Don't the Holidays Seem So Long Ago Now?

Already it seems many of us are stressed and worried and sleepless.  How did this happen so fast?

 Wouldn't it be nice if we could turn the clocks back, just those few couple of weeks?  How quickly we need refreshing again!

Here just around the corner from Pimlico Road are images of that season.  Sweet, beguiling.  The English have such a different approach to Christmas decorating than we in the States.  In fact these shop window decorations remind me of Polish, Russian or Ukrainian folk art.  And because they seem so does not make them less Christmas-ey.

I love the feathery whites and the surprising oranges and ultramarines which work so well with the little touches of piney green.  Xmas decorating in the UK comes with a lighter touch and a broader palette.  We in the U.S. feel compelled to express the season exclusively in the narrow terms of bright red and blunt green.  Why?

This artist was apparently quite popular and affordable.  He/she decorated about 5 shop fronts in this immediate vicinity and I saw other examples of the work elsewhere in London.  I would love to have this person decorate my house for a Christmas party - if I had a house with lots of lovely big windows and massive mirrors.  I think the work would look equally beautiful in the summertime.  For a Midsummer party.  

If you live in London and have the big windows and mirrors, you could.

In that theme of surprising ways to reinvent Christmas decor, what about chocolate boxes shaped as wreathes?  Did you know that boxes could be made in this shape? And red ribbons!  What's not to like?

Have you ever seen shop doors decorated like this?

Doesn't it transport you straight to the country?  Reminds me of a Christmas I spent in Somerset where they decorated the village streets with unadorned baby Christmas trees leaning out of the stone buildings just above our heads.  Makes you think of mangers!

The white branches I've seen in NY - the Italians seem to especially like to decorate at Christmas with these.  But this looks so different without the red and green Xmas lights in them.  And speaking of the bucolic, in these yet gloomy days with spring still for many two, three, four months away...........

Wouldn't it be nice to take a break from our new worries and duck into this welcoming place.  And feel as if one's been dropped into a village in the Alps?

( no! not cantelope!)

Smack dab in the middle of Central London, just off Marylebone High Street, just south of Regent's Park

 is La Fromagerie. It's a favorite of Jamie Oliver's and giving the Neal's Yard Dairy in Covent Garden a serious run for it's money.

Here not only will you find a very wide range of carefully made cheeses English and imported,

but beautiful beautiful veg:  Those lettuces are bigger than your head!  Have you ever seen SUCH SMOOTH celery root (top pic)?  Ruby carrots?

Honey from the country, still on the comb - honey from

Regent's Park!

Cakes and chocolates and glasses of  beer and wine.......Wouldn't you love to just skip work tomorrow and spend all day here with a good friend?  Gossiping and plotting?  Nibbling and savoring?

Look closely at all of these pictures.  What will you see?

But crowds and queues, queues and crowds.

This is a very popular place.  No need to wonder why.  One word describes it:

C-I-V-I-L-I-Z-E-D!