Kerbisher & Malt

Often when I come back from Britain, people ask me if I had fish & chips. I always answer no. After some not so pleasant pub meals in the early aughties, I have consistently avoided this local fare and instead opted for real British food 2.0 as in Indian curries, Turkish grills and, well, maybe some scones and afternoon tea.

This time however, while passing through Hammersmith on our way out to Heathrow, Anna and I stopped by Kerbisher & Malt on 164 Shepherds Bush Road. While already listed by those in the know, the place was still a fascinating discovery. In white and dark blue with pictograms of diving helmets, the restaurant easily served up the best fish & chips I have ever had. It all reminded me of one of the great truths of contemporary cultural capitalism: if one really has a passion for something, success almost always follows. In less than half an hour, the place was full with early Sunday lunch eaters and after a week in chain-land, I was happy to see that some people still feel for their business.

Travels

After twelve days north of the Arctic Circle, I am back in this dreamed world above the clouds. If not Turkish so Swedish coffee from dark purple packages, the experience of placelessness is the same anyway. Yesterday, when reading a letter from my mother, I was struck anew by her poetic ability to say a lot through fragmented sentences. In fact, she seems to be vehemently opposed to the idea of letting two sentences follow logically upon each other. Every new sentence has a new topic, a new stream of consciousness, a new association which does not in any obvious way relate to the previous one.

So, I added a few words about the Paris crash, killed some darlings and made some other minor revisions to my paper about the post-Concorde world. Now I just have to be patient again and wait until I hear something from the editor. Academic publishing is in many ways a parallel universe to the last minute obsession found elsewhere in society. If it takes a year from first submission to print, one should consider oneself happy.