We arrived in London mid-afternoon, feeling tired and disoriented. We’re staying in the same block of short-term let studios we found in 2012 – wonderfully located near Marchmont Street in Bloomsbury, haunted by the ghosts of Virginia Woolf, Roger Fry, even T.S. Eliot in his Faber office over at Russell Square. This time we have a tiny studio in the cellar, not as charming as the third floor one we had last time. But it’s cosy and clean and we shopped for provisions at the local Waitrose — cheese, wine, olives, apples, and malted wheat bread for breakfast.
What should we do for dinner? Not Tas, said John, referring to the Turkish place near the British Museum where we’be had deliciour meals in the past. We should try new places. I agreed. We went for a walk in the dusk and promptly got lost. Or not lost exactly but out of our comfor zone. And then, isn’t that Tas? And it was.
Did they have room for two lost souls? They did. The familiar warm chewy Turkish bread, hummus, spiced olives. The bright Anatolian wine tasting of pines and hot sun. A table of small meze dishes — broad beans flecked with dill, roasted eggplant, some sort of hazelnut thing with garlic, tabbouli, minted yoghourt, falafel, borek, and more of the warm bread kept appearing in a wooden bowl.
So London, and Tas, and a walk back past the British Museum with its treasures and plunder. Who could tell in the darkness which was which?
...Theresa Kishkan 