The United Republic of Texas.

I have a love/hate relationship with blogs. Part of me wants to think of escape cville... as a book - I'll travel, jot down where the stories are as they happen, then immediately post once I get back. But the mind doesn't work that way. I get home, write about a few, then grow tired. I get tired of waxing poetic about whatever trip I've just been on. So I file the rest away in a drawer somewhere and forget.

Inevitably though, something will happen to remind me of a great travel story and I'll think, "Damn, I should've written about that the minute I got BACK! That's a GREAT story, why didn't I write about that? " My linear mind wants to write them all down one by one, right then, pretty little memories all in a row. But my real mind jumps around. I remember certain things, forget others - only to remember again in a flash much later when I'm lying awake at 3am. Or doing laundry. Or listening to the radio. Which I guess is what a blog does, jump around, offer some insight into how a person's mind can work. But I just can't seem to get past the satisfaction of looking at the escape cville... archives and seeing all London entries in January, all Breckenridge entries in February....Sigh. Maybe I should just relax and go with the flow. Hell, I haven't posted here in eons after all.

In any case, something happened today, June 2009, which reminded me of a great travel story that happened last YEAR. I hadn't even THOUGHT about it until today. It took Jay Thomas on his Sirius/XM radio show to remind me of it. It was just one statement, but the minute he said it, my mind reeled, flashing back to a sunny day last June on London's Portobello Road. Jay said, "Chuck Norris wants to become President of the United Republic of Texas!"

And there it was. The United Republic of Texas. That statement sent my head Wayne's World reeling, complete with flapping hands and Doodle-do noises, flashing back to an image of two scruffy, grizzled, elderly gentlemen in dirty suits, one brown, the other gray. They wore brogues on their feet, fedoras atop their heads. Sitting outside a pub on Portobello Road on worn wooden chairs. The table in front of them has been gouged with pocket knife carvings and is covered in pint glass water rings. One is strumming a guitar, the other it is humming and playing drums with the tabletop. Both are drunk, guzzling Guinness like it is water...

Hubby and I had headed out that afternoon to meet friends. Telling them to meet us at the corner pub, we grabbed the only two chairs left on a busy happy hour Tuesday. Two chairs immediately adjacent to said grizzled guys. Humming, strumming, drinking along without a care in the world. Waving to anyone who looks and generally being genial in a "I'm drunk and cannot really harm you," kind of way. Most people would've maybe chosen a seat inside, but I figured, what the hell. We're traveling. Let's make some friends.

So we sit. Offer the gentlemen a Guinness which they gladly accept. Small talk is exchanged. And that's when it happens. The older gentleman of the two, his face covered in gray frazzled beard, his eyes just on the verge of rheumy, but jolly all the same, his teeth yellowing, reaches into his jacket and offers me his card.

A business card. Handmade. Like something a child who was just learning computer software would create. The edges were dirty, like he had fingered its edges many times, offering it to people to look at, but never keep. The words were typed in mismatched fonts, the map below was badly pixelated and some of the words were misspelled. It said, in all caps:

PROUD CITIZEN OF THE UNITED REPUBLIC OF TEXAS!

With a colorful map of the Republic underneath. Mr. Grizzled then began a long diatribe about how he came to be a proud citizen of this Republic, and in his American accent (getting slurrier by the minute) talked about what brought him to that stretch of London on that particular afternoon. Or day. Or month. Or year. It kinda didn't matter. Mr. Grizzled Two just sat and strummed his guitar and grinned. Grinned like he'd heard this speech many times before. Too many times to count, so why not just strum the day away. Playing nothing in particular.

I think I may have actually whipped around to make sure that 1) I wasn't dreaming and 2) ol' John Singer wasn't about to come walking around the corner because right then I was sure I had somehow dropped right into a Carson McCullers novel.

But no, Mr. Grizzled was real. And he was passionate about his cause. He talked and talked about why this Republic needed to happen. And why it needed to happen NOW. I wanted to ask if he was so passionate about it, then why was he sitting on a London streetcorner instead of protesting down the Main Street in Dallas, but he kinda wouldn't let me get in a word edgewise. It's as if the card was attached to an invisible string which led to his sternum, and once it was pulled, he would talk until that string rode back up inside him. However many hours that took.

Our friends arrived a while later and so we left these gentlemen. One strummed, and one talked. Even as we stood to leave, Mr. Republic of Texas just smiled, waved, and kept spewing his passion all over Portobello Road. Later on that week we saw them both, one strumming, the other just sipping, this time seated at the front of a different pub on a different street in the same neighborhood. I caught the eye of Mr. Texas and he just smiled. Pointed his index finger at me like it was a gun and with a wink of his eye pulled the trigger. But in a genial way. Like we had shared a secret joke.

So is this travel story accurate? For the most part. But like all travel stories you file away in a drawer for a year, it is probably the victim of embellishment. Maybe forgetting for a while makes it better? Maybe not. Nevertheless, it definitely makes it mine...

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Paella Love Fest.

Oh, she looks happy. Probably because she's cooking yummy paella at Jamon Jamon on Portobello Road in London. I'm happy just looking at it! And I know Nick (the owner) is happy because he sent me SUCH a sweet email today - one that made me grin from ear to ear. He loves my writing. I love his paella. The girl in the picture loves making paella. Let the paella love fest begin! If you're ever in that section of London, check it out. It's wonderful. Thanks Nick, for making me feel like someone out there is actually reading anything I write about...you've made a struggling writer very, very happy today.

Hey Libby,

My name's Nick, I'm the owner of the paella stall on Portobello Road that you wrote such amazing things on your blog about. Thank you so much for the wonderful description, I was quite emotional while reading it, you really spun a story around our humble rice dish :-) So you mind if I link to it on our website? Any time you're in London please come by again, and you and your husband will be our guest for lunch.

Thanks again for the glorious blog
hasta luego
Nick
Jamon Jamon

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Portobello Paella.

Paella. Just saying the word conjures up my trip to London this past June. Yep, not Spain, but London. I love the stuff, and don't eat it nearly enough because of how long it takes to prepare. There was a place in Richmond where I'm from that had it – Café Europa. The name always made me think of the David Sylvian song. We'd always order tapas instead though, because even on the menu it stated, "Preparation Time 1 hour, Please Be Patient." And the one time we did cave in and order it, the rice was way too salty. All that anticipation for nothing. We'd been better off with more anchovies and olives with our peach sangria.

But I do LOVE LOVE LOVE paella. That slightly nutty, crunchy, little bit salty rice mixed in with fresh seafood. It has a smoky spiciness and a comfort food heartiness that I just love. And in London of all places, I had the best of my life so far. At a stand called Jamon Jamon on Portobello Road in Notting Hill.

While in London we stayed quite near Portobello in a flat rented by my in-laws. Yep, the in-laws pretty much ROCK. It was a great vacation – I’ve now decided if I ever win the lottery, this is where I’ll be buying a flat. It’s beautiful. All the houses seem to be white Georgian creatures. Imagine a New York brownstone but in a vivid white with lots of little turrets and columns. With loud bright-colored doors in red and blue. Very pretty.

Portobello Road, its market, and even the bookstore where Hugh Grant attempted to woo Julia Roberts in "that movie" were just two blocks from our flat. Oddly enough, I never quite made it into the bookstore, even though owning a travel bookstore is pretty much my dream job and that particular one is the one that appears in my dreams on a nightly basis. Maybe I thought the dream wouldn't live up to the reality? Or maybe I was too busy buying a coffee or a Guinness in every single one of the coffee shop slash pub slash sandwich counter places which line this road and all the adjacent ones besides. I've had the best pizza of my life on Portobello Road - at a place owned by Italians. It's the essence of London cuteness this road. You could spend every living day browsing for antiques or snapping quaint photographs, stopping off only to have an espresso and a sandwich. Or a lager if it's after 4. Or not.

On Saturdays though, the street changes entirely. Early that morning I imagine if you live anywhere near Portobello you are awakened at dawn by the clanging of metal pipes - booths under construction but only for the day. The place transforms and for many many blocks the entire road is pedestrianized and chock full of wares. Produce, meats, and baked goods share space with florists, handmade crafts, and rock-bottom priced pashminas and handbags. It's glorious. Completely crowded, people pushing and shoving, calling out to the greengrocer their orders for apples and green beans, handing over money, a cacophony of commerce. And then there's the paella.

You don't see it at first, you smell it. That smoky, spicy smell, so strong and pervasive you can smell it blocks down the road. It hits your nose and you think, "My god that smells good. Where is that COMING from?" Like a cartoon the paella smell is a thick smoke that curls itself into a finger and beckons you. Eyes closed in culinary ecstasy, you lift off the ground and start floating down Portobello Road, led by the smoke finger, determined to find out the source of that bliss.

The Jamon Jamon stand is tiny, most of it taken up by two massively huge paella pans. Giant-sized cereal bowls. Cauldrons of goodness that hiss and smoke and send up the most glorious smells you've ever encountered. Caretakers turn and stir with huge wooden paddles, cultivating the flavors with gentle motions. Beautiful to watch, and a great marketing tool. Who would pass up something like that? The line is was ungodly long to purchase this tasty treat.

After much waiting, hubby and I decided on seafood paella. We usually order something different so we can taste each other's meal, but not this time. The seafood just looked too damn good. Huge shrimps, scallops, and crawfish. It also didn't matter that we had just eaten - a sandwich and espresso (of course). No worries, let the overstuffing begin. No tables here, so we took our styrofoam containers laden with paella goodness and began to walk down the road, eating as we went. Or I should say, shove our way through the crowds and attempt to walk - by this time in the afternoon the road was positively impassable by man or beast. People gearing up, buying their sundries for Sunday supper preparations.

The funniest thing happened too as we walked. While we were still near the stand, everyone knew what we were eating, and looked longingly at us. Or looked at us as if to say yeah, I know that's good, have had that before. Wish I had it now.

But as the stand went out of sight, people still looked at us. They'd get this look in their eyes like, Heeeeey, whatya got there? That looks yummy yummy yummy and their eyes would get all big and round - again, like a cartoon. They would point, and their mouths would drop open. Because you see, they had just smelled it, that elixir of the gods, that Spanish fly of food. Paella. Then they see us, and the two things connect. Holy crap I need that now, they think. And the smoky finger grabs them too. They lift off the ground, close their eyes, and float past us to buy their own morsels of yummy.

Whenever I hear the word, "paella" now I think of my Portobello paella. Of Jamon Jamon. It might not even be the best in the world, who knows? But something about eating huge shrimps and yummy rice out of a styrofoam carton as you stroll the market in London was really something. We smelled it, and we bought it. Then we ate it. Instant gratification coupled with cool scenery to wash it down. People looked at us and wanted to be us because of what we were eating. It was the perfect paella package. Only a peach sangria would've made it complete.

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