Alexander is in London (he lives just south of Cambridge) and collects us, as he has to be in the area of Paddington Station anyway. He's found a restaurant in Notting Hill to try for our now traditional lunch date. It's called The Shed, and is an unprepossessing building well disguised by vines. A young woman is smoking (quite legitimately) in the outside porch where there are a couple of tables and A comments on how nice this is. I have to assure her that both A and J are inhaling deeply before she is relieved to find this is not sarcasm.
A long unpretentious room with small tables, and a short menu with dishes designed for sharing. The owners, three brothers, have their own farm and vineyard and we have a carafe of their bright, floral tasting white wine as well as choosing one "fast" and one "slow" dish each for the sharing. A salad, battered cauliflower florets with almonds (and a bit of curry heat?), venison ragout, beef sirloin, hake with "sea vegetables", and slip sole, as well as their own thickly cut seeded bread. Portions not large (and not underpriced) but the food is lovely and we're more than satisfied.
Gives us a chance to catch up as well. Alexander voluble as usual on any number of topics, from British politics to Mendelssohn's period living in Notting Hill (not then a part of London) to the merits of various electric cars. He's been busy still occupied with tuning and transporting instruments, as well as regaining his pilot's licence. Accused of not slowing down, he says that he works as hard as ever when he's working, but works fewer days in a month. Fair enough. He also tells us about burying Flora's ashes next to their baby son, as she had wished, and shows us a photo of the grave stone, beautifully simple and graceful.
Mobile needs charging by night. So the charged battery with which we arrived lasted almost six days of admittedly light use. Not bad, as it's the original battery in the mobile we bought in Damascus just before the Syrian war.
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