London is all A-Buzz!

Friday, July 23, 2010
London

Amy and I raced off to Thetford where our friends Cynthia and Michael were meeting us. We arrived almost on time and I continued with the Colcloughs on their onward journey by car to London. The time just flew as we caught up on our lives.

By the time we reached London it was 1. 00 pm (time for a quickly rustled up lunch of toast and scrambled eggs). I was shown up to my room in a--get this--Christopher Wren home. The master architect designed this new block of terraced housing in 1670 right after the Great Fire of London in 1666. The rooms are huge and the interiors, beautifully detailed--marble fireplaces, ornamental plasterwork on the ceiling, tall sash windows, wide sweeping staircases, grand landings, a full apartment on the third floor reached by a separate servants' staircase--in other words, a home after my own heart! Who would ever have thought that one day I'd be living in a Christopher Wren home? How's that for having a dream come true? How do I know the history of this home? Because last year when I was in the Geffrye Museum, this block of housing was featured in it as one of London's earliest examples of post-fire grandeur. Gone was the timber that had gone up in flames. Brick and stone would be the new idiom of the New London. And Wren got it right--after all these years...no centuries, it is holding up splendidly, though Cynthia apologized to me about the aged plumbing and the need to have the bathrooms modernized--which should happen right after my departure. I, on the other hand, found everything fascinatingly old-world.

I drew the curtains in my room and guess what? I discovered that my windows overlook the great big dome of the Old Bailey. The Goddess of Justice holds her weighing scales in her hands in superb gilded splendour! And every hour and half hour, I hear the tolling bells of St. Paul's Cathedral reminding me that Tempus Fugit! Dreams, dreams, dreams, do come true....

The Colcoughs have made me very comfortable indeed. They are gracious hosts and are including me in everything though I have assured them that I am an old London hand and know it like the back of my...well.,.hand. After I settled in, I set off alone to cover the remaining items on my To-Do List and it was at Covent Garden that I began. It was a gorgeous afternoon--perfect English summer weather--dry and cool unlike the oppressive heat we have on the North Atlantic coast and in Canada at this time of year. Covent Garden was simply crawling with tourists and the buskers (street entertainers) were attracting large crowds (I felt such a strong sense of deja-vu as this was exactly the London Llew and I had encountered when I first came to live here, two years ago).

I headed straight for the London Transport Museum (which is one of those I hadn't covered earlier) and spent the next 2 hours there. I have to say that I was disappointed. I have certainly seen better museums. It failed to evoke in me the sense of bygone London no matter how hard I tried to capture it. Not worth the 8 pound entry fee, but that is just my personal opinion. No doubt, if you are a kid, this is paradise.

I walked around Covent Garden and wished I had more time to visit my favorite old haunts (Carluccio's for its superlative citron tarts and Hope and Greenwood for artisinal chocolates)--but I had to press on as the Colcloughs had invited me to a barbecue party in St. Paul's Gardens. I did mange to buy a citron tart from Patisserie Valerie, however, and I munched it on the bus back to Ludgate Hill.

Spent a really glorious evening meeting a variety of lovely people as Cynthia introduced me around. By far, the most interesting was a jolly white-haired man who was a personal friend of author Vikram Seth--we had so much to talk about as he was very up on Indian Post-Colonial Literature. During our very absorbing discussion, I discovered that he was once Governor of Hongkong and Master of a Cambridge college and was on back-slapping terms with the Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen--you can imagine what a fascinating conversation that was! We exchanged business cards before departing when I discovered that I had been speaking to Sir David, Lord Wilson of Tillyorn. I also enjoyed meeting his wife Lady Nicola--a really pretty, very gracious lady. I am sorry that I will be missing the Sunday lunch at the Chaplain's house to which I have also been invited...but then my friend Bash has offered to drive me to Wisley Royal Gardens that are spectacular at this time of year--and it is an offer I cannot refuse.
The barbecue meal was just superb--not the usual hamburgers and hot dogs that we usually feature at a cook out in the States. This one featured juicy pesto chicken, really perfectly done burgers (yes, they were there), tasty sausages (chipolatas?), coleslaw and potato salad and glass noodles and lovely grilled radicchi0 with pine nuts. The 'puddings', Cynthia told me, would be the best part, so we waited though she became chilly as the evening wore on, for little individual cups of Pimms jelly with fruit, strawberries and cream and raspberry mousse with chocolate--all quite delicious and so very classy!

Our evening ended when Cynthia drove me to my former building at High Holborn so I could pick up my suitcase from the flat of my friends, Tim and Barbara, where I had left it on the morning I vamoosed to Norfolk. It was great to see them again briefly and off we went (Edward, Cynthia's son) and me to the waiting car.

I caught up on my email and blogging because...yes! I am finally online again in my room through wifi and how fabulous it feels to be able to reach out to the world again. Calls to Llew and Chriselle have kept me abreast of the fact that she will soon be home bound to the States and that Llew is enjoying having a houseful of friends who have descended down upon him from Canada and Maine to partake of the offerings of our local Pequot Library Book Sale in Southport.

Tomorrow, I join the Colcloughs on a day trip to the Midlands where I have never been before--just north of Birmingham in a small town called Litchfield. Hope the weather holds out...