Saturday, November 27/2010

As in a classroom without a seating plan, the guests in the dining room find habitual tables and form at least nodding acquaintance with their neighbours, made easier when these happen to share a language, though many people are fluent in more than one. by European or North American standards the dining room is overstaffed, and there's a clear hierarchy. There are the kitchen staff in white, who only appear behind the buffet, replenishing or removing trays, as well as at the carvery or the griddle as required. Then there are the red waistcoated waiters, bringing drinks as ordered as well as removing plates, somewhat too assiduously as it's easy to leave for more bread and return to find one's half finished plate tidied out of existence - though nobody minds if you start over at that point. Presiding over all are the dark suited maitre d's - always more than one, so it should be maitres. It's hard to know exactly what their role is. Are they supervising us or the waiters? Certainly they are too superior to concern themselves with such trivialities as an empty yoghurt basin at breakfast, although one was once forced to capture and remove a cat that had wandered in from the poolside. One supervisor is stationed near the door where a sign warns in three languages (ungrammatically in all three?), that food is to be eaten in the room and not taken out. However, patrons routinely leave with an orange or a pear - one giggling couple with a plate bearing about 30 dates - and sometimes more. The Irishwoman at the next table not only makes elaborate sandwiches - half a baguette containing sliced meat and cheese - but sends the waiter for aluminum foil to wrap them in.

Finish reading Donaldson's The Case Against Owen Williams. Enjoyed the book less for the plot than for the sense of small town New Brunswick, and the protagonist's hopeless knowledge that stereotype and simplicity would always outweigh the less compelling and more awkward claims of truth.

Friday, November 26/2010

An afternoon walk in the souq, itself a world heritage site. It's Friday, the Moslem holy day, but that hasn't closed mostof the shops or the outside cafés. There are locals everywhere, enjoying a little fast food on their day off, and a smaller number of tourists, unmistakeable as they`re more lightly dressed, though Tunisians sometimes wear bright colours as well. At a café just outside the entrance to the souq one European man sprawls next to his wife, his enormous bare belly spreading out over his shorts in defiant insult to local custom. Most tourists, though, are more discreet, with short sleeves and, more rarely, shorts.

There is a maze of lanes and it`s easy to get lost - and pointless not to as the market is no more than a kilometre across and there are a number of exits. Many of the shops and stalls have wares of interest only to locals - batteries, cheap watches, hair ornaments, underwear. Others are clearly aimed at tourists, with jewellery, kaftans, and packaged spices (though one disillusioned traveller online warns against finding oneself with packets of coloured powder. Leather goods are everywhere, with the rich scent of leather in the air from handbags, cases and ottomans, most at very good prices even before bargaining begins. We`re not actually in buying mode, though I would like a light cotton jacket. There are handmade woven cotton jackets here, but much heavier than I'm looking for. There's also pretty relentless "assistance" from shop owners, making browsing more or less impossible. Will have to steel myself eventually. J's much better at it than I.

Wednesday, November 25/2010

Take a walk and discover, on a side street, St. Felix Catholic church. Tunisia is 98% Moslem, and other religious buildings are pretty thin on the ground, almost nonexistant. The church itself doesn't look new, but the very small and plain cross on top of the steeple does appear as if it might have been a recent modification. Could it have been a church - perhaps under the French - and then lost and recently regained its ecclesiastical status? There's a caretaker who explains that he is Moslem, but very poor and with a family, and so he asked the priest for a job. The point is probably more that he is short of money than that he is embarrassed at having such a non-Islamic job. The church is a fair size but pretty plain, and appears to len d its facilities to an evangelical group that worships here as well as the Catholics.

There's an account in the news of an elderly woman in France who was locked in the loo for twenty days, trapped in the windowless room by a lock that jammed and surviving on lukewarm tap water. The sixty-nine year old woman banged on the pipes at night to alert neighbours in the apartment building, but it took them nearly three weeks to be more than annoyed by the disturbance. The most distressing aspect of the story? The description of a sixty-nine year old woman as elderly. Do think it might have helped to bang out SOS in Morse Code. Surely the neighbours couldn't have ignored that. Hope that her loo was larger than ours here. The toilet is an a blue and white tiled room four feet by three, and the only water available comes with the Arabic metal hosepipe provided for paperless cleaning of one's anatomy - unused by us as there is also toilet paper for the heathens. (We do have a very nice sink, tub and shower in the next room).

Tuesday, November 23/2010

Signs are always in Arabic - which might as well be curly decorations for all we can make of it (though we can read the Arabic numbers, which are actually Persian) - and French. In tourist areas hey are also frequently in English and German as well. Spotted one in Finnish. Translations vary in skill and spelling: thus a building site notice reads "Excusez le dérangement" and "Sorry for the distrub."

Find in my pocket a sheet handed out the other day by someone in clown regalia advertising a showing of Avatar in 3D, more or less next door to us, and presumably in French. Entrée 12 TD ($8.70 CAD, £5.25). Seems pretty reasonable, not that we were desperate to see it.

Reading aloud The Case Against Owen Williams, by Allan Donaldson, one of my old UNB professors, the book borrowed in London from Jean. Nice momentum, credibility and sense of period.

In the dining room J spots one of the guests carefully removing the chocolate decorations from a large cake and placing them on his own plate. As I leave the room, the head waiter, mistaking me for one of the German majority, asks "Schmeck?" and I have just enough memory of Mennonite cooking to translate this as "Tasted good?"

Signs are always in Arabic - which might as well be curly decorations for all we can make of it (though we can read the Arabic numbers, which are actually Persian) - and French. In tourist areas hey are also frequently in English and German as well. Spotted one in Finnish. Translations vary in skill and spelling: thus a building site notice reads "Excusez le dérangement" and "Sorry for the distrub."

Find in my pocket a sheet handed out the other day by someone in clown regalia advertising a showing of Avatar in 3D, more or less next door to us, and presumably in French. Entrée 12 TD ($8.70 CAD, £5.25). Seems pretty reasonable, not that we were desperate to see it.

Reading aloud The Case Against Owen Williams, by Allan Donaldson, one of my old UNB professors, the book borrowed in London from Jean. Nice momentum, credibility and sense of period.

In the dining room J spots one of the guests carefully removing the chocolate decorations from a large cake and placing them on his own plate. As I leave the room, the head waiter, mistaking me for one of the German majority, asks "Schmeck?" and I have just enough memory of Mennonite cooking to translate this as "Tasted good?"

Tuesday, n

Monday, November 22/2010

We've eight cats who have attached themselves to the hotel. They're hungry and slim but definitely not starving. Always on the lookout, and some of the guests feed them, but they also play with each other and lounge in the sun.

Walk down to the port just south of us, ignoring the repeated invitations to stop at the outside cafés. Not easy to read the posted menus without raising expectations unduly, but we do note that the price of a beer in the café outside Claridge's is 1.8TD ($1.30CAD, 80p). It's probably well short of a pint though.

There are several large working ships plus a couple of pirate ship style boats for tours of the harbour. A number of men are fishing, most with long black poles but one, a man sitting in his sock feet on the harbour edge, is using line and hook only.

Find the Magasin Général a block off the corniche. It is, as the name suggests, a general store, selling everything from automatic washing machines and china to basic groceries, including rather unperky produce. Water here is 250 to 350 millemes for 1.5 litres, making it approximaately 1/13 the price of bottled water at the hotel. But then it's pretty inexpensive staying here on half board. Guess they have to make the money somewhere. Walk back from the MG to our hotel along the beach. There's miles of fine sand. Some sunbathers, but not overcrowded.

At home we check the temperature on the balcony. Twenty degrees iin the shade but 50 in the sun! That's 122 Fahrenheit, though no one younger than we are still remembers that. We sit on the balcony and look past the einosaur trunks and luxuriant fronds of the palm trees to the deep blue streaked with aqua of the Mediterranean. Interesting: the very word "Mediterranean" sounds so romantic in a way that the German "Mittelsee" doesn't, but the meaning is the same - it's simply the sea in the middle of land.

Sunday, November 21/2010

Sunday is a little laid back here. It`s not a work day per se and many shops are closed, leaving the field to smaller family run ones and restaurants. A surprising exception seems to be shoe stores, with even quite large ones spilling their goods out onto the sidewalks. Shoes are impressively inexpensive here, if not impressive in quality. Plenty of signs on racks proclaiming everything for 10TD ($7.20 CAD or £4.46). Because this is not a school day there are young children playing in the lanes and families out enjoying a snack. Our street, named after former president Habib Bourguiba, and the area by the traffic circle are heavily touristed, though with many locals too, but the small streets and lanes only a block away have mainly Tunisians - drinking coffee, buying pastries, chatting. We stop at a little shop to buy a bottle of water - bonus size 1.75 litres. The man hands me two ml coins - implying that the price is 8 millemes. Fortunately we bought water here yesterday so I look at the change and say "sept". He looks, J says, sheepish, and hands over another coin. This is a standard complaint amongst tourists - comprehensible from both sides, of course, as the tourists hate being taken advantage of while many locals must see Europeans as so rich it shouldn't matter to them.

Breakfast was a little thinner than usual, with skeleton staff as most seem to have the day off. But at dinner there's a huge turkey at the carvery - gone despite the skilful carver's best efforts by seven o'clock. The printed card we were given on arrival says that dinner is from seven to nine but a bit of observation has shown that the actual time is more like six thirty to eight thirty, with some guests beginning to gather about six fifteen and doors actually opening at six twenty. So, as the turkey's disappearance shows, it's a bit hard lines on those who suppose dinner starts at seven. Though there's always plenty of other choices when one dish is finished.

Saturday, November 20/2010

The tourist information office is, conveniently, at the end of our block, not that the information itself is up to much. And it should be pretty well from source, as the building itself appears to be the Ministry of Tourism. Train times are posted on a bulletin board just a little too high to be readable, but we're not going anywhere today anyway. We do aquire a brightly coloured but not especially useful map of Sousse centre, showing our hotel as well as the post office, train stations and souq. Could be worse, but seems mainly designed to feature telephone numbers for sponsoring hotels and restaurants. Across the street from the tourist info is Claridge's Hotel, which had always interested me, despite a certain scruffiness, mainly because of its upmarket name. That is until I read online that the rooms have open showers but toilets are off the corridors. Not on next year's short list.

There's a nice park between the roundabout and the souq. Lots of benches, some in the sun and some in the shade of tall palm trees. A bit of an oasis, close to fast food vendors, shops and taxis - who park opportunistically across the ends of crosswaks which serve to funnel pedestrians into their ambit. Crossing the street here is a bit like doing so in Beirut. The crosswalks don't seem to be particularly protective but drivers are quite aware and don't regard pedestrians as targets. We sit on a part sun part shade bench for a spot of people watching. There's quite a variety, more local than tourist, though with plenty of both. Young local women seem almost equally likely to be wearing or not wearing the hijab. Obviously there's no pressure either way and groups may include both. Noticeably the locals of both sexes wear more clothes than the Europeans, presumably a combination of modesty and sensitivity to cold. What do they make of shorts or bare shoulders? Do they seem scandalous or just silly? We're much more conservatively dressed than that, but this is not a country in which we'd ever be mistaken for residents, everything from hair and skin colour to clothing proclaiming our otherness.

Friday, November 19/2010

Still in sleep mode, and lucky in that we have a fairly long stay and can afford to take a leisurely approach. We inquire about a map. Of Sousse? Non. Would there have been maps of anyplace else? I'm not sure whether it matters much whether one communicates with the reception desk - actually a sweeping bar rather than a desk - in English or French. Miscommuication seems inevitable. Thus J inquires about the posssibility of a remote control for the television - not really of overwhelming concern as there is only one English chanel - and is told that the guide has been waiting for us and had phoned our room but we weren't there. Heaven knows who we've been mistaken for. I give it a try and am asked what our room number is. Sixty? Oh yes - it's been sent. Untrue. Determine that the French for remote control is télécommande. But is language the essence of the problem?

Thursday, November 18/2010

Breakfast buffet the cholesterol special we remember from 2008 in Monastir. Theyère happy to put as many eggs as you want in an omelet cooked ias you watch, but how many eggs does one want in a three week period? It's an east (or in this case south) west mix. There's the presumably local yoghurt, cheese, olives, sausage slices and onions. Or the eggs, croissants, baguettes (whole wheat ones if you're quick but these are prized by the Germans too), sliced cake, jam. As well as two breakfast cereals - one cocoa coloured and one bleached ghost white. Neither attracting much attention. And coffee, various teas, cocoa, hot milk. The usual sugar water "juice" substitute. Last night's oranges are gone, though, leaving the elderly apples. Do too many people pocket breakfast oranges?

We should be exploring but we've both been hit by fairly miserable colds, so we catch up on sleep instead.

Wednesday, November 17/2010

Four alarm beginning. That is, the alarm on the mobile goes off at four, so that we can leave at ten to five. The street is smoother than the sidewalk, which gives us a good surface to wheel the suitcases on as there's no traffic yet. First train out of Swiss Cottage gets us to London Bridge station in time for the 5:50 train to Gatwick, actually ahead of the morning rush hour.


Our flight is at nine from Gatwick's north termminal and it's not at all full. I've booked - with some difficulty online 24 hours before - the window and middle seats on exit row 12. Had I known that the plane would be half empty I'd have gambled on booking the window and aisle seats. But visions of conducting conversations over the girth of a stranger seated between us who might be, unaccountably, not willing to trade seats. It's supposed to be a three hour flight - therefore short haul, meriting only a cold bun with cream cheese and tomato, and a cup of coffee.

We're in to Tunis early. Long queues at unprepared immigration desks and a hand baggage x-ray on exit. Well, of course there was the time a man flew in to Gatwick with a live grenade. Checked luggage still not unloaded forty inutes after landing, but that leaves time to find the WCs and take out some Tunisian dinars from the cash point. The transfer man is waiting for us. We seem to be his only passengers, but a man with two silver coloured cases, who clearly hasn't booked a transfer but wants a ride to Sousse, turns up. Much loud dispute in French, but in the end he comes. The driver is a young man in a dark suit - the car an extremely dirty (outside) five seater. Interesting. In Canada - outside Toronto - the driver might have worn jeans but the car would have been clean. It's a good hour and a half drive, on six lane highway past spiky little palm trees, olive groves and flowering shrubs.

Sousse is a spreading city, Tunisia's third largest, on the coast, the signs mostly in Arabic or French - though there is the Amen Bank as well as The English Pub for those who don't qute want to get away from it all.

We register at the hotel, on a form that wants all the info on the immigration form and then some. I leave some blanks - our date of marriage, for instance. Why do they want to know that anyway? It would be easier to invent a date than to buy a gold ring if decency is their concern. The hotel itself (Sousse Palace) seems fairly large, though there are only three storeys of rooms, most if not all with sea view. We're on the second floor, looking out over the key-shaped pool and, immediately behind it, the Mediterranean beach. Downstairs the lobby is enormous with endless marble, massive crystal chandelier and loud sports TV screens and thick cigarette smoke, though some tables - it would seem individual tables rather than areas - are marked no smoking. The happy discovery after dinner is that the lobby area, though not the rooms, has free wifi.

Dinner is from seven to nine, with lots of choice, none of it especially exciting. In spite of the fact that the time is an hour later than GMT, we don't last long after dinner but fall asleep watching BBC World, another happy surprise.

Monday, November 15/2010

We have a wander past the old book and print shops between Charing Cross Road and St.Martin's Lane, and find ourselves growing covetous. There's a large Hogarth print of Gin Lane. Can it be original? How many were there? And hand coloured Shepard illustrations of Winnie the Pooh. Then to the Portrait Gallery where we limit ourselves to the modern gallery, which changes frequently. We're both taken with a portrait of Sid James - painted with his face on a television screen, with the Radio Times and a Woodbines cigarette packet incorporated as collage elements. There's also an interesting exhibition of photographs by Dmitri Kasterine, including portraits of a young Margaret Drabble, Tom Stoppard, Kingsley and Martin Amis, Graham Greene, and a long-haired elderly Robert Graves.

Before we go out to dinner Maggi phones from Norway, her call coming through on the Cypriot mobile, which has fortuitously been left on. She'll meet up with us in Cyprus in January.

By tube again to Soho to have dinner with Alexander (just back from a whirlwind tour with Nigel Kennedy) and Flora. As we take the lift at Belsize Park underground station, two other women are as amused as I am by the didactic tones of the recorded message. "You have reached the lower level," the voice says, with pedantic slowness. "Exit, turn right...." As if we would otherwise have hit the wall as we turned right without exiting the lift.

We meet at the Gay Hussar on Greek Street. It's in what was once, quite literally, a red light district, immediately next to a Church of England refuge for women in distress. The Gay Hussar is a Hungarian restaurant dating back about sixty years. (When A first gave me its name over the phone I misheard it as "gay bazaar" - or bizarre? - and googled with predictable results. It has a long history as a meeting spot for left wing intellectuals, and the scene of many political plots. The two rows of tables are elbow to elbow, so that it's easy to be drawn into the next table's conversation, though the noise fosters intimacy at one's own table as we lean in to hear each other. The walls are lined with political cartoons featuring the left wing cast and the bookcases over the doors to the kitchen are spilling over with signed copies of works by former habitués. The food is mostly Hungarian and the wine list, A points out, divided into "Hungarian Wines" and "Wines from Other Countries." The house Hungarian red is quite good, though. Flora and I have the roast duck, A duck liver, and J stuffed cabbage. After dinner we head a couple of streets over to a spot A knows that does indeed, as promised, have excellent coffee. So we part with plans for a next meeting.

Quote from Baronness Kennedy in the New Camden Journal, as she pays tribute to the late Michael Foot, a man with integrity seldom found in contemporary politicians: "to spin is to deceive and to deceive is to fail."

Sunday, November 14/2010

Many options this morning. Regretfully we pass up the high mass at Westminster Cathedral and the choir. And we don't join the royal family at the cenotaph for the Remembrance Sunday service. It's a moving ceremony with veterans and bands and wreaths laid by the queen and all of her children as well as the prime minister and other political party leaders. We do get to follow on television though, remembering that when we watched two years ago there were still a very few World War I veterans left - but no more.

The program we've been waiting for, though, comes at noon, just after we've had brunch - the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, final race of the season, with Red Bull's Vettel on pole. Great coverage, with lots of pre and post commentary. It's good to have a final race where the driver of the year is still undecided. There are four statistical possibilities for the championship, with Spain's Alonso - not our favourite - the statistical favourite. But the race is a good one and the new champion is a tearful young Sebastian Vettel.

Saturday, November 13/2010

We'd thought about going down to the City to see the golden coach and procession - parade really - for the new lord mayor of London, but we wouldn't have been back in time to see qualifying for tomorrow's Formula 1 Grand Prix, and it's the last race of the season. Besides, we get quite a good view of the parade, commentary included, on TV. And then of course there's qualifying itself - with Vettel on pole for the race tomorrow and the championship up for grabs. We barely see the final result before it's time to leave for Jenny and Doug's.

Out by train to Thames Ditton to visit the extended Clarke family. Emma and Giles and little Jasmine are staying with Jenny and Doug while their house is being remodelled. Doug takes Joe over to see the renovations of their place and also Laura and Nathan's loft conversion. A more than full time job for him, as well as plenty of work on the parts of Giles and Nathan. Jenny's mum is there and Laura and Nathan arrive with the three boys. Cody and Jasmine aren't babies any more. Cody is quite a self-sufficient little nearly two year old with a sweet smile - and a tendency to put things he finds in the bin, including, Nathan fears, his missing wedding ring. Jasmine, a few days younger, is very chatty now, explaining that Daddy is in their "holey" house - uninhabitable as the construction is still in progress. She's missed her afternoon nap and is tired enough that she suggests brushing her teeth - the usual preliminary to bedtime. Jenny brings in fish and chips from the neighbourhood shop and there are thirteen of us round the enormous dining room table and much laughter.

Home by train with a borrowed guide to Tunisia in hand.

Friday, November 12/2010

Over by tube to King's Cross. I'm now used to not feeling too old if a young man offers me his seat. It's almost always an Asian boy, and part of the whole Asian culture of respect for older people. Today, though, a Chinese girl insists that J take her seat. I always wish I could sketch the random collection of six or seven people sitting opposite me on the tube - such an amazing cross-section of the very multicultural city that London is - bless them all. Today there is a girl wearing rhinestone slippers and ring with a (presumably fake) pearl the size of a marshmallow.

At the British Library we see an exhibit on the development of the English language. There are 400 million people with English as a first language, but 1.4 billion for whom it is the second language. Does that include those for whom it is 3rd or 4th? We've noticed in the winter that it is many people's second language. When a Norwegian speaks to a Greek Cypriot, it's almost always in English. Or as one Dutchman said, "Of course I speak English - who speaks Dutch?" The exhibit does contain some of the earliest works in English, I'm more interested in some of the other aspects. There are maps showing how the waves of immigration supplanted the native Celtic, especially the early Scandinavian influences. Both Kent and the Isle of Wight, homes of my great great great grandparents, had early Jutish settlements. For example Rolvenden, home of the Kentish ancestors, takes the "den" in its name from the Jutish for swine pasture. Thus also Benenden and Tenterden in the same area. It seems pretty likely that some of the untraceable ancestors were Jutes. There are also tapes to listen to with different accents - such as recreations of the Shakespearian period - and different slang. Thieves' argot and gay slang - the latter the origin of the term "naff". Before leaving I read the sample passage to add my own accent to the study.

Thursday, Novembe 11/2010

Remembrance Day and as dour a day as it seems usually to be. We're still at home when the television takes us by surprise at 11 o'clock wit Remembrace observances. Two years go we were in Waterloo Station as people came to a stop for two minutes. Now the news shows buse and cabs a well as pedestrians stopped for the silence. We're wearing Canadian Legin poppies from Canada House. They're noticeably different from the British ones - brilliant red with a felted surface as opposed to a muted red paper with a green leaf.

Alexander texts with a suggestion that we meet Monday for a meal.r

Wednesday, November 10/2010

To Jean's in West Harrow. Happily, it's dry, though there's a chill wind. Warm inside, though - and a lovely Asian feast as well as good conversation. We're lucky Jean could fit us in, as she has extra practices for a coming concert. Shanthi joins us after work. She's lucky to have her new jog, having survived the swingeing civil service cuts that saw out many of her colleagues, but the new position is pretty stressful, involving the design of further cuts and redundancies. She's brought aubergine and chicken korma to add to the lamb cury and all the vegetable dishes - sweet potatoes, green beans and leeks - as well as dhal and cucumbers in yoghurt and fragrant rice. The table looks like it's set for Thanksgiving - and we're nearly, but not quite, too full for the apple crumble and custard.

And to top it all off, we leave with a borrowed book by Alan Donaldson one of my old professors. And yes, he does look old in the photograph at the back, but probably hasn't aged any more than the rest of us over the last 40 odd years. I didn't think of him as being especially young when I was a student, but he must, actually, have been only in his mid-thirties.

Tuesday, November 9/2010

Visit the Natural History Museum. We've tried before,but it's usually more crowded. This time there's no school break, though there are plenty of excited children in bright school pullovers, clustering aroun the many dinosaur reconstructions and trying all the hands-on exhibits in the human perception area. There's plenty of info, much of it presented in visually impressive form - e.g. the rati of hormones to blood shown as a cylinder of quite realistic blood coloured fluid accompanied by a teaspoon of white liquid. Or the poster indicating thesize of a dinosaur by showing it stretched out over a double-decker bus.

Over to Asda or ine anda look at the mobiles. Some pretty good prices but, despie the assurances of the helpful young man, nne of the Nokias prove to be tri or quad band - thus they're unusable in North America.

Mushroom and aubergine spaghetti for dinner.

Monday, November 8/2010

W et and chilly - and we note that this is not the case in Sioux Lookout, where temperatures seem to be hitting the teens.

Dave has a meeting just off Trafalgar Square, so we head down to the National Gallery and meet him on the steps. Time for a quick visit to the gallery. Interestingly, Dave is intrigued by the changes in men's dress over the centuries.

Then jam-packed tube to Paddington. Dave has found a nice Victorian-looking pub with fireplace, local clientele and good food - fish and chips (J), chicken and leek pie (me) and beef brisket sandwich (D. Good bitter. Tea afterward in Dave's hotel room - the Cardiff. We work off the meal by climbing the four storeys to his room. Good view from the top though. Dave calls home on Skype and the kids have a great tie making faces and hamming it up.

Sunday, November 7/2010

We've bought a week's wifi from the Welby, which enables us to make arrangemets with Dave, who flew in to London early this morning. We go down to Mass at Westminste Cathedral. Choir lovely as always, with boy sopranos. Now up to three collections (!). Though it is a pretty expenive place to maintain and, unlike Westminster Abbey it (and all the Catholic churches) is free to the visiting public.

Meet Dave at the Marble Arch Marks and Spencer. Then we go for coffee and take the tube back to our place for some supper and a pint. Nice relaxed meze, and Dave doing quite well in the face of jetlag.

Saturday, November 6/2010

Take the netbook over to Swiss Cottage Library, which is meant to be free. Fifteen minutes' confusion as the password of the day fails to work. Turns out that someone has misspelled the password card on the library desk - misinforming the public in letters six inches high.

We go down to St. Katharine's Dock to see the launch of a full-sized boat made of heavy paper. The giant origami exercise is to begin at 12:30, with launch time set for 3. We're there a couple of minutes after 3, in time to see a white boat close to 20 feet long but not much more sophisticated than a child's paper boat, a little lopsided and dented but strong enough to hold a man who is risking not death - he has a lifejacket - but a pretty cold dunking. The paper boat is towed slowly past the dock by a small motorboat, to the clapping of a few dozen spectators.

Down to Queensway by tube. A little sad, as we remember it - scene of our first meal together - as a quite different road. It was gritty and alive - full of tiny shops spilling out onto the pavement and aromatic little family owned restaurants. A street that didn't sleep until the early hours of the morning. It's still busy but now there are fast food chain restaurants and much less sense of village where people live.

Dark by five and the staccato of fireworks left over from last night.

Friday, November 5/2010

Guy Fawkes Day, though rain is predicted later in the day, so we probably won't head out to Clapham Common for the fireworks. Jenny texts to suggest we meet up at Waterloo Station late this morning. First to the bank to sort the card problem and then, with a bit of extra time, to Canada House on Trafalgar Square, pausing on the way to admire the model of Nelson's ship in a large bottle (4 tons in all) on the fourth plinth. Lucky stop as it happens, as there's an email from Dave saying he'll be in London Sunday.

Collect Jenny and we head to the Museum of London for coffee and a look at some of the new displays, many based on recent London excavations. There's a movingly attractive and modern looking bust of a woman based on a skeleton found in a lead coffin. We're interested to learn that when the Romans left in the fifth century London fell into deserted ruins until the Saxons began to arrive.

Then lunch at the Olde Cheshire Cheese. None of us has been here for years, and it would be a classic pub even without the astonishing sign proclaiming it to have been rebuilt in 1667 after the Great Fire. Good chat and catch up time. Jennycatches a bus to Waterloo and we go home via Camden Town.

Rain and bonfire night fireworks beyond the trees outside our window as we make dinner.

Thursday, November 4/2010

Tube to Camden Town for setting up part two. The intent is to go to Inverness St. market, but we never actually get there because there's a new Lidl store on Camden High Street with some fairly impressive sales - a kilo of bananas for 40p.

Over to the South Bank. It's seventeen degrees and a warm breeze off the Thames. Antique prints for sale at an outdoor stall (prices between £15 and £75). There`s a nice one of Hungerford Market, which was bought in the 1860's for the construction of Charing Cross Station. Collect the schedule for the plays at the National Theatre.

On Finchley Road, near the station, a young chalk artist is quickly completing a crucifixion picture with a sky blue background. When we come back past it, he's gone, but there's a cup beside his work saying "homeless soldier".

The HSBC bank card, which worked yesterday, fails to work twice at Sainsbury's and once at Waitrose - so it will be locked now.

Wednesday, November 3/2010

Oddly enough, the day begins, technically, with last night's dinner, so to speak. That is, it's past midnight Tuesday when we board and are served our meal. The extra money from this year's fair increase has clearly not been spent on the food - a bland, overcooked penne with chicken and a strange salad involving peas and bits of what looks, but doesn't really taste, like peach. The Cabernet is quite all right, though.

We arrive to mild weather (we wear jackets only because it's easier than carrying them) - and a partial tube strike. But not much hassle with the revised route. Rates at the Welby have risen, though, a hefty 16%. We are supposedly getting an upgraded room, but it looks reasonaably basic - though extremely clean. Full stove, though; not just two burners with a mini oven.

Down to Sainsbury's for a few basics - and the pleasure of a huge range of cheeses. We pick a Stilton, an extra-old cheddar and one identified as Parlick Fell sheep's cheese, lucky to have similar tastes. Also olives, yoghurt, bananas, peanut butter and seeded bread.

The leaves have turned orange and bronze, and we're shuffling through them, but there are plenty of flowers still blooming, including beautifully scented roses.

Tuesday, November 2/2010

Janet picks us up at one and we have a leisurely lunch at Smitty's before the airport. It's been ages since we've seen her, so a nice visit. At the airport discover that I've failed to take the penknife off my keychain and put it in the checked suitcase. It's a little Swiss Army one - losing its red paint but of sentimental as well as practical value since Dad gave it to me, so J acquires an envelope from the currency exchange people and I mail it to Ian.

The airport in Toronto has free wifi - a fair drawing card when choosing airports for transfer. A page of limited liability terms, but it works well.

November 1/2010

Alarm goes off at 4 am. Telephone proves to be disconnected, as we suspected. An hour's worth of last minute jobs - antifreeze in the plumbing, scraps to the birds, pull the main power switch.

In town we pick up coffee to take to the train station. Station is overstating it considerably. It's next to the nice building that was once a station, but is a prefab about 24 feet squared. A chatty worker explains that he has to leave to help with the hospital's move to its new quarters. Translation: he is leaving us in charge of the waiting room. It is warm enough, heated by construction heaters fixed to the ceiling. There's even a sink, which has been clearly used as an ashtray. The coffee, as 5:30 becomes 6 and then 7, seems not to have been a brilliant idea. Two small compartments, neither of which appears to be a washroom, one padlocked and the other with a fist-sized hole underneath the doorknob. There's a bag of recycle tins in the corner and, interestingly, about a dozen and a half empty wine bottles. Signs of solace for the night crew or salvage from the dining car for a home winemaker short of bottles? No decor as such, but 6 copies of the same notice re scheduled time changes for trains from Hornepayne, as well as a bilingual no smoking notice, the French part carefully amended by hand to read "il n'est pas interdit de fumer dans cet Ètablissement."

At 7:30 the train arrives, and it's not crowded, so we get to spread out a bit. The sun has just risen and the first ponds we pass still have a partial film of ice on them, giving way to open water as it warms up. At Ottermere and Malachi there are boats still in the water and cottagers heading back from rail-only access spots. Two golden eagles soar off on our right.

The car is less than half full and we're sitting near two Chinese men, one young and busy with a computer and the other older. They've made themselves thoroughly at home - the older man heading off to the washroom with his coffee and the younger spreading out the snacks. We debate their origin. The book the young man is reading is in Chinese, as is the writng on the crisp packet, and all their conversation is in Chinese. On the other hand the travel mugs and the resealable plastic container full of peeled oranges suggest a domestic journey. Or is this a Leonard Cohen moment - tea and oranges that come all the way from China?

Bus to Ian and Susan's and then over to Jennifer and other (boyfriend) Ian's place. Lovely meal but almost asleep in front of the tv later - maple liqueurs or the 4 am start?

October 31/2010

The trip hasn't quite begun - but the travel hazards have. We have an email from VIA rail informing us that the train that should have left Toronto heading west at 10 pm last night will be leaving at 7 this morning instead. Keep phoning VIA for updates. No Hallowe'en prank, unfortunately. The real problem is not that we will be leaving tomorrow instead of just after midnight tonight. It's that the telephone has been cancelled as of November 1 - which the phone company will probably interpret as one minute after midnight. So as of midnight we will have no telephone, no pathetically crap dial-up internet, and no idea how late the train will be or when we should leave for the station. We can (and do) keep checking throughout the day. The last estimate is 6 a.m. tomorrow - but will this change during the night? Memo to self: next year suspend the phone from the day after anticipated departure.