Day Trip 3: Sky Garden

Our third day trip last week was on Thursday, when we went back to London. We started with lunch at Borough Market. One of the joys of this food market is that there are many places to get takeaway hot food and everyone can pick something different to eat. M opted for a large salt beef bagel, TG wanted a filled bao bun and sweet potato fries, and I had a vegetarian filled dosa with a chickpea side dish from an Indian street Ford stall. There is a stepped outdoor seating area where you can look down on the stalls and watch the world go by while you eat. 

After lunch we walked across London Bridge as I had booked tickets for the Sky Garden. This is a free-to-enter public park at the top of the building in the picture above - if you look closely you can see the viewing balcony at the front. (Aside: The building just to the left of this photo is where M and I first met over 40 years ago, when we worked in the same office.)  Although tickets to enter the Sky Garden are free they have to be pre-booked as it can only accommodate a limited number of visitors, even during non-pandemic times. I think it only recently reopened, and I was surprised I managed to get tickets as they go pretty quickly. 

The "garden" is on two levels, with a restaurant above (the box in the top left corner) and a couple of bar / cafe areas. Unfortunately the weather wasn't great and the balcony was closed as a result - too much wind, I think. The views from inside are still pretty impressive though. After we had walked around we stopped for coffee and pain au chocolats before heading back down.  

After the Sky Garden we split up. M had arranged to meet a couple of friends in the City, and TG wanted to go shopping in Oxford Street. By this time the weather was getting wet and nasty, so we had to dash between shops. We spent a bit of time in the giant Primark store (magnet for teen girls!) where she bought a Disney sweatshirt in the sale. We then spent a lot of time window shopping in Urban Outfitters, which according to TG is Gen Z style perfection, and finished off with a putter round the Disney Store. We are hoping that we will be able to make it to Disneyland Paris at the beginning of September, a trip postponed from last February, so in a fit of optimism I bought three little clip on Disney characters (£2 each in the sale!) for our bags. Whether we will actually make it, who knows! By that time we had had enough of the weather, so we abandoned a plan to go in search of soufflé pancakes for dinner and grabbed a couple of pasties at the station to eat when we got home. 

Friday was a day of socialising with band friends. I have swapped jobs with a friend so that he is now treasurer and I am band librarian again. This also involved swapping several large boxes of stuff, an exchange in which I came off worse! Fortunately there was space on shelving in the garage so they aren't adding too much clutter. We stayed for lunch with him and his wife after sorting out the various things we needed to hand over, then in the evening another couple of friends came over to us and we had an Indian takeaway with them. On Saturday, TG and I went to the cinema for the first time since before the pandemic to see Black Widow. On Sunday I stayed home and had a restful day before going back to work. today. 

Day Trip 2: St. Albans

I''m behind with updating this blog again, but as I want to keep a record of what we have been doing I'm writing late and assuming I will eventually catch up. On Tuesday we drove to the city of St. Albans in Hertfordshire (about 40 minutes away) for a picnic lunch, a wander round the city park and the cathedral, and a bit of shopping (mainly for TG's benefit, though it turned out to be very useful). 

 

The cathedral is a gem. In the Middle Ages St. Albans Abbey was one of the largest and most important Benedictine monasteries in England. It held the shrine of the first English martyr, St Alban, and was home to 13th century chronicler Matthew Paris, whose writing is one of the most important sources for the history of his century. Unlike so many of the great medieval monasteries here, the church of St Alban survived the Reformation by becoming the cathedral of a new diocese - the monastic buildings have all now disappeared, but within the church itself even some of its 13th century medieval wall paintings can still be seen.  

St. Albans was once the Roman city of Verulamium, and it still has some impressive Roman remains and a  good museum. TG remembered visiting the museum when she was at lower school, but as TG and M can only manage a limited amount of history in one day, we only visited the cathedral and ignored the Romans. If you look closely at the picture below, you may be able to see that the tower and part of the walls are built with small red bricks - these were recycled by the 12th century builders from the ruins of the Roman town.  

We parked near the Roman museum and walked through the city park and round this lake on the way to the cathedral and the town. I love it when I manage to catch a good reflection in a photo. After the cathedral we ambled round the city centre. We stopped for a coffee and we did some birthday shopping for H, who turns 23 next week - I got some Le Creuset items for her kitchen (I know she loves their stuff, though most of it is prohibitively expensive!), and TG bought her a candle from Anthropologie. We left St. Albans at about 4 and drove home via Milton Keynes to get dinner at Nandos on the way. 

Wednesday was mostly a lazy day at home, though I went to an orchestra rehearsal in the evening. Gardeners came in the afternoon to cut the tall hedge round our back garden. We used to do it ourselves, or with my brother's help, but it is a heavy physical job and we have reached the point where paying someone else to do it is worth every penny! Thursday was another day-tripping day - more about that in the next post. 

Theatre is Back!

M and I both have this week off work, so we are turning it into a bit of a staycation (holiday at home) with some trips out. TG had been wanting to see Everybody's Talking About Jamie since she watched a recording at school, so I booked tickets as a birthday treat for her and H (though rather nearer H's birthday as we wanted to wait a while until Covid measures had been lifted).  We originally booked for next Sunday evening, but that show was cancelled and they exchanged the tickets for last Sunday afternoon. The first tickets they sent us were slightly better than the originals, but when we got there we discovered they had given us another set with much better seats. 

Being at the theatre again felt both strange and a little alarming - we are so unused to being somewhere with a lot of people - but also emotional. All the actors and musicians who had been unable to work for so long clearly relished being back and the energy of the show was fantastic. We all loved it, including M who was a bit unsure whether it was something he would enjoy, and the actors who played Jamie and his mother both got standing ovations. TG loves musical theatre and performers need all the support they can get just now, so I have two more shows booked for the two of us over the next couple of months - Six at Oxford at the end of August, and Hairspray in London at the end of September. 

After the show we went to Chinatown, which is just across the road from the theatre, for dinner. Strangely given that M and I have both lived in London and go there fairly often we had never eaten in Chinatown. It may have been the first time but it won't be the last. It was just warm enough to sit outside and watch the world go by while we ate. The meal was excellent and included some very pretty coloured dim sum. You can see in the photo above that it was pretty busy, and this was without foreign tourists in London. You can also see that TG (on the right with lighter hair) is now as tall as H. I'm beginning to think she may end up the tallest of our daughters, which would be a huge shock given how petite she was until the last year or two.  

As it was dry we walked from Euston Station and back, which took about 30 minutes each way. R and H have discovered an app called Too Good to Go on which cafes and food shops sell boxes left over food at the end of the day rather than let it go to waste. It is lucky dip; you pay a small amount for a box or bag without knowing what will be in it, and are given a collection time to pick it up. H found a coffee shop on Too Good to Go which was on our way back to the station and bought a box which turned out to be four large and very tasty vegan donuts. We had to wait at the station for a bit as the train we would have caught was cancelled due to lack of staff, so TG and I ate donuts while we waited. H was more restrained and took hers home!  

The combination of good company, the sheer joy of the theatre and the delicious Chinese food made for a wonderful and memorable day out. The long lockdowns and the limits imposed on daily life for so long by the pandemic have made us truly appreciate things that we used to take for granted. 

An Olympic Week

This was another busy week, with freelance work on top of my two archive days. I took some time out on Thursday and M and I went to Aylesbury to have lunch with an old friend and former colleague who we hadn't seen since before the pandemic. We have been having quite a bit of rain, but Thursday was dry and bright so we headed over early and went for a walk first. 

I used to live close to Aylesbury (admittedly a few decades ago!) and thought I knew the town pretty well, but had never discovered the canal. This is a branch of "our" canal which I think was restored and put back into use some time ago. We walked past this narrow lock - just one boat width, whereas on the main canal they are wide enough for two. 

We had intended to do a circular walk, but the footpath shown on the map had been blocked off where a new housing estate is being built. We decided the easiest option was just to turn round and walk back along the towpath the way we had come. I imagine that the houses will eventually have access to the canal and a path will re-open. 

We had lunch at Nandos in the town centre. It is in a newish complex by the cinema, with restaurants fronting onto a green space with a set of sporting statues - very appropriate as we are in the middle of the belated Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Talking of which, I have been watching as much as I can manage. Normally I rarely watch sport on TV, but I enjoy the huge variety of the Olympics, and the sheer range of skills on display. My highlight so far has been the two young British women who won gold medals for BMX cycling. Bethany Shriever won the racing medal after having to fight tooth and nail to get finance to allow her to compete - part of her training was crowd funded - and put so much into her final race that she literally couldn't stand when she got off her bike. Today's BMX freestyle winner, Charlotte Worthington, fell off on her first run then went on to perform an extraordinary series of tricks, all with a beaming smile on her face. Her tribute to the American world champion she beat was matched by the other young woman's graciousness in defeat - wonderful examples of Olympic spirt, and fantastic ambassadors for a sport that had never previously been on my radar. 

On Wednesday I went to another orchestra rehearsal for the festival performance at the end of August, but this time took my viola instead of my violin. Lots of violinists had signed up to play but very few violas, so the organiser asked if any violinists would be able to switch. I thought it would be fun to change things up a bit and play viola now I have one, so I volunteered. I enjoyed playing it and didn't have any problems keeping up, but the sound is a bit scratchy at times - not surprisingly given how little I paid for it. After Wednesday I had the bright idea of trying to play it with my decent violin bow instead of the cheap bow that came with the viola, and it makes a huge difference to both the sound and the feel of the instrument. I'm looking forward to playing it again next week.