Tuesday, April 19/2911

We're booked to go to a presentation of short war films at the War Museum this morning. We're expecting a bit of a mix, including some period propaganda. What we get is so much more. Many of the shorts are silents (more properly known as mutes, as they were never actually shown in silence). They were accompanied by music, often ad libbed by a piaist who played while watching the screen. Sometimes the film came with a suggested medley with cues on where to change to the next bit.

Luckily for us, we have a wonderful pianist, Stephen Horne, here today. He has 25 years experience with playing for mute films and is quite amazing. Also we're fortunate to have Toby Haggith as presenter. He's passionately engaged, as well as knowledgeable. Interesting contrasts as music accompanying WWI tank sequence very cheerful - Entrance of the Gladiators (Entrance of the Clowns) - quite shocking to modern sensibilities, but reflecting a buoyant sense that the tank would bring a triumphant end to the war. Also some quite humorous, as well as other perfectly serious, government messages on things like composting or using grated potatoes in place of suet in puddings. Actually quite a variety.

Stop briefly on the way back at Camden High St McDonald's - not our favourite, but we do have vouchers and by now we're hungry. There aren't many seats to begin with, but four are being occupied by a woman and her daughter, aged about six. They are consuming a commercially prepared sandwich and two drinks, none of which were purchased at McDs. Fully ensconced when we arrive and showing no signs of leaving when we go.

Get a quick hair trim on Kilburn High Road. The evening spent packing.

Monday, April 18/2011

Down to Piccadilly to the retro shop on Great Windmill. Lots of fun amidst the old posters, film star photos, etc. Carnaby St not at all what it was in the sixties (not surprisingly) or even retro. Liberty's what it always was - beautiful and expensive.

Then out to say goodbye to Jean. Wine and lovely Asian snacks and talk, and Shanthi comes over as well. Jean off to Fredericton next month.

Sunday, April 17/2011

The Shanghai Grand Prix. Fortunately at 7 rather than 6 a.m. - much easier to stay awake. Hamilton wins. A good race - not simply decided in the pits.

In the afternoon over to Jenny and Doug's. Emma now two weeks away from due date and Jasmine now an articulate and charming little girl, about to become a big sister. Doug and Jenny just back from a two and a half week cruise of the eastern Mediterranean, which seems to have been a good one. Jenny's mum there too, so we get to visit, and Giles comes in from house renovations. We stay to tea (good samosas) and Jenny and I get a bit of catch up time in the kitchen. Doug and J get to catch up as well - from plumbing to the economy. So nice we didn't miss them.

Saturday, April 16/2011

Out to Hammersmith, along King's Road. A keeper for next year. The Oxfam shop has books we'd love to take but have no room for. Next year must come with empty suitcases!

In the evening meet Alexander and Flora for tapas at Tierra Brindisa in Soho. More or less kitty corner to the John Snow pub, site of a large protest last night, billed as a kiss-in, following the eviction the previous evening of a gay couple caught kissing in the pub. Lots of people drinking outside tonight and no commotion. Lovely seeing A and F again - in between their trips to Antigua and Cuba. Food known for its quality not its quantity - but very nice. J with scallops and I with prawns and shared potato tortilla. A and F with lamb. Also herbed toast. Very good. Then to Italia for coffee. Soho alive and humming. We don't go out enough at night! Brief panic as I think I've left the new mobile behind but no - it's in my handbag all along. Could the confusion have anything to do with the two bottles of Spanish red?

Friday, April 15/2011

Up to Hampstead to Keats' house, the place where he lived from 1819 to 1821, at a time when Hampstead was mostly fields, accessible from London by stagecoach, the nearest stagecoach stopping point being the location of the present Royal Free Hospital. Keats had moved there to nurse his younger brother Tom who was dying of TB - and contracted it himself. The house, to which he moved after Tom's death, was owned by a friend, and was originally divided into two houses - the other part being occupied by the Brawne family, including young Fanny Brawne, to whom he became engaged. Very informative guide, and a moving experience, especially after yesterday's talk. Keats came down with TB here and left from here on his trip to Rome in the hope of a cure in a warmer climate - though no one who has been in Rome in midwinter would have held out a great deal of hope.

Thursday, April 14/2011

Talk at the National Portrait Gallery at 1:15 by Oliver Herford on a Keats portrait by Severn. Very good - careful, scholarly and moving. Easy to forget how very young Keats was - died in Rome at 25. Severn, his friend, accompanied him to Rome and stayed with him until his death a few weeks later.

Supper at the Old Bell in Kilburn. Curry night. Curry and a pint for £6.

Wednesday, April 13/2011

Down to Oxford St. by bus. Lilacs now out as well as cherry blossoms. Selfridge's is always a pleasure to stop at, though we seldom buy. Three pounds for a very small but no doubt exquisite petit four. It's really pornography of the very nicest sort.

After supper over to Angel to meet Kristen. First pub we try is too full, too loud, but the next is good upstairs. On Upper Street - but what was it? K enjoying London and now has flat share.

Tuesday, April 12/2011

Cooler, but despite threats from the weatherpeople it stays pretty fine. Go up to Haverstock Hill where a man is trimming a tree. Very brave of him too, as the tree is a good 50 feet high, taller than the surrounding houses. He's tied to the trunk, but the distance from the man to the knot is greater than that from the knot to the ground, so....Then down to the Embankment, and we walk along the Thames as far as the Temple, grounds of the legal profession. Lovely gardens and some of the buildings are very nice too. Then along Fleet Street and up past St. Paul's.

Then across the Millenium Bridge to the Tate Modern. The exhibition in the Great Hall is Ai Weiwei's Sunflower Seeds - hundreds of thousands of them, all made out of ceramic, individually crafted and hand-painted. A little uninspiring initially, if impressive in sheer quantity. But interesting metaphorical implications in terms of the concept of the individual and the effect en masse. Worryingly, Weiwei was stopped at Beijing Airport on April 3 by authorities and has not been seen or heard from since. Authorities have referred to suspected economic crimes - probably read tax disputes - but his family believe that pro-democracy activism is the problem.

Monday, April 11/2011

Walk from Notting Hill back along Kensington Gardens and then up Queensway. Is it just imagination or is it going, happily, a bit downscale again? A bit more in the way of shops spilling out onto the sidewalk and a bit less in the way of chains. More like we remember from 20 years ago? Or is this wishful thinking? Stop at Baron's hotel. Are they still there? Yes, and still remember us. We'll be back.

There's a little Tesco there that always has excellent mark-downs - things with absolutely nothing wrong that they're clearing - so we get some strawberries and blackberries. Beautiful looking - and tasting too, it turns out.

Sunday, April 10/2011

The morning begins with the race. As it's Asian, we're much luckier than North Americans. Nine a.m. here is 3 a.m. Central Daylight. Plenty of passing room on the track but no one passes young Sebastian Vettel.

In the afternoon we decide to walk King's Road, Chelsea, home of all kinds of creative ferment in the sixties. Tube to Sloan Square - and wonder which hotel it was where Oscar Wilde was arrested. We're right by the Saatchi Gallery, so stop. It's always an interesting visit, and today is no exception. Fascinating exhibit by Tessa Farmer. A large rectangular glass container holding a number of miniature sculptures. The figures are less than a centimetre high and made of "dessicated insect remains, dried plant roots and other organic ephemera" with real insect wings. Fairies, perhaps, but dark fairies indulging in a "microscopic apocalypse." Quite amazing. http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/tessa_farmer.htm

A summery walk down King`s Road, but sadly the repairs to The World`s End Distillery Pub are not quite finished. J finds a man having a smoke in a back doorway and inquires. It will reopen April 18. So it's still in store. Former Labour Home Secretary Alan Johnson, interviewed soon after his appointment to cabinet, suggests that his recent appointment to a high cabinet position didn't quite live up to his youth on King's Road, Chelsea:

I went to school on the King’s Road, Chelsea, in the Sixties. We used to sit at lunchtime outside the World’s End pub because that’s where Mick Jagger and Keith Richards drank. It was just a buzz, a real buzz, a really exciting time. I’ve never [recaptured] the excitement of playing in a band. Nothing has re-created that for me and I did it when I was really young, I was playing in pubs I was too young to drink in. [New Statesman interview]

So home by bus, one that crosses through Kensington and Notting Hill to Kilburn.

Saturday, April 9/2011

Start by watching qualifying for tomorrow's Malaysian Grand Prix. So, lazy start, which is a shame really, because the weather continues to be lovely - the pink magnolias now out. We walk up the hill. Charing Cross Road becomes Tottenham Court Road, which becomes Camden High Street, which becomes Haverstock Hill, which becomes Rosslyn Hill, which becomes Hampstead High Street. We join it at the Haverstock Hill bit. The cafés and pubs are all spilling out into the sunshine on the pavements - or in the gardens for those lucky enough to have them. Lots of boutiques and little upscale shops and restaurants. Then down to Camden Town by tube. Inverness Street Market humming. Used to be market stalls with fruit and veg, and there still are, but now also clothing, football souvenirs and trendy fast food. Also hit the stores along Camaden High Street to top up the groceries - spaghetti, onions, cherry tomatoes, peppers, seeded wholegrain bread.

Friday, April 8/2011

Another warm, sunny day, so we take the bus up north Finchley Road to where it becomes Regent's Park Road. This takes up through Golder's Green and up to Finchley Central tube station. It's a mixed area - Jewish, Iranian and Polish, amongst others. There's a Polish shop that J spotted in one of the Polish newspapers. It's not bad, but probably not as good as some of the more accessible ones.

Then back to Kilburn, rapidly becoming our favourite multi-ethnic corner of the city. It's hot in the sun so, vitamin D not withstanding, we take a break in the shade in a large park just behind the Black Lion Pub. There are young families and sunbathers and a few boys with a football. A couple of dogs getting in on the action and plenty of room for everyone. We're sitting near some friends who are sharing a chat and a drink. They're young Caribbeans and one of them, dressed in yellow team shorts and shirt, is putting on an impromptu performance, part rant and part song, the song bit fairly good and probably consisting of off the cuff variations on existing songs. He's a philosopher, an entertainer and a wit.

Back on the street and past pound shops and pubs. There's an Afghani restaurant (Ariana II) and Roses with the Polish food, not to be confused with the Najlepsy (Polish for best) Halal (Moslem equivalent of kosher) Food - that's the nearby butcher. Butchers have meat on tables outside the shop. Good prices on eggs. And there's a fishmonger's. Most shops have open doors so that the line between shop and street is blurred. Plenty of places to unlock phones and a few to place bets. Fruit and vegetable stalls on some of the corners with baskets of oranges, peppers, strawberries, tomatoes.

We wind up at the Old Bell pub. Menu full of specials. J goes for the steak and chips and veg with a pint of beer for £5.95 ($9.30 CAD, €6.70), but you can also eat two meals for £6 - beer not included - from a fairly wide range of dishes. And there`s an old couple there having pasta with wine - pay for two large glasses and they give you the rest of the bottle.

Back along the east side of the street - now no longer in the full sun. A large man walking ahead of us with a stick such as one might use for street cleaning scoops up an apple, tosses it about and then eats it. J, who has a better view than I of the performance, says that it was actually more core than apple. We see the man briefly a little later, sitting on a sofa ouside a furniture shop and drinking a bottle of water of unknown provenance.

Home in time for double Coronation Street.

Thursday, April 7/2011

The temperature yesterday must have been something like 23 - and sunny. Lots of vitamin D absorbed. Today is nearly as warm Nineteen or twenty but warmer in the sun. First down to Buckingham Palace in order to see the Canadian War Memorial in Green Park. It needs major repairs, which Canadian Veterans Affairs has agreed to as Conrad Black, who had been seeing to its upkeep, stopped paying as he hit other difficulties. However the workmen there now explain that the pumps for the water that runs over the surface are rusted out and need replacing - seems relatively poor engineering for something created in 1994. The replacement is on hold now, though, and it's being cleaned up so that it looks presentable during the Royal Wedding festivities.

Then we set out to sun ourselves walking along the south bank, perhaps as far as the Tate Modern or even the Globe. But we get just past the National Theatre and as far as a sign advertising south bank events where we see that the BFI Cinema is offering a showing of Anatomy of a Murder free to people over 60. So we go. Queue for returned tickets and are lucky. It's a large comfortable theatre and there's an intro by a Duke Ellington expert (re the soundtrack). Lovely afternoon. It`s really too nice to have been indoors, but tomorrow should be sunny as well.

On the way home J and I get separated - for the first time ever on the tube. Must have happened on the escalators at Waterloo - and we never do figure out how. The standard arrangement is that the one who gets on the train gets off at the next platform and waits - but this assumes that one person has got on a train and then the doors have closed before the second person boards. There was no clear plan for a situation in which both of us claim "but you were right behind me on the escalator and then you vanished!" Separately we check around the escalators, get on the train, alight at Westminster and check the platform, and then take the next train to Swiss Cottage - where J is waiting for me on the platform. Mystery unsolved but happy ending.

Wednesday, April 6/2011

This is our day for lectures. Over to the Wellcome on Euston Road in the morning. There's an exhibition here on dirt - everything from women sweeping in Dutch paintings to photographs of low caste people in India cleaning out human waste with their bare hands. The question of what dirt is receives the answer "matter out of place." We've picked today to visit because at lunchtime Dr. Adrian Martineau, a medical researcher is presenting information on his work on Vitamin D. Very interesting. Basically he describes the relationship between Vitamin D and higher immunity to quite a number of diseases, from TB to type 2 diabetes to some cancers, and suggests that current recommended daily requirements are quite a bit too low. There are other exhibits in the permanent collection here as well - some more interesting than the dirt one, including some stunning electron microscope photographs and displays of early medical instruments, including more bizarre items, such as an undoubtedly politically incorrect shrunken head.

In the evening we go to Westminster Cathedral Hall for a talk on faith and diplomacy by Francis Campbell, a young man just finishing five years as UK Ambassador to the Vatican and about to be reassigned to Pakistan. Very diplomaatic and discreet (for a former aide to Tony Blair) in his answers to questions, but a nice self-effacing style and view of the value of friendship and relationship in diplomacy in counteracting inevitable differences.

Tuesday, April 5/2011

Visit to the National Portrait Gallery. Spend time in the Tudor gallery and also looking at the portraits of 18th century arts figures. Now quite a few of the paintings have analyses posted next to them explaining how recent research and computerized studies have dated pigments or wood and shown earlier work that has been painted over. Quite interesting.

Then out to Asda in Greenwich. Top up card for the UK mobile as well as buying Chianti, yoghurt and sinful sticky toffee puddings.

Monday, April 4/2011

Exploration of Hammersmith, some deliberate and some accidental as we can't find the Polish Cultural Centre but find other things we didn't know existed, like the Spitfire Restaurant, serving Polish food and commemorating Spitfire fighter pilots. Eventually after some first class charity shops we do find the Polish Cultural Centre and stay for an enormous and very good cup of coffee. Go home with kapusta and grzyby (sauerkraut and mushroom) perogies from the little Polski sklep.

Sunday, April 3/2011

Mass at Westminster Cathedral. Lovely music though the boys' choir isn't singing this week. We've taken the tube, although that nearly didn't happen. When we got to Swiss Cottage the trains had stopped running - as a person had gone under the train at Finchley Road Station - the next one up the line. (London Underground gets about a hundred suicides a year). The trains start again but with delays. I love watching the variety of people on the tube. Would be best sketched. Opposite me on the way home are two men in football club shirts and trainers standing on the right, and a father in a football club shirt sitting with his son in a performance motor oil sweatshirt on the left. In the middle is a small man in black, wearing brown oxfords and reading Virginia Woolf's essays.

Then out to Jean's in the afternoon. Shanthi is delayed so we have time for quite a visit before she arrives. Jean has prepared a lovely meal - and has had us over the day after her choir has taken part in a performance of Handel's Messiah.

Saturday, April 2/2011

Kilburn High Road day. There are a couple of pubs we want to check out for future reference, as well as Tricycle Theatre and a collection of shops and market stalls. It's a rough and ready but vibrant place, reminding us a little of Queensway twenty years ago.

It's as multi-ethnic, certainly, with a minority of people speaking English on the street. There are quite a lot of cheerful young Islamic people handing out information, and hairdressers specialising in African styles. Many of the pubs are Irish and there are signs in the windows in Polish. My favourite is in a restaurant window and reads:

NAJLEPSZY KEBAB
[unknown word in Arabic writing] HALAL

Najlepszy is the Polish word for best. Wonderful!

There are charity shops, hardwares, supermarkets and pawn shops. European grocery stores and coffee shops. It's probably a mile from Kilburn tube station south to the railway tracks butit always feels like less because there's so much live street theatre as distraction.

Friday, April 1/2011

Set up day, with supermarket and street market stops. Lovely cherry tomatoes at Inverness Street Market. Jean calls while we're out and asks us to come to dinner on Sunday. The internet is handy for checking on what's going on around the city and we've noted a number of free lectures and looked up the theatre reviews.

Thursday, March 31/2011

Set the alarm on the mobile, though the transfer man is twenty minutes late. No great rush at the airport though and, fortunately, J's suitcase weighs in at 17 kilos something despite the weight of two bottles of wine - hard to estimate in advance. Plane lands at 2:15, on the train from Gatwick at 3:15, and on the tube at 4:15. This allows time at London Bridge tube station for buying seven day tube passes and putting them on the Oysters. There's only one wicket open and the people queuing are entirely those who can't, or don't want to, use the automated machines - those who don't know the city or don't speak English well or have questions - and the man behind the wicket is endlessly patient, helpful and good humoured.

At the Welby before 5. The good news is that we get the wifi for free instead of the standard £10 per week/£25 per month. The bad news that they've raised the weekly rates again - this time dramatically, so we may have to rethink future stays here. So meanwhile, we'll enjoy.

It's warm (although not as warm as Portugal) but mild breezes and flowers everywhere. The daffodils a little past their prime, but cherry blossoms and mimosa and magnolias are magnificent.