Tag Archive | Paris

Departure from Kent and Michael’s 60th Birthday Party

Sunday, July 5 2009
Isle of Sheppey, Kent and London

It turned cool during the night and what a relief that was all around for the heat had indeed been rather oppressive. I awoke at 7.00 am after a very restful night and got washed and dressed and ate a bowl of Aldi’s muesli (only 2% fat, said Cherry, and, therefore, superior to Tesco’s Finest muesli) and milk and got dressed for the 9 am mass at their small shed-like church where Cherry and David are Eucharistic Ministers.

Mass with a Small Island Community:
The nice thing about the mass was that everyone seemed to know everyone else—it is a very small island community and I really did feel the sense of friendship and fellowship in the members of the congregation. Fr. Frank, the parish priest and the one for whom Cherry does part-time secretarial work, was a jolly good soul and he joked with me when he was introduced to me. I really did like him immediately. He has, what the local newspapers have described as a “scruffy” dog called Breeze and the dog follows him around so faithfully that he actually perches himself on the altar during the mass. I have to say that I am not sure I like that too much as I believe it to be rather disrespectful of the sanctity of the altar–but, of course, this is my personal opinion and the rest of the congregation does not seem to find it offensive.

The other thing I found very disturbing about the mass was the constant wailing of the kids whose parents did not have the courtesy to walk out of church with them even when the Gospel reading and the sermon were on. While I do not expect every church to have a Cry Room as we have in our parish at St. Thomas Aquinas in Fairfield, Connecticut, I do expect parents to be considerate of the congregation when their kids are badly-behaved. Of course, other than this, I found the mass very good and I particularly liked the sermon that Fr. Frank preached—which was thoughtful and humorous and very enlightening.

After Mass, we returned home for a little fresh fruit—I tasted the cherries and strawberries from Mount Ephraim Farm and a fresh nectarine, which was really sweet, and delicious and less than an hour later, we were rushing off to Sittingbourne station so that I could catch the 12.16 train and get back to London Victoria.

Off to Maida Vale for Michael’s Bash:
I intended to get straight to Maida Vale for the 60th birthday party of my new friend Michael. I arrived at Victoria in exactly one hour and found the bus stop opposite the Apollo Victoria Theater (where Wicked is still going strong). The bus (Number 16) came along in just a few minutes and off I went, arriving at Elgin Avenue in about a half hour. I found the Anderson’s beautiful ‘Garden Flat’ easily enough and by the time I reached there at 1. 50, there were already a few people including Sushil who had arrived exactly at 1. 30, he said, when the party began.

I had a really enjoyable afternoon and met some wonderful ladies—whom I dearly wish I had met earlier in my stay here in London, There was Anju and Chote and Natasha and with them I had a wonderful conversation. I also met Cecil and his partner Anne and a very nice young guy called Andrew who has promised to put me on to an Anglo-Indian MP whom he says lives just below him in Acton. I really do hope I will have a chance to meet him.

The ladies were funny and interesting and we discussed a number of things including Salman Rushdie’s novels, their varied backgrounds, the ways in which they are all connected, etc. It really was a lovely gathering and best of all, the food was superb. The seekh kebabs and the mince samosas were fabulous. I lost count of the number of small wine glasses of Pimm’s cocktails I drank and then when lunch was served, it was marvelous. That biryani is easily one of the best I have eaten and the raita was equally delicious. There was a brinjal curry and a very interesting salad with cherry tomatoes, corn, avocadoes and olives in a light mayo dressing. And for dessert, the most enormous birthday cake I have seen—a grand chocolate affair with chocolate mouse and profiteroles studded on the top served with glasses of bubbly. So very Yum!

Of course, we ate and then when I saw Sushil leaving, I thought it would be good to leave with him as that would give me a chance to catch up with him as I haven’t seen him since we traveled to Calais and back.

Watching Wimbledon Men’s Finals at Home with Jack:
So, we left at 5. 15 when the Wimbledon Men’s Single Finals were still on: people had been gathering around the TV sets to keep abreast of the match. I got home at 6. 00 pm after taking the Tube from Maida Vale station and found Jack at home in the Farringdon loft watching the last bits of the match on TV in the living room. I joined him, very grateful to see him at home and together we saw the match come to its conclusion. It was a record-breaking match as Roger Federer tried hard to break Pete Sampras’ record of 14 Grand Slam titles in his fight against Andy Roddick–and did!.

Indeed Pete Sampras was present as were such age old champions as Bjorn Borg and Rod Laver (Australia). God, that aged me somewhat as I watched those old names from my youth. I remember when Laver used to play tennis and certainly Bjorn Borg was the great heart throb of my generation! So, when Federer won, Jack was disappointed as he had been rooting for Roddick, but hey, Roddick did give Federer a run for his money and Federer is invincible as anyone would agree and I rather think that his defeat to Rafael Nadal last year was truly a fluke.
At any rate Jack and I watched the end of the ceremony, the prize distributing, the interviews with the champions, etc. before Jack left and I was able to turn to my unpacking as well as catching up with this blog and a few calls that I had to make as I was determined to talk to Chriselle to whom I haven’t spoken for nearly two weeks.

Then, it was time for me to take a shower, do my laundry and get ready for what promises to be a very busy week ahead with interviews scheduled tomorrow at West Drayton and another visit to the British Library.

It’s Deja-Vu All Over Again! An Oxonian after 22 Years!

Jun24

Wednesday, Jun 24, 2009
Oxford

For some reason, I did not sleep well at all last night—I mean not a wink! Could have been nervousness or excitement about the fact that after working at this for such a long time, I would finally be in Oxford again on attachment to St. Antony’s College where I have the position of Senior Associate Member for the summer. I had set my alarm for 6. 15 am but I don’t believe I slept for more than 2 hours. No wonder I was still bleary-eyed and dazed when I awoke at 5. 45 and decided to have a shower, get dressed, finish the last bits of my packing, eat my breakfast and leave.

Journey To Oxford:
It was 6. 45 when I left my Farringdon flat. I took the 63 bus from Farringdon to Fleet Street from where I boarded the No. 11 directly to Victoria Coach Station. I arrived there at 7. 30 am, well in time for my 8 am departure. The coach was empty but just before it left, I was joined by a lovely black lady in the very front of the upper deck where I parked myself and hoped to sleep once the bus left the city environs. Her name was Ranti and she happened to be an Oxonian too—she had read English at Magdalen graduating about 12 years ago. It was a meeting that was taking her back to Oxford and at the end of the chat we had en route, she offered me a lift to my new lodgings at Norham Road in North Oxford from St. Clements where she would be alighting. I thanked my good fortune at such a helpful encounter and tried to catch some ZZZZs as our bus ate up the miles.

My New Digs on Norham Road:
An hour later, we were alighting at St. Clement’s and Ranti’s colleague Cat arrived in her car. Less than 5 minutes later, I was ringing the old-fashioned pull bell at Norham Road and was greeted by the couple who run this lodging for international scholars who come to Oxford to teach or do research. Mrs. Longrigg showed me to my room—a darling little Sun Room on the ground floor decorated in pink—a very feminine room indeed. Sunlight flooded the space from the wide windows and I found myself looking into a room with a narrow single bed, a bureau-desk with a chair, a very comfortable sofa chair, an armoire, a chest of drawers, a small table with a TV set on it and yet another table with a microwave oven, and a tray for tea and coffee. Unbelievable how much furniture was stashed in this tiny room—and yet it all seemed to work. It was very English indeed, the feel of well-worn furniture that spelled scholarly pursuits. I like it immediately even though I thought the fact that my bathroom was one floor below in the basement was a bit odd—but then I did not share the bathroom with anyone and had it all to myself (which is a big advantage, I guess, though I am not the sort to spend oodles of time in a bathroom).

Getting on at St. Antony’s College:
As soon as I registered and paid for my stay, I left the house without even unpacking and rushed off to St. Antony’s College to meet Julie Irving who is in-charge of the SAMs. She too put me through the formalities but we ran into a snag when she needed a real passport sized photograph for my official Oxford University ID card without which I cannot use the library or computer facilities. Well, I had no choice but to get to the City Center (a good ten minute walk away) to have a picture taken at Boot’s. Only Boot’s no longer have this service so it was off to W.H. Smith and I was four quid poorer after I had my picture taken and printed.

Instead of going straight back to the college, however, I stopped at the Oxford Information Center to find out about travel arrangements for the next few days as I do wish to cover some local sights when I am not in the library or drafting my lecture. I found the assistant very helpful and I left with maps and time tables for local buses and trains as well as the tickets I had booked earlier on the phone for the two walking tours—“Inspector Morse’s Oxford” and “Pottering in Harry’s Footsteps”. With all this information under my belt, I headed back to St. Antony’s. But Julie was at lunch at the Buttery which is where I headed too for I was suddenly starving. One large plate of salad later, I felt deeply fortified. Julie had already given me my Dining Hall card, which allowed me to take meals in the College Hall, and I joined a large group of students and faculty for my first meal there.

The Museum of Natural History and the Pitt Rivers Museum:
Then, it was time to go out and explore a bit of Oxford on what was a brilliant summer’s day. Skies were a piercing blue with loads of cushiony clouds and there was just that slightest bit of a breeze stirring the leaves on the trees. Just beautiful! I recalled the last time I had traveled to Oxford in mid-December of last year when I had arrived to tour St. Anthony’s and finalize arrangements for my attachment here. How bleak it had seemed! It was dreadfully cold and rainy and the entire atmosphere was so depressing that I seriously wondered whether I would enjoy my stay in Oxford. But after just ten minutes in the city of dreaming spires, I was left in no doubt whatsoever. I am so excited to be back here again to roam the familiar streets to which I became permanently endeared in my youth that my heart is exhilarated at the prospect of spending the next few days among these beloved buildings.

The golden tone of the Cotswold stone of which these buildings are constructed glowed warmly in the afternoon haze as I found my way along Parks Road to the Oxford Museum of Natural History and the Pitt Rivers Museum—two of the museums that I was determined to see on this visit because, somewhat incredibly, I had never been to this part of the city before. It was an episode of Inspector Morse that had actually introduced me to this rather unconventional space in Oxford and since the museum was closed for a while for renovation and has just reopened, I was determined to make a visit there a priority.

What a coincidence that I saw two Museums of Natural History (one in London and one here in Oxford) pretty much on two consecutive days! This one too is an imposing Victorian edifice with columns and pillars and a turreted façade. Its vast central hall, just like the one in London, is filled with dinosaur skeletons though its most impressive exhibit is the skeleton and stuffed Dodo that I realized (ignorant me!) was actually a real bird and not a mythological creation! The Dodo really did become extinct—hence the famous comparison, “As dead as the Dodo!” Lewis Carol included the Dodo in Alice in Wonderland because he often brought Alice to this museum where they would pause at this very same showcase and comment on the strange bird!

But my real interest in coming to the Pitt Rivers Museum was to see the famed shrunken heads and these were at the back in the adjoining building (the front building, the older one, contains the dinosaurs and the Dodo). The actual Pitt Rivers Museum contains the anthropological collections of thousands of pieces of a man named Pitt Rivers who donated it to the University on condition that a building should be constructed to house it and that the curators of the museum should also be involved in teaching about the cultures represented by his collection. It is impossible for me to explain how varied and fascinating this collection is and, no doubt, it would take a whole day to inspect every object carefully. Instead I headed straight to the shrunken heads and gazed in awe at the five real human male and female heads in the showcase representing people who had been killed and whose heads were preserved by a method of shrinking that involved the removals of the skulls and the brains, the slow heating of the features by the use of hot pebbles, the sewing up of the mouth and other rather bizarre procedures that reduced the human heads to the size of small tennis balls—hence shrunken heads. Needless to say, these were the most popular items in the entire collection and these cases attracted many visitors.

When I finished perusing these cases, I returned to the Museum of Natural History to take in the Charles Darwin exhibit entitled “In His Own Words” which celebrates the second birth centenary of this renowned naturalist. There were loads of pictures, pages from the first edition of his Origin of the Species and other important publications and all sorts of memorabilia that would fill any student of science with delight. I spent about a half hour looking at this exhibit, then simply had to take a break somewhere as my lack of sleep had made me feel exhausted.

A Nap in the University Parks:
The University Parks provided the perfect spot and there under the shade of a spreading oak, I lay down on the springy grass, closed my eyes and took a 20-minute nap that was most refreshing and rejuvenating in the midst of a number of folks who were sun bathing. Then, I returned to my house on Norham Road and took a second 20-minute nap, awaking only at 5. 30 pm. to unpack. I was disappointed to discover that though connected to the wifi network, I wasn’t able to pick up my mail and I called my IT friend Tim in London to request him to help me establish a connection. However, despite working on this issue for almost an hour, we were unsuccessful and decided to wait until I can get help from the owners of this home, perhaps tomorrow.

Dinner and the First of Many Walks in Oxford:
Then, I dressed again and set out for an early dinner in St. Antony’s Dining Hall—I ate cod in a lemon sauce with a huge helping of peas and green beans—a very healthy meal indeed and when I was done, I badly needed to walk it off. And so I took the first of what I know will be long voyages of discovery on my own two feet.

This evening, I started off at Carfax, but before I arrived there, right outside the Ashmoleon Museum, I found myself dodging hundreds of youngsters in costume, all piling into coaches that were parked along St. Giles. None of the Halloween parades I have attended in New York City had anything compared to this riot of color and style in the costumes that these kids were wearing. There were monks, priests and nuns, flapper girls, all manner of animals and birds, even a bride (who turned around to reveal herself as a young man complete with moustache!). When I asked one of them what was going on, she told me that they were headed towards a party to celebrate the end of their freshman year at Oxford. The theme of the party was Heironymous Bosch’s famous painting “The Garden of Earthly Delights” which Llew and I had seen at the Prado in Madrid a few years ago. This explained the weird clothing! Suddenly, all these surreal scenes I was seeing around me made complete sense. Good Old Bosch! I asked the student where they were headed and she responded, “We really don’t know. None of us knows where we are going”. Ah, one of those Mystery Bus Tours! How marvelous! Oh to be an Oxford undergrad again to take in these end of term do’s–garnering memories that will undoubtedly last a lifetime!

I then walked down George Street to find out where the bus stops are for the trips I shall be undertaking in the next few days. Then, I continued on the same street to a part of Oxford that I had never seen before—the Railway Station as I needed timetables for a journey to Stratford-on-Avon and back. That task accomplished, I took another unknown path, past the Oxford Castle (which I saw for the very first time) and arrived at the mall shopping area (of course, all shops had closed for the day) which I do not believe existed when I was at Exeter.

I was aiming to reach Christ Church Meadow for a stroll to the banks of the River Thames (which is called the Cherwell–pronounced Chawell—in Oxford). But it was already close to 9 pm and the Meadows were due to close in five minutes. I decided that I would return earlier on another evening and instead sneaked my way into Christ Church College to hear Old Tom, (the bell in Tom Tower) toll 101 times at exactly 9. 05 pm. This was a real hoot and I recalled a scene from the film Chariots of Fire where a group of Oxford undergraduates attempt to race around the quad five time before the bell finishes tolling 101 times! I also had the opportunity to take in the magnificent fan-vaulted ceiling above the staircase that leads to the Dining Hall which is one of the finest in the city—though I know that this is probably on the Harry Potter Walking Tour as it became the model for the Dining Hall at Hogwarts, I was glad to have this opportunity to take pictures of this largest of Oxford Quads from many different angles and in rather good light, considering that it was past nine. This is, to my mind, one of the best parts of summer in England—the fact that daylight can still be discerned close to 10 pm!

Then, I decided to get back home and as I picked my way along Banbury Road, I thanked my lucky stars that I have been handed this marvelous professional opportunity to return to Oxford after 22 years—this time not as a student but as a scholar—and to walk in the footsteps of my youth. The city is gorgeous—as glorious as I can remember—and I know that the next few days are going to make me feel as if I am in Heaven!

Towers, Gallows, Churches, Markets–Another Fascinating Walk

Jun9

Tuesday, June 9, 2009
London

I am sorry to have to spend so much time analyzing the vagaries of my sleep patterns, but they never cease to amaze me. Throughout the winter, when most folks tend to sleep in, I was awaking at the crack of dawn–even before dawn had cracked, in most days, i.e. at 4 and 5 and 6 am! Now, when summer is almost upon us and light appears in the eastern night sky before 5am, I sleep curled up like a baby until 7 and 8 am!!! This is the weirdest thing and I have never in my life experienced anything like it. Much as I am delighted that I am finally sleeping long and well, I am also sorry to lose the several productive hours I had at my PC in bed long before the rest of the world stirred.

At any rate, I awoke at 7 today, read Potter for an hour, called my parents in Bombay and spent almost an hour on the phone catching up with them about so many things, then sat to blog about my day yesterday. This took me a good part of the morning and it was about 11. 30 when I got out of bed!!! Since it was too late for breakfast, I fixed myself a brunch (toasted parma ham and blue cheese sandwich with some good coffee) and got back to my PC right after that to call my cousin Blossom in Madras. That chat when on for ages, then emailing back and forth with Chriselle in the States (after a long chat with Llew in the morning–we’re all about her wedding plans right now) and I found that it was about 4 pm when I finished all the things I wanted to do–most of which involved scheduling my projects for the next few weeks.

With time running out and my return to the States becoming imminent with every passing day, I feel pressured into completing all the items on my To-Do List as well as making time for my library research and for drafting the lecture that I have been invited to give to the international graduate students at Oxford in the middle of July! So you can imagine that I am beginning to feel as if I should make every second count–as if I haven’t been doing that for the past one year already!

The end result is that I have almost given up the idea of doing the Homes and Gardens Tour that I had intended as I find that most of the places I want to visit are way out of the public transport tracks and would take me ages to reach if I used the National Express coach services. Instead, I have decided to try and see just a couple of the gardens that can be reached by local train lines from London (such as Sissinghurst and Wisley Royal Garden) and to see the estates and mansions that lie sprinkled along the Thames. When I am in Oxford, during the third week of this month, I shall find it easier to reach places in the Cotswolds and in Wiltshire and at that time, I can try to see Blenheim Palace, Kelmscott Manor and the Hidcote Manor Gardens. So major changes in plans for me mean that next week I ought to be able to spend a whole week at the British Library with documents that will aid my understanding of negotiations that were carried out between the officials of the departing British Raj and the representatives of the Anglo-Indian Association.

I am, in a way, relieved that I have modified my plans. Everyone thought I was idiotic to aim at so ambitious an itinerary and I can now see why. At any rate, with so many wonderful places to cover that are so much closer to London, it makes no sense to be spending long hours in coaches, stuck in traffic when I would rather be out on my two feet exploring the country. So with those alterations in my plans all set, I could take a shower, dress and go off to cover one more self-guided walk in my book–this one entitled “Wanderings and Wizards”.

Wanderings and Wizards Walk:
There was much more than wanderings and wizards on this walk which turned out to be a sampler of sorts for it offered everything that the city of London has been known legendarily to possess–marvelous Wren churches, spooky graveyards, teeny-tiny tucked-away gardens, dim alleyways, atmospheric pubs and even a gigantic Victorian market–Leadenhall, so-called because its roof was made of lead and glass in the 19th century.

So, let’s begin at the beginning: I started off at Tower Hill (took another old Routemaster 15 bus there–I will never tire of the thrill of riding in these relics from a past era) and arrived at the Tower Hill Underground Station from where I walked across Trinity Square Gardens to arrive at the Memorial to the members of the Merchant Marine Corps who gave up their lives for their country–and then to a far older monument–the Memorial to the many men and women who were beheaded from 1381 to 1747.

The Tower of London is right across the busy road and I could only imagine what the last minutes of these poor ill-fated individuals might have been like as they made the journey from their prison cells in the Tower to this spot. Beheadings and hangings were public spectacle in those awful days and people gathered in vast numbers to take in these gruesome scenes. It was in 1747 that the last person (80-year old Lord Lovatt) was beheaded–thank God for little mercies! The monument is a poignant reminder of the injustice that so many of them faced in their last few years (individuals such as Sir Thomas More, for instance, who died fighting for their beliefs, their faith and their ideals, as heroes not as cowards).

When one considers the circumstances in which they died, it is curious (and I do not see the humor) in a pub across the street that is named The Hung, Drawn and Quartered!–but this is British humor, I guess. This pub stands right opposite the Church of All Hallows By-The-Tower (where I attended a recent Sunday Eucharist service) from which Samuel Pepys, the famous diarist who recorded the details of the Great Fire of London of 1566, watched the city turn into a bonfire–a scene of great desolation. There is a bust to his memory in a small garden in Seething Lane opposite the church.

Just a few steps away is the churchyard of St. Olav’s with its eerie stone gate that has three skulls and crossbones adorning its pediment. Apparently, these were designed to keep body snatchers away for it was not unusual for thieves to dig up fresh bodies right after they had been buried–these were sold to hospitals that needed them for the instruction of their student doctors as part of anatomy lessons. Inside, I found St. Olav’s to be equally spooky and I took a quick tour of the place before dashing out again. Somehow, with all the ghostly tales that I am reading as part of these tours, I feel rather uneasy in spaces that have not another soul in sight. I do not want my own brush with any of London’s ghosts and spectres, if I can help it.

Past St. Olav’s, the tour took me to very narrow alleys and unlit lanes that must have been the breeding ground for thieves in the not-too-distant past. They were reminiscent of the novels of Dickens and it was only when I was back on the main thoroughfares that I felt comfortable again. Office-goers were hurrying homeward though it was only 4. 45 and I soon realized that with the newspapers reporting a strike by Tube staff starting this evening, they were eager to get home before they found themselves stranded.

I pressed on, however, arriving at the splendid entrance to Leadenhall Market, a truly magnificent piece of Victorian architecture. It is a trifle reminiscent of Borough Market and Spitalfields but its fresh coat of paint makes it seem somehow much more striking. Whether this face lift is owed to its use by Hollywood producers of the Harry Potter films or not, I do not know, but the location was the setting for the scenes in Diagon Alley and there is actually a shop front in vivid blue that was the entrance of The Leaky Cauldron pub in the film. I enjoyed pottering (if you will forgive the pun!) around the market and its many shops that appeared like cubby-holes in the wall.

Right past this antiquated building is another that stands in peculiar contrast to it–the building that houses Lloyd’s, the British insurance firm. Only its building is like an industrial factory what with its steel facade, its glass elevators that ply along the exterior and its pipes that run the length and breadth of the structure. It reminded me very much of the building that houses the Centre Georges Pompidour in Paris, the location of the city’s collection of Modern Art. As anyone who has been reading this blog regularly knows, this form of Modernism is not my cup of tea at all and I was glad to leave the premises, though I rather marvelled at its design.

That was when I arrived at a series of churches, one after the other, that stood in small patches of green studded with ancient grave stones. There was the Church of St. Peter Upon Cornhill and then the Church of St. Michael. I have, by now, seen so many churches on these walks, that I have pretty much entered and perused all of the work of Christopher Wren that exhibits his attempts to rebuild the main houses of Christian worship in the center of the city after the Great Fire.

By the time I arrived at Bank Underground Station, commuters looked deeply harried and I could see why. Trains had already stopped running and I abandoned my intentions of getting to the National Theater to try to exchange some tickets that I am currently holding. Instead I did the sensible thing and hopped into the first 25 bus I saw that got me safely back home where I spent the rest of the evening writing this blog, fixing and eating my dinner (Chicken Kiev with soup and toast with chocolate mousse for dessert), making transport inquiries online for my intended trip to Highgate and Hampstead tomorrow and reading some more Potter before I retired for the day.

Osterley Park and House–Another Adam Masterpiece!

Jun7

Sunday, June 7, 2009
Osterley Park, London

The Silence of English Rain:
It was only because I was awoken today by a series of thunderclaps that I realized how quiet really is English rain! I mean for all these months that I have lived in London and for all the dreary, drizzling, dull and dripping days I’ve dealt with, never have I ever woken to the sound of rain–unlike the din that the downpours make in Bombay or the drumming of the drops that come down in sheets outside my Connecticut windows. English rain is silent rain. You see it, you feel it, you taste it, you smell in—but you never never hear it! This fact came home to me this morning when I actually heard the thunder and realized how odd the sound felt and how long it had been since my ears had picked up those deafening decibels.

I turned over in bed, reached for Potter, read about fifty pages, then promptly turned over and fell asleep again–awaking this time about 8. 30. This left me just enough time for a fragrant shower but not time enough to linger over coffee. I fixed myself a breakfast to go (toast with raspberry jam), dressed in layers and a trifle too warmly (as we’ve had a few nippy days and I did not want to feel chilly on the Thames’ tow paths) and was off. I caught a bus from Charterhouse Street, then connected to the 8 on High Holborn, then to the 9 that got me to Hammersmith and then the 419 that took me to Richmond. See? I am becoming quite a pro at this bus route thing!

My friend John was awaiting my arrival at Richmond Station and, at my request, we checked out some of the thrift shops in the area (inspired by Mary Portas who has lent her expertise to a recent feature in Time Out in London magazine on the city’s best thrift shops). It seems the ones in the towns and villages along the Thames (Richmond, Barnes, Twickenham, Putney) are particularly good and since I was in the neighborhood–what the heck! It was worth a dekko, I thought.

Well, I was not disappointed. John knew them all. From Richmond to St. Margaret’s, the little village in which he has a very cute flat, he accompanied me like a trooper. And my sleuthing was not in vain. By the end of my foraging, I emerged with a virtually new pair of Prada shoes and two English bone china mugs that commemorated the wedding of Prince Charles with Camilla–in their original boxes! Needless to say, I got these enviable items at bargain prices but then we were too laden with my purchases and the drizzle continued intermittently.

We decided to abandon our plans to walk at leisure along the Thames; but instead crossed Richmond Bridge (I saw a lovely interpretation of it in Trevor Chamberlaine’s oil painting at the Guildhall Art Gallery recently) and took a bus to Osterley. Our aim was to tour the National Trust-run property that was designed by Robert Adam called Osterley Park and House.

Visiting Osterley Park and House:
Once we alighted from the bus, we had about a ten minute walk to the gate of the property, after which we had to walk another ten minutes to get to the entrance of the house. Once past the gate, the visitor soaks in the wide expansive property on both sides of the driveway–property in which cattle grazed placidly or chewed the cud for the weather kept changing every ten minutes and by the time we reached Adam’s imposing Neo-Classical portico, past the beautiful artificial lake, every raindrop had dried and the sun shone warmly upon us.

We released our coats and brollies and jackets to the safe keeping of the staff at the front door and launched on our discovery of the premises. The best thing we could have asked for was the audio wand that comes free with admission (normally 8. 50 pounds though it was free for me as I am a National Trust member) for this proved to be extraordinarily useful as we flitted from room to room.

But, first things first. Modern-day visitors (i.e. We) do not enter the house by Adam’s intended main door. We use a far more modest side entrance. Why this is so is beyond my comprehension. If the Trust wishes visitors to achieve as exact an idea as possible of what it might have been like to be invited as a guest of the family in the 18th century, they ought to have permitted us the holistic experience! Nevertheless, the entrance was impressive as we were carried up a wide staircase and on to the first floor landing from where we saw a superb ceiling medallion done by none other than Peter Paul Reubens in the early 1700s. Now the original was removed for safe keeping in the early 20th century (during World War II), rolled up and placed in a warehouse on the Channel Island of Jersey–which promptly caught fire so that Reuben’s original work was destroyed. What adorns the ceiling of Osterley House today is a reproduction but it carries none of the subtlety of Reubens’ coloring (as anyone who has seen the ceiling of the Banqueting House at Whitehall would tell immediately).

Be that as it may, the audio wand told us the story of the inhabitants of this house at this stage in the tour. The house was built by James Child in the 18th century to a design by Robert Adam who was recognized as the greatest architect of his era specializing in the creation of the English country estate. Child had inherited his fortune from his ancestors who were Directors of the East India Company and had made their money a century previously trading in tea, cotton, silks, spices and, yes–it must be said–slaves! In 1763, he married a woman named Sarah who gave him one child, a daughter named Sarah Anne. The family lived for at least 30 years in Osterley Park at the time when most of the interior decoration was undertaken by Adam.

The tour wound us through the exquisite taste and grandeur of Adam’s aesthetic. If you have seen Syon House (or any one of the other stately homes for which he is responsible–see my blog on my visit to Syon House written last October), you will see a uniformity in his designs–his use, for instance, of symmetrically formal arrangements inspired by classical motifs in the Palladian style–such as urns and pilasters, columns and Greek key designs on moldings, the lavish use of white plaster of Paris embellishments contrasted against the matt backdrop of what has come to be called Wedgwood blue, green, teal and puce (because it was in the same era that Josiah Wedgwood was imitating the classicism of plaster of Paris interior decoration on his ‘Jasperware’ pottery in his factory in Stoke-on-Trent in the Midlands).

Apart from this, Adam’s most striking signature feature, there are paintings galore in the house, executed directly on ceilings or as panels on the walls of each room or as framed canvasses then used to decorate them. Collections of fine European and English porcelain, marquetry work on furniture. impressive sideboards and other occasional seating pieces (a Robert Adam-designed bed is the most stunning centerpiece in the master bedroom) and other accoutrements make up the bulk of the house. Special mention must be made of the Tapestry Room whose walls are lined by Tapestries whose four center medallions are woven interpretations of a series of paintings by Francois Boucher called The Seasons. This work is so finely executed that were the visitor not informed that it was tapestry on the wall, he would well have believed he was looking at paintings. These tapestries were made in France by the famous Gobelin factory and they must be among the most valuable things in the place. Downstairs, visitors walked through enormous kitchens in which prodigious amounts of food were cooked and conveyed by a stealthy series of staircases and concealed doors for the gastronomic pleasure of the family and their privileged guests. Overall, not too bad an ancestral pile at all!

The audio guides were superb in pointing attention to each of the features of the rooms as well as providing a wealth of historical, artistic and architectural information to further enhance enjoyment of the visual feast. What came home to me on this visit was that the Neo-Classical architect needed to combine the genius of three varied disciplines in the execution of his work: as builder, engineer and artist. Indeed, all these elements combined to make this one of the most enjoyable tours of a country estate that I have ever taken. Though Osterley lacks the ostentation of, say, Vanbrugh’s Castle Howard near York, it is a magnificent building and one that I was very glad John accompanied me in visiting.

Tea in the Stables:
Our visit had rendered us ravenous and we were glad that sustenance awaited not too far away–in the picturesque Tea Rooms that extended out into the Tea Garden–a brick-walled enclosed garden with wrought iron furniture and green canvas umbrellas. We settled down to cups of steaming Darjeeling and a cheese scone and how welcome was that treat! Truly, if it was the East (China and India) that bestowed the habit of tea-drinking upon the English, it was they who gave to the rest of the world that charming meal called Tea-time. I often wish it were not the issue of the tea tax that had led to the loss of the thirteen North American colonies. It was probably out of defiance that the American colonists rejected the delightful customs of tea-time–which explains why we do not pause for tea at 4 o clock in America while the people of every former British colony everywhere else in the world do!!! Or maybe Anna, the Duchess of Bedford, who is credited with having started the delightful custom of tea-drinking by surreptitiously calling for the drink with a snack in her boudoir had not yet initiated her habit by the time the colonists dumped that shipload of tea in Boston Harbor!

A quick look at a film in the former stables and a browse around the shop and it was already 5 pm and the park was closing down for the day. John and I walked past the lovely lake, took some pictures together to commemorate our visit and then were walking along the rural pastures that had made agriculture such a lucrative pursuit for the 18th century aristocracy–it was not for nothing that they were called the landed gentry! If you could only see the endless acres stretching all the way to the horizon that surround this house! It wasn’t long before we said our goodbyes, parted at the bus-stop and went our separate ways.

I have begun to master the routes to Charterhouse Street and in an hour and a half, I was home. I had almost an hour-long conversation with Llew on the phone before I stopped to eat my dinner (a rather light one of chicken noodle soup and toast with chocolate praline ice-cream for dessert) as that scone still stood me in good stead.

It was soon time to write this blog, get ready for bed and go to sleep, my appetite entirely whetted for the feast of country estates and gardens that await me on my proposed tour.

Seeing Samantha Bond in Stoppard’s Arcadia and Liberty of London

Jun6

Saturday, June 6, 2009
London

In keeping with my resolution to always get substantial work done before I goof off, I awoke at 7. 30 am, read some Potter, proofread my blog, caught up with my email, then stopped for a spot of breakfast–make that a whole cup of coffee and some toast with preserves. I am trying to finish up all the odds and ends of food stuff left over from my pantry supplies as I do not want to take any of it back to the States. And time is flying…

Then, it was back to the drawing board for me as I began transcribing an interview I did with Gerry in Wembley. This neighborhood is quiet, quieter than Holborn, if that is at all possible. While Holborn did carry the occasional screech of tyres up to my third floor window even on weekend mornings, I do not hear a squeal here at all–the better to get my work done.

It was while I was hammering away at my PC that the email came–offering me free tickets to see Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia. This is a play I had toyed with the idea of seeing for a while–not only do I think Stoppard is quite the most brilliant living playwright in England (I speak here with knowledge of The Real Thing, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and, of course, his unforgettable Oscar Award-winning screenplay for Shakespeare in Love)–but the play stars Samantha Bond whose performance in Distant Shores I had loved when I saw her play the very feisty wife of a physician (played by Peter Davison) on a PBS channel in the States. So, when the offer of free tickets fell into my lap, I grabbed it. A few calls on my cell phone and I found company–my buddy Rosemary agreed to drop all her scheduled cleaning chores to go with me (I didn’t have to do too much arm-twisting!) and we decided to meet at the Duke of York Theater at 2. 15 pm. This gave me enough time to have a relaxed shower, get back to my transcription, dress, and leave the house at 1. 15 pm to pick up tickets outside Covent Garden at 1. 45 pm.

I have yet to figure out which bus stops are closest to my new roost, which routes they serve and how to make connections–but I am sure all that will be sorted soon. What I did find when I set out was that the entire Smithfield Market area was barricaded. Apparently, there were to be some major bicycle races there in the evening. I did find an odd Number 11 stop by (all buses were re-routed) and hopped off at Covent Garden and, against all my expectations, made it there on time to pick up the tickets.

London is just crawling with tourists right now and the attractions are buzzing with buskers. It is difficult to cut through the crowds and though, at most times, I do enjoy the travel energy associated with these folks (God knows I have enough of it myself!), I have to say it was annoying this afternoon.

However, I did pick up the tickets and a hearty ham and mustard sandwich from M&S Simply Food which I munched en route to the Theater on St. Martin’s Lane which kept the hunger pangs at bay.

Rosemary was waiting for me in the lobby. It wasn’t long before we found our seats and chinwagged until the curtain went up. She had bought a program while awaiting my arrival and I was glad she did. Not only did it have an extraordinary amount of information on the actors, but it was full of notes about the history of landscaping in England as the play is themed around the changing fashions in English garden design from the classical to the naturalism of Lancelot (Capability) Brown to the Picturesque style that followed. Hannah, in the play, speaks of Brown who was influenced by Claude Lorraine (French landscape painter) who was, in turn, influenced by Virgil (Italian medieval poet). She says:

“English landscape was invented by gardeners imitating foreign painters who were evoking classical authors. The whole thing was brought home in the luggage from the Grand Tour”.

These have to be among the most striking lines in the play and a perfect example of Stoppard’s erudition–and this is only one example. . Of course, those of us who have kept up with the trends beyond the 19th century know that in the 20th, English garden design continued to evolve with Gertrude Jekyll and Edwin Lutyens collaborating to create the concept of Garden Rooms–a venture in which they were joined by the redoubtable Vita Sackville-West who presented us with her famous White Garden at Sissinghurst.

I know I digress when I say that perhaps it was fitting that I should see this play the very weekend I am beginning to make plans for a week-long tour of the Grand Country Estates and Gardens of England. This is another one of the items on my List of Things To-Do before leaving England and since June is possibly the best month to visit English gardens, I can think of no reason to waste any more time. Besides, my friend Loulou in whose fabulous loft I am currently staying, was just telling me only a few days ago that she has to get her garden ready for a local garden club that is about to visit her estate garden in Suffolk. For she is a dedicated gardener and if her home (whose en suite spare room I am currently occupying while she spends most of her week in Suffolk) is anything to go by, her garden must be ethereal! I can’t wait to take her up on her offer to visit her there and see it for myself. By comparison, I am sure that my Connecticut garden, a tour of which is on my website, must seem like a blooming traffic island!

So there was I familiarising myself with the vocabulary of English landscape design from ‘hermitages’ and ‘hahas’ to ‘gazebos’ and ‘wilderness’ as much as I grappled with the more esoteric aspects of the script that derive from mathematics about which, I have to admit, an abiding ignorance–one of the characters deals with chaos theory and utilizes it to help figure out the grouse population on the estate. Infused into this rather abundant pastiche of allusions are those from literature–from Lord Byron (who is central to the plot) and Lady Caroline Lamb, to Mrs. Radcliff and Robert Southey–so that the creative arts constantly intersect the sciences. Newton is thrown in for good measure as are Euclid and Fermat and Carnot. Stoppard is nothing if not intellectual, so go prepared for a cerebral roller coaster ride in the theater.

After you have stopped gasping at the verbal and conceptual pyrotechnics of this play, you will have a chance to be swept away by the engaging performances especially of Bernard Nightingale (played very energetically by Neil Pearson whom we have all seen in the Bridget Jones films among other things) and Bond herself (who brings to this role the same mixture of sensuality and physicality I had grown to love in Distant Shores). The set design lends itself perfectly to the juxtaposition of two different eras (the early Romantic Age and our own early 21st) and the comings and goings of historic and more contemporary characters who waltz around each other literally and figuratively on the stage. Prepare to be enchanted.

Inside Liberty of London:
When the play was over, we went our separate ways. Having equipped myself with a map and bus guide, I found my way to Liberty of London which is on Great Marlborough Street just off Regent Street but closer to the Oxford Circus (not the Piccadilly) end. And what a building it turned out to be! Just charming! I mean, I had seen pictures of this store and was prepared for a Tudor building. But how cleverly the space inside has been employed. It is simply stunning. I have yet to read up a bit about the history of the building. Is it a genuine Tudor building? Or a Victorian masquerade made in imitation of the Tudor idiom? God knows…and I will find out, I know, soon enough from the garrulous Web. But for the moment, I have to say I was delighted I stepped in.

It really is a London institution and I cannot for the life of me explain why I haven’t been in here before! Why is it that I have always visited Harrods? Why is Selfridges always on my list of stores to sample? Well, better late than never—so I guess I can say Been There, Done That to Liberty to London and tick another item off my List. Needless to say, everything was screamingly pricey, but then what did I expect if not sticker-shock? And this is perhaps the very first store in which I have ever browsed where every possible precaution has been taken against those endowed with sticky fingers. I mean as if the CCTV thing (such a fixture in London) were inadequate, there are locks and long telephone coil-like extensions attached to all the big label items! Watch out Winona!

Nor did I walk out empty handed. Indeed I was presented with some pretty nice samples–Dr. Perricone’s skin care products for face and eye area–the deep penetrating night creams, said to work wonders in two weeks. I’ve seen the good doctor peddle his wares on the box in the States but never have I seen his range in a department store. Well, try them I will. Hopefully something lovely will come out of my gallivanting into Liberty!

I had half a mind to undertake one of my walking tours in the St. Paul’s Cathedral area but then it had turned nippy and I wasn’t adequately dressed (nor did I have the right walking shoes on) for a gad about the graveyards of the East End. I decided to get home instead and finish transcribing my interview as I have another full day ahead of me tomorrow (a Thames-side visit to Osterley House and Park), so I figured I’d better conserve my stamina for the hike that lies ahead.

The area around Smithfield Market had been transformed. Crowds had gathered to cheer the cyclists on and provided me with the opportunity to take a few pictures as the competitors warmed up. I do not believe that this sports meet has a name yet, but the commentator kept raving about the fact that it is becoming more popular each year and poised to take its place soon as one of the capital’s most exciting events. Well, if that ever happens, I will be able to say that I caught the races while the event was still in its infancy. For I did stand around and take it all in and then I continued to stay abreast of what was going on as the commentary floated up to my loft home while I ate my dinner.

Yes, indeed, back home, I ate an early dinner (chicken noodle soup out of a packet and pasta with Chocolate mousse out of a pot) and I returned to my room to continue my transcription. When it was all done, I stopped to brush and floss my teeth, get ready for bed and write this blog.

I’d say it was rather a productive Saturday, wouldn’t you?

June 8, 2009:
PS: Did have a chance to read up a bit about the history of Liberty of London and this is what I have found out (Courtesy of The English Home magazine):
Liberty of London was founded by Arthur Lasenby Liberty in 1875. “The creation of a recognisable look for the shop was always a conscious aim of its founder and his most shrewd move was the building of a Tudor shop, which was completed in 1924. This addition meant that the building itself became the shop’s trademark and a symbol of its founding values”.

I would also agree with writer Harriet Paige who says, in the same magazine, that:
” And it is perhaps the buildings themselves–Liberty’s timber-frame structure, Fortnum and Mason’s eccentric time-piece and Harrod’s Edwardian frontage–that has ensured Britain’s great department stores have become true London landmarks”.

I mean, I think this is absolutely true. Other than Macy’s which does have an iconic building all its own on an individual block at 34th Street and Sixth Avenue, none of the New York department stores stand out in any way in terms of their buildings. Each one looks exactly like the other–there is no character, no individuality, indeed no imagination whatsoever that has gone into their making. This is what, I suppose, has always made England so enthralling to me and the States…well, so blah!

Museum of London (2) and Selfridges is A Hundred!

Jun4

Thursday, June 4, 2009
London

I took forever to fall asleep last night. And then, when I did get to sleep, I awoke within an hour and then took forever to fall back to sleep again! In frustration, I switched on my bedside lamp and turned to Harry for company. Read about 50 pages before I did finally fall asleep at 2. 30 am and awoke at 7.00 feeling really fatigued. Sitting in bed, as I usually do, I began to work and realized it was 8. 30 when I heard sounds outside my bedroom door–which announced to me that the cleaning lady, Minda, had arrived to start her weekly chores. Just when I was getting accustomed to rattling around on my own in this spacious loft, I had company and how comforting it felt.

Of course, just as I had been warned about her arrival, she had been told about my presence. And she could not stop chatting with me as I ate my cereal breakfast. She was so excited that I was from the States because she has traveled there extensively herself and has several relatives in Michigan. She is a lovely friendly Filipina and she instructed me very thoroughly on the garbage disposal system in this building and the precautions I must take if I am using the washer-dryer in the laundry room. I was very grateful indeed, both for her company and her concern for me.

Then, I got back to my room and worked steadily for about three hours. I finished transcribing the interviews I did with the Walters and after I had proofread them, I felt hunger pangs beckoning me towards the kitchen once again. I made myself a toasted ham and goat cheese sandwich which I ate while watching TV–this gave Minda more of a chance to chat with me and ask me if I knew her former employers from Sharon, Connecticut!–which I didn’t.

I showered quickly to allow her to go ahead and clean my bathroom and at 2. 30, she left, having spent 6 whole hours cleaning this penthouse. I decided to go out and enjoy the day which was a bit more nippy than the hot days we’ve had recently.

More of the Museum of London:
I set out first for the Museum of London with the idea of finishing up the bit on the Fire of London that I hadn’t yet done. I arrived there rather quickly, taking two buses, and discovered that in just 15 minutes time, a Highlights Tour of the Roman Gallery would be starting. I decided to join it and in the company of a docent called Lynne, I spent the next 45 minutes seeing again the items I had seen two days ago.

Lynne was very good indeed. In the manner in which she spoke–the clear enunciation, the turn of phrase, the wacky sense of humor, the accent–she reminded me so much of my former neighbor Tim! It was amazing! Of course, she knew a great deal about the gallery and she explained things very clearly; but to my enormous shame, I who had grabbed hold of a portable stool so that I could rest my feet in-between items, found myself dozing away during her commentary! Clearly lack of sleep was taking its toll on me and I resolved to get to bed early tonight. I was glad I received another review of the Roman Galleries and I have to say that I came away from this museum realizing how deeply influenced London is by Roman occupation. In fact, the modern city of London sits on top of 20 feet of “rubbish”, i.e. garbage that was left over by the Romans initially and all the other people that made the city home over the centuries.
The Fire of London exhibit was not half as exciting as I thought it would be, though I have to say that I was deeply excited to discover that the home currently occupied by my friends Cynthia and Bishop Michael Colclough at 2 Amen Court is featured in the Museum as one of the blocks of houses rebuilt after the Great Fire between 1671 and 1675! I wonder if my friends know that information about their house is actually in a museum with a picture of their front door! I must make sure I convey this fact to them!

St. Bride’s Church on Fleet Street:
I was done by 5.30 pm and out the door soon after. Since I was in the right vicinity, I decided to finish up a self-guided tour from my Frommer Book 24 Self-Guided Tours of London entitled ‘Monks and Bodysnatchers’. I had covered almost the entire route over which this tour travels (on one evening when I had decided to explore Charterhouse Square and Smithfield on my own). It was only the latter part of the tour that I hadn’t traversed and this took me through Giltspur Street to the golden statue of the ‘Fat Boy’ on the corner of Cock Street. It is significant that I was looking at this statue today–the day I had spent studying the various aspects of the Great Fire of London of 1566–as the statue was put up to represent the dangers of gluttony. For the fire had started in Pudding Lane and had ended, five days later, in Pie Lane! It was felt that it was the gluttonous ways of Londoners that had brought the wraught of God down upon them and caused them to suffer so abominably! This statue was later moved from Pie Lane to its present location.

Then, I was walking towards the end of the road to enter The Viaduct Tavern at the end of the street and the intersection with the Old Bailey. I was instructed to enter the pub and examine its interior decoration which was rather striking. The pub was already full of white-collared workers having their first pints of the evening and I had to elbow my way to get through to the three paintings of classical women representing Agriculture, Banking and the Arts. The decoration on the walls was ornate and featured fat cherubs gazing down upon the carousers. My book also informed me that this is the most haunted pub in all of London–oh dear! Knowing this fact, I will not be seen hanging around this place after dark–that’s for sure.

Then, I was crossing Fleet Street and entering St. Bride’s Avenue where I suddenly came upon the beautiful tiered ‘wedding cake’ spire of the church that was another one of Christopher Wren’s masterpieces! In fact, this spire inspired the design of the traditional wedding cakes! It is not just this fact but so many other historical tidbits that make it special: the parents of Virginia Dare, the first English colonist to be born on American colonial soil in Virginia, were married in this church. The famous 18th century novelist Samuel Richardson (author of Clarissa) is buried in its church yard. Dickens worshipped here as did Dr. Samuel Johnson (whose home is not too far away). In the Crypt of the church, which was discovered after the Blitz destroyed a part of it, an intact Roman pavement was discovered deep beneath the foundation. Perhaps, most importantly, since this church is a landmark on Fleet Street, once the stronghold of the newspaper publishing industry in Great Britain, it is the Journalists and Publishers’ Church and many prominent members of the Fourth Estate have been associated with it. For all of these reasons, this church is special indeed.

I was, therefore, very pleased when I discovered that it was open and could be visited. Naturally, I went inside and made my three special wishes, and had a chance to examine the interior elements. Like most Wren churches, it has a rather plain and austere look with the slightest embellishment in the form of gilded plaster ornaments on the ceiling. There are two rather interesting plaster of Paris figures of a girl and boy that once stood over a school that was situated close to the church. These figures, I have now come to recognize, as traditional fixtures of 18th century schools and foundling homes of London–there are a couple of them on the first floor of a former foundling home in the East Side as well as in nearby Hatton Garden.

Since, it was only 7.oo pm and still so bright–it now stays bright till almost 9.00 pm, a sure sign that summer is almost upon us in case the blooming roses are not indication enough–I decided that I would go out and cover another item on my List of Things To-Do: Visit Liberty of London Department Store, which, if you can believe it, I have never visited before! So I hopped into a bus that was headed towards Oxford Street and just sat in traffic forever around Trafalgar Square. Again, sleep washed over me and I dozed off for a few minutes right there in the front seats on the upper deck!

A Bargain at Selfridges:
When I found that I had not carried my map with me and had no clear idea where Liberty was, I decided instead to hop off at Oxford Street and do something else on my To-Do List: “A Visit to Selfridges during its centenary celebrations”. Yes. Selfridges proudly announces the fact that it opened its doors in 1909 and since this is the year of its hundred year celebrations, there are specially packaged items all over the store–chocolates, tea, cupcakes, biscuits, etc. I browsed around in the Food Hall and enjoyed some free samples of chocolates at Artisan du Chocolat (which were delicious!).

Further browsing took me to a section devoted to condiments and there I spied a tiny ceramic dish containing the very English condiment called Patum Peperium aka The Gentleman’s Relish! Now I have heard of this thing for years but have never ever tasted it. I believe it is some kind of fish paste or spread made of anchovies which I actually find rather tasty though a lot of people have an aversion to them. This concoction once came in white ceramic signature pots that have become collector’s items today and are sold at incredible prices in antiques’ stores. Apparently, they no longer make the white pots because the spread is available at Selfridges today in black ceramic pots. However, the tinier white ones that I spied where much more fancy–they featured Edwardian golfers out on the links and Victorian riders at a fair. I picked a small pot of the former design which was, somewhat unbelievably priced at 2. 99 pounds! The small plastic pots that sat right at their side sold for 1. 99 pounds. Naturally, I went for the ceramic pot and took it to the register to pay for it. It was at that stage that the store realized that they had mispriced the item. However, they gave me the benefit of the marked price and I ended up paying 2. 99 pounds for something that ought to have cost me 8.00 pounds! Not only was I glad about spying something that is a keeper–an old-fashioned ceramic box that I can use to store trinkets, but I walked away with it at a bargain!

Discovering St. James’ Church, Clerkenwell:
It was time to get back on the bus and get home, but not before I made a slight detour when I got off at St. John Street. I decided to try and find out the name of the church whose white spire I can see from my new bedroom window. I had walked by this church and its yard before on one of my walks but I could not remember its name and I figured that I might as well try to get to Sunday service there if I can while I am living in it shadow! Well, it turned out to be the Church of St. James’, Clerkenwell. The streets leading up to it and all around it were just spilling over with wine bar clientele with loosened ties fuelling up for the evening ahead. Indeed, they were so numerous that I thought for a minute it was Friday night!

Then, I walked briskly back home and discovered a nicer, shorter route to my building through the street that I see straight out of my window–Britton Street. Within minutes, I was upstairs, changing, then serving myself a plate of pasta with prawns and peppers that I had thawed from out the freezer and eating chocolate and praline ice-cream for dessert and then catching up on my email of which there was a stack, mostly from Chriselle. While I was in the middle of dinner, my friend Ian called me from the States and we had a chat as we hadn’t spoken for ages. He is a regular reader of this blog and he is astounded by how much I have managed to cover. He says he is afraid that when I return home to Southport, Connecticut, I might find it “so dead”.

Though I told myself that I would go to bed early tonight, it was midnight when I switched my bedside lamp off and went to bed.

Moving on Pentecost Day! Goodbye Holborn, Hello Farringdon!

Jun1

Sunday, May 31, 2009
London

I awoke on the last morning of my stay in my cozy flat at High Holborn at 6 am. I guess you could say that at the very end, I was sleeping almost the whole night through and for that I am grateful. I did check my email and I continued drafting my monthly newsletter to my friends around the world, then checked the website of the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Field as I had never been there before for a service. I figured that Pentecost Sunday would be a good time to get there and listen to the choir of a great church.

Only, I did not bargain for the fact that because the church sits at Trafalgar Square right in front of Gerard Street and the heart of London’s Chinatown, it has a huge percentage of Chinese parishioners and the service was, therefore, bi-lingual—in English and Mandarin Chinese. This, of course, made it very interesting but it also made it very long. In fact, it went on for almost two hours! There was an English priest and a Chinese one and they alternated as co-celebrants. What was particularly interesting was that the readings were done in fragmented fashion by a number of folks representing different nations and in different tongues. This was especially significant as Pentecost, which represents the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles after the death of Christ, bestowed upon them the gift of tongues. This allowed them to travel far away from the Holy Land (some as far as India as St. Thomas did) taking the message of Christ with them and spreading Christianity.

The preacher, the Vicar of the Church, whose name I did not catch, was, as all Anglican preachers are, simply compelling. The quality of these sermons astonish me, Sunday after Sunday, and given that he included detailed references to Mohsin Hamid’s novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist with some very interesting interpretations, I found it very absorbing indeed.
The light at the end of the lengthy tunnel was that the entire congregation was invited to attend a Bring-And-Share Lunch in the Crypt after the service. And because the congregation was so diverse, there was a variety of foods on the table—from three kinds of Chinese noodles to sausage rolls and cold ham. Indeed it was all quite fascinating.

A couple of people came up to speak to me and welcomed me into their midst—one of them happened to be a Malaysian named John who informed me that he had been a member of the congregation for the past 30 years. Another lady told me that she was originally from Cape Town, South Africa, and had spent about 40 years in England. She had recently retired and wished to return to South Africa but she was disappointed by the lack of racial harmony in her country and the terrible corruption, she said. An Indian woman, who informed me that her father was a Sikh and her mother a Christian, also came up to chat with me.

Of course, I need say nothing about the fabulous interior of the Church that is a London landmark, what with its strategic position on one of the country’s most-visited sites. The lavish plasterwork on the ceiling is just stunning, embellished here and there with touches of gilding. There is a huge royal Crest in the center featuring the lion and the unicorn that I have seen all over this country—in churches, palaces and all sorts of venues associated with the royal family. I had once sat upstairs in one of the pew boxes during a fusion concert that featured Middle Eastern, Indian and Western music in the compositions of Talvin Singh. This time, seated down, in the midst of the congregation, I had a very different perspective of the church and I thought it was quite arresting indeed.

Finally Finishing The Order of the Phoenix:
Despite the fact that it was moving day for me, the bulk of my packing had been done and I could not resist joining the throngs of people who had gathered on this extraordinarily bright and beautiful day to enjoy the outdoors. Since I was so struck by the Victoria Embankment Gardens in spring when the tulips and primroses had filled the green oasis with color, I decided to take a look at it again. I had carried The Order of the Phoenix with me and I thought that the gardens would make a great place to finally finish the book—I had about 30 pages left and I wanted to return it to Barbara who had lent it to me before I left the building in the evening.

My thorough knowledge of the geography of London now allows me to find my way to my desired destination in the shortest possible time and with the least amount of walking. I have to say that I myself marvel at this ability as London is not laid out in a grid like New York and there are no numbers to guide you to a venue—you need to have a very good map or a very good instinct for direction.

In less than ten minutes, I was entering the gardens and, expecting to see loads of blooming flower beds, was in for a huge disappointment. All the spring flowers had gone and the beds had been dug up, in time, perhaps, for a new round of planting. At any rate, they looked bare and devoid of any floral interest whatsoever. Not willing to be dissuaded from my goal of finishing the book, I found a shaded bench and spent the next one hour turning the pages and people-watching (and unconsciously eavesdropping) at the same time. A pair of elderly ladies joined me on my bench and twice I entered into their conversation as I could not help overhearing them and both times I had the answer to their questions.

“What is that thing called?” said one of them pointing in the distance. “I always forget it’s name”.
The other shrugged. She did not know and she not care.

“That’s the London Eye”, I said. Though they thanked me warmly, I wondered if it was impolite of me to have butted into their private conversation. In the States, I wouldn’t think twice about doing this; but in the UK, where everyone is so reserved, such an intrusion on my part might well be considered rude and I am not yet fully familiar with the social protocol governing casual chatter with strangers.

A few minutes later, the sharper woman stopped a member of the cleaning crew to ask, “What is the name of those flowers there?” –pointing to a flower bed.

“I don’t know”, replied the man. “You will have to ask the gardener there”.

“Those are hydrangeas”, I said.

“Oh thank-you”, they said again, then proceeded to ignore me for the rest of the time I sat there! Again, I am certain that such a thing would never have happened in the States where this exchange would have been the start of a long and interesting conversation about mutual interests, such as, in this case, gardening!

Back to Pack at Home:
I stopped for a few minutes to gaze at the Thames before I walked back home to begin the final stages of my packing. It stunned me that no matter how many hours I devoted to the job, it seemed never ending. Finally, it was all done and I was able to await the arrival of my elves—Rosemary, my friend, arrived with her car, from Battersea and a little later, Chriselle’s friend, Rahul, joined us too. We began loading my boxes (about eight of them in all plus 3 large suitcases and a bureau—how on earth did I accumulate so much stuff???) at about 7 .45 pm but we were not done until after 10 pm because though I am only moving about a ten minute walk away from my current place, the one-ways and the barriers erected between buildings made the journey convoluted and cumbersome. Still, I have to say that my friends were a pair of workhorses as we loaded all my stuff into the car and then into my new digs and carried the bureau like a pair of stalwart movers! Between the three of us, we got the entire job done and then we got out in search of dinner, but not before the pair of them expressed their awe at the place into which I have moved.

Moving into my New Digs:
Indeed, my new digs have to be seen to be believed. From a tiny one-bedroomer, I have entered a sprawling loft-like apartment whose “living room”, as Rahul put is, “is larger than a football field”. My own room is cozier though and has a lovely, very spiffy attached bath. The place is tastefully furnished, crammed with medieval sculpture and modern abstract art (Andy Warhol and Maggi Hambling among a host of contemporary artists), Polynesian carvings and a whole whale vertebrae. It is a very classy place overall and I know that I will enjoy finding my way around it as I rattle around on my ownsome.

Because it was almost 10. 30 and none of us had eaten, I decided to take them out somewhere for dinner but Carluccio’s where we went first, at Smithfield Market, was closed for the evening and at Rahul’s suggestion, we drove far off towards Old Street, close to where he lives, to the heart of Vietnamese London where we finally settled down in a restaurant and ate steaming bowl of Pho, the noodle based soup. My Hot and Spicy Prawn Pho was just that—hot and spicy! Rosemary sniffed her way through her Chicken Pho while Rahul had beef with bamboo shoots and mushrooms. It was late, really late, when I returned to the flat, feeling a bit uneasy about the strangeness of my surroundings and the vast size of the rooms.

With so much unpacking to do the next morning, I decided to call it a night but not before I had a long chat with Llew on the phone. Since we hadn’t talked all day and he wanted to know how my move went, it was a long call, so that it was after midnight when I finally switched off my bedside light and hoped for a good night’s sleep.

Packing & Posting, An Organ Recital and the Bank of England Museum

May26

Tuesday, May 26, 2009
London

Life returned to legal London this morning as Holborn sprang up like a phoenix from the ashes of the long holiday weekend. As folks rushed in and out of the Tube stairwell to the closest coffee shop or their electronic offices, I continued reading The Order of the Phoenix, then went to my kitchen to do some cooking. I pulled out all the items from my freezer and the vegetables I bought last evening, and concocted two pasta dishes: with Ham, Asparagus and Peas and with Peppers, Mushrooms, Tomatoes and Prawns. With the addition of my home made chicken stock and single cream, they both turned out rather well. I filled them into my Tupperware containers in small lots (the better to freeze them with) and then turned to the serious business of getting packed.

I spent simply ages on the phone trying in vain to find out how my vintage desk could most economically be shipped to the States. I had very little success as both Fedex and UPS informed me that they simply do not have boxes large enough to accommodate my bureau. While they are willing to pick up from my residence, they needed me to do the packing.

Finally, at the advice of Matt, the dealer who sold me the desk in Hampstead, I zeroed in on Hedley Humpers, a company that specializes in shipping antiques around the world. They gave me a quote that hit the roof but they will deliver right to my doorstep in Connecticut, they will create a special wooden crate made to measure for my bureau-desk and they will take care of the packing so that I need not worry at all about breakage. It seemed like a good deal and I have to now figure out how to get the bureau to their warehouse in Acton as that will save me a hundred quid!

Martha arrived on duty this morning and brought me a load of boxes in different sizes. With Arben’s help, I was able to figure out the exact dimensions of my purchase. In the midst of the growing load of boxes that are rapidly filling with my books, I rushed off at 12. 15 to take the bus to the Church of St. Lawrence Jewry, near the Guildhall for one of their 1.00 pm Tuesday afternoon organ concerts.

St. Lawrence, Jewry, Church:
It didn’t take me long to get there at all. A quick canter from the bus stop to the Church got me inside a magnificent Anglican Church that has been around on this spot since the 1100s. Named for the martyr who was tortured over an iron grill, the second part of the Church’s name derives from the fact that it is located in a part of London that was once the heart of the Jewish ghetto (that is before all Jews were driven out of the city by Edward I).

The church was destroyed completely during the Great Fire of London in 1666 when Christopher Wren redesigned it. Worship continued in the church until the mid-1940s when it was, once again, almost entirely gutted by the blitz. Reconstruction using Wren’s original plans then began but the church no longer functions as a parish. Instead it is a guild church of the Corporation of London and there is a special seat in the very front reserved for the exclusive use of the Lord Mayor of London. Go for it Boris!

A large number of people had already taken their seats and awaited the beginning of the recital. I had the time to inspect the more significant details of the church such as its sparkling ceiling with elaborate gilded plasterwork, the splendid carved oak screen (the work and design originally being undertake by Grindling Gibbons, of course), the reredos with its smallish painting and the marble baptismal font at the back that dates from the 1540s. The spanking new stained glass windows (made in the 1950s) feature a number of saints from the Christian pantheon while at the back, there is a very evocative window that memorializes the work of Wren and Gibbons. The pews are also quite wonderfully carved and I was very pleased to find an opportunity to see the interior of this church as the concerts are the only occasions on which it is opened to the public.

The Organ Recital:
A large number of London churches hold free lunch-time concert recitals and they are a very good way by which to get into these historical venues. At the Church of St. Lawrence Jewry, the concerts are named in memory of one John Hill who played this church organ at all services while spending 40 years of his life as a banker at HSBC. Following his death, the bank offered sponsorshop for these recitals which bring young international organists to London as Hill was always keen to introduce new talent to the public. The concerts held on Tuesdays in May and June have attracted a large number of organ enthusiasts and sitting right behind me was Steven Green, Group Chairman of HSBC Holdings.

Mareile Schmidt was the featured organist today. She was a tall, very slender woman with a lovely smile. She currently teaches music in Koln, Germany, and it was with a heavy but very charming German accent that she introduced her program–ingeniously it was themed around the Biblical line: “And the Spirit of God moved on the surface of the Waters”. Hence, all her pieces had water connection. She chose compositions by Handel and Bach and lesser-known composers such as Louis Vierne, Jeanne Demessieux and Olivier Messiaen whose atonal work was very reminiscent of the compositions of Phillip Glass–not surprisingly, he is a Modernist.

The concert lasted 45 minutes and was a very enjoyable experience for me as this is the first time ever I have attended an organ recital. Apart from hearing the instrument played in church during servcies, I have never heard it played purely for listening pleasure and I have to say it was a lot of fun.

When it ended, I had a chance to inspect the interior features of the church and its architecture and then made my way out towards the Guildhall Art Gallery which lies in the same complex. Only I discovered that though I thought I lived within the old ‘City of London’, my taxes are paid to Camden–and, as such, I wasn’t allowed free entry. The clerk told me to return on Fridays when entry is free to all.

The Bank of England Museum:
Since I was so close to the Bank of England, I decided it would be a good time to take a look at its museum–besides, I had always wanted to set foot inside the bank. Only, I made a funny discovery! The building that I had long thought was the Bank of England building wasn’t so it all–it was the Royal Exchange Building now filled with luxury stores such as Loro Piana (who sell beautiful cashmere stoles, Hermes whose silk scarves I covet and, as I found out for the first time, Jo Malone whose cosmetics and fragrances are my passion!). I had to spend some time browsing through this marvelous space before I crossed the street.

Sir John Soanes’ Bank of England building lies catty corner to the Neo-Classical grandeur of the Royal Exchange Building on her own little island. I haver to say that it looks more like a fortress than a bank–which I guess is what it is when you consider all the gold bullion stashed in the vault way down in the bowels of the earth beneath the bank’s foundation.

I found the entrance to the museum easily enough, discovered that it was free, and then spent the next couple of hours wrapped up in the process of learning all about the history of banking in England. It was in 1694, for instance, that the Bank of England came into existence through the goldsmiths, who had, until that time, made extensive loans to merchants and the Crown. You can see them in their black top hats and cloaks looking for all the world like a bunch of Flemish aristocrats, in the many early paintings in the museum–this is not surprisingly as it was among the Dutch that banking first originated. These goldsmith’s notes, originally receipts for coin deposits, circulated freely as a form of paper money (because they carried the words “or bearer” on them meaning that they could be passed on from one person to the next). This is why paper money is also referred to as a “note”! These indeed became the forerunners of the banknotes we use today. I found this early information fascinating.

As I walked through the history of the bank, I found out about the sorting and destroying of soiled or defaced notes (something I once did personally in the Cash Department of the Reserve Bank of India in Bombay where I had worked while pursuing graduate studies). I saw the powdery remains of destroyed notes–grey-green confetti–in a glass case. I saw an early chest, dating from 1700, a forerunner of the modern-day bank vault. I saw the Bank’s silver and, perhaps most fascinatingly of all, I saw a bar of gold bullion weighing 13 kilograms (which, I discovered is 2 stone–so now I finally know that 1 stone is 7 kilograms or 14 dd pounds. The English still funnily enough weigh themselves in stone and I have always wodnered what to make of this measure of weight!). It was so heavy that I barely managed to lift it up. Yes, you could actually handle this gold bar–imagine how awed kids must feel in this space!

I understood what is meant by the Gold Standard which was adopted in Great Britain in 1816. It formally linked the value of a pound sterling to a fixed quantity of gold and a new coin, called the sovereign (because it featrued the head of the monarch on it) was circulated the following year. This gold standard played a key role in international trade throughout the 19th century and was finally abandoned in 1931.

Of course, a lover of literature and literary history like myself will usually find some gem in every museum that most takes her fancy and the Bank of England’s Museum was no exception. I made the startling discovery here that Kenneth Grahame who started his career in the bank as a humble junior clerk made his way up the ladder and in 20 years (at the age of 39) became its Secretary. It was while he worked in the bank (just like T.S. Eliot worked in a bank while writing poetry!) that he wrote his books, the most famous of which is, The Wind in the Willows, one of my most beloved of story books as a child. There is a whole section devoted to Grahame which includes a signed first edition of the book (Llew would have loved that) as well as correspondence between him and key figures of the bank. It was with some sadness that I learned that he resigned rather suddenly (his letter of resignation is on display) and though he cited failing health and nerves as the reason for his decision to do so, the real reason was that he was bullied by one of the bank’s Directors, one Walter Cunliff whose full sized portrait in oil hangs on a wall in the lovely Rotunda, perhaps Soanes’ best interior feature in the building with its beautiful caryatids (sculpted Greek goddesses) that encircle it.

I also realized that there is so much similarity in the bureaucratic hierarchy of the Bank of England and the Reserve Bank of India. The head of both banks, for instance, is known as the Governor, and both boast a Board of Directors–they are called Executive Directors in India. Again, I suppose this should not have surprisied me considering that we inherited a system of banking from the British together with those of jurisprudence and education, post and telegraphs, railways, customs and excise, army and police.

A cartoon explains where and how the bank received her nickname–The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street. It came from a cartoon that appeared in a contemporary newspaper that satirized William Pitt The Younger’s liberal war-time spending that requried him to dig deeper and deeper into the pockets of an ageing old lady. The cartoon is on display in the museum together with life size caricatures of Pitt and his arch opponent Charles Fox who debated with him endlessly in the House of Commons on the sagacity of the incurring of so much national debt.

There are scores and scores of bank notes and coins in ther museum, each set portraying the heads of the monarchs under whom they were minted. In the adjoining shop, you can purchase sets of coins (they make valued christening gifts) and all sorts of items connected with banking, including a lovely set of old fashioned nib pens that I loved. The place was crawling with kids who found something or the other to catch their fancy and there were so many excited exclamations all around me as I surveyed the exhibits. It is truly an interesting place to visit and I would strongly urge anyone even remotely associated with banking to visit this museum. Many thanks to the anonymous reader of this blog who drew my attention to this museum and recommended that I visit it. I am very grateful indeed.

Packing and Posting Nightmares:
Then, I was back home, worrying about all the packing I had to do and books I had to ship out. On impusle,I decided to go down to the Post Office which is just six shops away from the entrance of my buuilding, with one of my 5 kg. boxes to find out how much it would cost me to mail it to the States using their Special Rate for books and printed paper. The line at this Post Office is always long and it took me about fifteen minutes to get to the counter, when I discovered, to my utter horror, that it would cost me 45 pounds per box! Can you imagine? I doubled checked with the clerk that it was the Special Rate she was quoting and when she said yes, I beat a hasty retreat out of there thinking that I really ought to be far mroe choosey about which books I will mail–especially if I want to have enough of my shipping alloowance leftover to mail the desk I bought.

Well, I returned home when it occured to me that perhaps there is a better rate for sea mail (or what is called Surface mail in this coutnry). I tried to find the information online through the Royal Mail website but did not succeed, so back I went to the Post Office, I stood in the queue for another 15 mintues and discovered, from the same clerk, that there is such a thing as Priority Mail which will allow me to ship a maximum of 30 kgs of books and printed material for 168 pounds in one lot. That makes it a little cheaper and I decided to go for that. I will now have to reopen my boxes and become far more judicious about which books I will take back with me and which ones I will leave behind.

Surveying my New Digs:
I merely had the time for a shower before I had to set off again, this time to keep my appointment with Jack who was going to hand over the keys to me of the new place into which I will be moving at the weekend. He was waiting for me outside the gate and we spent the next hour in the flat as I learned the ropes–which keys go where, how kitchen applicances worked, how to turn the boiler on and off, how to work the remote controls on the TV and the DVD player and the blinds, how to log on to the wireless internet (did not succeed there as I need to make some adjustment on my computer which baffled both of us). I think I have all the information now under my hat and much as I am sorry to leave this cozy little one-bedroom flat, I am excited to be moving into a penthouse that is filled with modern art and medieval antiquities. Indeed, there is a Maggi Hambling oil painting right above my bed–a rather strange portrait of someone surrounded by a cloud of smoke that emanates from his own cigarette!!! The canvas is three-dimensional–there is a pack of cigarettes attached to it with the legend Smokers Die Younger very prominently displayed on it. I became acquainted with the work of Maggi Hambling at the National Portrait Gallery where her self-portrait, done in her funky signature style, presents her with a signature cigarette dangling from her fingers. This space is Huge, my apartment being the only flat on the entire floor, and I can’t imagine myself rattling around on my own in it. But, like everything else, I suppose I will get accustomed to it slowly.

Back home, I felt really tired again (I am certain these are withdrawal symptoms) as I have rarely felt depleted of energy. I ate my pasta dinner, sent out a few urgent email responses, then got into bed and went straight to sleep.

Bloomsbury on Jubilee Walk (Part 6) and Dinner with Friends

May25

Monday, May 25, 2009
London

Holborn was lifeless as May Bank Holiday Monday dawned. I stayed in bed for a long while catching up with The Order of the Phoenix as I am determined to finish it by the end of this month. The trouble with books that weigh a ton, as the later Potter books do, is that they are not mobile–I simply don’t want to carry them around with me anywhere–which means I only read them at home by my bedside. This is why it is taking me forever to finish this one. My blog and my email kept me busy for the next hour and it was only much later, which Holborn continued to remain stubbornly silent, that I ate my cereal breakfast while watching the last bits of The Breakfast Show.

Needless to say, I finally had to get down to the sad task of beginning my packing. I felt oddly lethargic–a clear sign that Withdrawal Symptoms are beginning to manifest themselves at the thought that I will have to leave from her at the end of this week. It was with deep reluctance that I packed up all the clothes I do not believe I will need for the next two months and put them into one of my suitcases. I probably will not need to open this one at all. With my wardrobe pruned down to the barest minimum, my clooset now looks very empty indeed.

Packing up my kitchen things was a lot more challenging. Checking my freezer to find out how best to clear it up, I discovered two lots of plain cooked wholewheat pasta and I realized that I will need to shop for some ingredients so that I can cook them tomorrow and take some cooked food off with me to my new place which I can then place in the freezer there, I hope. I am also emptying out my fridge…so but for milk and my preserves, there is not much else left in there.

I badly need boxes to clear up the rest of my stuff–stationary items, my costume jewelery, loads and loads of paper (how DO we accumulate so much of that stuff?) and a few books that I will need for the months of June and July. Martha and Arben are off today, so I must catch them tomorrow as Martha has promised me some boxes. I am weighing all my books and files as I place them in the boxes I do have with me as the guy at Royal Mail informed me that there is a special rate for books and printed material packed in boxes that are no longer than 60 cms, no more than 90 cms overall and that weigh no more than 5 kgs each (I am making mental conversions all the time as my America digital bathroom weighing scale is marked in pounds and ounces!).

After lunch (pasta with vegetables and a cup of soup–still trying to finish supplies in my pantry), I decided to read some more Potter and felt more lethargic. Before I knew it, my eyes had closed and I was taking a nap–something I haven’t done in ALL these months! (more Withdrawal Symptoms, I guess). Luckily, I awoke within the hour and decided to go out and continue my Jubilee Walk Adventures–Part 6 of them.

Jubilee Walk Adventures–Part 6:
This bit took me through my own backyard, so to speak, as I began at next-door Brownlow Street which, I discovered is no wider than an alley and into a most delightful street called Bedford Row. This one is lined on both sides with typical London Georgian terraced housing and on this delightful spring afternoon, with the flowers from the tress that line it having shed their white petals all along the footpaths, it looked absolutely heavenly. There was a spring in my step as I pranced along and made another discovery–Bedford Street ended on the Theobalds Road side just opposite my friend Sushil’s building–and I would be seeing him in the evening! So, in other works, I found another way to get to his place instead of walking along Gray’s Inn Road. I just love it when I make these sudden discoveries!

I pressed along Great James Street and arrived at a Blue Plaque that announced the residence of detective story writer Dorothy Sayers whose mysteries starring her creations Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, I have enjoyed a great deal on DVD through my Westport Public Library. Sayers had an extraordinary life for a woman of her time and her personal life was fraught with the keeping of a secret–a terrible one in those days (the early 20th century)–of the hiding away of her illegitimate son. Though she did go on to marry, she never openly acknowledged the existence of her biological son (her only child) though she did have a close correspondence with him and made him the sole beneficiary of her estate in her will.

Born to a clergyman father at Christ Church College, Oxford, and to a mother who was rather advanced in years when Dorothy was born, meant that while she was able to study modern languages at Oxford and graduated with an MA (becoming one of the first women to receive the degree through Somerville College), she was also terrified of what her personal scandal would do to them. They died never knowing that she had given them a grand child! Her child was, for all intents and purposes, given up for adoption, his true parentage never made known to her closest family members. It is astounding to me that while carrying this enormous burden she was such a prolific writer and produced some of the earliest womens’ detective fiction of our time. To be able to stand on the very street on which Sayers spent so many creative years of her life and to know that she was married at the Holborn Civil Court just a few meters away (because her husband was a divorcee with two children and, therefore, could not marry in church) was oddly inspring to me and I discovered even more bounce in my step as I continued the walk.

How amazed I was to discover that I had actually walked parallel to Gray’s Inn Road all the while and was soon at the huge red brick facade of St. Pancras Station on Euston Road! And there just a few steps ahead was the British Library. Of course, everything was closed today, but there were much activity on the streets as I spied so many other visitors taking self-guided walks–the various books and maps they have in their hands and the manner in which they gaze up in wonder at buildings to take in architectural details always give them away!

Back through the maze of tree-shaded streets I went, arriving at lovely squares and flower-filled gardens such as Cartwright Gardens and Argyle Square and then I was passing by the Coram Fields Foundling Home Gardens (which adults can only enter in the company of child!–a lovely reversal of regulations) and then Brunswick Square and Gardens where so many folks lay sprawling on the grass taking late-afternoon naps or propping themsevles against tree trunks to read. I thought I really ought to be doing that too–making the most of this glorious spring sunshine by whiling away some time in the city’s gardens reading. I will never stop admiring the ingeniousness of the architectural concepts that led to the creation of these marvelous Georgian squares and gardens that pepper the city of London so liberally and give it such a distinct ambience. The only American city I know that comes close to this in structure and development is Savannah, Georgia, where architect James Orglethorpe created a city in which stately homes and gardens were built to surround a number of squares that allowed more greenery to flourish.

Before arriving at St. Pancras Station, I had passed by a really massive church–the Parish Church of St. Pancras–that has Egyptian caryatids as part of its exterior design , exactly like the ones to be found on the Erectheium near the Parthenon on the Acropolis in Athens. I discovered that Sunday Communion Services are held at this church at 10 am and I shall try to make every attempt to attend a service here sometime.

It was not long before I was leaving Euston Road behind me to walk down Gordon Square where I passed building after building belonging to the University of London (and which reminded me so much of the vast number of New York University buildings that have taken over Greenwich Village in Manhattan) and arrived at the other end where I found the most beautiful honey-toned Gothic Church. However, I could not find its entrance so I do not know its name. But curiosity did get the better of me and I promised myself I shall look it up on the net. Set in a quiet and very pretty square called Byng Square, I had begun to suspect that this church was in the vicinity that Virginia Woolf and other members of the Bloomsbury Group had once called home. In fact, the name Gordon Square began to ring a bell in my mind and I became determined to explore the houses set around the typical green lawn surrounded by wrought iron railings where I spied it: a dark brown plaque at No. 50 that announced that it was in this home and in the srruounding houses that the members of the Bloomsbury Group had lived in the early part of the 20th century. In fact, just besides this house, on the right was a Blue Plaque announcing the residence of Lytton Stratchey (I do love the film Carrington in which his asexual relationship with the artist Dora Carrington, played by Emma Thompson, is beautifully retold) and on the left hand side is a Blue Plaue announcing the residence of economist John Maynard Keynes. Even if I were to live in London for a decade, I would not tire of these facts upon which I stumble so suddenly as I take my walks through the richness of its literary history.

Then, I was skirting the Woborn Gardens directly behind the Birkbeck College building in which I held my afternoon classes all through the year. Cutting through the back of SOAS and the British Museum, I then decided to end my walk and get back home, past the large Sainsbury at Holborn from where I bought fresh vegetables and some cream for the pasta I will fix tomorrow.

Dinner with Sushil and his friends:
And then I was home, getting into the shower and dressed for my evening rendez-vous with some new friends that my friend Sushil had organized. He had sent me an email while I was in Lyon inviting me to dinner at Ciao Bella Restaurant on Lamb’s Conduit Street after drinks at his place at 6.30 pm. So off I went, walking through the Bedford Street shortcut I discovered this morning.

At Sushil’s place, I met Owen who happened to be an Anglo-Indian and a very worthy subject for my research inquiry. Owen lives in Kent and had driven a long way to join us. Just a few minutes later, along came Mike and Nirmala and over red wine, I got to know them a little bit. Owen and Mike were classmates of Sushil at Cathedral and John Connon School in Bombay and, therefore, went back a long long way, They were actually contemporaries of Salman Rushdie and remembered him well during their junior school years at Cathedral. Nirmala’s late brother was Rushdie’s batchmate as was the brother of yet another person I met later at the restaurant, Cecil, who is a physician in Ealing. Cecil arrived with his English wife Ann and we made a very jolly party at the restaurant as I learned more and more about my new friends.

Over shared appetizers (bruschetta and a wonderfully tender Italian salami) and wine and Perroni beer, we made our entree choices: Having had pasta at home at lunch, I kept the carbs off and ordered a Saltimboca which is one of my favorite Italian dishes–escalopes of veal served with pancetta and sage in a mushroom sauce. It was absolutely scrumptious and I finished every large piece on my plate–it was served with the most perfectly done roast potatoes (nobody can do roast potatoes like the English) and mixed vegetables and made a very hearty meal indeed. Little wonder that no one had room for ‘pudding’!

I was kept most amused and entertained throughout my meal by Mike who sat besides me and told me stories about his early life in Bobmay where he had lived until the age of 18, his English parents having found work with a British company called Ferguson’s. He kept lapsing into idiomatic Indian-English so easily and used words as part of his conversation that only an Indian raised in India would understand and appreciate. For instance, he cracked me up when he referred to a man in an Bombay club who arrived there each evening to be surroudned by “his chamchas”. To hear this term emerge from the mouth of a white Englishman sitting right there besides me in an Italian restaurant in London was so hilarious that I couldn’t stop laughing. It became very clear to me then that you can take the Boy out of Bombay but you cannot take Bombay out of the Boy!

We talked a bit about what Owen described as my own “schizophrenic life” over the last 20 years–living in the West with one toe in India. He asked me how I possibly managed it. There was some discussion when I announced that mentally and psychologically I don’t believe that I have ever really left India at all! My connections with the land of my birth are still so strong because of the work I do there, my areas of research interest, my frequent travels to the sub-continent and the strong ties I have continued to maintain with a host of folks–extended family members and friends–out there. While several of them marveled at this fact, they did acknowlegde what I have come to realize–that for most Indian immigrants to the UK, despite the fact that the two countries (India and England) are so much closer to each other (than India and the US) and air fares so much cheaper, immigration to Great Britain meant a virtual cutting off of ties, a complete burning of bridges, as it were. This is something I cannot even begin to conceive of and I recalled Rushdie who has spoken repeated in his essays and to me in person about the strong pull he always feels towards India, no matter where it is in the world that he chooses to make his home.

We returned to Sushil’s place in a gentle drizzle after our excellent meal. It was just a couple of blocks away and over more red wine, we chatted until well past midnight when Owen gave me a ride back home. Bank Holiday Monday had turned out to be perfectly wonderful for me and as I return to more work and chores tomorrow, I hope to start the week on a productive note by doing some cooking first thing tomorrow morning,

Sunday Service at the Church of St. Bartholomew the Less

May24

Sunday, May 24, 2009
London

On a day that led to a crick in my neck from the hours I spent at my laptop, I only set out in the morning to get to Church spending the rest of the day catching up with my blog and French travelogue. A breakfast of skimmed milk and Waitrose cereal with berries got me started and from then on, I was basically handcuffed to my computer.

Checking John Betjeman’s City of London Churches, I found out that the Church of St. Bartholomew the Less had a service at 11 am and that was the one I decided to attend. I have visited this church before on one of my self-guided walks, so it was its proximity to home that made my decision for me–I did not want to venture far away on this rather busy day nor did I have a bus pass that would allow me to take a long ride somewhere.

At 10. 45, I left my flat and walked briskly on what turned out to be a rather warm morning towards the Church. I arrived just as service was about to begin and found myself in a rather small but very sweet church which had just 10 people in its congregation. The vicar, one Ben, was waiting at the front to start conducting the service with the assistance of a female priest. I was warmly welcomed by a very attractive lady (whom I later learned was called Rosemarie) who pressed a service sheet and hymnal into my hand.

Every church service is different but this was most unusual in that the congregation remains seated throughout. Being new, I took my cues from those around me. The interior had been newly painted and the gilded decoration on the ceiling seemed spanking new. This contrasted quite vividly with the old monuments on the wall.

The Church of St. Bartholomew the Less is located in the grounds of the great Hospital of St. Bartholomew that surrounds it and serves as its parish. Was it because it was a holiday weekend that so few people had made it to church? Or is this customary, I wondered, as service began with a hymn. The organ at the side of the church was played at hymn time by a lady who seemed to have trouble reading the music. Few people sang and responses were barely audible. Unlike the rather grand churches I have been visiting for the past several months, this one seemed very subdued indeed.

After Communion, we were invited to coffee at the back of the church. I had a chance to chat with the Vicar. People have always been very welcoming at theses churches and I am repeatedly struck by their warmth. I understand now why the best way to make friends when you are a stranger in a community in England is to make a beeline for the local church–someone or the other will befriend you there and before you know it, you will have worked your way into the community.

At coffee, I met a number of rather interesting people such as the young man who called himself Nicholas and then proceeded to tell me that he was a fellow academic who taught English as a Foreign Language to foreign Law students at Queen Mary College of the University of London. He also turned out to be a history buff and a great lover of art and next thing I knew he was recommending all sort of places that I could go and see–such as the Thames Barrier (which I had been planning to visit) and the Main Hall of the adjoining hospital building which has a large painted roof by William Hogarth. One of my self-guided walks will be taking me to Chiswick where Hogarth’s House is on the route; but I figured it would be best to start off by taking a look at this painted roof.

It turns out that Hogarth once used to live in the neighborhood and worshiped at this church. He donated his work in the Main Hall, not charging a penny for his pains. I later found out that though the Hall is not open to the public, a hospital volunteer such as Rosemarie could get me in with her badge. We exchanged telephone numbers and have made tentative plans to visit it together on Wednesday–an outing to which I am very much looking forward.

Nicholas’ Dad, who was also present, is also a Tube buff and we spent a while talking about the Hogarth collection in the John Soanes Museum–his series entitled The Rake’s Progress is quite the most interesting collection in that fascinating space. Nicholas told me the story about Soanes’ sons who made fun of him through an anonymous article they wrote in a contemporary newspaper. When Soanes found out that it was his sons who had written so derogatorily about him, he disowned them, passing on his entire collection of architectural fragments to the City of London instead of disbursing his wealth among his sons. Good job he did that–this museum is one of the most amazing I have ever seen (and what’s more, you get double value for money as you actually walk through the rooms of Soanes’ own home and get to see how the moneyed gentry lived in the Victorian Age–which, for me, at least is a matter of undying interest). Soanes, by the way, was the architect of the Bank of England whose museum has also been recommended to me by a reader of this blog–and which I hope to get to really soon.

Of course, all this conversation occured over coffee and a chocolate biscuit–how very civilized! Before I left, another member of the congregation who happened to be from New Zealand, suggested that I visit the Church of St. Cuthbert’s in the Barbican. This was the church in which John Milton, the poet, was married. I promised to look it up on the internet. I have also passed by it on the Jubilee Walk and I was curious about it–except that it was closed and I could not peek into it at the time. I know where I shall be going next Sunday for church service! What a great time I am having seeing these churches and talking to the local parishioners.

Back home, I returned to my PC and worked steadily all day at my writing. It was about 9 pm when I had everything I wanted to remember about my travels in France and my impressions of the Chelsea Flower Show uploaded on to my blog. Time for a relaxing shower, a bit of dinner, some TV (I really enjoyed a show called Coast on the Blighty channel which took us to the east coast of Yorkshire to such beach resorts as Scarborough and Whitby–places which I have not visited but have heard James Herriot rave about in the book he wrote about the attractions of Yorkshire). It was great to learn about Whitby Jet–a kind of shale that is harvested from the hidden caves and grottoes by the water and which has been made into jewelry since the age of Victoria when she took to wearing it after the death of her beloved Albert. This led to a huge demand for the jewelry–who said it was Diana who set trends first? It seems the avid public has always allowed its fashion tastes to be dictated by royalty!

It was after midnight when I finally fell asleep with that annoying crick in my neck–a result, I am told, of stress!

I am sorry that this will be my very last week in this flat. I have adored my time here in Holborn and every second of this coming week will be precious to me as I have a heightened consciousness of the fact that I will probably never again have this incredible experience of having a London flat all to myself right in the very heart of the city. I am now determined to spend the coming week living completely in the moment savoring every second so that I can call them all to mind when I am far away and whenever I wish to think happy thoughts.

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