Friday, April 29/2016

You can't go home again. Or can you? Final leg of our journey home. The train is late in arriving at the station in Winnipeg - not unusual - and we get talking to a soft-spoken man who is moving home to the Gaspé after an absence of forty-two years. He's retired now and just made up his mind. Didn't even tell most of his mates. Speaks affectionately of a woman he knows who has sent him birthday and Christmas cards through the years. Just a friend or is he hoping for more? He's not from Winnipeg. Thompson maybe? Spent the afternoon at Polo Park Mall where friends were supposed to meet him but they never showed up. You can only drink so many cups of coffee. And what will the Gaspé hold for him after the decades? He's injured himself and is walking with a cane so they pre-board him when the train comes in and we don't see him again. One unfinished story from tonight's train. 

The train, due at five in the morning gets in about 8:30. Final blog until we resume our roaming life.

Thursday, April 28/2016

Jet lagged, so that six AM feels like the noon it is in London. Get up after an hour. Ian and Susan at work but lunch with Janet and Dave, Judy and Dino. Dino just out of hospital and the restaurant chosen for its wheelchair access and accommodating staff. Dinner at home with I and S. Then Ian takes us to the station, as the train, originally meant to leave at 10:30 is delayed. Know the delay is definite when we're offered tea and biscuits.

Wednesday, April 27/2016

Airports and security. Montreal is nicer than Toronto - less hostile, politer, smaller. Luggage trolleys free. Remember for future trips. Before security at Montreal dispose of water acquired after security in London. Some unseen passenger had to dispose of what they couldn't finish of a bottle of Baileys. Empty and half empty bottles accumulating on the benches before the security queue.

Saturday, April 23/2016

To Thames Ditton to see Jenny and Doug and family. Farmers' market on outside the George and Dragon pub, so we have a quick look and a couple of tastes while the rain makes up its mind and decides against. Our first view of Morris dancers - entertaining, though rather in the vein of a Black Adder parody? Everyone there for lunch - Jenny's mum, Laura and boys, Emma and Giles and girls - thirteen of us altogether, not including two dogs and a cat. Jenny and Doug the only people we know with a table that can accommodate such numbers, symbol of their open hospitality. Jenny off to China next month with a friend. 

Train to Waterloo instead of Wimbledon so we can stop off on the South Bank and catch the end of the Shakespeare festivities -  screens set up at intervals playing clips from the plays, all 20 plus.

Friday, April 22/2016

Last weekend coming up. A number of anniversaries this week. Yesterday the queen's ninetieth birthday. Tomorrow Shakespeare's birthday, as well as the four hundredth anniversary of his death. 

Revisit the warren - a complexity of shops behind the store fronts at the Bayswater end of Queensway. You enter through one of two shops with carry ons or similar and one small room or narrow corridor leads to another. The shops change hands over time, tracing the waves of immigrants. Possible to buy Russian dolls, or Brazilian food, have your computer repaired or your mobile phone unlocked. A unisex Polish hairdressing establishment - signs in Polish as well as English - will cut your hair for £7 (€8.75, $12.65 CAD), compared to £25 for a shampoo and blow dry in a shop on the street outside. A watch repairman has a corner den overwhelmed by its contents - which seem to include every saleable curio that has come the watchmaker's way,  Dickensian surfeit.

Thursday, April 21/2016

To the Wellcome Collection, which we remember best for acnoon hour presentation on vitamin D some years ago. The exhibit we've come for is on the human voice. Probably the most interesting bit is the opening theory, which suggests that speech began prehistorically with song, for purposes of bonding rather than conveying information. Obviously unprovable, but a great deal of speech in our time is essentially bonding rather than information - just listen to any two teenage girls.

 We're in the area of the Mary Ward Café, part of an adult learning centre. They have a cosy little vegetarian café that we've used in the past because of its proximity to the London School of Economics, where we sometimes go for evening lectures. Tonight there's a very nice broccoli and cauliflower quiche, which we both choose, or a vegetarian moussaka, which also looks good.

The presentation we go to after supper isn't at the LSE but at the London Review of Books shop, where veteran maverick journalist Seymour Hersh is interviewed by LRB editor Adam Shatz. Hersh is famous for having broken the stories of the My Lai massacre and the Abu Ghraib abuses. More recently, and more controversially, he has written on Assad and the poison gas issue (he argues, plausibly, that the Syrian Army wasn't responsible for the Ghouta incident) and has refuted the official American version of the killing of Osama bin Ladin. Tonight he's in good form, entertaining and reminiscing on his decades as a reporter and journalist. Shatz is a little too gentle in bringing out the genial and skimming over the criticisms - which mostly come down to sources that were intimately involved but reluctant to be cited publicly. Hersh claims that if they are not willing to confirm their accounts to his editors he doesn't use them as sources. And certainly in the past the official story was cover up bs and Hersh was right. Small shop, but sold out. Anyway, Hersh enjoying himself, audience uncritical, glasses of wine. 

Wednesday, April 20/2016

Stunning day. As J says, it's a shame to go inside, but there are two exhibitions we want to see at the Imperial War Museum. Stop at Trafalgar on the way. Our UK bank is there and confirms that the bank card has been mailed out. Current one expires at the end of the month. The replica Palmyra arch is on display now, attracting plenty of sightseers. 

On to the War Museum. Thefirst exhibition we're here for is photographs by Nick Danziger. It's on the theme of women facing war and features pictures of 11 women that he photographed about 2001 and then returned ten years later to see how they had fared. We'd heard him speak on BBC5 - so compelling that I'd found the program I'd heard in the middle of the night and replayed it for J. Quite a remarkable man, Danziger. He had been a photo journalist, always on the road and often in war zones, and had found he had to protect three young victims of war in Afghanistan, eventually adopting them rather than abandoning them. As the UK did not allow single parent adoptions at the time, he ended up making a home in Monaco, which was accommodating and helpful. This exhibit includes a short film featuring each of the eleven women - or more accurately ten women and a girl, fulfilling the rôle of a woman as she tries to feed and protect her two younger brothers after her mother died and her father abandoned them, sometimes reduced to eating grass - and what then, she asks, sand? From Israel and Palestine to Bosnia to Africa and  Afghanistan, he finds them all, except for the young girl, who he believes has died. There's a short but moving film sponsored by the International Red Cross about the women accompanying the photographs. Often sad and occasionally inspiring. A profound anti-war statement. 

And the next gallery presents an equally profound and even more un-nuanced message. It features the work of Peter Kennard, "unofficial war artist," with mixed media works, posters and collages covering decades and protesting the means and results of war. Sometimes bitter, sometimes witty, sometimes clever.

Tuesday, April 19/2016

Back to Covent Garden to reload ipad from the Cloud. A great deal better than attempting it from the Starbucks office. Then meet up with Jenny, who has been collecting a visa for China. Catch up lunch at the Museum of London and a quick look at the pre-historic gallery - striking in its similarity to native North American Indian museum galleries elsewhere. Stone tools, and a hunter gatherer existence. 

Back to Kilburn, where one of the corner fruit and veg stands is shutting down for the day. Any two baskets for £1.50 (€1.89, $2.72 CAD). We get a basket of small oranges - 20 of them - and one of cherry tomatoes - must be a kilo. Where are they from? Morocco, they're always the sweetest. Roses at supper time. The owner, it turns out, is Kurdish, from Turkey, and we chat. What is it about Erdogan, I ask. He's crazy. Pretty much our own conclusion.

Monday, April 18/2016

Down to Covent Garden for the Apple Genius Bar, which has treated us very well in the past. And a nice young man who wipes the older of the ipad minis in order to refresh its software. The good news being that its quirks do not appear to be signs of imminent demise. 

Then to the National Portrait Gallery. Rather thinking of taking another look at the portrait of Shakespeare, the one believed to be the only one done during his lifetime. Turns out that the 400th anniversary of his death is being celebrated by lending said painting to Moscow. Pay a visit to the Stuart gallery anyway. And renew acquaintance with the genealogical chart that shows the transfer of the crown from the Stuarts to the Hanoverians. Had always supposed that the supporters of Bonnie Prince Charlie were romantic dreamers, but the chart suggests otherwise. He was the only son of the only son of James II, and the obvious royal choice, had it not been for anti Stuart and anti Catholic sentiment. In the light of which a tenuous link led to a German monarch who disliked England and spoke virtually no English.

In Trafalgar Square they're setting up the 3D 2/3 size copy of the Palmyra arch, recently destroyed by ISIS and soon to be on proper display for 3 days.

Sunday, April 17/2016

Wake up to the Shanghai Grand Prix on BBC Radio5. Once upon a time it would also have been on tv, but that is getting increasingly difficult without pay channels. Somewhat like boxing. Previously BBC alternated with Sky in tv race coverage, but it has given up its contract before it expired, so now we can rely on Channel 4, for about every second race. No way to acquire a new generation of fans, but there it is. Pretty chilly out.

 To Camden Town in the afternoon. It too is changing. The fruit and veg market that was on Inverness Street is gone, of course. There's an interesting division. Come out of the Camden Town Tube station and turn right and you are in the middle of Camden market - all youth, counter culture, live music, tattoos, incense, t-shirts, piercings. Turn right and you're in the world of small supermarkets, charity shops, fast food restaurants, hardware shops, mobile phone unlocking services, and pound stores. The people at this end of the high street are local - careful shoppers trailing kids or stopping at a pub. A Lidl store here, with queues showing how it and Aldi are running competition to the traditional supermarkets, though this one is neither as big nor as busy as the Kilburn Aldi.

Saturday, April 16/2016

Things change. Along Queensway the East European grocery shop has become a Mediterranean grocery shop. Other shop fronts (including the currency place where we watched the fire a year ago?) seem to have combined with flats above to become a hotel. We've watched this street for over a quarter of a century. The luggage shop on the corner across from Whitely's once sold roast quarter chickens, though that was a very long time ago. It's gone upscale a bit too. Restaurants and pubs more expensive than they once were and pretty posh cars as well. 

Kilburn High Road is our other street. A bit like Queensway used to be. Rough and ready, multi-ethnic. Good local theatre and still some cafés that aren't chains and do attract working class locals. Two of them are on our must try list, but this time we find ourselves drawn back to Roses, where they do both the best lamb kleftiko (though only on a Thursday) and the best fried fish - perfectly done and longer than the plate.

Friday, April 15/2016

Rainy, as promised by the weather persons. Debate which indoor venue to go to and end up falling asleep. Waste of London time, but resetting internal time clock. And always behind reading stack of newspapers and tablet pocket articles all for "later".

Thursday, April 14/2016

Tube to West Harrow to visit Jean. Take our umbrellas as the forecast is iffy, but this is sufficient to ward off rain until we get back. Reminiscences and chat, about family, friends, politics, books - and wine and Cornish pasties, the first since Cornwall. We sit in the dining room! Where the french doors let in the sun and look out on the garden. The garden is looking good, with azaleas in bloom and a robin visiting, as well as two of the neighbours' cats sizing each other up. 

Wednesday, April 13/2016

Starbucks office to set up for the day. J spots a comment on Twitter from Ben Judah. He's going to be interviewed at the Waterstones bookshop on Hampstead High Street tonight. Attempt to buy tickets online. Bizarre site involves filling out forms printed in black on charcoal. Eventually give up and phone bookshop. They have plenty of tickets so we arrive early enough and then poke around the antique shops. Lovely, and expensive, area. Young couple are operating a coffee shop out of a disused red phone booth and kindly let me photograph their operation. Reluctant to ask them to stand back while I set the shot up properly so it's a bit substandard. 

About 25 or 30 people there for the interview. They've clearly done the routine before, but it's good. X asks the questions to get Ben started and then the performance is on - explanations, background, readings "in character", accents and all. Energetic and engaging. Like Judah's. book, This is London, the various migrants he met telling their own stories. Perhaps too much reading from the book. He does it well and it is compelling - but presumably everyone in the room has recently read, or is about to read, the book, and his method and insights are interesting.  Over a third of Londoners were born abroad, half of them having arrived since 2000. This has nothing to do with the current issue of war refugees, who would in any case be a drop in the bucket, and is also different from past waves of immigration here - the Huguenots, of whom there were 50,000 over 20 years, the Irish following the famine, the Jews (including Judah's grandparents) with 200,000 immigrants over 30 years. These people, large numbers of East Europeans, Africans, and Middle Easterners, are changing the character of the city. They are also living very difficult lives, often without the communal supports of the past and without much realistic expectation that life will be better for their children. Personally Judah sees London in a historical tradition of cosmopolitan trading cities of past and present - Venice, Hong Kong, Krakow, Calcutta, Alexandria. Cities with a varied cultural and ethnic presence and power. The hour passes quickly. A glass of wine, the signing, and we're on the tube with our new book. Have wanted it ever since first seeing excerpts. It's only disappointment being that the many photographs that were in colour on the internet are, in the hardcover book non-gloss black and white. The real loss not the black and white but the lack of sharpness.

Tuesday, April 12/2016

Packing done, but there seem to be odd piles of things that belong nowhere. Little piles - a half lemon, three plastic bags, some lids. Nothing important but causes of micro decision making. Boxes - embarrassingly rhere are now 7 of them - down to storage in the mezzanine. Actually 7 plus the rack for drying clothes. Three oranges that don't fit anywhere in the luggage, which is sad as we know it will be six months before we taste any half as sweet. Suitcases stuffed and down to turn in the key in reception. Drama begins. Are we really leaving? One moment - Chris (next door at the travel agency) will want to say goodbye. (He never has done before). And the young man on reception - whose name we never did learn - has to pick up the gift for us, from the whole staff! Chris is busy: can we wait? No, sadly we have a bus to catch. Young man returns with bottle of wine, clearly hastily purchased round the corner, to which Lefka hastily attaches  sentimental note. We express extreme gratitude - but we have no room at all for an extra bottle. But perhaps Chris ( who is still busy next door) could arrange for them to seal it at the airport so we could take it as hand luggage? Seems unlikely, but, worse, we really can't carry more weight. And it has to be carried further at the London end than the Larnaca end. Don't explain all this. J just says, very that, grateful though we are, it is impossible. Can they keep it for our return in November? We will be happy to see it then. And so, with hugs and kisses, drama ends - and we catch the bus with about thirty seconds to spare.

 Plane extremely full. Our usual trick of booking aisle and window of a threesome at the back of the plane fails, so as fallback I trade and sit in the middle when the plane fills up. Decent meal and quite drinkable wine. Window Seat Passenger next to us leaves to visit the loo - and doesn't return. Have, naturally, not timed his visit, but he is gone so long that eventually we cease thinking that it would be wise not to follow him too closely into the same loo and begin wondering first whether he is all right and then whether he might have died. Have visions of being delayed endlessly at Heathrow as airline staff and police question us about his final moments in the window seat. How long has it been - half an hour? At least. Presume that the now endless queue for the toilets must all be using one facility, the other being permanently occupied. Then J joins the queue and notes that  WSP is happily drinking water in the galley. No disaster. 

Back to Bayswater, and favourite of our rooms. Little things matter - radiator rather than portable heater means it's possible to dry a pair of socks. Definite asset. Genie greets us as usual, but since our last visit she has broken arm (shoulder, elbow?) in three places. Will undoubtedly never be the same again, and she's much younger than we are. The fragility of life.

Monday, April 11/2016

Packing. Boxes packed like Chinese puzzles to store in the mezzanine housekeeping area until next time. First few years we stored nothing, but now we've acquired a large soup pot, a ceramic frying pan, mugs, glasses, CDs....makes for a nice winter but the packing is time consuming. And inevitably once the boxes are taped and tied there is something we wish we could retrieve or add. Maggi and her friend Sama stop so M can say goodbye.  Sama is Sri Lankan and works as an underpaid and overworked housekeeper for a Cypriot family. Mistreatment of foreign workers unfortunately endemic in Cyprus, from denying time off to assigning extra work for friends or relatives, to delaying pay. Sama cheerful nonetheless.

Sunday, April 10/2016

Last Sunday lunch at Bill and Jane's. David and Susan give us a lift out. Bill's famous fish pies and Jane, ambitiously, makes blini as a starter. With smoked salmon and crème fraiche style topping. Very nice. Also apple pie, to which Bill adds a few raisins. Harry arrives on his Harley after we've eaten, having previously given warning that he'll be late. They've saved him some of the lunch, though, and he keeps us entertained as he eats, reminiscing about the days when he captained commercial ships. There are an endless supply of the stories; today's featuring a ship off the coast of Africa carrying five passengers as well as goods, two of them being then president Nkrumah of Ghana and his bodyguard. 

Home in the evening watch the swifts as they engage in aerial acrobatics. Swifts even mate and sleep on the wing. Their tiny legs are not well designed for perching but  the long wing span allows them to coast for extended periods.

Photo: Paweł Kuźniar

Friday, April 8/2016

Haircut. Could in theory leave it to tomorrow or Monday but last minute contingencies have a way of intervening. Incredibly busy (though Saturday would probably have been no better. They don't take appointments and there are ten people ahead of me. Possibly more, as women keep appearing in the doorway to ask questions or shuffle over to the owner, interrupting him as he finishes a haircut to hold brief but serious discussions. Naturally all conversation is in Greek, so there is no way of knowing whether these are entirely innocent requests for information or arrangements for queue jumping. There are actually five hairdressers at work, so ten customers waiting is not as bad as it might seem, and in fact I get taken quite quickly. In fact, I have a method. It seems that if I take an ipad and have either work to do our something serious to read the waiting time will be shorter than is required for the task.

Thursday, April 7/2016

Bill and Jane arrive at 9:30 with B's small bag of tools, specifically appropriately sized wrenches. J has already picked up the replacement wheels for his suitcase from the excellent DIY place conveniently located around the corner. Some discussion of why J's wheels have worn while my identical ones have not. They settle on the theory that his were less tightened, allowing more play, dismissing my (unserious) suggestion that I take more care. Now free to start initial packing.

Wednesday, April 6/2016

 Begin with dental appointments. Waiting room has the same four National Geographic magazines as always. Dated 2006, and not precisely the same as, increasingly bits are missing as English readers presumably take home articles to finish reading at leisure. Only here for teeth cleaning, although Xenia, our dentist finds bits of breakage which will need to be repaired eventually. Can see an obvious advantage for female dentists - their hands are smaller, which is better when your mouth is full of fist. 

Then Jane, on her way back from her painting group, picks us up and we head out to Potamoc Creek, collecting Bill who has set out walking to meet us. Temperature about 27 - hotter under the full sun, of course. The creek is actually a bit more than that, although water level and stream width vary a bit with tide and rainfall. It's a picturesque spot south of Agia Napa, where fishing (and the odd pleasure) boats are moored. Rustic docks, sheds, and a couple of restaurants. We eat lunch on the veranda of the larger. More upscale menu than we're expecting - this isn't a little fish and chips joint. It is a fish restaurant, though. Start with mussel and shrimp saganaki. New to us, but Greek dishes with the seafood in a spicy tomato sauce. Made with ouzo, though to be honest we wouldn't have identified it, and with feta cheese melted into it. Delicious. Then the fish: whitebait (Jane), swordfish (Bill), sea bream (J), and sea bass (me). All fresh caught and lovely. Beautiful day.

Tuesday, April 5/2016

Temperatures now in the high twenties, so after J's beach walk we head to George's Apollo Café. In mid-winter the shady location in a covered walkway is not an asset, but now it comes nto its own. George boasts an extensive collection of classic film posters, some of which he hangs outside in the passage where his tables are in the daytime. He's also both knowledgeable and philosophical, always good for a chat or a game of backgammon with a patron.

Cyprus mail refers to the prime minister of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, who has resigned, putting the title of prime minister in quotation marks, only slightly subtler than the state tv channel feeling compelled to call him the so-called prime minister. Difficult to see how this can lead to a happy reunification any time soon.

Monday, April 4/2016

Happy bit of Cyprus trivia: there are still more than 7,000 anti-personnel and anti-tank mines in the ground across Cyprus. Removal slowed mainly by cost, though occasionally someone is injured or killed by one.

Sunday, April 3/2016

Sunday April 3.  Cambanella's for lunch. Last time for this year, the first of a sequence of lasts. Into summer weather now, although the Cypriots don't think of it as summer weather - that belongs to the high temperature high humidity pressure cooker of June through August, the time when most of our friends try to take their holidays in the UK or elsewhere.

Saturday, April 2/2016

Bus out to Pyla and we're off to the North, passports in hand to show at the border checkpoint. Our internet directions are a bit imprecise, but it seems that the camp that can be seen (sort of) is a little north of Famagusta - German Palestinian settlers, known as Templers, having been accommodated south of the city. Quite surprisingly we do find it, we think. Past the university, a large fenced area of fields and sand looking as if it is used for military exercises. On down to the sea. We're on a bay with soft sand and crystal clear water. Lovely! The camp will have been on the same beach, just the other side of the forbidding sign, but imprisonment pretty well negates any natural beauty. There's something about barbed wire. 

Carry on a little up the coast to Bogaz, a pretty spot on the sea where we stop for lunch, a very nice shrimp casserole. Super day.

Friday, April 1/2016

April 1 is Cyprus National Day, and by chance the second long weekend in a row. Not Cypriot Independence Day, but the anniversary of the day the terrorist/guerrilla/liberationist group EOKA began bombing and blowing up people, chiefly British military, as the island was British until 1960. Previous Friday was Greek Independence Day. Why? Good question.  So down to the waterfront in the afternoon. Lots of people out. Warm and sunny, so people swimming, eating ice cream, buying balloons for the kiddies. Stop at Harry's Café and celebrate by splitting a beer instead of getting our usual Greek coffees. 

Jane and I have imessage discussion on island exploration. Mention that J is interested in finding where the detention camp was that Jewish would-be immigrants to Palestine/Israel were kept in between 1946 and 1949. Jane immediately suggests we go tomorrow, spurring a couple of hours late night research on my part so that we don't drive round aimlessly wondering. Available info both sparse and vague, but collect what I can.

Thursday, March 31/2016

Ailsa to leave Monday for England to see her sister, whose condition may be terminal. By the time she gets back we will be gone, so A organises a meal at the kabob place oround the corner from Smart. We've been before, with Jane and Bill, but only at lunch. Very nice. Good food and, unusually for a Cypriot restaurant, it's possible to hear well enough to carry on a conversation. Usually the volume of talk at other tables precludes normal conversation. 

To our place for coffee after, or nearly so. We all get in the lift and it makes a buzzing sound and dies. Notice on wall says maximum 6 people, 475 kg. Mental maths follow. We're definitely under even if, as J says, we weigh more than we did two hours earlier. But the elevator is unimpressed by mathematics and we're forced to confess to Kiki, who calls a repairman. Jane unable to walk up four and a half flights, so Ailsa, J and I go and make coffee, and take it downstairs, along with glasses, mints and liqueurs. Kiki has kindly asked us to make ourselves at home in the lounge - probably depriving her of her regular evening television - so we end up with coffee in much pleasanter surroundings than our flat.

Wednesday, March 30/2016

More on the hijacker. The ex wife he wanted to see tells a somewhat different story, as exes are wont to do - one of neglect and lack of interest in the family. It appears that the separation received some police assistance, as he was deported - more than once for forging passports. Sympathy wanes.