I spent all of last week in London. There were a few things planned – meeting friends for drinks, perhaps seeing a show or two, visiting my favorite outdoor spaces, like Trafalgar Square (always need to see what’s sitting on the fourth plinth – this time it’s a golden child riding a gilded rocking horse), Covent Garden Market and the South Bank and the eastern Jubilee bridge.
On Saturday, I got over to Borough Market for the first time, having been intrigued by several scenes on TV travel programs. It was very crowded and very busy and I expect that this was partly because it was Saturday and partly because there’s some sort of construction/excavation work that seems to have cut the market space at least in half. What a shame, but rather than moan about the stuff that wasn’t there, I just enjoyed what was available and, because of the microwave in my ‘flat’, was able to buy a small farm-made pork pie from one of the purveyors. With a couple of slices of Red Leicester cheese, it made a most comforting supper.
The show I went to was Scenes From an Execution with Fiona Shaw. Interesting and provoked several questions about the female painter Shaw portrayed, the gigantic painting she was commissioned to produce (which is never actually shown in the play) and some related thoughts. There was also a small exhibition of French Property, currency exchange, retiring to France from the UK and similar topics at Kensington Olympia. The last thing I squeezed in was Evensong at St-Martin-in-the-Fields on Sunday.
I wanted to squeeze in one more play on Saturday, but I’d developed a sore throat and runny nose, so even if I’d dragged myself out, I probably would have been a really noisy audience member. I’d hoped to see Laurence Fox (he plays Hathaway to Kevin Whately’s Inspector Lewis on TV) in Our Boys, a modern play that examines PTSD and other issues facing combat soldiers trying to rejoin society.
One unfortunate side-effect of taking things as they come is that, once home, the perfectly logical reasons for doing or not doing fade, replaced with wistfulness that the thing didn’t get done or seen despite the need to act differently at the time.
After a long-delayed flight back to the US and some last-minute scrambling to get ground transport from JFK back to my brother’s in New Jersey, I finally got back to my house mid-day on Tuesday. The cats lost no time in expressing their requirements that I get back with the program of feeding them and turning on some flippin heat (meow!!) It was chilly in the house, down around 58F, so after completing both tasks, I crawled under the fleece blankets and took a nap before tackling the stack of bills that lurked in the shopping bag of mail I had picked up from the post office.
There will, of course, be loads of blog posts about my adventures, rather than the sometimes boring diet of links to news items and potential travel destinations that usually fill this blogsite, so stay tuned!
SuzanneTheTravelMagpie 