Cable Clips and a Bad Martini

I took this in St. John's Wood last night as I went out to dinner with Dave and a couple of his co-workers after their students' holiday concert. Only now, looking at the picture, am I realizing that car travel on St. John's Wood High Street apparently now goes from north to south, rather than south to north as it used to. Which means cars could have run me down from behind as I was standing in the middle of the street taking the photo. Fortunately there's not much traffic!

The concert generally went well, though there were a few slip ups. One of the drummers dropped his drumstick during a furious solo, and a sax player's instrument crashed to the ground when the lanyard holding it around his neck apparently failed. He was not happy.

Even though the performances were none of my doing, I celebrated with everyone else when it was over. I ordered a martini at the restaurant, and once again, I am reminded that a restaurant martini can be a disappointing thing. A martini should be, at most, one part vermouth to four or five parts gin -- in other words, nearly straight gin. The one I got last night was the wettest, most vermouth-heavy martini I've had since last May. I don't know why bartenders tend to overdo the vermouth, except maybe they're stingy with the gin for cost reasons.

Anyway, I ordered an extra shot of gin and threw it into the glass and that improved (but did not correct) the ratio.

For dinner I had an Asian salad with watermelon (better not think about the carbon footprint of that), blackened sea bass and mini mince pies for a Christmasy dessert.

See that little thing? That's called a cable clip. I spent yesterday morning doing something I should have done literally years ago -- taming our sprawling internet cable. It's a long phone cord that runs from our phone jack near the front door through the entire flat to our router, which is in the living room (where we spend most of our time). This cord has been loosely coiled and running across our floor for ages, but it was unsightly and a trip hazard. So I bought those little clips at our local Homebase (which is closing and selling stuff at fire-sale prices) and tacked the cord to the baseboards.

Now it's out of the way and more or less out of sight, but man, that was a tedious process. I thought it would be easy, but can you see how tiny those clips are compared to my fingertips? Now imagine trying to hold that tiny tack next to the floor and pounding it in with a hammer, especially in a confined or awkward place like an inner corner or behind a door. Infuriating!

Anyway, now it's done and I don't have to worry about the dog walker or a repairman or a guest tripping over the internet cable and breaking their face and then suing us. As a product of litigious American society, I worry about these things.