We scheduled ourselves for parts of our first two days in London, and fate scheduled the remainder of those initial hours. On day one, we took an enjoyable tour of the East End, around Old Spitalfields Market with Eating Europe. Spitalfields, where there is no longer a hospital (‘spital) much less fields, has a long history of housing refugee populations starting with French Protestants who moved there at the end of the 17th century. The tradition continues and our tastings included bagels and salt beef and Bangladeshi food. (Did you know that chicken tika masala was voted “the national dish” by the British population, the same people who brought on Brexit?) The Bangladeshi restaurants are sometimes called “Indian” curry houses, because Brits were familiar with India, and its long colonial relationship, but Bangladesh only became independent from Pakistan and took that name in 1971. There are now 300,000 Bangladeshis in London, or about half the size of the city of Washington.

Of course, there was also the classic English pub food: fish and chips with mushy peas from Poppie’s, reputedly the best in London. It was a terrific tour. Our guide, Josie, was a history buff, so we got at twofer—history of the neighborhoods we were walking through as well as a taste of what the East End has to offer.

After the tour, we took a cab back to our home exchange house to deal with a crisis. We awoke that first London morning to a text from the British family in our home announcing the air conditioner was not working. It took us the next two UK afternoons (mornings in DC), loads of assistance from Nicholas, and two visits from our A/C maintenance company, to get the machine up and running with a new crucial part that had failed. We were so fortunate to have friends and neighbors chip in to offer their homes to our guests, in case the repair work dragged on. The problem was fixed by the second day, however, and our home exchange family did not have to relocate.

The second morning of air conditioner distress, we were booked for an exhibit called “Food: Bigger than the Plate” at the Victoria & Albert Museum. The show aimed “to explore the pleasures and politics of what and how we eat today, … from climate change and sustainability to workers’ rights.” We enjoyed, and it seemed the curators also did, the first three-quarters of the show on waste, recycling, and alternative production methods far more than we liked the final and rather banal section on making and eating food. Many of the recycle presentations were witty and imaginative, making one think and sometimes laugh out loud (for example: “merdocata,” ceramics made of cow poop, with several items on display). Another admirable facet of the exhibit was the unflinching photos and videos showing our industrial food production, giving a sense of the scale and brutality required to feed 7.7 billion people, most of whom are not farmers.

Despite the hot, hot weather, the exhibition rooms were ice cold, and so we moved to the V&A area set aside for sustaining the arts patron, its lunch and tea rooms, after which we briefly enjoyed watching children keeping cool in the courtyard’s fountains. Then it was back to Crouch End to supervise from afar the A/C saga’s final chapter, “Success!”

It was in the upper 90’s on the day we went to the V&A