Hannah Moore

I have been scouring the internet for a Christmas bauble for my mother-in-law. I have fond memories of the blown glass baubles of my childhood – the little wooden cabin in the trees, covered in powdery snow; the half papaya, its orange cocoon concealing bright purple seeds inside. Last year I bought myself a glass bauble of Big Ben which, though perhaps not traditional, is still charming. We have a red post box too, which occasionally disappears and turns up in my son’s Lego set.  This year, though, I ventured to Etsy for a bauble and was shocked by what I found. The first one that caught my eye was a cartoon-like depiction of the nativity, with a speech bubble pointing to the babe in the manger and saying: ‘Spoilers: he dies.

As a child, the chef and television host Tyler Florence had 42 different listed allergies. It wasn’t until he was 13 years old that he tasted melted cheese for the first time. “I had a very weird early diet. I could only eat and drink things like salmon, lentils, goat’s milk.” As a teen, he finally outgrew the allergies and tried foods most kids had been eating their whole lives. “It was like an explosion – all the flavors and the textures. I couldn’t get enough of it.” His first job was as a dishwasher at the Fish Market restaurant in Greenville, South Carolina. “It was the nicest restaurant in town. All the waiters had tuxedos and cummerbunds. It was the 1980s, so there were pink tablecloths and fish tanks in the dining room.

There isn’t a lot for a kid in Montana to do in summer. School’s out and the heat is relentless – so stifling that the only real escape is the cool embrace of the fruit and vegetable aisle at Albertsons. By July, my hometown’s lone waterpark was overrun with feral, overweight preteens, their bellies jiggling as they stampeded across the scorching cement. After an overpriced afternoon at the waterpark, many of these kids would head to McDonald’s for dinner. The more upmarket option was to try to exploit a family with a country club membership. The fast food there is classy; quick but not greasy – think mini tacos and peppery chicken strips served with a petite white cup of ranch on the side. But down the highway are the real fast-food joints.

In Spain you can eat all day — and we did. Earlier in the summer, I spent two days in Andalusia, and most of the forty-eight hours were taken up by mealtimes. A breakfast of the sweet porridge poleá started the day, then ham-tasting for a mid-morning snack followed by a two-hour lunch. I didn’t think it was possible to eat all day, but when the food is this good and meticulously chosen, it is. Spanish chef José Pizarro led the way, taking us to his favorite restaurants and showing us where he sources the ham and caviar for his own.

In the apocryphal Book of Tobit, Tobias is sent by his father to retrieve some silver that is owed to him. On the way Tobias is attacked by a large fish on the banks of the river Tigris. He cries out to his companion, a man named Azarias (he’s the angel Raphael in disguise), who tells him to grab it and bring it ashore. “Take out the entrails of the fish,” Raphael tells him, “and lay up his head, and his gall, and his liver for thee; for these are necessary for useful medicines.” Tobias seems skeptical. How, exactly, can the liver and gall of a fish be helpful? According to Raphael, “If a demon or evil spirit gives trouble to anyone, you make a smoke from these before the man or woman, and that person will never be troubled again.” And so it proves to be.

London has seen a string of celebrity restaurants, mostly with disappointing results. David Beckham and Guy Ritchie opened a pub in 2018 – the Walmer Castle – but it didn’t last. They handed it on in 2022 and the pub has changed hands three times since its opening. Ed Sheeran set up his grastropub, ‘Bertie Blossoms’ just two months before the pandemic, and while it is still open, Sheeran has admitted that it's not gone smoothly. He’s learned that unless you have a large chain, making money off a restaurant is very difficult. Lewis Hamilton and Leonardo DiCaprio have tried the chain business model, opening eight locations of their plant-based ‘Neat Burger’ in London and one each in Dubai, New York and Milan – but it doesn’t look like its working wither.

There is no clearer demonstration of the difference between America and Britain than their attitudes towards teeth. In America, you fix them. Doesn’t matter if they’re nearly straight. You subject yourself to years of semi-torture to achieve the American dream – a white picket fence of perfectly uniform teeth. Most perfect teeth are artificial – some so artificial that they’ve entirely replaced the real ones When I was about 11, I was taken to the orthodontist to straighten out my slightly overlapping front teeth. I dreaded those appointments. Our orthodontist was a tall, overly friendly man with large hairy fingers which he would shove into my tiny mouth without gloves. Surely that broke protocol even back then.

My daughter is in Year 1 at our local C of E school and my son will start Reception this autumn. I grew up in America, so my children’s introduction to the British primary education system is mine too. I was pleased to learn that my daughter spent her first term studying the Battle of Hastings, which was taught with fitting seriousness and detail. It is local history to us – Battle is just 15 minutes down the road – and the children were encouraged to imagine our local scenery and surrounding villages as they would have been a thousand years ago. I am baffled that the same rigour does not hold for the study of British poetry. There is a surprising lack of classic verse in the primary years.

My favourite home in London was a neat three-storey townhouse in Haringey right next to Wood Green. It was at a strange junction between the rough and mildly frightening Finsbury Park and the hilly Eden of Crouch End. When we needed to get the tube we walked south, past halal butchers and kebab shops – and when we wanted brunch we walked north, where frothy flat whites, avocado toast and poached eggs awaited. I loved that house. After the hell of our first year in London (during which we discovered a dead body in the flat beneath ours), the clean white walls and stained-glass windows of a London townhouse were heavenly. On hot summer days, my housemates and I drank cider in the back garden, stretched out on the Astroturf which baked us from underneath like a cheap green sun bed.

My husband and I live in a rural village about an hour from London. The nearest grocery store is a twenty-minute drive. I haven’t ordered takeout in six years. I spent a good few years craving Thai and Chinese food, and then we stumbled across a recipe in the Daily Telegraph for homemade dim sum. “But we don’t have a bamboo steamer,” I said. This seemed an insurmountable hurdle. “We can just get one on Amazon,” said my husband. And so we did. Making dim sum at home has been a pleasure beyond my expectations. They are surprisingly simple to make, and once you get the hang of it, not too laborious. The recipe we use is a classic combination of pork and steamed cabbage.

The summer of 2013 was the third hottest on record in London. At the time I was living in a mouldy semi-detached in Clapham South; what happened in that house has left a lingering horror in my memory that changed the way I feel about London forever. In the flat below us there lived an elusive elderly woman named Audrey. Before I signed the lease, the landlord had briefly mentioned her, saying only that she was a bit anti-social but nothing to worry about – ‘not violent or anything.’ That should have scared me off but I was desperate and my university course was due to begin in a matter of days. We signed the lease and sealed our fates for the next 12 months.