Thursday, February 12, 2009
London

I had an unusually listless kind of evening, so I’m glad I packed so much into my morning. Awoke and read my Prisoner of Azkaban for a bit, then got on with breakfast, Alternate Soaking, exercises, etc.

I don’t want to jinx anything, but if there is one thing that seems to be working really well for my feet, it is these Alternate Soaks. They are a heck of a messy form of hydrotherapy and have been doing a number on my beautiful hard wood floors. I guess it might be best to do them in the bathroom, but I watch TV as I do them, so it makes sense to do it in the living room.

At any rate, the very first time I plunge my feet into the basin of ice cold water, the shock to my system is so intense that I can feel my chest heave (and there is a medical reason for it–your heart tends to beat suddenly more rapidly to pump more blood down to your feet). The next plunge in the near-boiling water is no less traumatic. But it is these hot-cold, hot-cold contrasts that enhance the heart’s pumping capacity that sends blood rushing to the inflamed tendons and thus repairs the soft tissue and ‘cures’ the condition. I have no idea how long I will need to continue to do this, but my homeopath told me that if I continue with her medication, I shall feel better in another three weeks and I believe that if I continue these Alternate Soaks for the same length of time, I should find myself feeling much better overall. So, I am not giving up–at least not just yet.

I then sat down to transcribe my interview with Roger MacNair and this took me all of two hours. Between email correspondence and proofreading this report, time flew and before I knew it, it was time to go in for a shower and leave my flat. I had made plans to meet Rosemary for lunch close to her place of work. She suggested the Bay Leaf Cafe on Tottenham Street, just off Tottenham Court Road, next door to the Goodge Street Tube Station. In no time, I was there and Rosemary joined me in a few minutes.

The cafe is tiny (though there is more seating downstairs). It does a selection of eclectic fare from rissoles (which Rosemary ate–they are potato cakes) to a Vegetable Lasagne (which I ate–and which was fabulous!). Both our entrees came with a salad and needless to say, we were stuffed at the end of our meal.Rosemary walked back to work at 2. 45 and I took the bus from Gower Street and made my way to the Tate Britain.

My American neighbor in Bombay, Roberta Skaggs Naik, an art historian and artist herself, had mentioned to me when I visited her, a few weeks ago at her cottage in Bombay, that her favorite part of the Tate Britain was the collection of Turners. Now I wondered why I hadn’t seen them when I was there a few weeks ago. Was I blind? How come I missed them? I decided that the first chance I found a couple of hours at my disposal, I would rush there to see them.

And that’s what I did. Though it was a cloudy day, it was dry with not a raindrop on the radar. On the other two nights that I had been to the Tate, it had been coming down in buckets. Well, I found the Clore Center soon enough, but was informed by the Receptionist that most of the Turner Collection is traveling as a fund-raising effort at the moment. They are expected to return to London by April (when, fortunately, I will still be here).

The few canvasses that are on display (about thirty) spanned his life’s work as an artist, showing his full evolution from a painter who presented realistic scenes of the earth and the ocean to an artist who, influenced by French landscape painters like Claude Lorraine, began to experiment with light, brush strokes and background to create more and more abstract representations of reality. Having seen Turner’s major works at the National Gallery, I was pleased to come upon a few of the studies of his more famous paintings in this collection and I really do look forward to the day when the entire collection that was bequeathed by Turner himself to the nation will be available for my perusal.

It was still daylight when I got back on the bus and found my way home. Then, a feeling of inexplicable listlessness came over me and I felt so lazy. I simply did not want to get out of bed. Feeling guilty abut wasting time, I sat in bed and finished grading two batches of Writing assignments and then decided to get up and find myself some dinner. I also had laundry to do and these chores finally got me going again!

I made myself a dinner plate with pasta and soup with tiramisu for dessert and sat back eagerly to watch Mansfield Park that Love Films had mailed me, only to be bitterly disappointed. The DVDs they sent were not in order and while I received Parts 2, 3, 4, 5, there was no Part 1! How annoying! I decided to put the whole lot back in the mail and watched James Martin on Saturday Kitchen instead featuring Raymond Blanc whose legendary restaurant Le Manoir des Quatres Saisons in Oxfordshire is one place I would dearly love to try!

Still feeling rather listless and after another Alternate Soak, I went to bed at 9. 30 pm after losing myself in some more Prisoner of Azkaban!