA as always has the next laugh. This is the part where I think the IKEA engineers get a little chuckle, I don’t know the name of the pieces that extend to hold the shape of the bed or what they call the little screws that keep them in place once they are extended but getting those little screws in is a bit of a joke.

The strips of metal seem so flimsy it doesn’t seem that they do anything at all. The screws never go in the first time. It takes about 20 minutes of trying and cursing my life in order to get them in at all.

The bed frame is another point of frustration for me. It always seems to collapse in my hands. Once I have half of it in place and attempt to do the rest, the half that I’ve put in will pop out of the bed and fall to the floor.

Once the bed frame is in it’s us wrestling with the mattress and then I’m done!

So far, I’ve put together three beds and I’m looking forward to putting together one more bed and a desk. Oh joy!

This is one of my favorite places in the Victoria and Albert Museum. When I first stumbled upon it over ten years ago I just thought it was a really cool, spooky place with tomb effigies and other somber monuments. I don’t remember noticing HIM, which is sort of not noticing an elephant in the room.

Also I don’t remember noticing THIS.

In my defense I was stupified by the rows of tomb effigies. Standing among rows of them was quite an experience. It felt like I was standing among the dead and they were present. What I didn’t understand about any of these impressive pieces was that they were all copies.

It’s easy to be astounded when you find pieces that remind you of Dr Who’s weeping angels. I kept expecting them to jump on me and show me their fangs. I made sure I didn’t blink or turn my back on them.

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This also left me a bit dumbstruck.

You can read an authoritative explanation of the Cast Courts here on the V&A’s web site: https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/history-of-the-cast-courts. The Cast Courts are the oldest still extant section of the V&A. They were created before the internet and before the time where people could easily travel the world. They enabled people to see monuments, tombs, obelisks, and friezes that they would never be able to see normally. Students, architects, and artists could study and sketch beautiful pieces that they may have never seen any other way.

It has also served a more poignant purpose. Many of the reproductions in the Cast Courts are now the only version left, the originals of some of these items have been destroyed by bombing in WWII or by destructive environmental conditions or poor restoration. The Cast Courts were renovated in 2014 and they’ve put in examples of the casting process to show how some of the reproductions were made.

Here a few more of the amazing pieces in the Cast Courts. Visit them and be awed.

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It’s been a while since I’ve written any blog posts and I’d like to say I have some really good reasons. Here are some of my reasons:

• I’ve been sick this past week
• I’ve had to put together two IKEA beds
• I’ve been taking a French class
• I’ve been taking a yoga class
• Mostly I’ve been watching oodles of British TV and reading my friend’s FaceBook posts

The bolded, italicized reason is the primary reason I haven’t been posting. For most of my life since around 14 or so, I’ve had a regular, wage-paying job. Since November I have not been working for a wage. I quit my very nice job, packed up a bunch of household goods as well as the dog, Leo, and moved to England with my husband. We will be here for a few years and I’m not sure if I’m going to be a wage earner while I’m here.

When you have a wage paying job, you generally have someplace to be every day for a certain amount of time. The job dictates how you are going to spend most of your day. You spend the rest of your day getting to and from the job and finding time to make dinner, clean your house, and possibly spend some time with your loved ones. Since I don’t have a job to go to, I can wake up when I want and do what I want to all day. If I were a disciplined person I would probably have discovered or invented something amazing by now or I would have at least maintained a spotless home and served gourmet meals every night to my husband. Unfortunately, I am not a disciplined person.

The challenge for me is to maintain a regular schedule. But in order to maintain a schedule I have to figure out what I want to accomplish. Leo makes part of this easy; I try to give him a long walk every day. These past few weeks Leo and I have been exploring the Celandine Trail. I’m going to post about that as soon as we’ve completed our exploring. But this does not take up the entire day. So I’ve also been attempting to put myself on a schedule in order to prevent myself from becoming an expert on British TV and a full-time FaceBook stalker of all my friends.

Part of this schedule is to write this blog post. So I’m “pig committing” myself to one blog post every Monday. It doesn’t sound like much and since it’s Thursday today, (BTW Happy Valentine’s Day everybody!) I’m already 3 days late for my first blog deadline. Nevertheless, look for a blog post from me every Monday henceforth.

We have had Leo for almost 5 years. We adopted him from a lovely organization called Beagle Rescue of Southern Maryland. At the time, we had another dog named Bruno, also a beagle-mix, whom we had adopted from yet another great organization, Lost Dog and Cat Rescue Foundation.

Bruno was an older dog, we’d already had him for about 10 years and he’d probably been about 4 years old when we got him. Without hurting Leo’s feelings, Bruno was the best dog in the world and will probably hold that title forever because I’ve never met a dog as calm and sweet as Bruno. He accepted Leo immediately and they got along well.

If you are the type of person who notices things, you will notice that there are two chewed up shoes with the dogs and the sofa is pretty roughed up as well. Bruno, being a beagle and being alone for the good part of the day was a chewer and could get into mischief. Leo being younger and having more energy than Bruno proved he could get into more mischief and needed more attention.

When my youngest son was still home, he would walk the dogs and he could give them more attention. Both my husband and I worked long hours so we’d only be with the dogs for long periods of time on the weekends and during holidays. As Bruno got older he became less of a playmate for Leo and more of the dog equivalent of having Grandpa live with you. My youngest found a unique way to compensate for their differing energy levels by walking Leo and having Leo “walk” Bruno.

When my son left for college, it was harder for Leo. To be honest, I should have attempted to walk him and Bruno more, I just got out of the habit and got lazy. It didn’t help when I got deployed to Kuwait for 9 months. During that time poor Bruno died, he was probably around 16-18 years old and he’d been declining for about a year but it was still hard on all of us.

When I came back from Kuwait, I was working on my husband so we could get another dog companion for Leo. When the move to London came up, we decided that taking one dog to London was probably enough. I’m not working at the moment so I’m Leo’s companion.

We moved to Ickenham, Uxbridge, UK from the US. Ickenham has a station on the London Underground on the Piccadilly and Metropolitan lines. There has been some sort of train station at Ickenham since 1904. It is in the London Borough of Hillingdon

At the Ickenham station there is a bulletin board with posts with community and also about the history of Ickenham. Ickenham has a strong community identity. They have an active residents associations, www.ickenhamresidents.co.uk and an active schedule of festivals, www.ickenhamfestival.org.uk.

There are two rows of shops which include a bike shop, a Co-op mini grocery store, a pub, several barbershops, and several charity shops. The local Anglican church, St Giles Church has a lovely graveyard which I love to walk through on my way to the Underground station or to the Co-op grocery. In addition to the rows of shops there is a community center, a library, the village pump, and a manor house, Swakely’s House.

This blog is Leo the London Dog and Mom but it seems I’ve made it mostly about me (Mom). So it’s time to talk about Leo and what’s been going on with him.

We brought Leo from a suburb of Washington D.C. to a suburb of London, UK. Bringing a dog from America to the UK is not impossible but it is a fairly complicated process. The dog has to have a chip, a rabies shot, and be dewormed to come from America to the UK. Our USDA has to look at the dog’s rabies certificate and issue them another certificate. All documentation has to be with your dog when he travels.

You also need to make sure your dog carrier is within regulation for air travel and large enough for your dog. Leo was a bit claustrophobic so it took us a couple months to get him to accept his carrier.

Leo did not take to his carrier. He had to be coaxed into the carrier and we had to do it gradually. I put the cage first in our front room and finally in our great room and I would leave tasty treats for Leo in the cage. Cheese was one of his favorites.

We started the process several months before Leo was to go on his trip to the UK. I didn’t want him to be terrified when we put him in the cage.

You can actually bring your dog to the airport and pick him up on the other side yourself but we decided that would be difficult since we do not have a vehicle in the UK. Our service picked Leo and his cage up on travel day but did not put him in the carrier until they absolutely had to.

Leo’s flight had a layover in Frankfort, Germany. I was actually glad about this even though it made his journey a bit longer because since my husband and I were traveling on the same day, I was worried that Leo would get to our house in the UK before we did. In Germany the transport company let him out of his carrier for a potty break and to get something to eat. He had a couple of hours where he didn’t have to be in his cage but the company emailed us this picture and told us Leo sort of hung out in his carrier with the door open.

We were relieved when Leo was finally delivered to us in our new home. Leo was ecstatic when he saw us; we definitely felt loved and he didn’t seem to hold a grudge against us.

My last guests left this morning. My daughter has been with us since Dec 24 and her friend joined us Dec 29. My youngest son left yesterday and my cousins left New Years Day. It’s a little sad here this morning to be truthful; I know there is a lot I still need to do and I’ll be busy but it’s a very empty feeling when the last guest leaves.

Still I get to be a little more selfish which always appeals to me. I can sit and have a cup of tea and breakfast without making breakfast for anyone else. My guests were great and took care of themselves but as a hostess, no matter how easy your guests are, you always feel you haven’t done something for them.

I’m sitting down writing the blog in real-time, eating biscuits with some black current jam that my cousins gave me.

I also have the list of things I still need to do to get us completely moved in so after Leo’s walk, I’ll get cracking. Have a great morning!

So my practice Christmas meal did not go entirely as planned. I ended up staying out in London with my youngest until 6pm and not finishing cooking the chicken until 10pm which we ended up eating the next day for dinner. Here was the final menu:

• Roast Chicken — it turned out okay but I needed to probably cook it at a higher temperature because it didn’t brown as nicely as I would have liked it to.
• Butternut Squash Puree — turned out okay
• Roasted Carrots & Parsnips — didn’t make them
• Smoked Salmon on Crostini — made them the evening of December 18 which we ate for supper that night.
• Deviled Eggs — didn’t make until later
• Sugar Cookies — made them they turned out yummy
• Chestnut Stuffing — made this, it turned out okay just a little dry
• American-style Buttermilk Biscuits — these turned out okay

I found that when cooking both the chicken (which was about 2kg) and the turkey (which was about 10kg) I needed to cook a little bit longer and higher than I would in a conventional oven (my oven here is a “fan-assisted oven”). The chicken was okay but on Christmas Eve when I cooked the turkey it turned out well.

I bought a turkey from the butcher which was a little more expensive but I was able to pick it up from the butcher the day before Christmas Eve so I only had a behemoth bird residing in my fridge for less than a day. Usually I get a frozen turkey and it sits forever in my fridge defrosting and it will still be an “ice bowling ball” on the day it is to be cooked. They sold both frozen turkeys and turkey crowns in the Waitrose nearest to me.

The turkey crowns are just the breast meat on the bone. I guess a lot of people prefer this and it’s probably a lot easier to cook but I like the challenge of wrestling the entire bird.

For the last couple of weeks I’ve also been experimenting with making the perfect “American-style” biscuits. In England what Americans call “cookies” are called “biscuits” and the English don’t seem to have a word for what Americans call “biscuits” so I ended up calling them “American-style” biscuits as did the recipe that I looked up on the web. This is similar to the conundrum of what a “jumper” is. In America what the English call a “jumper”, we call a “sweater”. I have no idea what the English call what Americans call a “jumper”, perhaps “American-style” jumper just like “American-style” football. (I could go on about this, but I won’t.)

I want to talk about biscuits both “American-style” and the other kind. I cooked a basic biscuit (i.e. cookie) recipe that I found on the internet and the cookies (or biscuits, I’m going to drive myself crazy here so I’m just going to call them “cookies”) cooked at 160 celsius in my lower oven for about 10 minutes. The recipe called for 15 minutes but I found 10 was enough. The cookies were very nice, I decorated them with a flavored sugar I had found in the Waitrose:

I’ll post the link to the cookie and “American-style” biscuit recipes I found on the internet. (Yes, I know I’m being inconsistent in my idioms.)

As for the “American-style” biscuits, I’ve made them several times now and they get better each time. The recipe called for buttermilk which I can’t always find so I’ve also been using half plain yoghurt and half “semi-skim” milk (what Americans call “2%” milk.)

The recipe I am using also calls for a product called “Trex” (or as my husband likes to say “tee-rex”) but I’ve also substituted animal lard for “Trex” and they both work pretty well. As for tools, I’ve been using a pastry blender to cut the butter and lard into the flour mixture and it works really well.

For both biscuits and biscuits (ha, ha, now I’m really having fun with this) I have started to use a kitchen scale. I’m used to American recipes which use cups and tablespoons but the British recipes use milliliters and grams most of the time and every once in a while throw in a tablespoon or teaspoon to make things interesting. I really love the kitchen scale, I bought it locally for 10 pounds and it’s coming back to America with me when I move back.

The last kitchen tool I have found very useful is what the English call baking or greaseproof paper and what Americans call parchment paper. It seems to be thinner in England and I like it better here but I also like parchment paper because it prevents me from burning the bottom of biscuits and biscuits (I’m still having fun with this.)

So here are the links for biscuits and biscuits. I’ll let you figure out which is which:

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/3468/basic-biscuit-dough

http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/34749/american-style-buttermilk-biscuits.aspx

Not Leo’s, but mine, his owner.   I was going to spend the day cooking a “practice” Christmas Eve meal.   On the menu:

• Roast Chicken (I’ll serve Roast Turkey on the “real” Christmas Eve)
• Butternut Squash Puree
• Roasted Carrots & Parsnips
• Smoked Salmon on Crostini
• Deviled Eggs
• Sugar Cookies
• Chestnut Stuffing
• American-style Buttermilk Biscuits

To make my life easier, I was going to make things I already knew how to make for Christmas Eve supper.  I hadn’t cooked a meal for Christmas in two years so I was a bit out of practice and more importantly, I was cooking in a new kitchen.

This new kitchen is really nice and spacious.

  I have a window that looks out to our backyard which is extensive. 

The big difference is that in America I have a gas range and double (huge) electric ovens but here I have an electric hob and two much smaller electric, fan-assisted ovens.  The top oven seems more like a toaster oven.  It is about the size of a large toaster oven and I’ve been using it to make toast and heat frozen pizza.  It works really well for that.  The bottom oven is more like a “regular” oven.

I started out very early and made the crostinis for the canapes, the chestnut stuffing, and the squash.  I was going to start on the cookies when my son came in and asked if I wanted to go to London with him. So instead of cookies and biscuits we took off to London and came back way later than we planned on. Chicken ended up being put in the lower oven at 7pm at night and not done until 10pm that evening. See the entry for Dec 19 for more about the food, the hob, and the double ovens.