Read about the Cantwell Family's Christmas in London in December 2007, with entries by Dad (Brian), Mum (Barbara) and daughter (Lillian).

Scroll to the bottom for the first entry, and read upward from there. Cheers!

It rained heavily on Christmas, the first precipitation we've seen this visit.

The first real precipitation, anyway. The snow in Brompton Road, which caused my daughter and me excitement more than once, did, indeed, come from a machine on the roof of Harrod's. (It sure looked real, when the wind caught it and sent it whirling up the street, but if you caught one of the "flakes," it was like soap, not ice.)

"A crummy commercial," Lillian muttered, quoting a favorite Christmas movie...

"You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!" -- Ebenezer Scrooge, blaming indigestion for making him see Marley's ghost in "A Christmas Carol"

So are underdone potatoes served in London these days? We've not found much in the way of bad food...

It was when the English Chamber Choir launched into "Ding Dong Merrily on High" -- one of my favorite old-fashioned carols -- as we sat in the first row at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, with candles burning at the windows and light glinting off the restored church's freshly gilded cherubs, that Christmas in London became real for me. We joined heartily in the singing and bonded a bit with our British pew-mates...

Why the heck do you do this, I asked 76-year-old Londoner Ron Whitten, one of three dozen or so swimmers who competed in the annual Peter Pan Cup swim race on Christmas morning in the Serpentine lake in Hyde Park.

Easy answer:

On the afternoon of Christmas Eve, we retraced some of the steps of Ebenezer Scrooge through what's called "The City," and is now London's modern financial district. Do we know how to have fun, or what?

London headlines this past week:

"Heir of the dog William?" -- over a photo of a sleepy Prince William leaving a London club called Tramp, with subhead, "While Kate's away, Wills likes to play" (alluding to girlfriend Kate Middleton, who had flown to Barbados for Christmas with her family.) -- from London Lite

"Foggier yet, and colder! Piercing, searching, biting cold...The owner of one scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed by dogs, stooped down at Scrooge's keyhole to regale him with a Christmas carol: but at the first sound of 'God bless you merry gentleman! May nothing you dismay!' Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action, that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and even more congenial frost." -- from Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," 1843

Fog shrouded London streets Sunday morning, and a misty, penetrating dampness hung over Bloomsbury even as late as 3 p.m. when we visited Charles Dickens' house, now a museum dedicated to the author. It was Christmas, how could we not make the pilgrimage?

Other than a bit of fog, the skies have been fairly clear this past week. But several times, when we've been walking down Brompton Road in front of Harrod's, it's started snowing. A kind of magical, wow-this-is-cool thing in the days before Christmas, especially in London.

However...

"Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it." -- from Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," 1843

You don't have to be Mr. Scrooge to want to find ways to stretch your dollar in London, with the British pound running about double the value of an American greenback these days.

One place to save on lunch: Cabmen's Shelters.

We visited Portobello Road Market in London's Notting Hill neighborhood on the Saturday before Christmas -- a lively, colorful, fun place at Christmastime. Barbara and I will tell you about it here, and then there's a slide show. (This is just like being home already, with guests over to see our pictures.)

This isn't a way to get cheap shellfish, and it sure doesn't involve eating anything out of the Thames (thankfully).

Well, we couldn't get the beef from Prince Charles' farm -- you have to special-order the cut needed for Beef Wellington. "And we sort of have to ration out that particular beef, I'm sure you understand," said the man in the straw bowler behind the counter.

But the C. Lidgate butcher shop is worth a visit even if you don't plan to cook your own holiday feast. Though we might need to take out a second mortgage after what we came away with.

If laughter is the best medicine, everyone in my family is going to live to 110.

After last night's panto at London's Old Vic Theatre, that is.

Most buskers in London hang out in the Tube -- it's warm and out of the weather, but isn't the best place for sound or stopping to watch. It was a treat to come across this Santa playing Christmas songs on steel drum at London's Portobello Road Market on the Saturday before Christmas. His wiggly hat made him even more fun to watch.

The main problem with ice skating in a moat is that you're surrounded on both sides by high walls, which provide a perfect vantage point for other people to look down on you.

That was, quite literally, the situation as daughter Lilli and I joined London merry-makers on the first day of school holidays at one of the city's popular outdoor ice rinks: in the dry moat of the Tower of London. We'll take turns telling you about it -- Brian first. (We even have some fun video.)

Christmas, like most things in London, isn't cheap. Here's a list (I've checked it twice) of what we've spent on some of the gewgaws:

Ho, ho, ho, here's where we've been and where we're going this Christmas week:

Archie McPhee did not invent the idea of making candy in the shape of silly stuff such as bacon and eggs. It actually was a popular Christmas tradition with middle-class Brits in the early 1600s.

So forget peanut brittle and gingerbread. Grab the sugar bowl and get busy.

It was a sunny day yesterday in London -- with sinking temperatures and an ice-mint blue sky. We went for a long walk through Hyde Park, Notting Hill and down through Kensington High Street. It was interesting to take a look at what is worn here on a cold winter day:

I got my Christmas Treat early this year.

Wednesday night, Brian, Lil and I headed out to the Cheesemongers' Night at the Borough Market on the South Bank right near the London Bridge.

London is one of the most expensive cities in the world. So how did we find a decent place to stay that isn't breaking our holiday piggy bank?

"WOW!" The word blurted from my lips, as jaded as I was after 20 hours of travel last night, when we emerged like squinting gophers from the Knightsbridge tube station into London's toffiest shopping district. ("Toffiest," for toffy-nosed, a sort of semi-affectionate British insult to the rich.)

Where in the world would you spend Christmas, if you could deck the halls anywhere you darn well chose? "London, hands down," my family said. Where better to get in the spirit than "Jolly Old" -- the city of Marley's ghost and figgy pudding, firelit pubs and God-Rest-Ye-Merry-Gentlemen? Where better to do your holiday shopping than Fortnum & Mason and the Portobello Market?