Monday, November 28/2011

Toying with the pros and cons of Paphos as a winter spot, as compared with Larnaca. Paphos is much more tourist friendly, and this hotel cleaner and better run than the Sunflower in Larnaca. Being touristy isn't always an asset, but far more people speak English, which is less isolating. In fact here at the Paphiessa English is the first language of most of the guests.

On the other hand, the television and radio are much better at the Sunflower in Larnaca, where there is a movie channel and several Cypriot channels that show occasional English films with Greek subtitles - not really high class entertainment but a diversion over the winter. There is also, thanks to the nearby British base, very good radio - BBC world service and a mix of BBC 4 and 5. Though, ironically, BBC World television, which is excellent here at the Paphiessa has more or less unintelligible sound at the Sunflower. And the daily rate at the Paphiessa is less. Well, it's nice to have choices.

Sunday, November 27/2011

Weather is fine, but we're slightly under it - cold or virus or whatever. So we give up our plans, including the one for watching the last race of the season - the Brazilian Grand Prix - at a sports bar down at the harbour. A rare treat. Fortunately the race isn't critical as the season championship was decided some time back.

Saturday, November 26/2011

An enormous Christmas tree is going up in the lounge as we go out - slotting together in dark green bottlebrush pieces, of course, but ceiling high, a good twelve feet.  More or less finished when we get back and pretty festive, if a little premature. Large red baubles and twinkling gold fairy lights.

J and I debate whether the two-toned birds outside are crows or magpies. He says their tails are too short for magpies, while I maintain that the colour is wrong for crows, though I can see that they're actually black and light grey rather than black and white, like magpies. He's right, of course: they're hooded crows, inhabiting the northwest of England, Scotland and Ireland, as well as central and eastern Europe - and Cyprus.

Friday, November 25/11

New glasses ready, though postponed from yesterday. The first time either of us has had prescription reading glasses.

Thursday, November 24/2011

Out to the fruit market in the morning. Any walk here is made beautiful by the flowers - cascading and in beds and flower boxes. There are still roses and pansies out in London but Cyprus is in much fuller bloom - hibiscus and bougainvillea cascading over stone walls and palms above the red tiled roofs.

Wednesday, November 23/2011

Our morning foray a little earlier as it's Wednesday and Cyprus still has the village habit of early closing - usually some time between 1 and 3 pm - on Wednesdays and Saturdays. We stop for a more thorough exploration of the ruins around Ayia Kyriaki. there's ongoing archaeological work and a fairly large area surrounding the ruins is fenced off. The original 4th century basillica was enormous (with seven aisles, many pillars of which are still standing) and there are the adjoining ruins of a 16th century Gothic Franciscan church. A large signboard relates St Paul's progress through Cyprus, coming from Silesia to Salamis, in the Famagusta area, then to Paphos from whence he sailed to Antalya - this all referenced to the book of Acts.

Then a second visit to St Michael's Hospice charity shop. There are tons of books but we restrict ourselves to five paperbacks - current additions to the 120 or so books on the Kobo which are our mainstay. I'm currently reading a Dorothy Sayers on the bookreaderas well as my bedtime reading of Flora Thompson (of Larkrise to Candleford fame) and reading aloud with J the autobiography of Clarence Darrow.

. Tuesday, November 22/2011

Decision day on the glasses. Write out the pros and cons of the shops we visited and revisit two of them. In the end we opt for the first shop we went to - the one where they didn't give us the fast talk. And J persuades them to add a pair of reading glasses for each of us for an extra 99 euros ($140 CAD, £85). So everybody happy and specs to be completed by midday Thursday (day after tomorrow). We treat ourselves to a pint at the café with the noisy parrot on the waterfront.

Monday, November 21/2011

Jenny and Doug arrive about 10 for our planned trip to Polis. Stunning blue sea and harbour views as we drive into the hills above Paphos. It's always slightly surprising how quickly Cyprus's traditional rural character makes itself felt as one leaves the city behind. There are suburbs of sorts, some of them housing developments produced for the boom that became a bubble and some small villages that have acquired modern additions. But it's not long before we're driving through hills terraced to prevent erosion and past orange groves. We're heading up the west coast and get occasional glimpses of sea before the route moves inland.

A lovely stop at Theletra, where there is the new village and the old village, accessed by a road that is little more than a winding track - one farmer using it beeps at all the blind corners, of which there are many. It's not quite abandoned now, as a few people have moved back and begun to restore a half dozen of the traditional Cypriot stone houses. The church has been repaired and is in very good shape. Doug finds a key in the door and we go in to find a couple of icons and beeswax tapers still burning. but overall the place is as silent as a completely deserted vilage, high on a hillside, the farm fields and the travelled road well below. There's little sound beyond the birds or the buzz of an idle fly near the derelict houses. There are pomegranate trees, orange trees, fig trees - and silence.

Then up past Polis on the Akamas Peninsula to Aphrodite's Baths, a grotto pool in the hills, shaded by a fig tree and, by tradition, the place where Aphrodite used to bathe and where she met her lover, Adonis. It's a nice, shady spot, and, as Jenny points out, this is particularly good in the hot, dry summer when the trees and running water provide a welcome respite.

There are miles of nature trails inthe surrounding hills and stunning views of the sea below. In the area below us caravans overlook the sea as well. It's a lovely spot and we all play with the notion of acquiring a caravan. Jenny hears goat bells and  eventually we see four sure-footed goats working their way along through the scrub beneath our track.

On the way back we stop at the village of Latchi, a fishing village -  aware of its tourist appeal but still a fishing village. They're redoing the harbour - and quite nicely, though they seem to have been redoing it for the last eight years, so it should be starting to look attractive by now. The restaurateur is resignedly amused. They only have two men working on it, he tells us, one of whom is the boss. So the boss mostly supervises, when he's not having coffee. Meanwhile we get a table overlooking a mix of gleaming white yachts and small fishing boats. It's a real fishing village, nets and all. And Jenny and I have the mixed fish plate for lunch. Very nice and filling enormous plates, with a whole red mullet, a whole large sardine and a complete other fish we can't identify, as well as deep fried kalamari and whitebait (dozens, it seems, of the little fish). Plus salad and chips. We can't finish and Joe and Doug, who have ordered curries, find that they are having curry with fish. good food, good view, and a relaxed familial feeling in a family run restaurant - small children in evidence. the kind of experience that is disappearing from the cities in Cyprus, sadly.

Dusk is approaching, so it's a quick stop in the older part of Polis, a nice little town with some medieval remains reminiscent  of the stone enclosure of the old caravanserai in Nicosia or the market in Larnaca. We want to get back to Paphos by dark because the road is hilly and winding and the drivers unpredictable. On our way up, a police car was pleased to overtake on a downhill curve as we all held our breath. As we descend to Paphos the lights, first of hillside villages and then of the city and harbour, begin to twinkle.

Tea and biscuits at our flat before we say goodbye. doug and Jenny will be flying back to London on Wednesday. It's been lovely being here at the same time.

Sunday, November 20/2011

Sunny and warm - in fact sun almost too warm, but we're not complaining! The historic Ayia Kyriaki church very popular for weddings, was built on the ruins of the largest early Byzantine basilica on Cyprus and is surrounded by stones and standing columns from the ruins. In the courtyard is a pillar to which, according to legend, St Paul was tied in order to be flogged. Surprisingly, the Greek Orthodox allow the church to be used by Anglican and Roman Catholic congregations. so we decide to go to Mass here, choosing the sung English Mass, which follows the Latin and Polish masses. Turns out it's standing room only, with some of the later arrivals standing outside the church. The building isn't configured so that everyone can see the front, but there are icons visible from every section, so art to look at meditatively. the little stone church is 16th century - one presumes the icons are somewhat later.

Saturday, November 19/2011

Spectacle shopping day. What rapidly appears is that almost any of the offers is much better than we could do at home or probably in Larnaca. But the deals are all different. Thereès the offer with a second pair, or the one pair from the man who actually knows something about eye problems and sounds as if his lenses are better, or the place that offers, rather embarrassingly, to send a taxi to pick us up and spare us the fifteen minute walk. Of course if only one of these places existed we would probably be delighted and place an order.

Friday, November 18/2011

Take  the alternate walk today to Paphos town, not much farther than the harbour walk, but uphill. The town centre isn't big but it is busy, with locals and tourists. The views of the harbour below are striking and there are some good coffee spots looking down. There's a covered market as well, with fruit and vegetables - elderly women pressing us to sample the oranges and guavas. There are also leather goods, jewellery and souvenirs.

Stop on the way back at a Russian shop (there are enormous numbers of Russians in Cyprus) where we find pepper and aubergine spreads and also at a greengrocer for oranges, grapes and coriander. There's a little charity shop on the road as well, but it's deciding whether to rain, so we head back.

In the lobby we use the earphones with the netbook to listen to the National - the first Canadian news broadcast in two weeks.

Thursday, November 17/2011As soon as we set out for the harbour, the sky darkens, and in fact it rains while we are in the supermarket but has stopped by the time we come out. Stop at one of the many optical shops on our way back. cyprus has a reputation for inexpensive glasses and it seems that this harbour ara is more fiercely competitive than Larnaca, perhaps because it's more touristed. It's quite easy to get a pair of vari-focals (progressives) with frames for €149 ($207 CAD, £125) - or less. We can't get BBC radio here - it's too far from the British base - but can and do download some BBC radio progrms to listen to later in our flat.

As soon as we set out for the harbour, the sky darkens, and in fact it rains while we are in the supermarket but has stopped by the time we come out. Stop at one of the many optical shops on our way back. cyprus has a reputation for inexpensive glasses and it seems that this harbour ara is more fiercely competitive than Larnaca, perhaps because it's more touristed. It's quite easy to get a pair of vari-focals (progressives) with frames for €149 ($207 CAD, £125) - or less.

We can't get BBC radio here - it's too far from the British base - but can and do download some BBC radio progrms to listen to later in our flat.

Wednesday, November 16/2011

Jenny and Doug arrive about quarter to twelve, having been delayed by a puncture before they set out and by the inaccuracies of the map.  It's a lovely day, though Doug says, disapprovingly, that this is not in accordance with the forecast.  Nice that it is, though, because we take the old coast road back and it is stunningly beautiful, with rugged cliffs above multicoloured sea.  Aphrodite's birthplace, a breathtaking mix of rock and foam. We drive through the British sovereign area, which contains the military base on which Jenny and Doug, as well as Jane and Dave (now retired in Cumbria) were living when we met on a Nile cruise. Then on to look at the ruins of a roman stadium as well as stopping at the beach below Curium (also very good Roman ruins). Jenny's a good guide because she remembers many of the places from 30 years ago and can chronicle the changes.

Jenny's father and his wife, Sam and Paddy Taylor, live in Erimi, a village a little south of Limassol. It's a lovely house and the back garden is beautiful, with a swimming pool, trees, flowers, statues, and tiled sitting areas for sun and shade.

And a lovely lunch as well - with chicken and mushrooms on basmati rice and a choice of apple tart or creme caramel - we're encouraged to try both and find it impossible to resist. It's a real pleasure to listen to Jenny's father's reminiscences - he's philosophical, knowledgeable and soft-spoken - and we could do so for much longer. He was born in Palestine of an English (Irish?) father, a military man who went in with General Allenby in 1917, and a Palestinian mother, and has spent much of his life in the Middle East. His second wife is Irish and turns out to be from Enniskillen, birthplace of my great great grandparents, in honour of which she gives me a copy of the Book of Kells.

J and D drive us back to Paphos and come in to see our flat. We have tea and coffee but no biscuits. Doesn't matter as no one has room anyway.

Tuesday, November 15/2011

Rain. Not quite what we signed up for, but always needed in cyprus so might as well be philosophical. So down to the waterfront again and second round of groceries.

Try to co-ordinate tomorrow with Jenny. She can't get her father's phone to text and the netbook (or the wifi?) refuses to send an email. So we hope that between doug's map downloading and our texting we'll link up.  We do  have a fairly good map - but it's downloaded onto the netbook with its tiny screen and we don't have printing facilities. And so it goes.

Monday, November14/2011

Ironically, we leave London on a warm sunny day and wake to clouds and predictions of rain - though it is warm, warmer than England. And there is bougainvillea blooming deeply pink beside our first floor (North Americans read second floor) balcony. Thereès a pair of sparrow-sized birds enjoying themselves among the blossoms, damp with last night's rain. so we venture forth ourselves, umbrellas prudently slipped on wrists.

We're about a kilometre from the seafront and the temperature is about 18 - maybe a little more as we do see some tourists in shorts, but then some Brits who have booked their fortnight in the sun dress for it, whether or not the weather co-operates. And the British are everywhere in Kato (lower) Paphos, the tourist area near the sea. A little like Albufeira's old town, with cafés on the pavement and plenty of signs advertising full English breakfasts or pints - the latter only €1.75, €1.69, €1.50. English is the predominant language of the passers-by, but J's eagle eye spots locals carrying bags of groceries. And soon we too find the supermarket, a relief after the insanely priced peripteros (often also styling themselves supermarkets), mainly featuring overpriced liquor and crisps.

So we begin with the basics, mindful that we're not here for much more than 2 weeks and it all has to be carried back to the Paphiessa. Tomatoes, passata, onions, garlic, courgettes, Spanish wine (on sale for 89 euro cents a litre, so why not gamble), lountza (smoked pork tenderloin, also on sale and beautifully lean), streaky bacon, extra virgin olive oil, eggs, mushrooms, fresh green beans, tomato paste, milk, bread and a tin of baked beans. We have cheese and peanut butter and coffee and tea with us, so it's a start. The real prize, when we get it home, is the bread - whole grain and heavily seeded - though with none of the usual North American/EU warning on nuts, seeds, etc - in fact no mention of same.

Get a bit lost coming back - between the winding roads and the inadequacies of the map - and it starts to rain, but we have umbrellas, and it's not cold.

The tv is a mixed asset. reception of BBC World and Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation and Sigma (private Cypriot) are very good - but the second Cypriot public station (which carries brief English news) is missing as are some local chanels. the good news, though, is that there is free wifi in the lobby. We ask about a password and the receptionist writes it out for us, but it turns out none is needed. 

Note that our chocolate bar nibbler of Saturday night may not indicate that we were living on the wrong side of the tracks.  Ten Downing St has acquired a cat - said to be a good mouser - after a rat was observed crossing the doorstep. Elevated, if not good, company.

Sunday, November 13/2011

Moving day. We take the bus from Bayswater to King's Cross - not crowded and moving freely on a Sunday morning - and then the train from St. Pancras to Gatwick. The suitcases felt heavy, but they're only 15½ to 16½ kilos, so we`re safely under the 20 kilo max. Even when J brought back two bottles of wine from Portugal, the case wasn`t overweight.
)
Thomas Cook seems slightly more civilised than either EasyJet or Ryanair, although this may be because I booked a package that included a meal and choosing our seats as well as a texted info pack that never seems to have materialised. Actually the seats, as J points out, wouldn`t have been much worse if we hadn't picked them - middle and aisle and pretty narrow. But they're together. The meal is better than anticipated though, with chicken fillet and a chocolate pudding. Surprisingly, when we land the pilot warns the passengers that Paphos airport food is quite expensive and they may wish to acquire their food in advance when returning. Surprising not because it's not likely to be true, but because ppilots don't usually concern themselves with passengers' budgets and he wasn't even recommending purchasing food onboard.

Our transfer bus is a bit hard to find - a minibus hiding behind huge coaches - but it's there as promised and we are delivered to the Paphiessa where we've booked a studio. The studio turns out to be a one bedroom with fair-sized living/dining area, a microwave oven as well as the standard two burners, and full size bath and shower. There's pretty good furniture and drapes and a balcony accessible from both sitting area and bedroom. All for nine pounds 33p ($15.11 CAD, €10.91) a day.

Saturday, November 12/2011

Back to our Starbucks "office" - all working well now and wifi connectivity "excellent". The seating downstairs is comfortable and the music  mostly a pleasure - though it's a little unsettling to hear a sprinkling of Christmas carols in the mix when it's not quite mid-November. J brings the last of his coffee back to the room and Murphy's law strikes. He takes a sip and the lid falls off, causing curses and enough widespread coffee that my first thought is that he's spit it out. Hard to cover as much territory - shirt, quilted vest, carpet, bedspread - if trying. But several paper napkins and one wet bathtowel later, not bad.

Down to Bayswater for 5 o'clock in the hopes that the fireworks in honour of the new Lord Mayor will be visible. They're not (should ideally havebeen viewed from the Victoria Embankment) and they close the park at 5, as it's getting quite dark and presumably they're not keen on preventing drug dealers and campers from doing their thing.

We meet Alexander and Flora at Bel Canto (the Corus) at Lancaster Gate. It's next door to the Swan, a pub that is over 300 years old and, located as it is near the Tyburn gallows, gave many last drinks to those about to be executed. We're there for a dinner that includes arias presented by opera singers who double as waiters and waitresses.  they're very good and the basement restaurant not really quite large enough to hold their powerful voices. The food is good as well.  Champagne and starters and then A,F, and I have the duck's breast and J the seafood dish of the day with prawn, scallops and salmon in lobster sauce. So we have a visit to the opera as well as a first class meal. Popular arias from Carmen, etc. - and acted as well as sung. Excellent. It's fun and very nice. And so it should be too - for a total bill of £270 ($437 CAD, €313). We expect to follow the opera singers whose careers we've been underwriting as their careers blossom. Alexander tunes the piano here and the pianist is a pleasure in between the operatic offerings as well as when accompanying them.

Would have been good to have chatted a little more, but Flora is suffering from a miserable cold and the quality of the music makes talk difficult - as well as indecent.
Back to the hotel to find that the drama is not quite over. J has left a packet of Snickers on the bed and something has nibbled into the end bar. No other signs of infestation, but....

Friday, November 11/2011

Remembrance Day. Canadian commemorative poppiesare different from British ones - brilliant red felt covering over plastic rather than a faded red paper poppy with green plastic leaf and stem. The British ones are much closer to the colour of real poppies, so it's hard to decide whether the Canadian ones are more vibrant or simply vulgar.

The queen is laying a wreath at the official ceremonies, but eleven o'clock finds us at the Paddington Library for our two minutes of silence - and some internet access. The second time in two days that our path and her majesty's don't quite cross.

In the afternoon we walk along the Bayswater Road to the Tyburn convent and shrine. The chapel is serene, with ivory coloured walls and ceiling and clean lines. The cloistered Benedictine nuns sing an office and then file silently out of the other half of the chapel - behind the grille. The convent itself is early 20th century, but close to the site of the Tyburn gallows where Catholic martyrs, amongst others, were executed. If memory serves, the actual gallows were in what is now a nearby traffic intersection. But which one? More googling required.

Back along Edgware Road and Praed Street from Marble Arch. Edgware Road has become very middle eastern, with almost as many Arabic signs as English ones on shops. There are bakeries with plates heaped with pastries like the ones we buy in Damascus and Beirut in the windows. And there are many cafés and restaurants, customers smoking water pipes much in evidence at the outside tables.

Supper at a pub at the top end of Queensway. Nice chicken, ham and leek pie and good bitter. A German family are seated next to us, with no food or drink for some time until it occurs to us that they probably don't know they have to go to the bar to order. So J explains. There are  quite a lot of tourists about in Bayswater. Not entirely happily, for us, as it's a large part of what keeps pub and restaurants higher here than, say, in Kilburn.

Thursday, November 10/2011

Quite a bit of messing about with the netbook, which probably boils down to uneven connections in the free wifi spots.

Take the bus over to King's Cross to visit the British Library. It's the same bus we'll take on Sunday, as there are tube disruptions for maintenance on the weekend. The bus route seems fine. Forty-five minutes (not including a bit of shopping along Oxford Street) and it will be less congested on Sunday morning. The British Library, though, isn't on. Actually, it's completely roped off and surrounded by security men. It seems the queen is coming for the royal opening of an exhibit and the plebs will have to wait.

In the evening we meet up with Susan and Ian's niece, Kristin and Chris, her new boyfriend in the Tabard pub in Chiswick.  Lots of catch up with Kristin, who's about half way through her year here, and we enjoy Chris as well.

Wednesday, November 9/2011

Coffee and email at Starbucks on Queensway. Very civilised start to the day.

Out to Jean's in West Harrow. Our umbrellas do an excellent job of warding off rain and it's lovely and balmy. Shanthi is joining us but has been delayed by a signalling failure on the underground so we have time for some wine and a good chat before dinner when Shanthi and Priya join us for chicken and prawn curries. Lovely. And chocolate brownies with ice cream. As usual, we're spoiled.

Jean's been busy, not only with preparing the meal but with her choir, which undertakes such ambitious projects as Fauré's Requiem and works of Bach.

Tuesday, November 8/2011

Wake up about 9:30 - so much for closing the curtains at night.  So write off the early stop options and instead have breakfast at Subway and go over to the Paddington Library to check the email and get the news on the Saskatchewan election. Looks like James and Raye have jobs that are safe for a while yet.

Then by tube to Waterloo. Check out the National Theatre - sadly, Lenny Henry is playing in what looks like a marvellous production of A Comedy of Errors, but not until after we've left.  Along the Southbank to the Tate Modern.  The Turbine Hall installation is a film, about which we really know too little, though it does draw us in as we watch the 35 mm looking strip and its varied still and moving images.  No post production, its maker says. But how? As we leave, we notice that the repaired floor still shows the scars of Shibboleth, the shocking installation that produced an enormous crack in the cement floor of the building.

By bus to St. Paul's and the Occupy London encampment on the surrounding pavement. Too many tents to count, including large ones labelled Info and Occupy London University - where a man is seated on the ground holding forth to a half dozen listeners.  It's getting dark and fairly hard to see. Plenty  of notices and signs on every vertical surface. The tent interiors, of course, have no electricity, although a few candles flicker dimly.  There is electricity for the amp, though, and an open mike hour is just beginning on the steps of the cathedral.  Some level of disagreement within the Church of England over the protesters, with two of St. Paul's clergy already having resigned. One newspaper pointed out that if the occupiers remain they could conceivably cause distress to Church goers on Christmas Eve. Regular Sunday attenders, it would seem, are made of sterner stuff.

Back to the Old Bell on Kilburn High Street for a vegetable curry with rice (two for six pounds fifty and surprisingly good - and hot) and a pint of bitter each.

Monday, November 7/2011

Down to Charing Cross to do the banking.  Our money order should take between six days and six weeks to actually appear in the account. Do we get a vote on bankers' bonuses?

Next stop should be Canada House on Trafalgar Square for a quick email check. But it's boarded up and closed for renovations. Probably not a permanent cutback though, as it seems to exist mainly for business people and not the plebs. So on to the third item on the list - tracking down the location for tonight's lecture at the London School of Economics.  Good thing too, as the school sprawls across a number of lanes and the building we want is not on Houghton, as advertised, but on the corner of Sardinia and King.

By this time we're not far from a William Morris exhibition on Temple Place. Two Temple Place is considerably more than a building housing works by Morris.  It's a tribute to the aesthetic movement and Morris's belief that people should live surrounded by beauty. And beautiful the house is, with elaborately carved wood on benches, ceilings and staircases - the main staircase incorporating two-foot high carvings of figures from The Three Musketeers.  there are also beautiful tapestries designed by Morris and Burne-Jones, several of them illustrating The Romance of the Rose, as well as stained glass panels on walls and skylights and elaborate mantelpieces and fireplaces. At one point the house belonged to Lord Astor, but it has long been held by a trust. There are quite a few viewers, including small groups of children aged about eight, intently making copies of some of the works.

Back in Bayswater we visit the Paddington library to take advantage of magazines (J) and wifi (me). A quietly busy place with plenty of serious students. Then back to the LSE for the lecture on the recent Arab uprisings. It's an hour's lecture by Dr. John Chalcraft, held in a very full and hot room.  J is disappointed in its content - long on theory and short on specific current information. He's right, but I'm pleased with the slant, and some of the comments are interesting. For example, MI 6's advice re Libya, ignored by David Cameron, was to stick with the devil he knew. And the cheers with which Egyptians greeted the army were not simply politically discreet - the Egyptians genuinely believed (and correctly it seems) that the soldiers were their brothers. But so many unanswered questions. Why is Bahrain different, and who are the Libyan rebels? And, and..? J  is probably right - this is a lecture the speaker has given before.

Sunday, November 6/2011

There's a major exhibition of the paintings of Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven on at the Dulwich Picture Gallery.  The gallery itself is southeast of Brixton, a longish bus ride from Oxford Circus past Brixton's rough shabbiness and into southern parks and schools.  It has quite a history, beginning in the early 19th century, and is in fact in delighted possession of a guestbook signed by Vincent Van Gogh.

The Canadian exhibit is a large one with quite a few cnvasses of Thomson, McDonald, and Varley, as well as a number of the other group members. As always "live" canvasses are so different in effect from the reproductions. I'm struck by an odd echo of Gauguin - something in the colours and the rawness, though many of the smaller (and later?) ones have a much more Group of Seven feel.  It's difficult to talk about early or late Thomson when he died at 40. I grew up with the reproductions on the wall, though, courtesy of Thomson's nephew, who was a friend of my parents'.

Several of the artists, including Thomson, have twinned pictures, small and large, with the small picture (8"x10"?) functioning as a sketch done in oils, though perhaps with a limited palette.  Probably a way of rememberingcolour.  One small Thomson, though with no accompanying large version, has glowing tamarack trees. We're also taken wit a large canvas by Johnston showing Kenora from the water, its profile in the distance.  There are a few of Lawren Harris's paintings as well, some of them looking a generation more modern, with simpler colours and cleaner lines. There are quite a few viewers at the exhibition - a mixed British and Canadian lot, judging by accent.

Outside the Dulwich Gallery, the grounds are treed and the leaves echo the autumn paintings inside, especially the red maple lea shaped ones of some young gum trees.

Saturday, November 5/2011

This is Guy Fawkes Day but we opt not to head for the official celebrations as the early forecasts suggests drizzle.  Breakfast at Subway on Queensway: toasted subs with egg, cheese, turkey rashers and veg, along with pretty good coffee for two quid each ($3.20 CAD, €2.30), eat in or at the little table outside, which it's warm enough to do with a light jacket on.

Bus from the Bayswater Road to Trafalgar, a tantalising mini tour in itself.  Just west of Marble Arch we see Tyburn Convent and, next to it, a shrine to the Tyburn martyrs, and mark it for later investigation. Is this the site of the old Tyburn gallows? The bus does a bit of detouring and we pass iconic streets - Wimpole and Harley Streets and Savile Row and Berkley Square - before abandoning the bus to congested traffic near Piccadilly Circus. The detour seems to have been occasioned by a demo representing the 99% who aren't wealthy, as proclaimed on their signs, and we meet up with them, drums and all, near Trafalgar.  As we head off along Whitehall near the Banqueting House, site of the execution of King Charles I, a young man strides past in cape and Guy Fawkes mask, bearing a sign announcing that The Rebellion is Coming.

It's getting dark, although not late, so we go by tube to Kilburn and reacquaint ourselves with the high street.  It's not quite as busy as Queensway, but more real in a way, as the people in the restaurants and pubs and street markets are local - possibly recent immigrants or temporary workers, but not tourists.  Baskets of seafood and chips and a pint of bitter each at The Old Bell. Prices are good and atmosphere friendly, although there never seem to be more than three women in the pub at a time.

Home with a fat Saturday Guardian and brochures for theatre and exhibitions to read. We're back before the fireworks start but hear them sporadically throughout the evening.

Friday, November 4/2011

To Jenny and Doug's in Thames Ditton for lunch. They're preparing to leave on Sunday for two weeks in Cyprus staying with Jenny's father.  By seeing them now we can also see Jenny's mum as well as Emma and her girls, Leila (born two weeks after we were here last) and Jasmine, now close to three.  It's Laura's birthday and she is here with Cody (same age as Jasmine) and later Kai, who gets picked up after a school trip.  So, luckily, we get in on the birthday cake, a Victoria sponge made by Jenny with decorations courtesy of Jasmine.

Dark by the time we come back in the laate afternoon, a reminder that London is well northof most Canadian locations.  Quick look along Camden High Street but things are shutting down, so we take the tube home.  quite a few people with oddly coloured hair - emerald green, pink, violet.  Is this for Hallowe'en, Guy Fawkes' Day or just part of the great pantomime of life?

Thursday, November 3, 2011

We should have left at ten minutes to midnight (technically yesterday), but as we are queuing at the gate we see the pilots and cabin crew leaving the plane - not a good omen.  We ask the pilot as he passes: no, it's all right - we will go but they're checking out a water leak.  If they can't fix it we'll go on a different plane.  Meanwhile the crew is off for coffee.

So shortly after 2 a.m. we are underway on the new unleaky airplane.  Dinner at 3 a.m. - or 8 a.m. GMT if you prefer.  Which puts us  at the hotel about 3 p.m. GMT. It's just off Queensway in Bayswater.  Fairly basic, but the ceiling is over twelve feet high and gorgeous (Victorian?) with an elaborate plaster braid around what is clearly the original perimeter. There's more plaster decoration around the ceiling light fixture, and an oval mirror over the sink and a second one in the door of the old wooden wardrobe. Sink in one corner and loo in another are much later additions.

Not doing our own cooking this time, so over to Queensway to explore local options.  Humming as always and some OK choices at fast foods as well as a fairly good Tesco and some Lebanese and Asian spots. Also the full size Marks and Spencer in the four storey "mall" made out of the classic old Whiteley's Department Store - 19th century and still with traces of its original grandeur.