G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
This weekend my friend Lynzi came up from Guildford to eat cheese with me and wander. I've known Lynzi for ages but I haven't seen much of her over the last couple of years, except for when I went to her birthday party in September but I got bored and went home early. Lynzi used to live in London with her boyfriend Lardy and her five snakes and would make me cocktails when I visited her but she moved back home after those buses exploded.
We went to Jeroboams in Holland Park and got some Beenleigh Blue, Camembert Calvados, Appenzeller and some kind of small creamy cows cheese wrapped in vine leaves that I have forgotten the name of. We then went next door to tesco and got some of their posh relishes (one onion and one apple) and a baguette and I tried to convince Lynzi that cherry lambrini was the best pairing for our cheeses. She got four wine and hibiscus spritzers instead. Up the road from tesco's is 'Paul'. Paul sells posh sandwiches and breads and tarts and that. I got a fig tart and a slice of some kind of blueberry pie thing.
Cheeses..
Appenzeller:
Beenleigh Blue:
Camembert Calvados:
and the hibiscus spritzers:
This is the order in which our rambling picnic went:
First we took whatever turns we fancied until we found a nice church that had a big stone face in the garden. There were daffodils in the garden and it looked pretty and like the right kind of place to start a cheese picnic. We sat on a bench in the garden and opened a spritzer each and swigged on them like teenagers then broke off some baguette and had it with camembert calvados and a little bit of apple chutney. Camembert Calvados is just normal camembert soaked in calvados and covered in breadcrumbs. Lynzi liked the camembert calvados and so did I but it was not amazing and did not make me cry with happiness or dribble down my dress. An old man with obviously dyed brown hair walked past and gave us a mean stare. I don't know why he did it.
We walked from the church to the nearest bus stop and jumped on the first bus and got off outside the big parks with that massive gold statue in Kensington. Before we sat on the bench there we watched a squirrel making moves and approaching Lynzi like it wanted to fight her. Here we ate some of the small soft cows cheese and Lynzi decided that it was her favourite and I thought it was pretty nice and creamy but a little bland. We also ate a little of the Appenzeller here. Two French boys walked past and spat on a pigeon. This upset me a lot so I told them they were vile disgusting boys, they tried to kick the pigeon (it flew off, pigeon 1 french boys 0) and then said "sankyou".
From the park to the natural history museum down Exhibition road. we visited another Pauls for skinny baguettes. We walked past a place called cafe daquise that has yummy Polish food and despite the feast of cheese and bread behind and ahead of us it was hard to fight the temptation to go in and eat herring.
We had this plan to eat our food inside this little room where they show a film about babies in the womb. There were too many small children in the womb room so we had to sit in a room that had plastic arms and skeletons in it. We sat on a long bench with a fat sleeping man on it and ate our beenleigh blue next to him and stunk the entire arm and skeleton room out. Beenleigh blue is one of my favourite cheeses, it is a sheeps milk blue like roquefort but less salty and with a slightly sweet aftertaste. Beenleigh blue comes from ticklemore cheeses in totnes, Devon who make lot of wonderful cheeses including a nice hard goats cheese called ticklemore. The fat man next us snored a lot but didn't seem to be bothered by our smelly cheese and chat and only woke up occasionally to talk his wife and daughter when they would come and check on him and play with some of the plastic arms. We finished almost all of the cheese and polished off the other two spritzers before walking around the museum and taking photos of each other posing like animals in front of the stuffed animals. We went to the gift shop (my favourite bit) and I bought Jonny (my boyfriend) an elephants head on a stick that makes obnoxious elephant noises, a pack of shark top trumps and a crocodile head the you can blow eyes out of.
This is Lynzi with the hippos.
And me with the arm thing.
