Ode to Marks & Spencer

With our arrival into County Clare in the south of Ireland yesterday and a very drizzly, gray day today, "the damp" has put a spell on all of us which has resulted in quite a lot of lying around, snacking, and watching movies.  So I thought I'd take advantage of this laziness to do a special blog post, extolling the virtues of one of my favorite shopping experiences in the UK and Ireland:  Marks & Spencer.

I can think of no equivalent to M&S in the US.  Clothing, household, groceries and cafe, all under one roof.  I can only explain it like this:  take the styling and clothing of an average department store--say, Kohl's--and pair it with a combination of Whole Foods and Trader Joe's, but put all the food under the same branding and make the packaging really snazzy and uber-tempting and classy.  And then add in a mod little cafe which serves lunch and tea--toasties and free-range egg salad sandwiches and scones, oh my.  That doesn't even really translate, but it's the best I can do.  Let me say this:  it's the most fun Lesli Douglass can possibly have while grocery-shopping.  I loved it when we lived here, but now that we've been away and my passion for food has caught on like cherries flambé, it is even more mesmerizing to me.  I can't help myself.

 The Marks & Spencer's Food Hall in Dublin--first M&S stop of the trip.  Love affair officially aflame.

 Have you had a profiterole?  Think small little ball-version of an eclair:  choux pastry, stuffed with cold custard cream, topped with a chocolate blanket.  There's a reason they come in a stack--can't eat just one.

 I like trifles, and especially on this side of the pond, but the packaging made me put it in my basket.

 Sweets aren't your thing?  Hello, savory TV tray of cuteness.

 Food hall :: two of the loveliest words in the English language.

 Imagine being able to walk in a store on any given day and just purchase crustless egg salad sandwiches.  Imagine!!

 Quick, help me think of a way to transport chilled items back in my suitcase.

 I'm torturing myself.

 8 more little designs for children, just as cute as this.

 Folding picnic mat covered in Union Jacks?  I'll take two.

 Cookie tins.  LOVE.  This one was filled with little chocolate chip cookies.  Dear US cookie tin manufacturers, we can do better than cheesy sleigh-riding Christmas scenes.

 I didn't even know I was hungry for pizza untill I saw this.

 Okay, they have healthy food, too--and just as snazzy.

 At home, I would turn up my nose at a pre-packaged cake.  Scalloped packaging with cute cursive font on it?  Okay.

 Feeling snacky.

 Please take in the fonts, the descriptive tempters, and the thought of having your mouth come alive in a way you never knew possible.  Bought this first bag, consumed, back for 4 more bags.

 I know someone who wishes this had actually gone into the basket.

 Hm.  Pink and powder blue and gold Queen's Diamond Jubilee cookie tin?  No idea what's in it, but I'm buying it for the tin.  That makes two tins in my basket.

 I mean!!!

 My mouth just made a purring sound.  Can you imagine this paired with the cheeses?  I feel faint with euphoria.

 How I've started the majority of my mornings here:  vanilla yogurt with vanilla bean flecks throughout, topped with fresh berries.  I'm already sad because I can't think of one vanilla yogurt I've ever seen back home with FLECKS in it.  Our time is short, Madagascan vanilla heaven--let's make the most of it [dramatic flourish of old-timey romance movie music].

 Unless you were foggy before, cheese is one of my main love languages.  Please take note of the labeling, fonts, and descriptors.  The words "savoury tang" on a food label??  They're selling and I'm buying.

 You received your lesson on wheaten bread in yesterday's blog.  This is purely for reinforcement.

 The new-ish Marks & Spencer at the Abbeycentre in Belfast, which is near where we stayed and used to live.  I could've just checked in and spent the night.

 The M&S cafe.  I wish there was ANYWHERE in Knoxville, Tennessee that I could go at any given moment to have an egg salad sandwich, scone and jam, fruit cup (in an elegant little footed cup, btw) and hot tea w/"teapot for one" with a little bikkie on the saucer for lunch.  ANYWHERE.

 For $5, Mamie gets a kids meal with crustless sandwich, carrots and cucumbers, a tangerine, little Percy Pig graham cracker biscuits and a juice box.  Frances the badger would be right at home.

 Mamie's newest stuffed friend, Hedgehunk.  She wants to call her a chipmunk, but then remembers she is a hedgehog.  Given during a visit to our sweet former neighbors, Jim and Jean Simms.

 Finishing up our M&S lunch and getting ready to depart Belfast!  It was a bittersweet experience, especially for Hedgehunk.

 These two!!  Luke and Walker, two peas in a pod, makes that clamp on my heart tighten up just looking at this!!

 Was there ever a more appropriate sentiment??

 After trying to communicate proper camera frame placement to my husband, he decided to channel his inner comedian with this shot.  Don't quit your day job, honey.

  The farewell shot of the Bennetts and Douglasses--waaaaaa!!  And at Marks & Spencer, no less!!  Notice Mamie's strategic positioning on Luke's lap.;-/  We will miss you all like crazy--already do!!!

"She Was Alright When She Left Here"

I remember learning when we lived in Belfast that the Titanic had been built in Belfast Harbor.  And I remember thinking, "that is some kinda claim to fame"--and yet, no one was really shouting it from the rooftops.  No museum centered around it, no major attempts to draw attention to this huge part of one of the most fascinating world historical events in the last 100 years....  And then I got it--if you talk to enough people who are from Belfast, there's a little saying about the Titanic that goes, "Well, she was alright when she left here!"  

It's always seemed that Belfast wanted just a little bit of distance between its name and the disaster, which makes enough sense.  But shipbuilding is a huge part of Belfast's history and to not recognize and give it the respect that the Titanic undertaking alone deserves is....well, not giving a complete story, in my opinion.  For that reason, I was really glad when I heard the Titanic Belfast Museum was opening in time for the 100th-year anniversary of the Titanic and we booked for tickets to go on Saturday.  Really glad we did--it's very, very well done.  It was great to be in the city center of Belfast and have the kids down there.  Incidentally, had to stop in at Avoca--again--for lunch.  Mm.  And then got a snazzy night out with Al and Suz, just the four of us for dinner.  Here's some pics from our day...

 Before we headed down to the city center, I was so so thrilled to get to snag an hour and a cuppa with my friend, Lucia, who used to be my manager at the now-defunct Craftworks.  Craftworks was a fabulous retail shop in the center of Belfast, which was full of the most gorgeous art and craft from all over the north and south of Ireland.  It was such a special place--in addition to being a beautiful store in itself, it was a real lifeline for me because working there gave me a purpose and a community of my own in a foreign land.  Lucia always made me feel welcome and we had a lot of good laughs with our friend, Michelle, another American girlfriend whose husband was in the same program for PT as Dean.  Michelle, if you are reading this, we said at least four times how much we wished you were sitting right there with us!  Lucia is an amazing woman of strength and grace and Irish wit--she is a wife, mother, nurse, artist (among others)--and I have a huge amount of respect for her....

   

 Alright then, finally got down to the city center--kiddos in front of the magnificent city landmark, Belfast City Hall.

 Well, you don't think I could really go to Avoca for lunch and not post a food pic?  This is their charcuterie and cheese board--a thing of beauty worth beholding and savoring!

 If you have never been to Ireland or Northern Ireland, odds are you have never had wheaten bread.  It is a very dense, very grainy, very stick-to-your-bones bread--and smeared with fresh butter?  LIP-SMACKING.

 Done with lunch, onto the museum.  Very, very impressive building.

Standing in front of the last photo that was taken of the Titanic before it left its last port...

 A good quote makes me all tingly inside....

 Loved seeing Truman get interested.  Fabulous videos and learning centers for all ages.

 The staterooms section was so fascinating for me.  This room would've been for the wealthiest of the wealthy--very luxurious because there were electric lights.

 Second class stateroom--bunks, wash sink, much smaller.  there was also a third class room which was half the size of this one--very small.  Very sobering imagining the families that would've made themselves at home and unpacked their things in rooms just like these....

 Jack?  Ohh, Jack??  It's Rose calling....where are you, Jack??

 Kids with one of the big yellow H & W (Harland & Wolff) shipbuilding cranes in the background of Belfast Harbor.  they are major Belfast landmarks.  There are two named, "Samson" and "Goliath."

 Just get a hold of this couple!!  SMASHING.  Had such a great meal together at a restaurant which was much cooler than I am, called, "Made in Belfast."

Ahhhhh, memories--which, except for my hernia flaring up in the middle of dinner, are all very soothing and pleasant!;-/

This Hurts....

I can't figure this out, but more and more, if I vacate my usual life and take a trip somewhere on vacation, I just get utterly depressed to see it come to an end and have the regularity return.  We aren't coming home just yet, but we're ending the Belfast portion of our trip tomorrow....and all day today, I've felt something akin to a clamp around my heart that gets tighter with each passing hour....

And I have to emphatically state that I love the life I've been given--feel so thankful and blessed.  I think getting a glimpse of simplicity--without household responsibilities, scheduled kids' events, making do with only a few clothes in the closet, having more time to just see and hear and feel each other as a family--and then to return home, where it becomes harder to do these things...just feels like a drag. It reminds me of how we were created to be very simply-made people--men and women, in the garden, filled completely with God, enjoying His creation to the full. I feel like vacations give me the tiniest glimpse of that--TINIEST--and only on those trips where I let myself truly rest and recharge.

We are leaving Belfast tomorrow and all I've been able to do for an hour is lie in this bed and gaze out this window to the Belfast Lough and find myself coming up very short of feeling capable of packing.

My kids are downstairs eating a dinner of Marks & Spencer prawns (shrimp) and McVitie's caramel digestive biscuits (cookies) while they watch some version of Ice Age on television and again, I find myself coming up quite short of actually caring.

I think one of the hardest things about leaving is the physical separation I feel approaching with our friends, the Bennetts.  What a rare thing in life to have a friend situation where Dean and I both find ourselves caring very much for both Al and Suzanne and now all our children know and love each other and have laughed and chased and played and just gotten on famously for the past five days....  And now for everyone to have gotten to know each other and tasted the sweetness, but to know it's temporal and tomorrow it will change, inevitably, and we will be apart again--most likely for a long time....  Ouch.  The heart clamp tightens.

I've actually had to remind myself that our life is in Knoxville--that God has very specifically placed us there.  That even if we up and moved here, which we won't, it would be the same here, eventually--household responsibilities, children getting on each other's nerves, children getting on my nerves, children involved in activities that need to be constantly reigned in and re-evaluated, marital scuffs, stresses at work, etc.  All the hateful little thorns that seek to prick and entangle.  Moving here = not an option = looking for a way to release the clamp and coming up empty-handed....  

I just heard the boys talking in their room over an hour after they went to bed and I went in all stern-ish, "I shouldn't be hearing any talking in here at all!"  And Walker says, "We're just talking about our sadness."  I asked, "Sadness about leaving?"  He said, "Yeah.  Are we ever gonna see our friends again??"  ((gulp)) "Of course you will...."  And then, "When?  Like in 10 years??"  Arghhhh, why oh why are there oceans between friends?  Why are air fares so expensive?  Why is this freaking clamp on my heart about to cut off my blood supply??

((exhaling))  ((tears))  ((exhaling))  ((tears))  

BBQ, Golf, & Girly

Just to be clear, if your Northern Irish friends invite you over for BBQ, what they really mean is a "cookout."  Having been oh-so-graciously invited back to the Bennetts for "BBQ," along with two other families we know, the Shearers and the Cookes, we seized the good weather by the horns and indulged in Suzanne's hospitality for the second time in a week.  

Al grilled a feast of meats and Suz fixed some delectable salads and just made the whole thing really special.  We ate, drank, laughed, watched the boys play "football" for almost three hours, were initiated into Ethiopian coffee protocol by Al, and discussed, among other topics, what BBQ means in the southeastern quadrant of the US.  Here, the grill itself is referred to as "a BBQ," whereas back home, BBQ is actually a specific food.  Minor details, really, and always fun to translate these kinds of things with each other.  We also tried to convey to our friends, the Shearers, who have quite a strong affinity for all things "Disney," and who have been to Orlando more times than I have, that there really is more to America than Disney and that they should mosey on up to Knoxville one of these days.  I'm not sure they were convinced, but ah, well--it was worth a shot.  

And just to make sure we were covering all that Northern Ireland has to offer, Dean and I each took a guys/girls day and savored some gender-specific luxuries.  Thanks to a connection Al and Suz have with a friend, Dean and Al arrived in the northeast corner of the country on Thursday morning on the greens of The Royal Portrush Golf Club, one of the top 10 golf courses in the world, and one of the most challenging.  This was a dream come true for Dean and both the guys were boyish with the anticipation of it.  The girls took Friday and did a late breakfast/shopping/afternoon tea day, which never fails to be the cure for what ails me.  Ahhhh.....

The boys playing football with our friends' kids in the backyard--with breaks only to eat and drink, this went on for almost three hours!

Football REIGNS here and it was great to see boys 5-6 years younger than Truman "taking him to school" with their footwork!

Janet, Sandra & Suzanne--Ladies of the BBQ.

First of three in a montage:  Lesli and Suzanne attempting a photo.  No idea.

The sun was a challenge.  Lesli appears to have other challenges.

Prediciton:  I will be unappreciated for this.

The always-entertaining Mo and Janet, aka:  Mr. and Mrs. House of Mouse.  

Truman and Evie.  Last time they were together, they were almost four and watched little preschool videos together.  Awww, what happened?  Big 11-year olds!

Party trick:  Al's been investing time in missions in Ethiopia the past couple of years and is the foremost Belfast authority on Ethiopian coffee--down to the roasting of cinnamon, which was added to the extremely strong coffee.  The whole process took at least 20 minutes and something like 7-8 trips in and out of the kitchen.  I must say, it was very well-received, even among those of us who don't really prefer coffee.  Bravo.

It's only a matter of time before Mamie starts flirting and playing with the dads of whichever family we happen to be around at any given moment.  This was a little game of "pretend you're gonna eat my profiterole" with Mamie and Al.

Beautiful ladies!  And of course, the moon pies.

It took some effort, but sweet picture of Suz and Evie.  And, of course, the digestives.

And so begins the "girly" day with Lesli and Suz.  FABULOUS shop called, "Avoca," in the center of Belfast.  Avoca is famous for their gorgeous woolen blankets, made in the south of Ireland in Wicklow.  Over the past 12-15 years, they have broadened their company to expand into a more extensive range of home goods, clothing, and their own brand of food items, opening locations in Dublin and in Belfast.  In the upstairs of Avoca, there is both a self-serve cafe and a LOVELY restaurant.  I was kind of having a fit over the whole thing.

Gorgeous cashmere and wool cream scarf with crocheted trim and a red wool throw with sweet little details.  Made in Ireland.

Having a tea moment in the Arthur Street cafe in Avoca.  Makes me happy just remembering it.

Some of you probably don't know this, but I have a little/large dream to open my own tearoom someday and have it be realllly GREAT.  So the whole time we were in Avoca, everywhere I looked, My eye went to things that registered on multiple levels for me--lovely just because, lovely and possibly want to purchase, lovely to taste/consume, lovely and making mental notes for the someday-tearoom, etc.  Loveliness everywhere.

Desserts, pastries, puddings, oh my!

Pouring honey on my porridge  with the tiniest little honey jug!  Comfort food, you complete me.

Mix and match china.  If I hadn't fallen prey to my practical side in deciding against fragile purchases, I could've done some real damage here.  Practicality is such a downer.

LOVED these fun patterns on new plates!

And look what was directly across the way, coming out of Avoca!  Be still my floral-printed heart!!


It's just like coming home.

My first proper afternoon tea of the trip, in the Merchant's Hotel in Belfast.  Afternoon tea just never ever ever gets old.

These are the things I love about afternoon tea:  lots of details, the rarity of it all, how it quiets me, the softness of crustless egg salad sandwiches, the radiating warmth of hot tea and honey, the process of pouring, the order of the edibles, and just having a good hour and a half to sit across from someone and really have time to see them, hear them and have them do the same for you while you cup a warm teacup in your hands and forge delights of the palate and soul.

The tearoom at The Merchant's Hotel in Belfast.  What a sumptuous, beautiful setting for our tea!  This is not an experience of the Belfast we left 12 years ago.  It has been such an awesome thing to see the growth and progress that's been made in this city in that time--to see people walk with their heads a little higher and with more confidence as a city.  It's just such a lovely, lovely place.  If you're reading this and you haven't been here yet, do put it on your list.

Dean and Al at Royal Portrush--livin the DREAM.  And may I say how thrilled I was to see that they actually took pictures of the experience?!  Well done, men.

Yet another amazing day, weather-wise for this experience.  So thankful to God!  Makes my heart glad to see Dean getting to do something so exciting for him.  Thanks a million to Al and Suz's friend, Fraz, for taking them out!

One of the markers at this particular hole.  Again, so jazzed that Dean actually took pics.

The real deal.

 

And on Friday night, gathering in our living room to watch the opening ceremonies in London on tv was pretty special.  The first Olympics that it's seemed the whole family's been interested and invested.  Truman begged to stay up until the cauldron lighting at the end, but we'd had such a run of late nights that we asked him to go onto bed once the countries started coming through.  I wasn't even sure I'd be able to stay up, but when I saw that I was going to make it, I went in and woke Truman up at 12:15 to come back out and watch the cauldron lighting.  He was so glad!  As obsessed as Truman is with fireworks, I'm really glad I did--that finale was AMAZING!