Zoo, Harrods, Sunday Afternoon at Elthorne

Chronologically this post is a little out of order, relating to events that happened on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday afternoons. The last post ended Saturday night, so this might be regarded as a postmodern twist to the usual narrative scheme of things to make sure everyone's paying attention.

We've managed to accommodate our three guests quite easily. Benedict is happy to have their company, a distraction from the usual father-directed activities.

Dinner with Karin, Michael, and Ruth.

Meeting sheep and imitating meerkats at the London Zoo on Friday. I stayed home that afternoon. Word is that the zoo is pretty good. In Regent's Park, I believe.

Saturday afternoon we all met at Harrods. This was our third visit to Harrods. Masses of people made the sidewalks in the Knightsbridge area around the store as crowded as a tube train during rush hour. The area is famed for its shopping and people were either eager to spend money or watch other people spend money or wish they had the money to spend.

Harrods is a hilarious place. Really. Quite funny. The prices of some of the accessories will make you laugh. This is the place to visit when you are depressed because one's mood will instantly lift at discovering  that people exist in the world foolish enough to pay, for example, outrageous sums for diamond encrusted ipods. The model Lamborghini in the picture above is the size of a ordinary model car and its price is really modest compared to some the cost of other items. Still within the budget of most working families, isn't it?

Harrods's fame is the ability to acquire anything in the world for its customers. One of our SU tour bus guides told a story, which he claimed is true, of some newly minted Eastern European billionaire seeking a gift for some important member of the English aristocracy and asking a clerk whether Harrods sold elephants. Without batting an eye the clerk--undoubtedly dressed in black--asked back, 'African or Asian?' Harrods sold him an elephant as requested.

Some of us were content to have our picture taken with a bearish Beefeater in the Toy Department.

The store occupies over 4 acres and over a million square feet (90 000 sq m). It's massive. There must have been hundreds, nay, thousands of customers and tourists coursing through its aisles and hundreds of clerks to serve them. Dozens upon dozens upon dozens of boutiques and galleries, each could be a separate high-revenue producing shop, entice shoppers to consumer excess. Restaurants dressed in all sorts of decor tempt those with discriminate, and not so discriminate, taste buds (extravagant roses fill the Georgian Room to contrast with its elegant pinkish understatement). We saw the poshest Londoners shopping and paying cash, some of them smartly dressed Russians with their glamorous and mini-skirted wives (girlfriends? mistresses?), Arab oil men with wives covered entirely in veils, Sikhs in pastel turban-wrapped headresses whose wives wore exotically-designed saris; their parked Ferraris, Rolls, Bentleys, Jaguars, and other similar family sedans waiting for them near the shop. I'm not kidding.

Sampling one of the remote-control vehicles.

This red car in the Toy Department is powered by a small Honda engine. You can't see the price tag clearly, but if you want to get one for your toddler it will only cost 10,000 pounds. That's the equivalent of only about 16,000 dollars.

Below are a couple of photos from different angles of a memorial to Princess Diana and the man who died with her in that fiery crash in Paris 13 years ago. The companion was Dodi Al Fayed, whose father, Mohammed Al Fayed, until recently owned Harrods, selling the store for 1.5 billion pounds this past May. The father believed their deaths the result of a conspiracy, which may be why he has never been given a UK passport despite living in England for decades. In the upper right hand corner of the top photo you can see a pile of flowers with notes and a man signing a memorial book. The Cult of Diana remains alive.

In the stairwell facing the statue of the pair is a modest memorial to the employees of Harrods who lost their lives in the Great War almost a hundred years ago. Just a large plaque with names. Next to their names is the regiment they served in--Royal Marine Artillery, 4th Cameron Highlanders, 22nd London Regiment, 2nd Wiltshire, and so on--and the Harrods department they served in--bedding, Gent's boots, grocery, optical, linen warehouse, and so on. No one paid attention to this memorial to forgotten, ordinary men who died in an unnecessary war. No flowers for them, no romantic statue to 'ooh' and 'aah' over. No book to sign. No cult to keep their memory alive beyond this plaque and perhaps some seldom seen photos pressed between the pages of a family's bible. Maybe there is another plaque with their names on it in their home counties. Will Diana and Dodi suffer the same loss of memory in a hundred years? Who will care about them? Diana's great grandchildren, one of whom will likely be King or Queen of England? Will Harrods shoppers wonder why this couple deserved such an over the top display while the three dozen or so dead soldiers did not?

It took longer to get to the south side of the river than we expected. Benedict, Erika, and I were headed for the Globe for the second part of Henry IV. We just had enough time to slip into the Tate Modern Museum for some hot tea in the restaurant before taking a stand among the groundlings.

On Sunday we enjoyed what even the English call an Indian summer's day. I don't know how or why they picked up the term. On gentle warm day we walked to Elthorne Park near the high school we had hoped Benedict would attend. This climbing structure occupied Ruth and Benedict for a time.

Next to Elthorne Park we walked along the banks of the River Brent. If we had walked south we would soon be in Boston Manor Park, where we enjoyed the large festival under the motorway several weeks ago. And walking further south along the river we would soon find ourselves where the Brent joins the Thames in Brentford.

The simple joys of bourgesie life: family, friends, and a carefree sunny Sunday afternoon in the park.

Coincidences and the final engagement

With so many people living in such a large expansive city one would easily be under the impression that coincidental encounters would be extremely rare. I've already related a fortuitous meeting when Erika hailed Benedict and I from an outdoor table at bakery in Southwark (south of the Thames) as he and I sought a bottle of wine for our hosts that evening. Another occasion I haven't yet mentioned occured when Erika jumped on the same tube carriage at the Gloucester Road station when Benedict and I were already speeding to St. Pancras to meet her for the train to St. Albans. Then last Thursday Benedict and I found our guests, Karin, Ruth, and Michael, waiting for a train on the platform at the Holborn tube station as we and they were making our way to the Globe Theatre. Mind you, there are almost always scads of people wherever we go, so such occurrences ought to be rare.

But on top of these coincidences, Erika, Benedict, and I also ran into our Cambridge tour guide, Clarissa, at the Globe on Saturday night. The Globe was sold out for the final performance of the season, the play Henry IV, Part II. The maximum number of 'groundlings', the members of the audience who must stand, crowded around the stage. That's 700 people. Clarissa stood among the hoard. Recall that she was to serve as the tour guide for the LA Lakers last Saturday the day after she guided us through Cambridge. Turns out the players skipped the tour in favor of practice, the tour being only for their families and the Lakers' staff. The players might as well have skipped practice instead for all the good it did them in the games against the Timberwolves and Barcelona team (they lost).

The plays were both tremendous, with the same actors expertly playing the same roles in both productions. The actor playing Falstaff portrayed his character's playful rogueness with great sympathy and comic timing. One can understand why Hal rejects his friendship upon becoming Henry V. A king cannot afford to have the friends he had when his youthful indiscretions could be overlooked. Falstaff was needed for comic relief for the political maneuvering and intrigues could be depressing all by themselves.

Unfortunately, for the second play we didn't get there early enough and the only space available was on the sides. Often we had great views of the actors' backsides or our view was obstructed by a column in the middle of the stage. Seeing plays from the front, as we did in The Merry Wives of Windsor and the first Henry IV, gives us the full flavor by letting us see the actors facial expressions and to hear their words more clearly. Watching from the side it was too easy for the mind to wander. This happened to me and moreso for Benedict and made this production less interesting for him. Erika had not felt well for a few days, and since Benedict was not enjoying this play as much as the others, they left at intermission. It was quite late already. By the time the play was over and the artistic director gave his end-of-the-season speech thanking everyone from the volunteer stewards to the seamtresses who made and maintained the costumes to a very appreciative audience, some with sore feet like mine, the hour was nearly 11pm.

A wisp of fog put a chill into the air and a slight haze into the dark sky. The Thames was low and  lights streamed dramatically onto the dome of St. Paul across the river. I had to pause for a minute or two to absorb the scene. I wanted to impress it on my memory.

I shouldn't have been surprised after 2 months in London. But the train on the Piccadilly tube on the way home was absolutely packed, like rush hour except these people were dressed for partying and not for work. The pub near the tube station on Northfield Avenue buzzed with people, many spilling out into the sidewalk. It was nearly midnight on a Saturday and the city was still wide awake, even in Ealing. In Georgetown the traffic signals would have been off for two hours.

Theatre, visitors, and a school for Benedict

Another tube strike, over the same issue of 800 ticket windows facing the loss of their jobs, disrupted travel in London on Monday. No matter. Erika doesn't teach on Mondays and we stayed home.

On Tuesday evening Benedict and I rode the now-familiar tube-path to the Kilfoyle's house for dinner. The New Vic, not to be confused with the Old Vic in which we saw the Noel Coward play a few weeks ago, presented a contemporary take on Goethe's Faust. The Kilfoyles live only a few minutes away from the Young Vic, so they generously invited us for dinner before the performance. The company at dinner was far more convivial and fun than the play.

The Young Vic will never be confused with the Old, although they are only separated by only a few blocks. To get through to the theatre one must navigate through a raucous pub. One can easily find refreshments at intermission. The staging of the play itself is one that Goethe probably didn't, even couldn't, imagine. Icelandic actors exploded through the stage floor, shot into a net over the audience, and climbed around the scenery like trained acrobats, which I guess they were. While all that flying around the stage was interesting, based on the first half it looked as if the second half might veer into territories inappropriate for a young lad such as Benedict and for sensitive constitutions such as mine. So we departed at intermission.

Erika didn't attend the play with us because she went to Heathrow Airport to meet friends from Germany. Erika and Karin were students together at Teubingen University, and she came with her husband Michael and daughter Ruth. By the time Benedict and I arrived home they were already having some supper. The two sofas in the front room folded out into beds, and an extra mattress hauled down from the attic and we quickly completed the three beds we needed.

Tuesday was also significant for the phone call I received on the tube on the way to the Kilfoyle's house. Mr. Archer called from Acton High School requesting an interview with Benedict. We arranged to meet him at the school Thursday morning at 9:30. Mr. Archer is part of the pastoral staff and he deals with behavioural issues among the year 8 kids. He invited Benedict to attend Acton High School as a member of the year 8 class. Mr. Archer told us something about the school, and since we had no other offers I filled out the paper work, Benedict was fitted for his uniform (red polo shirt and blue sweater, green PE shirt), and I asked a few questions. Just like that, Benedict begins school on Monday.

The school is a relatively short bus ride from our house. The bus goes past Gunnersbury Park and a few stops later Benedict will get out at Acton Town, just a few yards away from the Acton Town tube station. He could also take the tube to school, though that will cost a pound a day while the bus ride for students is free. Depending on traffic and how long he has to wait for the bus pick him up, almost never more than 8-10 minutes, the trip only takes about 20-30 minutes from the front door to the school.

Some facts:

Acton High School is the newest high school in Ealing, only three years old. It has, Mr. Archer told us, the latest up-to-date equipment. Every classroom has an interactive white board. There are computers galore.

The cut off date for determining which year a student will be in is September 1. That means that Benedict will be the youngest student in year 8. That is equivalent to 7th grade in the US, where he would be in the 6th grade. We had asked about placing him in year 7, but they are very strict about the dates and Mr. Archer said they would assess him and determine which group of students in year 8 to match him with and support him in catching up if he is behind.

The default language is French, though Benedict might be able to study Spanish instead.

The school day begins at 8:45 and ends at 3:25, except on Thursday when it ends at 3 for the teachers to meet.

Benedict is 238 out of an eventual 240 year 8 students (the entire student body of St. Helen's isn't even close to that).

PE is three times a week. On those days students carry their PE clothes in a bag with them all day. They change in the locker room.

For 65% of the students, English is not their native language.

The year 8 students will read Hamlet this year.

There are two police officers on campus.

There are 5 one hour classes every day, except Thursday when each class loses 5 minutes to allow the day to end at 3. There is a 20 minute break after the second period, and an hour lunch after the third.

Hot and cold lunches are available for about 2 to 2.5 pounds.

There are many clubs, most of which meet at lunch.

Mr. Archer handles--trains? coaches? manages?--the year 8 football team.



Finally, in the afternoon we all ended up at the Globe Theatre for a performance of Henry IV, Part I. We stood again as groundlings. Falstaff, played by a different actor than the one in The Merry Wives of Windsor, was hilarious, and the fight scenes had swords flying all over the stage. We're getting ready to attend Henry IV, Part II Saturday night. It's the last performance of the season, and then the Globe will be dark until next spring.

Sunday Afternoon at Syon

Thirty percent of London is parkland. Thirty percent. London as a whole takes up about 600 square miles. That means about 200 square miles is devoted to parks. By way of comparison, Los Angeles is a bit over 400 square miles--a bit less if you subtract the parks and beaches that make up a much smaller percentage of open space. But over 8 million Londoner have to squeeze into around the same space--400 square miles--that sprawling LA uses for living space for its 3 million plus residents. The implications, I hope, are obvious.

Many of London's parks are huge affairs, such as the famous central London parks of Kensington Park and Hyde Park. Large local parks such as Lammas and Walpole in our neighborhood in Ealing provide valuable breathing spaces for the majority of Londoners living in relatively cramped quarters. The majority of homes and flats in our area are not much bigger than our cottage's 807 square feet. Some of them certainly house families larger than our own. The parks allow adults and children to stretch their legs with walking paths, playgrounds, tennis courts, and large lawns for playing with dogs and smacking footballs back and forth. And then there are the very large but more obscure parks unknown to casual visitors. Our advantage is that we are not casual visitors. We are serious, long-term visitors indeed, practically residents. We have the benefit and the opportunity--indeed the obligation! the duty!--to explore more obscure regions of the city.

So in that spirit we set forth Sunday afternoon with umbrellas unfurled as we braved the drizzle, our destination a large green blob on our maps by the shores of the River Thames. It would not take us long to get there. Jaunt over to Boston Manor Road, hop on the E8 bus at the tube station, ride south for a few minutes to the end of the bus line, forcing us off the bus in Brentford. As the name suggests the old town, now firmly within London's orbit, is named for a ford across the River Brent. The major road to southwest England from London, going all the way to Bath and Bristol, is the nearby Great West Road, now a major thoroughfare with some major old art decco buildings. That road has been in existence in one form or another for thousands of years. With a little guidance from our bus driver, we soon found ourselves in Syon Park.

It's worth noting, before going further, that Brentford is the site of two historic battles as well as a doubtful one. The doubtful one involved Julias Ceasar who supposedly crossed the Thames at this point and encountered some native Britons on his way to Verulamium, the ancient Roman town at St. Albans. The first Battle of Brentford was fought past the mists of time in 1016 between the forces of the Saxon king, Edmund Ironside, and Canute, the Viking king of the Danes. To quote British History Online:

Edmund Ironside having obliged the Danes to raise the siege of London in the year 1016, pursued them to Brentford, where he defeated them with great slaughter. In the ardour of the pursuit, a great number of the English soldiers lost their lives in the River. Here the same king afterwards passed the Thames at low water in pursuit of the Danes, who were ravaging the county of Kent.

Canute later defeated Edmund at Ashingdon, whereupon they divided England between them with the agreement that whoever should die first would cede his portion of England to the other. Unfortunately for Edmund, he died in November of the same year.

The more recent Battle of Brentford was fought between the Royalists forces of King Charles I and the Cromwellian Roundheads in 1642 as the Royalists tried to advance to London. Though the Royalists won this day, they lost the next day at Turnham Green.

Syon Park, if you looked at this map, is about the same size as Gunnersbury Park. (If your are so inclined you can enlarge the map, centering the hand between Boston Road and Northfield Avenue, until you see our street, Ridley Avenue, appear. That will give you an idea of our relation to our immediate territory and, if you are inclined to explore further, where we are in the relation to the rest of London.) There is, however, an important difference. The public owns Gunnersbury Park through the Ealing and Hounslow Councils. Syon Park, on the other hand, is the property of Ralph Percy, the 12th Duke of Northumberland.

This is Syon House, the residence of the Duke and his family. Apparently this isn't the Duke's only residence as he also owns a castle in Alnwick between Newcastle and the Scottish border. Syon House encircles a small garden and the rooms the Duke and his family live in surround this garden. The rooms open to the public encircle the inner private rooms with windows facing the fields and the Thames beyond. For a fee the public is invited to view the gardens and the public rooms of the house. The online tour is worth flipping through to get an idea of the grandeur of the rooms. I hope it goes without saying that the rooms are more impressive in person than in the photos.

The history of the house is too long to relate here, but the web site has a good summary. In brief, prior to its dissolution by Henry VIII Bridgettine nuns operated a very wealthy abbey founded by Henry V. Where the house sits today an Abbey as large as Westminster possessed the ground. The later ducal residents and the house itself seem to have been involved with some notable personalities and events, especially in the 17th and 18th centuries. The Percys, before achieving ducal honors, were earls, and the son of one of them helped the establishment of Jamestown, Virginia. The first Duke hired Robert Adams to remodel the interior of the house. The Duke's illegitimate son, James Smithson, provided the funds to establish the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. The second Duke fought for the British in the American War of Independence (as our Revolutionary War is called here), befriended and supported a Mohawk chief, and later commissioned Gilbert Stuart, Georg Washington's portaitist, to paint three portraits, including one of the Mohawk chief, Joseph Brant.

There is more stories to tell that include Mary, Queen of Scots, Henry VIII, Charles I, Queen Victoria.

The third Duke commissioned the design and construction of this wonderful conservatory. Essentially a huge greenhouse, the conservatory houses trees rare in England such as palm trees.

 This statue graces the front of the conservatory.

Wine cuttings from the conservatory helped start the
Australian wine industry.

Looking for fish, and finding them.

This sign suggests the Park's unobtrusive profit motive.



The net worth of the Duke, according to Wikipedia, not always the most reliable source, is 300 million pounds. He, or his managers, have cleverly succeeded in introducing businesses to the estate that fit in with overall tenor of the property. Examples are the excellent garden centre, a child care center, an indoor playground, a fishery, and the location for major motion pictures. And the Duke is more than willing to accommodate corporate events and wedding receptions as well. In one small corner of the his estate he built athree or four buildings of flats. Whether he intendes to sell them or rent them I don't know. If you explore the web site for the Duke's castle at link above you will find similar offerings and activities. The 12th Duke will certainly leave his estate intact, and then some, when the 13th Duke inherits it. If only the Ealing and Hounslow Councils could manage Gunnersbury half as well as the Duke as managed Syon.

A pair of Tudor roses on one of the gates. The rain had stopped by the time we finished exploring the great house. We had a bite to eat in the cafe and Erika bought some colorful violets to brighten our home at the gardent centre.

We wanted to see the River Thames, so we walked along the parks road to its southern entrance, where we had this view cattle lying in a marshy field. Remember this park is still in London, only about 10 miles from the center of the city. Planes landing at Heathrow flew overhead every couple of minutes. While we were in London, we were certainly not of it.

The River Thames, looking upstream. Note that the tide is low, that the tidal ebb and flow still influences the river this far from the sea. On the left is Kew Gardens, the huge and important botanical gardens. Behind the trees, I believe, is Kew Garden's golf course.

This view upstream again shows an island. The main channel of the Thames is on the left. At this point we have left Syon Park and entered the small village of Isleworth. It looks like a pretty exclusive, meaning very expensive, community today. Looks like a lovely place to live.

 

Pub on the wharf at Isleworth, the London Apprentice. Henry VIII and Charles I used to hang out here. I wonder if they played darts. When we go back to look at the Syon Park gardens more closely, we'll have to stop for lunch here. As it was, we had an incredibly satisfying Sunday afternoon.

Quiet, but not too much

Last week was a fairly inactive one for us, but still notable for some of the activities we enjoyed. Monday we didn't do too much outside the house, but Tuesday we did have a busy afternoon and evening.

Tuesday after lunch Benedict and I visited the Natural History Museum for the first time. The museum is only a few blocks from where Erika teaches and is next to both the London Science Museum and Imperial College. In the August when we arrived in London the lengthy lines outside the museum discouraged us from visiting. However by late September most of the tourists, especially families, were gone. As were the long lines.

Entrance fee: zero.

The museum is massive, an example of the German Romanesque style designed by Alfred Waterhouse. It needs to be massive because it holds about 70 million items in its collection, making it the largest natural history museum in the world. The design of the interior is as spectacular as the exterior and worth exploring for its own sake. The museum opened the day after Easter in 1881.

The first specimen we encountered upon entering the Central Hall of the museum is the skeleton of a large dinosaur. We then spent the next three hours pleasurably and leisurely exploring the dinosaur and the human biology galleries. There are several other galleries that we must return to examine, especially the brand new Darwin Centre. As well as being a museum displaying many pieces of its collection, the scientists at the museum also carry on several research projects.

After several hours of scientific study in the Natural History Museum, we flew off to meet Erika at the Barbican Centre for a bite to eat and an evening of music and drama. We joined Susan and Sarah for dinner prior to watching a performance of Les Miserable. The Barbican, recall, is in the area of London completely destroyed in the Blitz. Many in the audience were obviously repeat customers and they were not disappointed. The musical itself combined Victor Hugo's social commentary and romantic melodrama in a fantastic production. His idealism shone through and the audience lapped it up, perhaps pining for a hopeful beacon in an otherwise dark age of cynicism. I'm not familiar with the songs, and only a couple seemed worth remembering. But the performances and stagecraft were uniformly excellent. For me the most moving scenes involved the masterfully enacted scenes of the revolutionary students' predictable defeat and death at the Parisian barricades. For most of the audience the ending was more emotional. Sales of tissue must increase every time there is a performance.

Still, a stirring evening and an education in stagecraft, music, history, and psychology.

The next couple of days were fairly quiet. On early Friday morning we embarked on a bus to Cambridge. This was one of the CAPA-organized tours for the students that we hitched along with. Our tour guide this time was Clarissa. She had some things to say about the sites we were passing on our way through the city. She turned out to be an excellent guide with much to tell, most that I don't have time to repeat here.

Getting out of London on drizzly gray day took almost an hour, and in only another hour we reached Cambridge. The motorway taking us out of London passed by the site of the 2012 Olympic games. The builders looked like they were making great progress in preparation for the games. The arenas and stadiums are well along and look as if they'll be ready in a couple of summers.

The back of the Great Hall of Kings College. Its most famous
members were probably E.M Forster, A.M. Turing, and J.M.
Keynes.


Clarissa gave us some history of Cambridge (here is a less tongue-in-cheek version), noting that William the Conqueror built a castle there shortly after his successful invasion. What is left of the castle is a large dirt mound. Under Henry VIII, Cambridge Protestant preachers meeting at the White Horse Inn provided the theological underpinnings supporting the Reformation. One of them, Robert Barnes, preached the first evangelical sermon in England at St. Edwards, King and Martyr in the center of Cambridge. Most of these preachers were later executed by Mary, Queen of Scots. One of the downfalls of taking religion so seriously as to deny toleration of contrary beliefs.

Today the area around the city is known as Silicon Fen for all the high tech companies who've made it their home. A fen is land that is marshy and flat. The population of the city is about 100,000.

This is called the Mathematical Bridge because Isaac Newton
allegedly built it without nails, screw, bolts, etc. As our
guide said, "Tosh!" The bridge was built with ordinary
means 22 years after Newton died. It spans the River Cam.



Peterhouse College, the oldest of Cambridges colleges.
Famous graduates.



Cambridge University isn't simply one school but an intimage association, if you will, of 31 separate colleges. If you wish to attend, you apply to the particular colleges though your degree is from the University of Cambridge. You can apply to 3 colleges, according to Clarissa, in order of preference and hope you will get into one of them. The competition is pretty fierce. Students may attend lectures by anyone at any college. The University became an offshoot of Oxford University when in the 13th century students at Oxford University (founded by King Henry II in the 12th century) engaged in some violent encounters with the good citizens of Oxford and consequently some students went off to Cambridge in 1209.  Eventually Cambridge as a university became established and the rest is history. Oxford, however, doesn't let Cambridge forget its 'inferior' status.

Clarissa explaining the influence of scientific discoveries at Cambridge.

For centuries Cambridge, even before Newton, has been an important place for scientific discoveries. Since the Nobel Prizes began to be awarded in 1901, Cambridge leads all other institutions in the number of prize winners, the vast majority of them in the sciences.

Charles Darwin studied theology at Christ's College (John Milton is another illustrious graduate of the college). Darwin has the distinction of having one of the Cambridge colleges named for him.

The Eagle Pub, the hangout of scientists.

The most famous of the colleges, which according to Clarissa is also the largest and possessor of the biggest endowment, may be Trinity College, founded in 1546 by Henry VIII. The list of eminent alumni and fellows of this college is absolutely staggering. Newton, Bacon, Byron, Tennyson, Russell, Wittgenstein, Maxwell, Nabokov, and on and on. 

Clarissa and some students near Trinity College.



Punting on the Cam.





An old fellow and future Cambridge fellow? On the steps
of the Fitzwilliam Museum.

We spent a few minutes hanging out in the bookstore.

By lunch time Clarissa's tour was over and our time was our own. The first thing we did was visit the Wren Library, part of Trinity College. Designed by the architect of St. Paul's Cathedral in London, the library houses rare manuscripts, some of which they display in glass cases available for view to the public. The manuscripts we saw included an 8th century Bible, a 12 century bible with brilliant illuminations, a copy of Shakespeare's first folio of 1624, Newton's copy of the first edition of his Principia Mathematica with annotations for changes for the second edition, Wittgenstein's philosophical notebooks that were eventually published after his death, a manuscript by Bertrand Russell, a poem in Byrons hand. I wish I could remember the others. Fantastic.

Wandering around town brought us to the Round Church, which was supposedly built by the Knights Templar upon their return from the Crusades and dates from 1130. The church is a copy of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. It is one of four remaining Round Churches in England, and reputed to be the oldest of the four.

We set our sights on the Fitzwilliam Museum about mid afternoon. The entrance fee is zero. For a fairly small museum in terms of space, it holds an astonishing variety of artworks and artifacts. The knightly armor collection alone is truly astonishing. I've been reading Once and Future King to Benedict, T.H. White's take on the Arthurian legend, and seeing the armor (this is the only image of armor the museum has online, and it isn't a knight's armor; but you get the idea) makes the story more concrete. The ancient Egyptian sarcophaguses and other ancient pieces were stunning. The paintings, portraits, furniture, sculpture, ceramics. One could easily spend all day in this museum and not tire. But we only had about an hour.

We wished to see at least one of the colleges, preferably Kings College, more closely, but the college had closed to the public by the time we were ready to admire the interior of the Great Hall/chapel. Will we have time for a return visit to Cambridge, to spend more time in the Fitzwilliam Museum, visit the other museums in town, pretend to be fellows or dons in a Great Hall of one of the colleges, and check out what's left of William the Conqueror's castle? We'll have to see.

The bus took even longer to wind through London's rush hour traffic. Our driver had to take a roundabout way to CAPA, but we finally got there. Clarissa's next tour assignment was to guide the LA Lakers on a bus tour of London the next day. The Lakers are in London to play an exhibition game with the Minnesota Timberwolves. She knew nothing about them. Well, Clarissa, to begin with they're really, really tall...

Local Surprises

We normally take the northbound E2 bus from Northfields to what is locally known as Ealing Broadway. This is the closest main shopping area to us and it's also location of the town hall and borough council offices. The bus drives up Northfield Avenue to Uxbridge Road, Ealing's main thoroughfare that eventually ends in Uxbridge at the absolute western edge of London. For a few blocks the street is called Broadway. I don't know why. This lovely Anglican church, Christ the Saviour, is on this street and represents itself as the parish church of a major outer London shopping district, Ealing Broadway


Inside this building houses is main the mall of the area, the Ealing Broadway Shopping Centre. There is also several stories of parking garage inside. The mall has about 80 stores, including a major supermarket (Tesco), barber shops and hair salons, the main Ealing library, bargain stores, a couple of cell phone outlets, clothing stores, a sporting goods shop, a good bookstore, a couple of restaurants, a major department store (Mark & Spencer). The area around the shopping center is filled with shops and ethnic restaurants. One day I'll do a post of just the different ethnic restaurants in the area.

This is one of several side streets off Broadway that is also filled with shops. Don't be fooled by what seems to be a lack of shoppers and autos. The reality is that whenever we've gone to Ealing Broadway the streets are full of people and  crammed with cars. On Saturdays the sidewalks are absolutely packed with people. Even though this is in the outer parts of London, it is still very much an urban environment. The street we live on is very quiet, but a constant hum of activity pervades all the main avenues.

 One of the wonderful characteristics of living in London is that one never knows what one will encounter around the next corner. One day after completing an errand with the Ealing Council I barely missed the E2 bus. Instead waiting about ten minutes for the next bus I decided to walk home. But I didn't take the same route I was familiar with from taking the bus. Instead I went another way, thinking it might be shorter. A couple of blocks from Ealing Broadway I Ealing Green behind which stood some kind of building I didn't have time to invstigate.

I also passed this building, the offices of a movie studio. Since I grew up in the long shadow cast by Hollywood in California, this instantly aroused my interest. In turns out that Ealing Studios has been making movies for over a 100 years. During the forties and fifties in made a string of popular comedies, the one known best by American audiences perhaps being The Lavender Hill Mob, starring Alec Guiness well before his Star Wars days.

Last Saturday morning, a week ago today, we found the best football venue for Benedict to practice his skills and get some coaching within a relatively short bus ride from our house. Well, actually we have to take two buses. It's a new private facility with ten small football pitches for what folks call 5-a-side games. We've seen several such pitches in local parks busy with active adult players, so the 5 v. 5 game seems to be popular. There are fewer boys at the trainings and the competition is less cutthroat, perfect for keeping Benedict's skills in football condition.

Later the same day, a chilly and blustery afternoon, we got on the E2 bus again, the bus this time taking us south away from Broadway Ealing. We see on the map (after clicking this link, click on one of the map icons in the right column) that there is a very large park, Gunnersbury, not too far from us. We went to the park as much to satisfy our curiosity as to do something active for the day. Knowing nothing of the park or its history, we were surprised to find a couple of old seedy mansions, such as the one on the left, on the property. A museum, which we didn't visit this time, is in one of the mansions.


Sweeping lawns, groves of trees such as the small grove of gingko trees below, vast fields where athletes could play football, rugby, or cricket; a dozen or so tennis courts, some full of weed and lacking nets; an 18 hole pitch-and-putt golf course; a small pond with a pair of graceful swans

The gingko trees.

A shrine by the pond.

 

A small stone bridge.

A tree already changing colors on the golf course.



Benedict on the parapet about to repel would-be attackers.



Erika at the door of Princess Amelia's bath house.




















The property that is now the park once belonged to the Bishop of London. In the 14th century. Much later, in the 18th century, it belonged to Princess Amelia, a daughter of King George II. She was briefly betrothed to the man who would later become King Frederic the Great of Prussia. She used the property primarily as a summer residence. After changing hands several times the estate fell into the hands of the Rothschilds family, the famous bankers, in the 19th century. It remained in their hands until 1925 when the Ealing Council purchased amidst some controversy. Some argued that the land could be better used for inexpensive housing, but the council leaders disagreed. Today the park is administered jointly by the Ealing and Hounslow Councils. Some of the parkland needs assistance, and what we saw of the buildings need investment in upkeep and repairs. Apparently public funds are hard to come by in this era of tightening budgets. But the park is such a gem. Many people wandered on the park's paths, some read books in the meadows, dogs froliced unleashed, a cricket match was underway, a couple of tennis courts felt the smack of balls on the asphalt, several football teams engaged in furious battles, the cafe served tea and coffee to the weary, and a playground was busy with toddlers running around.

The next day, Sunday, we discovered another gem. We were graced with a visit that afternoon from my niece, Jenny. She and her family live in Denver, but she is working in London temporarily.

We all went out for a walk after lunch, strolling through Lammas Park which has an entrance on Northfield Avenue. At the other end we crossed a road and entered Walpole Park. By the time we reached the other end of this park we were almost at Ealing Broadway. As it turns out, this is a quick route--about half an hour--on foot to the shopping area. Ealing Studios and Ealing, Hammersmith, & West London College back
up to the park, and Pitzhanger Manor-House, pictured

below, anchors a corner of the park. I discovered this on a later walk. But on that day we walked through the gardens behind the manor-house, including the vegetable garden. When we walked back to the house a cold rain began to fall, and we were quite soaked by the time we returned. We dried off enough to have dinner and make tentative plans to travel together to visit her parents and brothers in Bristol the end of October.

The architect John Soane purchased and rebuilt the in the early 19th century. What's interesting about this is that by coincidence Soane is buried in the St. Giles-in-the-Field church we visited with Professor Mike on Wednesday during the Victorian England walking tour.

The last surprise--for the time being--Benedict and I found on Monday when we took a break from school work. We took a long walk up to Uxbridge Road in West Ealing, and on our way on this road--crossing into Hanwell as we walked (which is still part of the borough of Ealing)--to Boston Manor Road we walked past a pair of crowded cemetaries across the street from one another. What I found interesting about these cemetaries, other than the very old and ornate tombstones, is that one apparently belongs to the borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and the other belongs to the City of Westminster. (Westminster is a borough of London, but it is called a city for some reason. Perhaps because it's the seat of Britain's government and the Queen's main residence, Buckingham Palace, is within its borders.) These boroughs must have run out of burial space and acquired land in what was once the more sparsely populated Middlesex village of Hanwell.
These are some of the surprises we recently discovered about where we live.