Meeting Robin Ellis

This is Robin Ellis, who I posted about HERE. He is a British actor who is most famous for his role as Ross Poldark, a costume drama that is set directly after the Revolutionary War. He returns to England and finds out he inherited his families business, a coal mine. I mention this because it will come up later in the post. :-)

He is touring in the US to help get out the word on his recently published book Delicious Dishes for Diabetics. I bought a copy back in December, so when I heard he would be having a book signing not far from where I work, I decided to attend.

I knew it was scheduled to rain on Saturday, but minus a huge storm, I was determined to make the drive. I woke up to rain, but not terrible rain and since I have driven in much worse, off I went. I gave myself plenty of time and arrived at the Larchmont Village area of LA, with half an hour to spare. Yay me!

This gave me a bit of time to do some window shopping, though I did not end up buying the scarfs I was eying.

There were many coffee shops along the street and I debated a cup of coffee or tea to warm me up, but I didn't know if the bookstore would allow it, so I decided not to.

The store itself, Chevalier's Books was a small, but cheery book store. I looked at their stock and as I wandered around, I realized there were several people waiting. At exactly 1PM, Robin Ellis arrived, sat down at the table and began talking to each person while signing. The usual thing you see at one of these things. I enjoyed listening to the conversation he had with several people and when asked, he actually talked about the shooting of the scenes in Poldark that took place in a real mine. The mine was a training mine, but he said the actors went down 200 feet into the mine for the shooting. The real miners normally went down 2,000 feet. I found all this totally fascinating.

He also talked about his Type 2 Diabetes and his Mother's Type 1. He said it was very hard growing up with someone who had to deal with this and he hopes some of the recipes in his book, help other people with Type 2, live a better life.

When I got to the front of the line I told him that we had actually met at my workplace back in the late 80's or early 90's. I didn't remember exactly why, but I think he was there pitching Poldark to the current programmer. After I jogged his memory, he did remember stopping by my TV Station that day. His wife, Meredith then took a photo of the two of us. I have no idea if I will ever see the photo, but it is nice to know somewhere in this world is a photo of me and Robin Ellis. (Update: Here it is!)

All too soon it was over and I exited the bookstore.

Back to the rain and my real life.

If you are interested in a recipe from Robin, here is one I posted about a few months ago: Cauliflower Soup.