Monday, November 3/2014

Chillier this morning, though not as wintry as Starbucks seems to think it is - with red coffee cups and strains of "dreaming of a white Christmas" in the air. Our regular Starbucks has pretty impressive staff though. Not only do they juggle orders with four or five behind the counter and no mistakes, but Antonio immediately produced our regular  when we appeared for the first time in over six months.

To the National Portrait Gallery in the afternoon, the most intimate of London's major galleries, probably because the subjects are as interesting as the quality of the art or the artists.  A section on the Romantic period has a portrait of Keats in the Hampstead room we have visited next to a very young Coleridge and round the corner from an elderly Wordsworth. On the other side of the room, beneath a portrait of Blake, a remarkably shifty Turner looks as if he might be scalping tickets. 

Nearby there is a huge parliamentary scene of the trial of Queen Caroline, wife of George IV, longtime prince regent. The scandal, involving her affair with an Italian and his subsequent attempt to divorce her, seems remarkably modern, down to the character on the left handing a newspaper with the latest juicy details into the chamber to the hands of an eager MP. And there's both a bust and a portrait of William Hogarth, of Gin Lane fame, looking much less like an aesthete than a builder come to do repairs. So much for physical stereotypes.

Then supper at the Indian Veg near Angel tube station. Price has increased again, after a little more than a year, but only to £5.95, and the buffet has actually gone slightly upscale. Still entirely vegetarian and mostly vegan. And delicious.