Monday, May 8/2023

 Bird sitting on a glass screen at terminal 2. One of many flights at Heathrow today.

Winnipeg via Montreal. Last blog of the season. To be continued some time in October.

Sunday, May 7/2023

 

Well, yesterday was the coronation and J and Doug celebrated by solving the problems of the world in the sitting room, where the view on the world included a garden where we see a fox who has a den underneath the shed.

Today is the last of the other half of our life, so time to pack up for the last time until fall. No more things to pack going home than coming, really, so about the same difficulty fitting it all in Chinese puzzle style. Now should be the time for the list of all the things to remember to do or include next year. Or past the time. List should better have been taped to the inside of one of our suitcases for the duration.

Beautiful day. Warm and sunny. The second of three long weekends in the UK this month. And as always we hate to leave, as we regret leaving every place we stay. So many beautiful places and only one lifetime. And this particular studio, both in design and location, has been the best of the places we’ve stayed in London. We may be back.

Saturday, May 6/2023

 Photo obviously not mine. Credit this time to Belfast Telegraph. And more than pleased that someone other than ourselves did all the work of recording the occasion. Rain on and off and those who headed to the route of the royal coach will have spent a good deal of time standing and waiting for a glimpse of the coach and their majesties through the drizzle. 

Whereas we enjoyed the company of Doug and Jenny in the comfort of their home, along with a big screen tv, good quality sound and a bottle of champagne. And the music and pageantry was a pleasure. Well, both of us always appreciative of good liturgy.

Doug and I with memories of watching the last coronation. (Jenny slightly too young to remember and J having lived in a place with no television broadcasting at the time).  Our memories remarkably similar - no tv at home but being taken to watch a small black and white set at the home of an aunt and uncle, along with half their neighbours. 

Jenny has made a lovely fish pie for lunch, and Emma and her family come over after - the girls far more interested in their own pursuits than in royal ceremony. 

Train to Wimbledon and then tube the rest of the way home. A little over an hour but successfully avoiding central London. Small amount of tension as we wonder whether we still have enough money on our oyster [travel] cards. Yes, it turns out when we touch out. But mine is down to £1.35. Potential fine for travelling on the tube without an adequate ticket £80. Brinksmanship but no drama this time.

And, re drama, there is the problem of over zealous policing re anti royalist protests. Well, return to normal levels of indignation tomorrow.

Friday, May 5/2023

 

Have no intention of heading to the city centre in order to photograph royalist fans camped out to secure a place to watch the coronation procession, but fortunately a BBC cameraman - amongst others - has done this for me. Apparently Sharon Osbourne (as in Ozzie) is there as well as many others, some of whom arrived days ago. 

Unlike many - in part down to age, of course - I remember watching the last coronation nearly seventy years ago. Not in London but in Canada at my uncle’s house. (He had a tv and we didn’t). It was quite a feat for the infant CBC television network. As CBC recalls:

“CBC Television had been on the air for less than nine months in Montreal and Toronto when the coronation took place, and covering it was the network’s greatest challenge to date…the CBC made recordings of the BBC broadcast, processed the film using an accelerated method and put them on RAF bombers to Goose Bay. The films were then flown by RCAF jets to Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa, which had started that very day”

Point of national pride being that Canadian tv was able to show the ceremony half an hour before the American networks.

And tomorrow? Visiting friends. TV large screen and in colour this time.

Thursday, May 4/2023

 Central London amazingly crowded today. Or perhaps not so amazing considering that the first coronation in seventy years is taking place in two days. Would actually never have deliberately planned to be in London at the same time, but our airline tickets booked before HM chose a date, so here we are.

Arranged to meet Jenny for lunch before a theatre matinee performance she was attending at Victoria Palace Theatre. Assumed walking from Westminster to Victoria Station faster than taking the tube for one stop. Wildly over optimistic. Call Jenny to say we’ll be with her in five minutes. We aren’t. London full of tourists standing stock still open mouthed. Barricades up along the roads all the way to Victoria Station. Heavy police presence - actually preventing us crossing a side street as someone of importance driven up Victoria. Impossible even to overtake other pedestrians on the narrowed pavements.

Positive buzz downtown but many complaints in the press about cameras for facial recognition in the crowds as well as the possibility of arresting people who « may » be planning disruptive protests. [Short version, but long version not much more edifying]. Apparently 27,000 police officers will be deployed.

Eventually meet up. Abandon planned venue, and have a very nice chat and lunch in a virtually empty pub across the road from Victoria Coach Station, of all places. Lovely quiet corner for catch up chat. As we’re having a drink J spots two plainclothes  policemen frisking a young man. Process non-violent and indeed the suspect? victim? seems fairly cheerful. Everything pretty low key and not at all rushed (half an hour?).Enough to make one reflect on what the 27,000 will be doing with their paid time - or overtime. J notes that while the undercover cops are wearing worn clothes designed not to call attention, their trainers are new and they have identical square black cases.

Difficult week for Jenny as her mother died two weeks ago and she’s had all the sad tasks to do including arrangements for the funeral, which will be on Tuesday. She says this is her day off and is meeting friends to see Hamilton.

Wednesday, May 3/2023

 Walk over to Kilburn High Road via Belsize Road (and, incidentally past Abbey Road of other fame). Have spent a lot of time along Kilburn High Road in the past and needed to renew acquaintance. Not a great deal of coronation excitement here. There are changes but not all that many. Look in a charity shop and spot a backpack. Good material and the right size, just as I’m about to give up on trying to wrestle both suitcase and carry on. Meets J’s design criteria - always, rightly, more demanding than mine. So, proud possessor of same - we’ll see how it goes.

Passing Roses Restaurant, the place we’ve most consistently eaten in London. A wave from a man seated in the window, who emerges smiling broadly. It’s the Turkish proprietor, who recognises us after more than three years as loyal, if intermittent, customers. 

It’s been a tough three years, especially at the beginning. Eventually the government helped but it was difficult as he tried to look after his employees, a couple of whom he took into his household. And difficult in Turkey as well. He’s been back since the earthquake, which killed his mother and other family members. Kleftiko? He hasn’t made it for a long time. Come tomorrow and he will make it for us. (It is, arguably, the best we’ve had). Tomorrow won’t work for us, but it is now mid-afternoon, place half empty, fairly good social distancing, door open and good ventilation….We stop for fish and chips - though actually when the girl tells us apologetically that there is only one portion of cod, I switch mine to salmon. Both meals so enormous we can’t finish, though J manages all but the last of the chips - fish too good to leave.

Tuesday, May 2/2023

 Schoolboy humour pretty similar everywhere. J waits for me outside the supermarket  on a bench adorned with a wet paint notice hand written on paper clearly torn from a school notebook. 

Supermarkets themselves encouragingly full, although can well believe that this is not the case everywhere in the country. Plenty of fruit and veg at Sainsbury's, but no plastic bags to collect the produce in. Not accidental shortage but part of commendable policy to reduce use of plastics. In theory accompanied by reusable produce bags made from recycled bottles, but none in evidence. Can envisage half a dozen out of control onions loose on the scanner at the inevitable self serve checkout, but young man stocking shelves quietly hands over two plastic bags while saying that he’s really not supposed to. Pleased to note that selve serve checkouts not yet possessed of superhuman artificial intelligence. Human employee still required to confirm that we are of full legal age and are permitted to purchase the wine in our basket.

Coronation mugs and glasses as well as drinks like prosecco much in evidence in display aisle but not seeming to attract a great deal of interest. 

Monday, May 1/2023

 Our Finchley Road home for the week. Interestingly, not only is it familiar territory, as we’ve often stayed in Belsize Park, but the building itself is one I’ve looked at in the past, thinking it would be a good place to live. So here we are. Our flat not overlooking Finchley Road, though. We're on the other side, with a view looking out over West Hampstead. Much quieter as well.

Though there is an interesting sound. We’re about half way between Swiss Cottage station and Finchley Road station on the Jubilee line. Swiss Cottage is on the east side of Finchley Road and Finchley Road station is on the west, with the line passing beneath the road as it heads northwest. More or less underneath our flat, signalling its presence with the faintest of rumbles.