London calling
Rob and I said “au revoir” to Paris and boarded the EuroStar for London, which is a very nice ride even though it does go under water for a portion of the journey which I try not to think about. We stood in a long taxi cue to take us to Town Hall, our favorite place to stay when visiting, located in Patriot Square, Bethnal Green. The driver pulled up to the back of the hotel which seemed off to us, until we all realized the front was covered with towering lights and screens set up for movie filming. We asked to hotel clerk what was going on and she politely answered “no idea, they don’t tell us anything”, to which I added “I hope you are being compensated”, and she replied, “oh yes!”
We took a walk to our favorite pub we discovered on our first visit years ago called The Well & Bucket and had drinks and oysters to celebrate our return. We couldn’t stay long as my childhood friend, Cathy Cannon was meeting us at Town Hall to say hello 55 years after hanging out together in Beverly Farms, Massachusetts. Cathy’s mother and my mother were good friends whose husbands worked together and from whom they were each getting divorced. That freed up time for Cathy and I to loiter unsupervised at their mansion overlooking the ocean, which I frequently dream about. I reconnected with her by email through an artisan vendor who knew her family and adopted her cat Cairo, when Cathy moved to London to study acting. Learning there was already an actress with her name, she used “Cairo” and is now a film producer with her partner Carol Morley, who writes and directs independent art films. It was wonderful to see Cairo and hear about her work, and reminisce about the fun we used to have together, which Rob also enjoyed hearing. Cairo thought the filming at the hotel could be for the tv series “Only Murders in the Building”, but had to get back to her own film currently in production which I hope to see, along with her again soon.
Our next day in London Rob took us to the Borough Market where I had to stop several times just to take in all the aroma, color and enormity of it all. There was what appeared to be a six foot round pan being used by a worker cooking paella for a wiggling line of customers anxiously waiting to be fed. Having had a good breakfast we kept walking while enjoying all the visual offerings. Our next destination was the Tate Modern Museum which we walked to, stopping at anything that caught our attention. We saw a retrospective of the artist Tracey Emin who created quilts, videos, polaroids and paintings chronicling her emotions over four decades of her life. I so admired her brutal honesty.
Our next stop was an art supply store that I’d seen on Instagram and wanted to experience in person. Rob led me on another long walk through quaint old neighborhoods with folks hanging out on the sidewalks nursing their drinks on a late Friday afternoon. We arrived at L. Cornelissen & Son twenty minutes before closing, which was enough time for me to be informed about the finest sable water color brushes and learn how expensive they were. I settled for a very fine synthetic version which Rob bought for me as a gift to remember. I had arranged for fancy seats at the sold out performance of Inter Alia with Rosamund Pike, which we headed to next on foot, but not before wolfing down a burger, salad and fries at Gordon Ramsay’s Street Burger which were all delicious. The evening was topped off by a spectacular performance by Rosamund Pike in what was one of the best plays we’ve seen, and took the Tube back to Town Hall for a well deserved sleep.
We spent the next day visiting Rob’s relatives first in London near Liverpool Station where we had lunch with cousin Sue and family, and then later for dinner in Pinner with cousins Trevor and family, and finally met the three grandsons we’d only seen on Facebook. Before leaving the Town Hall our last morning in London, we decided to check out the row of small shops we had seen during our taxi ride to Town Hall. Turns out there was a bustling open air market along a stretch of Columbia Road that was full of locals enjoying the pastries and flowers and clothing stores, just my kind of photographic feast. We picked up our bags and took an Uber back to Liverpool Station where we finally caught a train to Colchester after missing two others by minutes while we were standing on the wrong platforms. Sometimes it’s frustrating to be a tourist but hopefully one can laugh after.
We were met in Colchester by cousin Mig and Peter who’ve lived in the charming village of Nayland their whole lives and whom we’ve visited two times previously with Rob’s parents. This visit they arranged for us to stay at their friend’s renovated barn, which looked like a page out of Architectural Digest when we arrived. It was glorious to be in the country after Paris and London and we enjoyed long walks along unpaved roads in between cups of tea and playing fetch with Mig’s dog before enjoying two different great pub meals. I really didn’t miss cooking every night.
On our last morning in Nayland we tried to follow the instructions of our hosts to keeping following the paths to the right until we’d made a full circle, but took a wrong turn and ended up in a field of cattle with an oncoming storm in the distance. I love cows and a good storm and kept trying to capture the moment which I will try to recreate at home with my new watercolor brushes.
We packed our bags and took to train back to Liverpool and then out to Heathrow where we stayed the night at an airport hotel and got up early to catch a plane to first to Athens, which is on the way to our friend’s Greek wedding on the island of Sifnos, which is my next chapter.