Sunday, October 30/2016

Foggy and overcast. Changed to winter time during the night - two AM to be precise - so actually lighter earlier than it would have been yesterday. London is pretty far north as well (51.5074 degrees), which leads to short winter days, so the time change will mean sunset at 4:35 pm. Do end up wondering what hope there is for world peace when we can't even agree on a universal date for moving the clocks (or indeed whether to do so). 

Camden High Street crowded as usual on a Sunday, when its small tube station is exit only. We emerge to see a street entertainer doing the limbo. He's all performance, shaking dramatically as he passes under the bar, which at this point is high enough that I could do it, but we don't stay for the finale. With Hallowe'en looming we've been encountering grim reapers, clowns and the walking dead on the underground. Here there are, as always on a weekend, throngs of young people overspilling the sidewalk, though there may be more Goths, and are certainly more vampires, than usual. Queues at Lidl stretch all the way to the back of the store - not worth stopping for one jar of sun dried tomatoes despite the attractive 85p (€0.94, $1.37 CAD) price. Back just in time to catch the beginning of Mexican Grand Prix coverage at six.

 

Saturday, October 29/2016

Still mild, though a bit misty. Tube and Dockland Light Railway to Greenwich, a bit slower and more crowded because, as usual on a weekend, service is suspended on several lines and the remaining ones are overburdened. The market is buzzing - ethnic foods and some pretty imaginative crafts - like glass liquor bottles, flattened heaven only knows how to serve as plates or bases for clocks. Also jewellery, cartoons, old photographs, scarves, carvings, etc. We're only a short block from Goddard's, the pie shop that has been family run in Greenwich for over a hundred years. It used to be a classic, cheap and delicious pies with mash and peas, fruit crumbles, gravy or custard (depending) overflowing. Not health food exactly, but superb comfort food served at long scrubbed wood tables with large mugs of tea or bottled beer. After a bit of family upheaval it closed briefly and then moved from its original premises a couple of blocks away. It's never quite recovered, though. Prices have, understandably, risen - they do over time - but the food is not quite what it was. Pies are definitely smaller, with a higher ratio of crusts to content. Servings of everything are diminished. Some of the original basics, like peas, have become extra. It's crowded as of old, the queue reaches the door, so it's hard to argue with the economics, but the assumption is that the patrons are not old locals. Last time we were here the server had no knowledge of the previous location. It's just another Greenwich eating spot. We may not be back.

On the packed train coming home an Asian woman offers me her seat, and I accept gratefully as I'm carrying bags with two bottles of wine. A stop or two later she gets a seat but promptly offers it to J, who is carrying four bottles of wine, but much more discreetly than I. Naturally he declines. She does succeed a little later in giving the seat to a woman with a small child. Confirmation of my entirely unscientific observation that seats are most frequently offered by young Asian men, followed closely by young Asian women.

Friday, October 28/2016

Cyclamen from the corner flower sellers (small pot for £1) brightening our room. Lovely moving back into a room that we've stayed in so often that we know where things go as we unpack. Delighted to find that the pay as you go mobile is still working. It's supposed to be good for six months non-use without dying, but it's been six months plus a day, so had low expectations. Think there was about £9 ($14.58 CAD) on it, so that should more than cover more than the three weeks we're here for this time and take us well into next spring's stay.

Super weather. Temp midday about 16 or 17. Light jackets. Up Kilburn High Road. No major signs of financial disaster and prices don't seem to have risen much - though some packages may have shrunk a little in order to remain the same price. As usual, fruit and veg bought on the street corners a much better deal than those in supermarkets. £1 for half a kilo of red grapes - one of the easier fruits to keep for snacking with no kitchen facilities. Earlyish supper at Roses. Cod and chips, excellent as always. High proportion of Roses' [yes, the apostrophe is in the right place] patrons are elderly singles, clearly regulars. Women usually in pairs or part of a couple. The men engaging in what I think of as pub style socialising. They concentrate on the meal or read a paper while they eat - there's a few newspapers near the till for the purpose - but there are sporadic bits of chat about sport or events, and it seems the blokes know each other. The singles are known to the East European waitresses too, and leave to a cheery "see you tomorrow".

Thursday, October 27/2016

A hundred and nine miles from London. Can smell the coffee. There still is coffee. Can faintly remember when there was breakfast on international flights. Think that there are faint memories of hot breakfasts - but perhaps that was a dream. Meal consists of a slice of very cold cake, 8"x5.5". Very sweet. Wonder what they do if you've ordered the diabetic meal. Substitute dry bread? Withhold the slice? Suspect that this is in preparation for abandonment of free meals entirely. Have noticed that when other airlines do this half the commentary is about how outrageous the omission is while the other half is along the lines of what rubbish the food was and how little it will be missed. In all fairness, though, the coffee is fresh brewed and a great improvement on the stewed cigarette butt flavour of years gone by.

Stewardess passes out landing cards to be filled in by anyone whose passport is neither UK nor EU. Or EU citizens practising for post Brexit? One more government expense post Brexit. And queues at Heathrow lasting long after your luggage has disappeared from the carousel. Indeed after a ten minute walk to immigration and a forty minute wait in queue our carousel has long ceased moving and our suitcases, with a half dozen companions, are waiting in a lonely clump. Not stolen, anyway, though it must be getting easier to do so. Can't blame the immigration clerks either. Ours is friendly but says when we suggest more staff and higher pay, that the opposite has occurred - her pay has been cut twenty percent. Amazing amount of patience and good humour about. Though maybe not always, as there are plenty of signs warning against abuse of staff. Things can only get worse when the other EU countries join the immigration lines.

Walking from Bayswater tube station to our temporary home in the heart of London, zone 1, a large, healthy looking fox tears across the road in front of us, at an intersection just off Queensway.

Wednesday, October 26/2016

Ian kindly drops us at the airport, so we're off. Well nearly. Flight half an hour late and oversold. Must have found a volunteer for their $400 compensation in return for waiting for the next flight though, as they don't reannounce the offer. Flight from Ottawa not overfull, though. Electrical connections at each seat, which is good because there were only two per departure lounge at the airport. Dinner tasteless nursery food, but wine quite drinkable.

Tuesday, October 25/2016

Visit Anna and Jeff and the little boys, who are in the process of moving into a newly built house in an endless east Winnipeg conglomeration of same, colonising the prairie for miles. Some houses already sporting green lawns, though, and trees with bundled roots lying by drives ready for instant landscaping. House full of light and still smelling new. Boys busy with toy trains on the floor. J and Ian spend considerable time installing a baby gate with obscure instructions at the bottom of the stairs, hampered somewhat by four year old Riley's removal of two bits of hardware to an upstairs bedroom.

Our last taste of pickerel for the year as Susan, somewhat unfairly as she was the only one at work today, produces a lovely fish fry.

Monday, October 24/2016

Technically it's Monday, as the train leaves at nine minutes after midnight. And it's on time - in fact early - which is nice, since VIA sees fit to provide info only for the Windsor Quebec corridor, hundreds of miles to the east of us, after business offices close for the day. Relatively easy to find the info for making claims when the train has been several hours late, an obvious admission that this happens frequently, but no method for avoiding spending said hours in the station instead of in the comfort of your one's home. Actually Patrick, who is seeing off a friend, says that, surprisingly, if you keep calling the number that professes to be for business hours only, eventually (and presumably randomly) someone may answer. 

Notice the sign on the toilet wall requesting that passengers refrain from flushing while the train is in the station. But surely raw sewage is no longer spewed on the tracks? No? Well, googling reveals that this is indeed still the case. Not only here but in The UK as well - and quite probably most of the rest of the world, to which my computer set up is less sensitive. VIA claims it would take government millions to acquire holding tanks, the British papers are full of complaints, railway workers are subjected to disgusting effluent, and the Atlanta centre for disease control insists there is no health hazard. There you have it.

The train is warm enough - not a given - and only half full, so we have the comfort of two facing double seats. Almost lying flat space as the footrests can be made to meet at seat level. 

Train in at 7 - an hour early - and we're allowed to disembark at half past, once the station staff are on duty. Ian kindly picks us up after dropping Susan at work. Our first  visit since he retired. Some advantages here, as he heats potato soup made with potatoes from Susan's garden. Very nice.