London 2023: The First Week

 

What a difference a year makes! Here I am back in Belsize Park. After a relatively uneventful flight, with minor weather delays en route and moderate turbulence across the Atlantic, my plane arrived at Heathrow a mere one minute late and, best of all, my luggage came on the flight with me. Thank you, Aer Lingus.

Now I'm well settled into the flat in Lambolle Road and am dusting the cobwebs off of the UK folder in my brain, reacquainting myself with the coinage (I still confuse the 10 cent US dime with the 5p UK coin), awakening the muscle memory for walking on uneven cobbles, revisiting all the grocery stores in the immediate area to get my favourite foods, refreshing my mental inventory of toilet locations, and learning the hard way that I need to add 10 minutes to any transit time estimates that I get on the Citymapper app, especially the walking bits. My legs are short and getting older, so I just have to reconcile myself to the fact that I can't walk at a London pace. To my #1 travel rule ("If you are nearby to an acceptable public loo, use it"), I've added a complimentary rule #2 ("If a bus comes along that's going in your direction, take it"). In both instances, you never know when the next one -- loo or bus -- will materialize.

Things in Belsize Park are essentially the same with a few minor changes. The Budgens grocery store has reopened since extensive renovations that began days after my 2022 arrival. It's a very nice store (check out the photos in the link above), though is now pricier than before. But I happily discovered that they still carry the Yeo rhubarb yoghurt that I love. In England's Lane, the French bakery still sells pastel de nata (priced at £1.90 each, which isn't much of a change if any) and there's a new convenience store that seems so-so. Best of all, right across from the tube station is a new charity shop that's fabulous. It supports the mental health charity Mind, which has shops in other parts of London but only just opened this one in the past six months or so. The shop is bright and cheerful, the staff and volunteers couldn't be nicer, and -- a lovely surprise -- the clothing is grouped first by type (shirts, skirts, dresses, etc) and then by SIZE, rather than colour like every other charity shop I've entered in the UK. 

A number of small and medium art exhibitions were ending during my first week so I darted about to catch a bunch of them:

• Art and Artifice: Fakes from the Collection at the Courtauld. I'm a huge fan of the programme Fake or Fortune, in which Fiona Bruce and Philip Mould are always bringing works to the Courtauld Institute for analysis, so this was right up my alley. I kept expecting Fiona and Philip to pop their heads around a corner to offer more info, but no such luck. 
• Black Venus at Somerset House -- Black women artists confronting and reclaiming images and representation in art since the infamous Hottentot Venus. 
• Brian Clarke at Newport Street Gallery. Big, colourful, splashy, sometimes dark stained glass windows and screens:

• Excess of Desire by keita miyazaki at Gallery Rosenfeld. Sculptural pieces made of car parts. Very cool. 

• Evelyn Hofer at the Photographers' Gallery. I absolutely loved this retrospective exhibition of a relatively unknown woman photographer (I'd not heard of her, though much of her work was done in America). I particularly liked the symmetry within her photographs.  

• Grandma's Land by Alvaro Barrington at Sadie Coles HQ in Kingly Street. Installation about his growing up in Grenada. 

There's some new temporary public art around the Strand. This is an installation that's part of the London Design Festival, called Spirit of Place by Simone Brewster. There are five pieces, all made of cork.

And there's also a new installation on the low rooftop of Temple Station, called Slackwater by Holly Hendry. It references the movements of the nearby Thames.

On Thursday, I went on one of the weekly walks with the Primrose Hill Community Association. Loyal readers will remember how much I enjoyed participating in PHCA activities last year. This walk included stops at the blue plaques of three local residents who are less known than the usual blue plaque set: Agnes Arber (a botanist), Henry Wood (musician and conductor of the Proms) and Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, an Indian economist, social reformer and political leader. It was lovely to reconnect with the group and to learn about these three fascinating, accomplished individuals. 

Thursday evening, I saw the first of several theatre performances I've booked. This one was of "Indecent" by Paula Vogel at JW3, a Jewish community cultural centre about a 25 minute walk up the Finchley Road from my gaff. I thoroughly enjoyed the performance -- the staging, the acting, the music and the story. It's a play within a play within a play (a bit confusing at times), about the controversial performances in eastern Europe, New York City, ultimately the Lodz ghetto of a play by Sholem Asch called "God of Vengeance." I managed to miss the number 13/113 bus up and back down the Finchley Road by a minute or two. I watched them both pull away from across the busy road, which I didn't dare dart across. Hence the new rule about adding minutes to Citymapper's estimates. 

I did a house tour at the Cosmic House in Holland Park on Friday. I'd been wanting to see the inside of the building ever since it opened for public tours in 2021. This was the brainchild and home of post-Modern architect Charles Jencks and his family until his death in 2019. In 2018 it was given Grade I listing. My friend Simon, himself an architect, told me about the ticketing process. As soon as July, August and September tix became available, I was persistently on the website until I scored myself a ticket. By that evening, they were gone. Admittedly, I had neglected to do much reading about the house before my visit. I was delightfully surprised to find how whimsical the place is, with various humorous motifs (faces, action figures) throughout. If you want to book for future open days, you'll need to get on the mailing list and be ready to pounce when you are notified that it's time to book. 

I rounded out the week with a shopping trip to the Parliament Hill Farmers' Market on Saturday and a guided walk around the old Eton Estate part of Belsize Park on Sunday. Oh, and I got a covid jab on Sunday morning. I was hoping for the new formulation, but it will not be available in the UK for another two months. Meanwhile, there's a big push on to get the over-65s vaccinated with the old bivalent jab, which they told me has been just as effective as the new one in the clinical trials. Since I couldn't get the new formulation before I left the US, and I've been horrified by the lack of covid precautions here in the UK (nary a mask in sight), I decided I may as well get boosted with the bivalent formulation. I was able to get it at UCL Hospital in the Euston Road, without question about immigration status and without a NHS number. 

Here are the stats:

Tuesday (arrival day):
£10 to top up my Oyster card

£20 mobile phone package for 30 days

£1.90 pastel de nata

£22.98 groceries and wine

12,694 steps

5.14 miles

Wednesday

£156.30 one-month travel card

£6.50 shirt from charity shop

17,026 steps

6.92 miles

Thursday

£2.30 sandwich

£7.33 groceries

£15 ticket for Indecent at JW3

27,844 steps

11.35 miles

Friday

£5 Cosmic House tour

£1 veggie samosa in Portobello Road Market

£1.85 pastel de nata from Lisboa in Golborne Road

£8.50 wine

18,008 steps

7.41 miles

Saturday

£11 bread & veg from farmers' market

£4 Photographers' Gallery (Art Pass price)

18,702 steps

7.62 miles

Sunday

£2.27 groceries

13,299 steps

5.45 miles