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. 

Life at Full Speed

Life has gone back to full speed now, and although I mean to keep writing here regularly I blink and another week has passed. For most of the week we had a heatwave. These photos were from a walk on Wednesday morning, and it was already hot by 9am. Although I am now back to working entirely in the office, I left early on Tuesday and finished off some work at home as M needed the electric car to go to work mid-afternoon, and I just couldn't face taking the little car and driving home without aircon in the heat.

On Monday the government moved to Stage 4 of its re-opening plan and officially abandoned all anti-Covid regulations in England. Masks in shops and on public transport are no longer compulsory, although still strongly recommended. Restrictions on numbers who can meet or attend events, both indoors and outdoors, have been lifted. All this despite being well into the third wave of the pandemic, with 50,000 cases a day last week. Encouragingly, this week case numbers have dropped significantly, probably because the Euros have ended (lots of people had been meeting up to watch the football), the weather has been good, and schools have finished for the summer. The big test is going to be whether case numbers start to shoot up again as the relaxation of anti-Covid measures takes effect. In practice, many organisations are keeping at least some anti-Covid restrictions in place, and we now have 70% of adults fully vaccinated and nearly 90% with at least one dose. Will it be enough? Maybe. It's a gamble, and we can only hope that it doesn't turn out to be a bad one. At work we had a big staff meeting on Monday, with everyone in together for the first time since March 2020, to discuss what changes if any we would be making. The answer was "not many", partly due to caution about Covid and partly due to being short-staffed as someone left the week before and it will take a while to replace her. 

TG finished school on Wednesday, having made it through the term without being sent home to self-isolate. I think by last week about a third of school children in England were in isolation, so the was lucky. I had a lazy day - too hot to do much! - but went to an orchestra rehearsal in the evening. I signed up to play at an outdoor vintage festival at the end of August. I played at the same event in 2019 and enjoyed it - great atmosphere and fun music to play - so decided to do it again even though it is a bit far to drive for rehearsals. It took me well over an hour to get there as I relied on my memory and didn't read the directions properly. Once I realised I was lost, I then relied on Google maps which imploded and sent me down a track to a dead end. Then I read the instructions, which included a warning not to rely on satnav. Duh! 

M was working on Thursday, so I took TG out for lunch to celebrate the beginning of the holidays. We went to Yo Sushi, which is her favourite place to eat. They now have a system where you order on your phone, then the food is sent to your table on the sushi belt with a traffic light system - red lights show at the side of the table which turn white when a dish is approaching and green when it arrives. 

It has been a very social week, starting with catching up with colleagues I hadn't seen since before the pandemic on Monday. On Friday I woke up to a text from an old school friend wondering if she could drop in for coffee as she was going to be in the area. In the end she came for lunch and stayed most of the afternoon. We used to meet up regularly when our children were young, but realised we hadn't seen each other for nearly five years so there was lots to catch up on. Then in the evening I drove over to Bedford to meet up with a group of close friends. Four of us had got together early in the spring, but only outdoors and it was too cold to sit and chat for long, so being able to go back to meeting indoors was lovely. The fifth member of our group has health issues and has not yet had her second dose of vaccine, so she joined us on Zoom. Yesterday we got together with all our neighbours - we had hoped to do a street BBQ but the weather forecast wasn't great, so in the end we just all took drinks and chairs out into the road and sat and chatted - we are at the end of a cul-de-sac so there isn't any traffic. We managed a couple of hours before it started to rain. We are incredibly fortunate to live somewhere that is a real community, where we all know each other and can rely on neighbours to help out if necessary. Today was a day for family socialising, as R and H and their partners all came for lunch, along with my brother. It was the first time they had all been here at the same time since before the pandemic, so that was another milestone passed. 

Lots of Normal

The last week has been the most "normal" for me since March 2020 in terms of outside activities. Last Sunday the brass band I play in performed to a live audience for the first time since Christmas 2019, playing outdoors in the local park. We had a full day of "band camp" the day before, so by the end of the weekend the physical effort was definitely taking its toll - aching stomach muscles, aching back, tired arms and so on. The trombone isn't a lightweight instrument. 

On Monday and Tuesday I was working in the office, and I will now be going in every week. Our public service is still very restricted, so not back to normal in that way, but back to a regular routine. Then on Wednesday there was another band practice (still feeling a bit ouchy!), and on Thursday an orchestra rehearsal - there have been three "live" sessions during July to allow us to get back to playing, but no more for that orchestra now until September. Yesterday I went to another orchestra session during the afternoon - this time for an orchestra which pre-Covid rehearsed on Friday lunchtimes. It is affiliated with a local university and can't meet on the premises, so some of the members have now organised a monthly weekend session in a local community hall as an alternative. M has also been working as normal and TG is still hanging in at school. A couple of local schools have had closed weeks due to Covid cases, and most have had to send students home to self-isolate due to cases, but TG has dodged that particular bullet so far. We are hoping that with only three days left to go she will make it to the end of term. The only "normal" thing that didn't happen last week was her dance classes - a student had tested positive and they decided to close the studios until the end of term, so it was back to Zoom classes. 

We are now into a heatwave, with temperatures up to 31 degrees today. Yesterday morning we walked over to our friends' house - a two mile walk, as they live on the other side of town - for tea / coffee and cake, and took the photo above as we walked through the town centre on the way back. Saturday is market day, with the market looking very tidy since it got these nice new matching stalls not all that long before the pandemic. It is extraordinary to think that a market has been held in this town for the last 1000 years, and has survived plagues far worse than this one. 

 

M bought these roses home from work last night. A local store took a load of food and flowers which had hit its sell-by date round to his office for people to help themselves. It is quite common for organisations to donate items for the benefit of NHS staff - it doesn't make up for their low pay, but it certainly makes them feel appreciated. I often read comments on social media by Americans who are scathing of what they call "socialised" medicine, and realise that they really have no concept of how the British feel about the NHS. We don't see it as a government organisation, we see it as our health service - we own it, we pay for it, and we have an emotional connection to it. Throughout the pandemic signs thanking NHS workers have been everywhere, ranging from kids' drawings to banners put up by large companies, and practical signs of appreciation like yesterday's food and flowers have been a thing since long before the pandemic. 

Thames Path: Chelsea to the Tower of London

Last Friday M had planned a trip to London to meet up with friends which fell through at the last minute, so we decided to do another stretch of the Thames. This leg was through Central London, and rather to our surprise we found it less enjoyable than the previous walks. We decided this was because the earlier sections had been through places that were new to us (or at least long forgotten), so it felt more of a journey of discovery, finding unexpected delights along the way. This central section was through areas we already knew well so didn't have the same joy of the unexpected. Lots of iconic London sights, but for us familiar ones. 

We started off at Albert Bridge and found the first section through Pimlico rather dull. Once we reached the Tate Britain art gallery it started to get more interesting. Tate Britain was the original Tate Gallery, which now has offshoots in different locations - St Ives in Cornwall, Liverpool, and the Tate Modern in a converted power station on the South Bank opposite the City of London. 

Next up was Victoria Tower Gardens in Westminster, just to the south of the Houses of Parliament. This rather splendid Gothic water fountain was built as a memorial following the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1834, and to commemorate the role of the Members of Parliament who worked to bring it about. Victoria Tower Gardens also gave us the best view of the Palace of Westminster - not hard as this iss the only side which is not currently covered in scaffolding! This tower is the Victoria Tower, which houses the Parliamentary Archive. When I was an archive student a tour of the archive was organised for us, but disappointingly I wasn't well and had to miss it. 

We walked past Westminster Abbey, round Parliament Square and up towards Horseguards as Google Maps told us there was a cafe and we wanted lunch. The lunch jinx struck again as we found the cafe was closed and undergoing building work. Plan B turned out to be Greggs as Westminster tube station - vegan "steak" bake for me and non-vegan steak bake for M. At least the failed lunch attempt gave us this view of the north door of the Abbey. M, who is far better at recognising faces than I am, also spotted the Education Minister, Gavin Williamson, walking past us. 

We sat and ate our lunch on the Embankment looking across to the London Eye. At this time of year this part of London would normally be packed with tourists and the emptiness was very noticeable; the number of former commuters who are still working wholly or partly at home also contributed to the quietness.. In one way it was good to be able to avoid the crowds, but also dispiriting to think of the difficulties suffered by all the people who rely on the tourist trade and commuters for their income. 

One new discovery was that the boundary of the City of London is marked by two of these silver dragons, one on either side of the road. 

At Blackfriars we were diverted away from the river for a short section, so decided to go in search of tea or coffee and cake and after M decided that the first couple of coffee shops we found did not have any cakes he liked we ended up in Starbucks. A bit further along we caught a glimpse of St Pauls peeking out from behind the Millennium foot bridge. 

As we walked along the southern edge of the City we had good views across to landmarks on the Southbank - the National Theatre, the Globe, Tate Modern and the Shard. 

Another discovery was Walbrook Wharf, a working freight wharf in the heart of the City. When we reached it a container was being moved onto a barge so the footpath was temporarily closed and we were able to watch the crane in operation. When we were able to walk across and get a closer view we guessed (rightly) that the containers were being used to shift refuse out of the City. 

We ended our walk at the Tower of London. The last time we were here was in 2018 to see the extraordinary art installation set up to commemorate the end of the 1st World War - a ceramic poppy was made for each British serviceman killed in the war, with some spilling over the walls of the Tower like blood and the rest planted in the moat. After the display was removed the 888,246 individual poppies were sold to the public - demand was so high they could have been sold several times over. 

This section was 6.5 miles long, but with detours and the walk to and from the local station we ended up walking 10 miles in total. Only one London section left to go now, from Tower Bridge through Docklands to the Greenwich foot tunnel.