Weekly Roundup #2

I invade London! (That Space Invader mosaic has been on the bridge near Southwark Cathedral for over 10 years.)

By the end of Friday, I'd been pounding the pavements for 17 days -- thus now making this officially my longest stay (in 2019, I was here for 16 days) and I haven't reached the halfway point yet. I'm settling into a rhythm, often doing an online Pilates class in the morning and then heading out the door around 11 or so. I'm still packing a lot in, but not at such a crazy pace as in week 1. The spider's web of bus routes is making more and more sense. I'm beginning to know which grocery store or market to go to for particular products, depending on who has the best quality or price. I say hi to the neighbours in Lambolle Road and a few say hi to me.

Again, for those of you who want the potted version: I saw some exhibitions (Cezanne at Tate Modern, Kaffe Fassett at the Fashion & Textile Museum, Executions at the Museum of London Docklands) and a giant globe, rambled around Hampstead on a warm, sunny day and Golders Green on a dreary one, spent time with an old friend and a new one, went to an excellent play at the National, and heard a book talk about London clay and the things it offers up on the foreshore of the Thames. Read on if you want the details.

The week got off to a fine start on Monday morning, when I met Jen at Southwark Cathedral to see Gaia, a giant globe made of NASA satellite images taken of the earth. As you watch it slowly turning, it's supposed to make you feel in awe of the planet and aware of our responsibility to maintain it. 

We then mooched around Bermondsey a bit, looking at the old warehouses and Georgian shop fronts, got sandwiches from Tesco and ate a leisurely lunch in Red Cross Garden (established by Octavia Hill, a woman who was an social reformer and advocate for decent housing for the working poor in the 19th century). I decided to head to Canary Wharf afterwards to see the exhibition of Executions at the Museum of London Docklands. The exhibition is full of images, artifacts including clothing worn by Charles I, letters containing pleas for clemency, tokens left by the condemned for their loved ones, and grisly stuff like chains, locks and gibbets. Matt Brown gave the exhibition a glowing write-up on Londonist, saying you could spend an hour there. Well, I spent an hour and a half and had to rush to see the final bits as the museum was closing. 

Tuesday dawned sunny, bright and warm. I decided to take a break from exhibitions, opting to spend four or five hours roaming the streets of Hampstead. My legs got a real workout as I climbed hills and steps, wandered down narrow passageways, poked around in graveyards, peeked in people's windows, stopped into the local library next to Keats's House and generally enjoyed myself. Hampstead is really like no other place, full of red brick houses, lovely shops and pubs, cobbled streets, an old lockup, a Grade II listed boilerhouse chimney, tons of plaques on famous people's homes and lots of atmosphere. It's no wonder well-off people chose this spot in the 17th and 18th centuries when they looked to abandon the filth and disease of London for the curative waters and clean air of this elevated spot.

I also walked past the Snappy Snaps that George Michael crashed his Range Rover into one drunken night in 2010. Fans used to leave tributes at the damaged wall. The owners have since repaired it.  

On Wednesday, I was back to looking at art and going to theatre. In the morning, I went to Tate Modern to see the blockbuster Cezanne exhibition. I got in at half price with my Art Pass. They were very good about controlling entry and letting people in according to the time on their ticket, but it was absolutely rammed with people, making it a bit difficult to edge my small self up to the wall text and the paintings. It's a very good exhibition despite the throngs, well organized and full of works I'd never seen before. (I later saw a small selection of his paintings at the Courtauld, and thought they would have been excellent inclusions in the Tate exhibition, but I suspect the Courtauld isn't keen on letting them out.) The exhibition is arranged chronologically, putting the paintings in context with what was going on in his personal life at the time he did them. 

While at Tate Modern, I also had a butcher's at the installation in the Turbine Hall -- Cecilia Vicuña's Brain Forest Quipu. 

After a lunch of sushi from Waitrose, ate while sat on a bench in Bernie Spain Gardens (named for a local woman activist), I went to the National for a matinee of Blues for an Alabama Sky. I had a cheap seat (20 quid) in the unraked first four rows of the Lyttleton Theatre. The seats are narrower in this section, but that's ok for a small person like me. Unfortunately, many of these level, narrow seats were occupied by LARGE men. My neck is still a bit sore from craning around these giants. So, the seat left something to be desired, but the production was excellent. As is expected from the National, the staging and costumes were fantastic and the acting was superb. The play was very moving -- with light comedy interspersed with some heavy themes. It may have been a tad too long, but that's not a major complaint. 

Since I had plans for Thursday evening, I got a late start on the day, doing an online Pilates class in the morning and just faffing about in my gaff. Then I got on the Northern line and headed to Battersea Power Station, for a short walk into Battersea Park to go to the Affordable Art Fair. I've never been to this semi-annual event before. I saw quite a few paintings and prints I liked, but I didn't buy. Instead, I collected cards from various galleries and made notes on what I liked for future reference. 

Bermondsey next, to go to the Fashion & Textile Museum to see the Kaffe Fassett exhibition. I knew about his line of yarns for knitting (and have a friend Janice who knit samples for him in the past), but didn't know so much about his textiles. This exhibition was all about fabric, specifically quilts made from his colourful and unique fabric designs. I enjoyed the exhibition (and my Janice enjoyed my snaps), but I wished for more. 

My last stop of the day was a talk by author Tom Chivers about his book London Clay. My friend Jen had tipped me off to this event -- it was originally scheduled to take place during the Totally Thames Festival in September but was rescheduled due to the queen's death. I met up with Jen and new friend Lesley at the event. Jen has read the book and highly recommends it. I'm going to order it as soon as I get home. The talk was utterly engaging. Tom told us about his long love of the south side of the Thames and the various smaller rivers that emptied into it long ago. He has both researched the geology of the river clay and explored the foreshore extensively, mudlarking for various relics that the river gives up at low tide. He read bits from the book -- historic, poetic and deeply personal -- and passed around some of the bits and bobs he has found. 

And now for Friday. I was too knackered to think about more exhibitions, talks, walks, etc., so I decided this would be a good day to go up to the post office in Golders Green to exchange the now-out-of-circulation paper 20 pound notes I came over with. The paper notes have been replaced with polymer ones and, as of September 30, are no longer good to spend. I arrived in the UK just a few days late to spend or exchange them at a variety of places. Now, they can only be exchanged at the Bank of England, which according to their website has queues of over an hour, or at six or eight post offices across the capital. The nearest one to me was Golders Green, and as I'd never walked around Hampstead Garden Suburb there, it seemed a good plan. The weather was iffy all day, alternately raining and overcast with occasional bits of sunshine. It took me all of five minutes to exchange my bills, and the rain was holding off (for a time), so I walked to St Jude's church in the heart of Hampstead Garden Suburb. The church has an amazing arts & crafts interior that I'd wanted to see, but alas it was locked up tighter than a drum. And so I mooched around a bit, looking at the charming cottages behind hedges and white picket fences. One of these days, I'll make it here during Open House Weekend and have a proper tour. 

As the plaque above the sundial says, "Let others tell of storm showers, I'll only count your sunny hours." 

Stats:

Monday, Oct 17

£1.40 sandwich from Tesco

£6.50 Museum of London Docklands (half price with Art Pass)

£10.41 groceries

19,191 steps

7.81 miles

Tuesday, Oct 18

£1 chocolate croissant

£1.40 package of Ginger Nuts

20,853 steps

8.50 miles

Wednesday, Oct 19

£10 Cezanne exhibition (half price with Art Pass)

£20 National Theatre ticket

£3.32 lunch

£9.50 wine and veg

19,313 steps

7.96 miles

Thursday, Oct 20

£6 Affordable Art Fair (early bird price, booked online)

£6.33 Fashion & Textile Museum (half price with Art Pass)

£2.15 cookie

17,157 steps

7.02 miles

Friday, Oct 21

£5.95 sandwich at a proper cafe

£1.65 ibuprofen

£2.50 banana bread

£2.96 yogurt and bananas

16,150 steps

6.59 miles

A Weekend of Walking in Bloomsbury

The annual Bloomsbury Festival is on while I'm here. It was started in 2006, I think as a five-day festival, which has now expanded to ten days. I've been aware of it when I've previously been in London in October, but I've never managed to do any of the events until now. I'm still very covid-wary and prefer outdoor events, so I poured through the schedule for activities and events that would fit that bill. Happily, among the many walks on offer, I found three that looked interesting and booked them way back in July. This turned out to be a good thing, as a couple of the walks I did were sold out. At only a fiver per walk, there's no way to go wrong. 

First up was a walk about the late-18th century feminist writer (and mother of Mary Shelley) Mary Wollstonecraft. Once again, I need to plead ignorance and admit that I've never read any of her fiction or nonfiction, the most notable work being A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792). I really should do, as she was a huge proponent of the education of women -- as a graduate of the largest women's college in the US (Smith College) and having worked at the oldest women's college (Mount Holyoke College, founded in 1837) it is rather pathetic that I have this huge hole in my reading. OK, while I'm fessing up, I've never read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein either. 

The Wollstonecraft walk was a long one, starting in Store Street, where she had once lived (house no longer there and exact location uncertain), through an archway leading under Senate House, into Russell Square, past a blue plaque for Mary Shelley and her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley in Marchmont Street, through Somers Town where a faded mural portrays Wollstonecraft, her husband William Godwin and their child when they lived in the area, which was semi-rural and only beginning to be developed at the time. The walk ended in the churchyard of St Pancras Old Church, where she was originally buried (she was subsequently re-interred in Bournemouth in 1851). 

After the walk concluded, I decided to walk northward in search of a bus stop. Never finding the right one, I ended up walking all the way through Camden Town and back to Belsize Park. Since I had started the day with a walk to the Parliament Hill Farmers' Market (I had taken the bus back and dropped my purchases at the flat before getting the tube to Goodge Street for the walk), it made for a very long day. But it wasn't over yet. My AirBnB hosts invited me to go out pub hopping in the neighbourhood. We started at the Haverstock Hill Tavern, but their beer garden was a bit noisy with music coming through the speakers and the football on the telly, so we moved to the Richard Steele, which was nearly empty and like a morgue (the walls and ceiling are painted black). It was lovely to get to know Chris and Renata a bit.

 

On Sunday, I threw a load of laundry in the washer in the flat before heading out to catch the tube back to Bloomsbury for two more walks. The first was a walk titled Bloomsbury's Best Open Spaces, led by Chris Foster, a retired Bobby who walked a beat in Bloomsbury. He didn't exactly stick to open spaces or to the festival's theme of "breathe", but took us around to some interesting spots while telling us amusing anecdotes along the way. Chris is a certified Camden guide and has done both in-person and online walks. During lockdown I did a couple of his Zoom walks and found them thoroughly enjoyable. I reckoned his in-person walks would be likewise and I was not disappointed.  

The second walk on Sunday was Rus in Urbe (the countryside in the city), led by Richard Cohen, another certified Camden guide. He took us through four squares in Bloomsbury -- Russell, Queen, Red Lion and Bloomsbury squares -- and Lincoln Inn's Fields in Holborn. This walk was full of historical information, with less of the personal or anecdotal stuff that Chris had infused in his walk. Richard did diverge from the historic to point out the home of the actor Rupert Everett in Great Ormond Street, telling us that he (Richard) had met Everett when leafleting for the Labour Party in the last general election. Everett said he'd be voting Labour. Richard added that he was confident Sir Keir Starmer would soon be PM. 

Throughout all the walks, we passed Georgian terraces and bow-fronted shops, beautiful foliage including the magnificent Brunswick Plane tree, world-renowned medical institutions, and more plaques than you could count, a testament to the writers, painters, politicians and other people of note who lived in Bloomsbury. 

On the Sunday walks, I overcame my natural shyness and reluctance to open my American mouth. One the first walk, as we were waiting for it to start, I chatted with a lovely woman named Lesley Thompson, who it turns out is herself a walking tour guide. Lesley recognized me (it's the magenta hair!) from the talk on Victorian London bricks on Friday. I hope I can work in one of Lesley's guided walks while I'm here. After the second walk was over, I found myself at the bus stop with a couple who had also been on the Wollstonecraft walk the day before. We got on the same bus heading north, and chatted along the way. They told me about the brilliant website The Menu, a weekly compendium of guided walks. I hadn't heard of it, but I've now signed up to get the weekly list in my email inbox. They also recommended that I check out the Gatehouse Theatre in Highgate, which I will do. It feels great to be meeting Londoners with common interests to mine and I hope they don't perceive me as a stupid American tourist. 

Weekend stats:

Saturday, October 15th

£9.30 farmers' market purchases

£5 guided walk

£1.50 pastel de nata

24,664 steps

10.16 miles

Sunday, October 16th

£10 guided walks

£2.80 pumpkin cake

£13.60 wine, kefir, bananas

18,519 steps

7.55 miles

Weekly Roundup #1

Here's the potted version of what I've been up to this past week: I saw a lot of art and photography, went to theatre, heard a talk on London Victorian bricks, looked into some lovely churches, went to a couple museums, saw a man trapped inside a clock and aliens in tin foil, and walked a lot. Read on if you want the details.

Monday saw me headed to Pimlico to meet up with my friend Judy at Tate Britain. After three years, we are both covid weary (and still wary), our hair is different -- hers longer and mine magenta -- and we still thoroughly enjoy contemporary art, particularly if it's a bit on the edgy side. I was really excited to see the Cornelia Parker exhibition. I'd not heard of her or seen her work before. She's a Brit, about the same age as me, who takes ordinary objects -- silverware, guns, cracks in pavement -- and puts them through a transformative process that makes you see them, and our relationship to them, in a totally different way. Among my favourite works was Thirty Pieces of Silver -- lots and lots of silver bowls, teapots, platters, cutlery, that she ran over with a steam roller and then arranges in groups, suspended from the ceiling, with shadows playing on the wooden floor underneath. It reminded me of the bin full of silver that we have at the charity shop at home where I volunteer.

 

Other works included a garden shed that she blew up (i.e. used explosives) and then suspended the bits and pieces from the ceiling, several chalk boards on which she had school kids of various ages copy headlines from the tabloids, the Magna Carta painstakingly embroidered by a host of volunteers onto a long linen sheet, and an iron grid made by first pouring liquid rubber into cracks in the pavement, then prising it up and casting the shape in metal.

After lunch in the members' dining room, we spent time walking all around Hew Locke's The Procession, the current commission in the Duveen Galleries. The installation is comprised of over 100 figures in a parade of sorts, like Carnival. After you are drawn in by the colourful costumes and the pageantry, you start to look closer and realize that much of the fabric is printed with images of stock shares in sugar companies and plantations. There are all sorts of other images in the clothing and banners that point to the violence of colonialism in the Caribbean. What was initially a joyful-looking scene becomes one depicting exploitation, militarism, death, and ultimately survival. 

We then ambled up Whitehall to Westminster, where Judy caught the tube while I headed on to Trafalgar Square to see the newly installed sculpture on the 4th plinth. This one is called Antelope and is by Samson Kambalu. It depicts two real men for a change (past plinth sculptures have been a ship in a bottle, an ice cream sundae, and a blue rooster), and a poignant moment in the history of the British Empire in Africa. Read more about it here and see photos that are much better than my snap below. 

Tuesday was another gorgeous autumn day, and I set out on what turned out to be a very long walk, from my gaff in Belsize Park, up and over Primrose Hill, down the Broad Walk in Regent's Park, through the streets of Marylebone, to Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens (with a stop to eat my packed lunch at the Italian Gardens, a place I love) and to see the exhibitions at the Serpentine Galleries and the temporary Pavilion. This year's pavilion is Black Chapel by Theaster Gates. Some years, the pavilion is light and airy. This one is dark and enclosed, with an oculus in the roof to let the sky be seen and light come in. It's supposed to be a place of "reflection, refuge and conviviality" and I reckon it fits the bill. 

Inside the galleries I saw works by Kamala Ibrahim Ishag, a Sudanese woman 

and by Barbara Chase-Riboud, an African American woman working in Paris. 

Later, I wandered around Bayswater a bit, saw girls on horses at the riding stables tucked away in Bathurst Mews, and made my way up to Paddington to see a man stuck in a clock. 

The bus ride home took me through Maida Vale and into St John's Wood, so I hopped off in order to dash into Panzer's Deli to buy a loaf of their wonderful rye, raisin and walnut bread. I so wish I could find a bakery at home that makes this bread. The deli has changed enormously since I was last there about 10 years ago. It's rearranged and remodeled and is now a temple of imported food. My eyes were definitely bigger than my stomach or my wallet. 

I spent Wednesday in Piccadilly and Fitzrovia, again soaking up a lot of art plus visiting two churches to see their ornate Victorian interiors. I started the day with a tube journey to Green Park and a walk to the Royal Academy of Arts to see the Milton Avery exhibition. He's another artist I previously knew nothing about and I thought I should as I had taken a course on contemporary American art at some point. I liked his use of colour and form. 

My next stop was the Photographers' Gallery just off Oxford Street to see a large retrospective exhibition of black and white photos by Chris Killip, all taken in the north of England during the 1970s and 80s, showing the impact that the economic decline during those decades had on the people who lived in the towns and countryside. I thought the photos were incredibly powerful, opening my eyes to a slice of British life I'd never seen, and I thoroughly enjoyed the show.

Before pushing northward to see the two churches on my list, I took a southerly detour to Poland Street to check out a now-restored ghost signs in an indoor carpark there. The last time I'd seen the signs, they were covered in a discoloured varnish and had been tagged with graffiti. I'm generally not a huge fan of restoring ghost signs, but this has been done really well. They've given it a new coating that will make any subsequent tagging easier to remove without causing further damage to the signs. My friend Sam Roberts has written about the restoration process in his Ghostsigns blog. Here's what the restored signs look like:

Onward to the north again, my next destinations were All Saints Margaret Street and the Fitzrovia Chapel. (Sorry, no pix, as the lighting was just too dark for my rubbish phone camera. I'll have some better shots from my proper camera to post eventually on ipernity.) All Saints Margaret Street is a Grade I listed Victorian Gothic revival church, with elaborate tile friezes covering most of the interior surfaces. The Fitzrovia Chapel, also Victorian, is a tiny structure, surrounded by modern buildings that dwarf it. The chapel was originally within the complex of the Middlesex Hospital, which was torn down about 10 years ago with only the chapel surviving. This one is Grade II listed. The gold-tiled interior is absolutely dazzling and feels like stepping into a jewel box or the inside of a Faberge egg.  

The last stop of the day was in Regent's Park to see this year's Frieze Sculpture. This is an event I always enjoy, as it's the only part of Frieze that's free and accessible to everyone. Some years I walk around scratching my head, not knowing what to make of the sculptures. This year's pieces often had me chuckling, especially when I saw two "aliens" in tin foil suits who were also looking around at the various works.

I'd really been pushing myself to the max, so I was happy to make an easier day of it on Thursday. In the morning, I joined the Primrose Hill Community Association walking group for their weekly ramble, this one a social walk down to Regent's Park, past the herbaceous borders and several fountains, then back to Primrose Hill. I enjoyed chatting with the other walkers as we ambled through the park. I had a leisurely lunch back at my gaff, and then walked the ten minute distance to the Hampstead Theatre to see the matinee performance of The Snail House. I hadn't read any reviews beforehand so that I could form my own opinion, which was that the staging was very good, acting generally good, but the play itself wasn't all that well written and had too many themes running through it. Apparently, the Guardian's reviewer agrees. 

Since I was essentially on the Finchley Road, after the play I had plenty of time to case more of the charity shops. I was in search of a sweatshirt or something else warm to wear for lounging around the flat. I finally found one that fit the bill -- an olive drab sweatshirt, never worn. The original tag was still on it -- it sold for £10 at Top Shop; charity shop price was £7. I also got some more groceries -- the flat has a tiny fridge, so food shopping is almost a daily activity for me. 

This brings me to Friday and to Clerkenwell and Bloomsbury. First up was a book launch talk at the London Metropolitan Archives by a man who has written about Victorian London Bricks. This probably sounds really niche -- and it is -- but I thoroughly enjoyed it and learned a lot about digging clay, forming bricks, firing and transporting them, as well as the people who did all those things. The LMA is currently running an exhibition on maps of London, something else that's right up my alley. It was a lot to take in, so I might pop in for another look at it if I'm in the area again. 

I discovered that Waitrose sells what they call "Forgotten Ends" -- end bits of sushi rolls that were cut off to make the rolls neat, the bits then put into pint-sized containers and sold for £2. This made for a great lunch, which I ate in a lovely cloister garden that I stumbled upon at the Museum of the Order of St John. There's a way into the garden from St John's Square, so you don't even need to go inside the museum proper. There were several other people sitting at tables or on benches, eating their lunches, so I figured this was a fine spot for my lunch break.

Westward I walked, across Clerkenwell, through the Italian enclave with a Vespa shop and some trattorias, to reach Bloomsbury and the Charles Dickens Museum. I'd been there before, but probably over 10 years ago, and I'd heard that the museum had been expanded and enhanced so I wanted to go back. And it's free entry with my Art Pass. The museum now covers five floors of the house in Doughty Street (the shop and admin offices have moved into the house next door). I enjoyed looking at all the various artifacts from Dickens life that are on display, including a grille from the Marshalsea Prison, where Dickens father was confined as a debtor, and two small but significant windows.

It's amazing that I had the stamina for one more stop, but I took some ibuprofen and pushed on to the Foundling Museum to see the exhibition Tiny Traces: African & Asian Children at London's Foundling Hospital. I've always liked this small museum and the stories it tells of the children taken into care there. (It's another freebie for Art Pass holders.) When I was very young, one of my favourite books was Dickens' Stories about Children, nearly all of whom are orphans. I know that we have romanticized the stories of orphans in literature for eons, but I do find them compelling. The exhibitions at the Foundling Museum cut through that romanticism and tell the real stories of very real children. In this current exhibition, the museum examines the fragmentary evidence they have found of children of colour who came into care at the Foundling Hospital. 

That concludes my first full week. I'm exhausted from doing it and from writing it up. What do you think, readers? Do you like the weekly roundup format? Or should I do shorter but more frequent posts? Let me know in the comments below. 

Stats:

Monday, Oct 10

£73 Art Pass (for free or 50% off entry to museums, etc.)

£4.20 pastry

54p bananas

15,239 steps

6.25 miles

Tuesday, Oct 11

£1.20 rolls

£6 loaf of bread from Panzer's

20p toilet (plus ? international credit card fee)

22,571 steps

9.22 miles

Wednesday, Oct 12

£16.25 groceries & wine

£5 Photographers' Gallery

£14 Milton Avery at the RA

18,772 steps

7.66 miles

Thursday, Oct 13

£20 ticket for Hampstead Theatre

£3 toiletries from Boots

£7 sweatshirt from charity shop

£5.25 groceries

18,987 steps

7.76 miles

Friday, Oct 14

£2 lunch from Waitrose

£2 cookie

15,100 steps

6.20 miles

A Glorious Weekend

At the risk of jinxing things by mentioning it, the weather has been absolutely fantastic: crisp, sunny, clear autumn days. It's been perfect for exploring, and that's just what I did at the weekend. 

I started Saturday with a walk down to the weekly farmers' market in the school yard of St Paul's C of E Primary School at the junction of Elsworthy Road and Primrose Hill Road (a ten minute walk from my gaff), where I loaded up on various veg to use in making some sort of soup and a pain au raisin for my breakfast. The market was started at the beginning of the pandemic to give local people access to good food in an open-air setting, and it's continued since. 

After dumping my purchases back at the flat, I headed north to walk up to Hampstead and ultimately go to the Parliament Hill Farmers' Market at the southeastern corner of Hampstead Heath. I got a bit distracted by three charity shops along the way (no purchases) and a walk down Nassington Road, where Roger first lived when he came to London in 2003. By the time I arrived at the market, it was winding down and there wasn't much left, but I bought some bread and corn fritters for later and an olive breadstick for my lunch. 

That done, I headed north up the eastern side of the Heath, aiming for Kenwood House. The Heath is vast, wild and beautiful. Some parts of it are open and offer fantastic views of London below, while other parts are wooded and mysterious. There's something about it that intensifies perceptions -- on a grey day, the Heath feels very gloomy and dark, while on a sunny day it can't help but put you in a great mood. Feeling the warmth of the sun on my face, a bit confused by all the paths that crisscross everywhere, but keeping the ponds on my right and heading ever upwards. Eventually, I entered the Ken Wood, a dark and ancient place, and emerged to see Kenwood House glowing in the mid-afternoon light. 

I hadn't been here since Molly and I visited Roger in 2004, also on a bright and sunny day. I took a wander through the house (free!), which is rammed with old master paintings, including a famous self-portrait of Rembrandt. Doors were open and it felt airy, and though a bit crowded and with no one but me wearing a mask, it was possible to steer clear of the other gawpers for the most part. 

Tired from my uphill trudge, I opted to take the bus back down to Belsize Park. I got on the 268, thinking it would take me down to Hampstead, but when we arrived in Golders Green I reckoned I'd gotten on the wrong bus or one going in the wrong direction so I hopped off. And just as the bus was pulling away, I saw that it was indeed for Golders Green and the driver was at that moment changing the sign to read Finchley Road (where I was meant to be headed). I guess it was taking a circuitous route to get there. I need to make a trip to Golders Green at some point (more about that later), but this wasn't the day for it. Fortunately I was opposite the tube station -- and the Northern Line wasn't being struck -- and that got me back to Belsize Park.

I'm getting much, much better about asking questions of people and starting conversations with strangers. As I was approaching my street, I saw a woman about my age, with two carrier bags of what I guessed were groceries. "Excuse me, " I said. "Can I ask you about where you buy your groceries? I'm new here and trying to work it out." That started a nice conversation about the various greengrocers and super markets in walking distance. We both turned into Lambolle Road, and it turns out she's just down the street from me, so we exchanged first names and wishes for seeing each other again. Back in my flat, I cooked up a pot of curried veg soup to last the next four days.

Sunday turned out to be a slower, more relaxing day, with nothing planned but for the boat ride through the Islington Tunnel that I'd booked through the Canal Museum. I'd been wanting to do this for years, but never got around to it or the timing wasn't right as the boat rides are infrequently on offer. The tunnel is just as you'd imagine -- dark, narrow and long. It takes 9 - 10 minutes to motor from one end to the other, but no doubt was a more difficult and time-consuming prospect in the days when canal boatmen needed to "leg it" through the canal. 

To get to the Canal Museum, I walked all the way, wandering down Gloucester Road in Primrose Hill, down the steps to the towpath, and along the path through Camden Town and King's Cross to the museum on Battlebridge Basin. I've walked bits of the towpath many times and always enjoy it, but I realized I'd never done this at the weekend. It was teaming with people! Tons of tourists all through Camden Town. I'm amazed I didn't get pushed in. Not wanting to repeat that experience, I took the tube from King's Cross back to Belsize Park where I settled in for the evening and ate my soup. 

Saturday, October 8th

£2.50 pain au raisin

£3 olive bread stick

£20 other market purchases

20,019 steps

8.22 miles

Sunday, October 9th

£11 canal boat ride

£3 cookie

16,165 steps

6.61 miles

Back in the Big Smoke

Peggotty said, "I’ll stay with you till I am a cross cranky old woman. And when I’m too deaf, and too lame, and too blind, and too mumbly for want of teeth, to be of any use at all, even to be found fault with, than I shall go to my Davy, and ask him to take me in." (David Copperfield) Well, a pandemic, global economic collapse, Brexit, two Tory twat PMs and the death of the Queen couldn't stop me from going to Blighty and London has taken me in. It's been far too long.

The journey over was a bit of a nightmare that started before I'd even boarded my plane in Hartford. In the years B.C. (Before Covid), Aer Lingus offered a brilliant route from Hartford to London via Dublin, but that was suspended in 2020 and hasn't resumed. So, I booked myself on a really cheap flight on American Airlines with a tight connection in Philadelphia -- a mistake, apparently. I was one of the last people to board the first flight. The gate staff came around saying there was no more room in the overhead compartments and they seized the bags of the last three of us in the queue for stowage in the hold. I had a really bad feeling about this. I had been so careful about packing light in the smallest roll-aboard possible (it even meets the stringent size limitations on Ryan Air). I begged and pleaded to no avail. The guy in back of me said not to bother complaining as the AA gate staff are always assholes. When I got to my seat, there was indeed a space right above it, perfectly sized for my wee bag. I stuffed my backpack with all my electronics, etc. under the seat in front of me and buckled up. The plane had barely moved away from the gate when it stopped ... and stayed for over an hour because, we were told, of bad weather in Philly. I talked to a nice cabin steward who told me that everything in Philly was delayed and odds were that my connecting flight would be leaving late. Well, it left without me. Fortunately, AA rebooked me onto a later flight that night to LHR, where I had an entire row of three seats to myself and got some kip, but unfortunately my bag stayed in Philly, which I only discovered after all the bags from our flight had come off the carousel at Heathrow. That meant going to the customer service desk, filing all the relevant details, and hoping I could believe that my bag would be put on that night's AA flight and would be delivered to me the next day. Long story short, the bag did arrive on my doorstep at 8 pm Thursday, by which time I could have used some good drugs to bring my anxiety level down.

What to do on my first day without my luggage? Go to a charity shop! There must be six or eight of them within easy walking distance and I lucked out. At the first one I went to, I got a t-shirt and leggings for 11 quid, then made it back to my AirBnB in time to unroll the yoga mat I had ordered from Amazon, log onto the wifi network, and be ready for the 3 pm livestream mat class (10 am EST) from my local Pilates studio. Feeling a bit more human afterwards, I went out again to go to the shops for food items. And I got caught in my first (brief) torrential downpour.

Day two started with the weekly walk around the Primrose Hill area, sponsored by the Primrose Hill Community Association. Some of the walks are social rambles and others are guided with a theme. For this walk, local resident Martin Sheppard, who has written a history of the area, walked us around the park for an hour and told us about how it was used during and impacted by World War Two. There were anti-aircraft guns on the hill, various shelters for the troops, and part of the park was used as allotments. He was full of interesting factoids, including some about how London Zoo dealt with the war. Fearing that a bomb strike would result in animal carnage and escape, they moved many of the animals to other locations outside London and euthanized some. Others remained in the zoo, and some were really freaked out by the noise of the shelling (this area sustained a lot of bomb damage due to proximity to the rail lines, a prime target), including a zebra who got out and had to be rounded up and returned. 

Mid day was consumed with errands. I ordered a burner phone from Argos and needed to schlep up the Finchley Road to Sainsbury's at the O2 (an even more dreadful place than it was the last time I was there in 2004). On the way back, I stopped into another charity shop and bought a scarf (I had forgotten to bring one) for 3 quid -- a bit scratchy, but it matches my plum raincoat perfectly. I might be cheap, but I aim to be well turned out. Back at the flat, I faffed around with the phone to great frustration.

Finally, in late afternoon I set out for a tour of the Islamic gardens at the Aga Khan Centre in King's Cross. I had wanted to see the inside of the building when I was here in 2019 -- it was featured during Open House weekend, but when I got there the queue was so long that I didn't try for it. The garden tours are announced on the website every three months, and I had pounced when they opened up dates for autumn tours. We had a knowledgeable and funny guide and the six gardens are beautiful -- scattered on various balconies and roofs throughout the nine-storey building. And the views over Coal Drops Yard and Granary Square were great.

Friday was my day to mooch around in Bloomsbury. It started with a trip to the EE phone store in the Brunswick Centre to see if they could get my burner phone working properly. They couldn't, but helped me to connect by phone to customer service tech people. After 45 minutes sat in the store while on the phone, the problem finally seemed sorted and I was on my way. The next stop was the Wellcome Collection to see a small exhibition about air -- not the best exhibition I've seen there, but there's a new one coming in a couple weeks so I'll be sure to come back. This is one of my favourite places in London -- the library is a fantastic place to chill out in comfy chairs and the caff is lovely. Unfortunately, they shuttered their wonderful bookshop for Covid and haven't reopened it.

I grabbed a sandwich in a convenience store and walked over to Tavistock Square, where I sat on a bench next to Gandhi and ate my lunch.

Next up, a walking tour of the UCL campus, led by a marvelous student guide -- a second-year undergraduate from Singapore who is studying geography and data science. He walked us around some of the historic and modern buildings on campus (alas, not Senate House) and brought us to the brand new Student Centre to see Jeremy Bentham's auto-icon in a glass case. Jeremy looked fantastic for his age and very happy to be in the midst of the activity of the campus. 

My final stop before heading back to Belsize Park was the Crypt Gallery below St Pancras Parish Church. This, too, is a favourite stop for me. The current exhibition is Beyond Nature by Jeff Robb -- holograms of flowers, hung singly in the arched niches in the crypt. Art meets horticulture meets technology. 

Sorry about the poor photo quality. The burner phone is naff. My next post will be shorter -- my weekend adventures and perhaps a bit about my accommodations.

Wednesday, October 5th

£10 to top up Oyster card

£26 groceries and wine

£11 t-shirt and leggings from charity shop

13,871 steps

5.71 miles

Thursday, October 6th

£47 mobile phone and SD card

£10 EE top up for phone

£3 scarf from charity shop

£7 Rescue Remedy pastilles -- I REALLY needed to de-stress

£3.35 Kevin pie (Waitrose was out of my favourite Heidi pies)

22,072 steps

8.99 miles

Friday, October 7th

£147.50 one-month travel card

£2.20 sandwich

£10.20 apples and wine

15,700 steps

6.43 miles