On John’s list of long-term goals (“bucket list” is too morbid for his taste) “living in one of “the great capitals” for a long stretch” rates very high. Not moving to one necessarily but spending more than just tourism-time there. Paris, New York, London, Rome, somewhere like that. The idea is that he has the barest understanding of what goes on in a place like those for people who live there, and the hints he’s picked up have been tantalizing. Concerts, plays, exhibitions… all sorts of events that are too “small” or too fleeting to make any sort of news in the wider world, but absolutely intriguing if you know about them. Plus, the difference of living in a neighborhood like a resident rather than just a vacation rental customer. Welp, serendipity is a hell of a thing. By definition you can’t plan for it, you just ride the wave when it comes along. When friends of friends needed a pet sitter for several weeks and their usual source – the mutual friends – weren’t available, we were asked to step in. We’d probably have done it in any case, but the fact that they live in central London was a stroke of good fortune.

The details of the sit were straight-forward enough. Their friends (well, our friends too, now) live on a Mews, which is not a thing we really understood before; history aside these days they’re just small streets sandwiched between larger avenues, and they allow for relatively quiet stretches in the midst of all of … everything. It’s a mix of residential and a few businesses, zoning not being so much of a thing in London apparently. They have one elderly pooch, a sweet girl named Molly who doesn’t need much special care, just the usual love and attention, with maybe a few extra, short walks because none of our bladders are like they used to be, eh? She had recently taken ill and had a condition that could make her very wobbly (almost like bad vertigo) but it comes and goes and under (the “new”) normal circumstances she was a snoozer and a sniffer. A good girl, in other words. Their home is a lovely place that could be described as “rambling” only vertically; four stories with a Merry Poppins view from the terraces on the roof – seriously Dick Van Dyke was out there somewhere, racking up overtime.

When the day came we made the almost normal trip for us, Porto in the morning and landing in Stansted airport by lunchtime. One train, the Stansted Express is a direct line from the airport to Liverpool Street Station and runs every 15 minutes all day every day. From there we took a black cab later (we later figured out how it could easily have been a second train, but alas…) and we were walking ourselves up the Mews and into Molly’s abode. Our hosts (who Lisa had met once but John only in Zoom calls to date) instantly made us feel at home and we spent the day settling ourselves in and learning our way about while they went about their normal lives and packed up for their trip to the States. One of their hobbies is tinkering with home automation – they didn’t just hire someone to come in and install a fancy, bespoke system, they’ve been learning how to integrate software with devices that lock and unlock doors, adjust lights, raise and lower blinds and so on. It’s really neat and has John pondering a new hobby, but it also requires knowing what’s-what so many buttons and switches were fiddled with.

Our hosts took us to Moro for dinner. It’s a charming little place in the neighborhood serving — of all things — Moorish cuisine with a Spanish influence. Although it’s an old favorite of theirs, we each tried different things. A tomato soup with fig and cumin, wood roasted turbot tranche with tomato, chickpeas and fried aubergine, charcoal grilled lamb with roast carrot salad, charcoal grilled sea bass, spinach, pine nuts and raisins, and a mixed vegetable mezze made for a filling meal. The flavors were complex, but not overly spicy. It was perfectly delicious; we loved it and will return again. Once we got back to their home we got another round of walkthroughs for care and maintenance, a last stroll of the pooch, and then all heads down for the big shift change on the morrow.