Wake up to a beautiful morning.
Go around the corner for breakfast; full English.
Walk to the Natural History Museum.
Take the bus to the Imperial War Museum.
See the awesome Horrible Histories Spies exhibit.
Take the Tube to the British Museum.
Have a wonderful time with Egyptians, Assyrians, and Greeks.
Walk to Foyles.
Get blown away by so many books.
Buy books.
Walk to the National Portrait Gallery.
Talk of kings, queens, explorers, scientists, authors and musicians.
Walk into Trafalgar Square.
Walk up to Piccadilly.
Go to Fortnum and Mason.
Buy cheese (Cheshire and Stinking Bishop), Fig Almond Tort, Turkish Delight and a
blissfully good Victoria Sponge.
Take Tube back to flat.
Go out for Indian.
Stop and buy breakfast items.
Come home.
Lucca shares said Victoria Sponge.
22, 303 steps; 9.60 miles.
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Adventures in England 3: Family Journey
My ancestry is English on my father’s side. We know the first Winder, Thomas, came to New Jersey with his wife, Sarah, in the early 18th century, so we’ve been North American for quite some time. One my uncles had traced it all back to England, but we’ve never gotten much farther than Thomas and Sarah and their marriage around 1700. The incomplete genealogy has that listed in London at St. Margaret’s Cathedral. I often wondered what that is, as St. Paul’s is the cathedral for the city, and Westminster Abbey the other big deal church. Where is St. Margaret’s Cathedral?
Doing a little of that family research was one thing on my list for this trip. It turns out that St. Margaret’s is that smaller sister church next to Westminster Abbey. Back in the 11th century when Benedictines built the Abbey, they got annoyed when lots of the regular folk started coming to their services and disrupting the pattern of their day. (Go figure.) So they built another church next door, St. Margaret’s, so they could be left to their own devices in the Abbey. Because it was so much a “peoples” church, there were many weddings, baptisms, and funerals, and the St. Margaret’s register, faithfully kept all these centuries, is one of the best collections of those records in England. I’m going to have to pay someone some money (ancestry.com, or The Society of Genealogy here) to see if the record of the marriage of Thomas Winder and Sarah Bull is there. The dates of the record go back that far. So today I braved the crowds at Westminster to go to St. Margaret’s. It is very lovely, although certainly the plain sister to its glorious older sibling. The thought of my ancestors’ wedding in that place gave it an interesting grounding for me.
From there I walked up Whitehall, passing all the parliamentary offices and Downing Street where the TV cameras were lined up waiting to hear how David Cameron is going to take action in Syria. I went to Trafalgar Square and to St. Martin-in-the-Fields to pick up tickets to a concert on Friday, and had lunch in the café in the crypt. The concert tickets are for me and Sarah and Lucca, who were already on their way to London from Rome. I went to the flat to await their arrival. Around three Sarah sent a text that the plane was stuck in Germany for an undetermined time.
They finally arrived around 8:30 and I walked down the street to meet them. Lots of fun. We came to the flat and got organized and then went “‘round the pub,” as they say, for dinner - fish and chips for Sarah, a meat pie for Lucca, and a fish pie for me. Very good.
Now we are all about ready for bed at the end of another London day. A family journey from over the centuries to our own family right now. This is Nana signing off on Wednesday. 15, 521 steps.
Doing a little of that family research was one thing on my list for this trip. It turns out that St. Margaret’s is that smaller sister church next to Westminster Abbey. Back in the 11th century when Benedictines built the Abbey, they got annoyed when lots of the regular folk started coming to their services and disrupting the pattern of their day. (Go figure.) So they built another church next door, St. Margaret’s, so they could be left to their own devices in the Abbey. Because it was so much a “peoples” church, there were many weddings, baptisms, and funerals, and the St. Margaret’s register, faithfully kept all these centuries, is one of the best collections of those records in England. I’m going to have to pay someone some money (ancestry.com, or The Society of Genealogy here) to see if the record of the marriage of Thomas Winder and Sarah Bull is there. The dates of the record go back that far. So today I braved the crowds at Westminster to go to St. Margaret’s. It is very lovely, although certainly the plain sister to its glorious older sibling. The thought of my ancestors’ wedding in that place gave it an interesting grounding for me.
From there I walked up Whitehall, passing all the parliamentary offices and Downing Street where the TV cameras were lined up waiting to hear how David Cameron is going to take action in Syria. I went to Trafalgar Square and to St. Martin-in-the-Fields to pick up tickets to a concert on Friday, and had lunch in the café in the crypt. The concert tickets are for me and Sarah and Lucca, who were already on their way to London from Rome. I went to the flat to await their arrival. Around three Sarah sent a text that the plane was stuck in Germany for an undetermined time.
They finally arrived around 8:30 and I walked down the street to meet them. Lots of fun. We came to the flat and got organized and then went “‘round the pub,” as they say, for dinner - fish and chips for Sarah, a meat pie for Lucca, and a fish pie for me. Very good.
Now we are all about ready for bed at the end of another London day. A family journey from over the centuries to our own family right now. This is Nana signing off on Wednesday. 15, 521 steps.
Adventures in England 2: The Sounds of London
I’ve been reading (for about a decade -it’s a long book!) Peter Ackroyd’s London: A Biography. In a chapter titled “Loud and Everlasting” he writes this about the sound of London:
London has always been characterised by the noise that is an aspect of its noisomeness. It is part of its unnaturalness, too, like the roaring of some monstrous creature. But it is also a token of its energy and of its power.
From its earliest foundation London rang with the hammer of artisans and the cries of tradesmen; it produced more noise than any other part of the country, and in certain quarters, like those of the smiths and barrel-makers, the clamour was almost insupportable. But there were other noises. In the early medieval city, the clatter of manufacturing trades and crafts would have been accompanied by the sound of bells, among them secular bells, church bells, convent bells, the bell of the curfew and the bell of the watchman.
These days the sounds in London are those of multitudinous languages being spoken. I don’t think I hear the same language twice in a row walking down a street. Each passing conversation is in a different tongue than the one before. Carol Hinderlie is in New York City right now, and she asked me if London had more languages than New York. They are both amazing in the rich diversity of culture and sound that come at you from every direction. But I’d put my money on London.
On Tuesday my day began by going to a shop called Selvedge. I had seen their beautiful magazine about textile craft a few years ago, and am on their email list. I enjoy this list because of the wonderful way they show the artisan textile workers of England and beyond. It is beautiful stuff. They have a little shop in front of their office, so I set off to see it. The journey took me to a new part of London for me called Archway. It’s in the northeast corner of the Borough of Islington in northeast London. From the Archway Underground Station I walked up the Archway Road; a nice, hilly route! The Archway Road is part of the A1, the major non-motorway road to The North. I love how the English designate general direction. You’re either going to The North, The South, The East, or The West - always with the article capitalized. I expect it comes from being an island - not much left after you go any direction!
I arrived at the shop and it is delightfully funky, looking like an old-fashioned place to buy sewing notions and cotton. And that’s a lot of what they sell in the shop, much of it restored antique fabric. I found a lovely, very plain, table runner to buy. When I left there I decided to take the bus. The store had been at the crest of the long hill, and as I turned to down the road I was amazed at the view before me. It must be the best view of central London anywhere, maybe even better than Hampstead Heath: St. Paul’s, the Pickled Gherkin, the new, spiky building they’ve nicknamed The Shard, and everything else in their shadows. Wowie.
The bus took me to Soho, my next stop for the day. I decided on this trip to check out the Dorothy L. Sayers London sites. At the end of her life, she was a churchwarden at St. Anne’s in Soho. It was at St. Anne’s that she delivered some of the speeches that became her classic essays, and she invited T.S. Eliot, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams and others to speak at St. Anne’s. This was all during the war, and the gatherings became important focal points for the larger community, words of thought and hope and intelligence in an unbelievably difficult war. The sanctuary and whole back half of St. Anne’s was bombed, and the building (what was left of it) was used as a community social service place for many years after. In 1991 it was refurbished and consecrated as a worshiping place once again. Sayers remains are under the tower, in the front of the building that wasn’t bombed. The new church is a little hard to see from its Dean Street address, tucked in between the restaurants, theatres, and sex shops that make up Soho. When I finally found it, I walked into a small enclosed corridor and then into a beautiful small chapel. The priest appeared, and I said, “I understand Dorothy L. Sayers is around here somewhere.” He laughed, and said he’d be happy to show it to me, but it would be in half an hour as there was to be Eucharist at 1:05. I said I’d be happy to stay. It was a lovely congregation, about 10 of us. Two were classic: Betty and Jean. Betty was losing it a bit and kept talking out loud, and Jean kept telling her to be quiet, also rather loudly. But once the liturgy began, all was serene. He had a good, brief sermon on last Sunday’s gospel, and we stood round in a circle to receive. After the service, he attended to Betty and Jean and the others, cleaned up the space, and then took me to the tower and DLS. The Sayers Society had put up a new plaque on the 50th anniversary of her death in 2007. It’s in a room used for lots of other things - sleeping bags all around, and a work project. Perfect.
Although he had another appointment to keep, we talked for some time. He is a second career person, after a first career as a puppeteer! The parish of St. Anne’s has a widely various ministry, as you might expect from its location. But he was having fun and getting oriented in his first full-time position. He told me about one of his predecessors who almost ran the place into the ground - certainly ran out most of the parishioners. He said one current member, an American, described it this way (all done in a spot-on American accent by the priest): “We were on the train to Aberystwyth and he was taking us to Penzance. We would have been fine going to Penzance if he’d told us where we were going and why, but he was off to Penzance and we were still on the train to Aberystwyth.”
The liturgy at the Eucharist was Common Worship: Rite One, and one of the options for the prayer after communion was this: Father of all, we give you thanks and praise, that when we were still far off you met us in your Son and brought us home. Dying and living, he declared your love, gave us grace, and opened the gate of glory. May we who share Christ's body live his risen life; we who drink his cup bring life to others; we whom the Spirit lights give light to the world. Keep us firm in the hope you have set before us, so we and all your children shall be free, and the whole earth live to praise your name; through Christ our Lord. Amen. It wasn’t used, but its beginning reference to the Prodigal Son reminded me of the quote from Sayers I have probably used most often through the years: God, like the father in the Prodigal Son, can see repentance coming a long way off, and is there to meet it. It was wonderful to meet sisters and brothers who still gather around such grace at St. Anne’s Soho.
I went from there to see the house where Sayers lived in the 1920's. It was up towards Russell Square, not far from the Inns of Court. So after I took pictures of the blue plaque at 23-24 Great James Street, I had a quiet walk through Gray’s Inn, and then back to the Tube and to the flat. I went out later to buy drain cleaner for the kitchen (downside of renting a flat), and for Indian and a G and T (very good!). A day full of London sounds, from buses and church bells and Betty and Jean, to the sweet voices of all the children who play in many languages in the neighborhood. 15, 596 steps.
London has always been characterised by the noise that is an aspect of its noisomeness. It is part of its unnaturalness, too, like the roaring of some monstrous creature. But it is also a token of its energy and of its power.
From its earliest foundation London rang with the hammer of artisans and the cries of tradesmen; it produced more noise than any other part of the country, and in certain quarters, like those of the smiths and barrel-makers, the clamour was almost insupportable. But there were other noises. In the early medieval city, the clatter of manufacturing trades and crafts would have been accompanied by the sound of bells, among them secular bells, church bells, convent bells, the bell of the curfew and the bell of the watchman.
These days the sounds in London are those of multitudinous languages being spoken. I don’t think I hear the same language twice in a row walking down a street. Each passing conversation is in a different tongue than the one before. Carol Hinderlie is in New York City right now, and she asked me if London had more languages than New York. They are both amazing in the rich diversity of culture and sound that come at you from every direction. But I’d put my money on London.
On Tuesday my day began by going to a shop called Selvedge. I had seen their beautiful magazine about textile craft a few years ago, and am on their email list. I enjoy this list because of the wonderful way they show the artisan textile workers of England and beyond. It is beautiful stuff. They have a little shop in front of their office, so I set off to see it. The journey took me to a new part of London for me called Archway. It’s in the northeast corner of the Borough of Islington in northeast London. From the Archway Underground Station I walked up the Archway Road; a nice, hilly route! The Archway Road is part of the A1, the major non-motorway road to The North. I love how the English designate general direction. You’re either going to The North, The South, The East, or The West - always with the article capitalized. I expect it comes from being an island - not much left after you go any direction!
I arrived at the shop and it is delightfully funky, looking like an old-fashioned place to buy sewing notions and cotton. And that’s a lot of what they sell in the shop, much of it restored antique fabric. I found a lovely, very plain, table runner to buy. When I left there I decided to take the bus. The store had been at the crest of the long hill, and as I turned to down the road I was amazed at the view before me. It must be the best view of central London anywhere, maybe even better than Hampstead Heath: St. Paul’s, the Pickled Gherkin, the new, spiky building they’ve nicknamed The Shard, and everything else in their shadows. Wowie.
The bus took me to Soho, my next stop for the day. I decided on this trip to check out the Dorothy L. Sayers London sites. At the end of her life, she was a churchwarden at St. Anne’s in Soho. It was at St. Anne’s that she delivered some of the speeches that became her classic essays, and she invited T.S. Eliot, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams and others to speak at St. Anne’s. This was all during the war, and the gatherings became important focal points for the larger community, words of thought and hope and intelligence in an unbelievably difficult war. The sanctuary and whole back half of St. Anne’s was bombed, and the building (what was left of it) was used as a community social service place for many years after. In 1991 it was refurbished and consecrated as a worshiping place once again. Sayers remains are under the tower, in the front of the building that wasn’t bombed. The new church is a little hard to see from its Dean Street address, tucked in between the restaurants, theatres, and sex shops that make up Soho. When I finally found it, I walked into a small enclosed corridor and then into a beautiful small chapel. The priest appeared, and I said, “I understand Dorothy L. Sayers is around here somewhere.” He laughed, and said he’d be happy to show it to me, but it would be in half an hour as there was to be Eucharist at 1:05. I said I’d be happy to stay. It was a lovely congregation, about 10 of us. Two were classic: Betty and Jean. Betty was losing it a bit and kept talking out loud, and Jean kept telling her to be quiet, also rather loudly. But once the liturgy began, all was serene. He had a good, brief sermon on last Sunday’s gospel, and we stood round in a circle to receive. After the service, he attended to Betty and Jean and the others, cleaned up the space, and then took me to the tower and DLS. The Sayers Society had put up a new plaque on the 50th anniversary of her death in 2007. It’s in a room used for lots of other things - sleeping bags all around, and a work project. Perfect.
Although he had another appointment to keep, we talked for some time. He is a second career person, after a first career as a puppeteer! The parish of St. Anne’s has a widely various ministry, as you might expect from its location. But he was having fun and getting oriented in his first full-time position. He told me about one of his predecessors who almost ran the place into the ground - certainly ran out most of the parishioners. He said one current member, an American, described it this way (all done in a spot-on American accent by the priest): “We were on the train to Aberystwyth and he was taking us to Penzance. We would have been fine going to Penzance if he’d told us where we were going and why, but he was off to Penzance and we were still on the train to Aberystwyth.”
The liturgy at the Eucharist was Common Worship: Rite One, and one of the options for the prayer after communion was this: Father of all, we give you thanks and praise, that when we were still far off you met us in your Son and brought us home. Dying and living, he declared your love, gave us grace, and opened the gate of glory. May we who share Christ's body live his risen life; we who drink his cup bring life to others; we whom the Spirit lights give light to the world. Keep us firm in the hope you have set before us, so we and all your children shall be free, and the whole earth live to praise your name; through Christ our Lord. Amen. It wasn’t used, but its beginning reference to the Prodigal Son reminded me of the quote from Sayers I have probably used most often through the years: God, like the father in the Prodigal Son, can see repentance coming a long way off, and is there to meet it. It was wonderful to meet sisters and brothers who still gather around such grace at St. Anne’s Soho.
I went from there to see the house where Sayers lived in the 1920's. It was up towards Russell Square, not far from the Inns of Court. So after I took pictures of the blue plaque at 23-24 Great James Street, I had a quiet walk through Gray’s Inn, and then back to the Tube and to the flat. I went out later to buy drain cleaner for the kitchen (downside of renting a flat), and for Indian and a G and T (very good!). A day full of London sounds, from buses and church bells and Betty and Jean, to the sweet voices of all the children who play in many languages in the neighborhood. 15, 596 steps.
Monday, August 26, 2013
Adventures in England 1: Walking in London
I'm in London for a week. Our Italy tour-guide daughter-in-law Sarah took 9 year-old Lucca to Italy with her for a week to see volcanoes. They are meeting me here on Wednesday and I'll be escorting Lucca home on Monday after Sarah goes back to Italy to do her tour work starting 1 September. So I thought I'd add a few posts to the blog as I reflect on this time in London and times before.
Whenever I’m walking in London I always have the same marching chant going through my head. I first walked here in 1972. It began with Karen Martonik and Wendy Peterson. Wendy was coming here after being with her family in India, and Karen and I had arrived at Victoria from Luxembourg (the cheap Icelandic Air flight from New York). It was April and raining and we were huddled in one of those red phone booths calling cheap B and B’s. We finally found a student hostel in Finsbury Park, and by the London miracle of good directions, the Tube, and lots of walking finally arrived at the place. It was OK for a couple nights, and we could have worked there for our lodging. But instead we had walked to the National Gallery and there on the steps met a family from Tacoma who had been on Teaching Staff at Holden the summer before. They had a big flat (location unremembered, but closer in than Finsbury Park) and we were welcome to roll out our sleep bags there. After a few days, Karen and Wendy headed elsewhere, and I joined up with Paul Hinderlie and Tom Ahlstrom who were with Mary Alette Hinderlie. Mary Alette had been studying drama in London that year. Tom had come from his studies in Berlin. They were in Stanhope Gardens (not far from where I am right now) with Mary A, and I think I was still with the Klopsch family. Anyway, we all walked and walked. And as we walked along four abreast we chanted (often quite loudly) this marching piece from something Paul knew or he made it up: You cats who all dig the new left right on!, you cats who all dig the new left right on! Tune in tune in, turn off turn off, tune in, turn off, drop out right on! It’s never far from the brain’s front even as I walk along 41 years later. And it lets me smile at the twenty-something’s from all over the world walking in London with their own chants and loud laughter.
Yesterday after arriving in London I had quite a walking adventure. In order to get into the flat we’ve rented for the week, I had to retrieve the keys from a lock box on an ivied wall on a street some blocks away. The agency said it was a 10 minute walk. 10 minutes my foot! (In this case, my poor plane-trip tired feet!) I had already looked at the map and had planned a Tube stop two down the line from the stop nearest the flat. It was easily 10 minutes from that Tube stop to the key box location. (I wish someone could have taken a movie of me looking for the key box. It was supposed to be at the place on the wall where the ivy was shorter, but they must have made that determination before summer happened! It was all quite long, and I had to kind of comb my way through it to finally find the box, with lots of ivy left on my clothing!) I made it back to the flat and climbed the stairs (more London walking) to the flat. Nice enough, and adequate for this brief stay. One more walk out for a few groceries, and then much-needed sleep.
This morning I walked for coffee to the Starbucks around the corner, then back to plan the day. Took the Tube the wrong direction from Earl’s Court and ended up going up the Circle Line towards Paddington. The train was packed - serious sardines. Oh, well, I thought. The station at Notting Hill Gate was closed because of a big, annual August Bank Holiday festival there. I said, "I’ll get off at Bayswater and go back the other way." Well, that’s where the festival-goers (those packed in the sardine train) were all getting off. What a loud crowd! And they could have used an organizational marching chant, that’s for sure. A poor London Transport worker was going hoarse trying to herd them away from the tracks. It was a great relief to walk down to the quiet of the other side of the tracks!
I rode to Sloane Square and walked around there a bit before walking down towards river and went to the Chelsea Physic Garden. Very lovely. I came just in time for a docent tour, which was very good. A pleasant place to spend a London summer afternoon. I learned that Linneaus thought the tree in the Garden of Eden from which Adam and Eve ate was a banana! Then I walked along the Chelsea Embankment, looked at the Albert Bridge in all its Victorian pink, green, and white glory, and paid homage to Thomas More at his Cheyne Walk property. I used to revere Thomas More from the movie A Man for All Seasons, but Hilary Mantel has changed all that. Her great and memorable descriptions of the visits of Thomas Cromwell to Thomas More at Cheyne Walk made the area more vibrant and alive. What a writer. From there I walked up towards the Fulham Road, and these days had a chat with Larry as I walked along. My walks over the years have been guided by London A-to-Z in various editions. Now it’s an app on my iPhone and works very well indeed. I found the Chelsea version of my favorite London bookshop chain, Daunts, and stopped in for a quick look around.
When I got back to the flat I checked out local pubs online and went to The Devonshire Arms on the other side of the Cromwell Road and up a couple blocks. Very good fish and chips, the real thing with the whole filet fried with lovely chips and REAL mushy peas, i.e., fresh peas cooked and crushed. The fish was done in a batter made with cider and tarragon, and was a bit sweet, but quite good. And it was all washed down with a pint of bitter.
Tomorrow will be more walking, and each street and turn will be different. Part is looking for those blue plaques that tell what historical figure lived there. Today I saw the London homes of Jenny Lind and Benjamin Britten. (I’m debating if I should go see Billy Budd at the Albert Hall tomorrow night - any opinions?) I’ll go looking for more blue plaques, notably the London Home of Dorothy L. Sayers at Great James Street.
The flat I am in is in Bolton Gardens, right across the street from Bramham Gardens where I stayed with the Hinderlie’s friend Bjorn Andreasson in 1984. So the streets here feel familiar, and I am noting familiar patterns and memories. For example, when I took the Tube the wrong way I remembered that it is actually more convenient to walk to Gloucester Road instead of Earl's Court to go east. I’ll do that tomorrow.
Something about the feel of the pavement here does good things for me. I am always ready to walk to in London, no matter how tired I am. Yesterday when I was on my key journey, I was reminded of the long walk on which I dragged Larry in 2011 from the flat we rented in Holland Park to do grocery shopping in the Kensington High Street. It looked short in A-to-Z! Probably they all seem that way. For all you fitbit users out there, I walked 16,714 steps today!
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