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!
No comments:
Post a Comment