A Farewell Dinner

Our primary reason for visiting Shepherd's Bush Market was to see it, but we also had a practical purpose: we were checking out the possibilities in order to complete our grocery shopping for a farewell dinner party we were throwing tonight for our friends Kristin and Gareth who have done so much to make this trip possible. One of the advantages of having a house instead of a hotel is that one can entertain one's friends in style, and we wanted to make the most of it. So we "put on the dog" and used every available dish for a big bash. Shepherd's Bush turned out to be a big help because it has a fish market which offers fresh catch at ridiculously low prices--f20 for a bag of prawns and four fat frozen salmon steaks. One person can hardly get a hamburger for tht price in this town, muchless four. With our company well fed, we enjoyed a great evening of conversation, storytelling of reminisces and current events. Gareth held us enthralled as he explained that the animosity between the city's financial community and the anti-capitalists which has everyone excited as the G20 Summit approaches actually has deep roots. Apparently, we have these marches, smaller in scale, frequently, and the usual response of the financial crowd is to hang out of the balconies of their buildings and throw f20 notes down on the marchers and laugh while the marchers show their hypocrisy as they scramble to grab them. We broke up the party just before midnight, wondering why we hadn't found the time to do this more often over three months.