It's all a bit off you know? I keep looking the wrong way and finding myself stepping out into oncoming traffic. Not to worry though because they're all quite polite about the whole thing. Actually everyone I've come across is so nice and charming... I think it's their accent. As for food, the Brits have really come into their own... although Vanessa says it's because the French have invaded their kitchens. Orange eggs? Apparently these came from Tusany. And they've paired food with shopping as we seem to always be finding retail clothing or housewares establishments doubling as eateries.
After a morning of hard work Vanessa and I took to the streets with little Mattu and made our way from their Earl's Court flat over towards Notting Hill to see her friend Lisa and her baby Jake. There are babies everywhere! Every where I turn, which is usually incorrectly to the right, I see a mom pushing her pram or towing a toddler by the hand. Of course we are in a posh neighborhood and the area is perfect for taking walks and enjoying the parks and gardens so perhaps it's just a matter of location and not an epidemic. I'm also really struck by how beautiful everything is... it's all just so lovely. Perhaps all this loveliness would become tiresome after a while and I might yearn for some grit and horn honking, but right now I'm just so smitten with the gardens and trees and cleanliness and friendliness. Of course the one thing I'm not so enamoured with is the cost... bloody expensive! Everything looks like the same price as in NYC, until you realise that the UK£ = 2x US$! So basically you're paying twice what you think it costs. But that's not stopping me from having a great time.
After a visit with Lisa and a sleeping Jake, and a bottle and quick diaper change for Mattu, Vanessa and I wound our way through Notting Hill to have a bit of lunch at the Nichol Farhi clothing and housewares store. The english really are fond of the mash-up. Right across the street from the restaurant/shop we found another interesting combo of flower shop/public loo. Fragrant. I seem to be a little obsessed with loos today... not sure if it's Mattu's influence or if I'm subconsciously anticipating the hole in the ground that I'm sure to find on my next stop in India. Even when the loo is on a construction site the English have managed to make it look pretty by pairing it with a lovely chartreuse scrim.
3 comments:
I can't wait for your newfound British accent to morph into an Indian accent! You colonialist, you.
I know what you mean about the loos Doug! Ariane always asks how Americans can manage to hold their wee when they're out and about, since there are so few public latrines anywhere. I guess because the restaurants wouldn't make any money if there were? New Zealand is like UK: public loos aplenty, some are even works of art. Just watch out for the self-cleaning variety, Papa will recall the scary one we found by the seaside in Provence.
Actually this is from AB – good to see that London is just like I left it (mind you I was there in April so I suppose it’s unlikely to have changed much). Actually, it does change, but perhaps not much recently. It amuses me that Earls Court is now a posh area – and has been for some time. When I lived in London it was full of tatty Victorian houses with dreary spinsters peering through the lace curtains – very Muriel Spark … the gradual gentrification of the London inner suburbs has changed the whole London landscape. People like me can go round boring the knickers of everyone by droning on about how I Knew Kilburn When It Was a Slum (I did, though, I used to work there in an “outreach” project - although even then we called it “West West Hampstead” if anyone asked where we lived …)
Still, Chelsea (where I also lived) is now so stonkingly expensive and so stuffed with tourists and dreary New-Age Sloanes that it’s unbearable and I suppose people have to live somewhere. You have to go further out to find the slums, but they are still there although most of the back-to-back Coro Streets have gone and they look like tower-block parks now – don’t bother, though, you’ll have enough of that in India I dare say.
If you have time, go to Greenwich – but I expect you will anyway. For my money you could bypass The Wheel, but the Bridge That Bounced is worth a look (I was actually there in Greenwich on the only day it was open before it was closed for rework, and I decided not to cross it because there were too many people – how stupid was that, I could have said I bounced across the Bouncing Bridge?). And the Tate Modern – if a man is tired of the Tate Modern … Well, he won’t be tired of it. We have good friends who live in Greenwich but they are bound to be at their house in the Dordogne at the moment or I would get them to take you out to lunch at Conran – people are never there when you want them. Even their daughter is busy cycling over the Alps for charity – hard not to hate them when they are so typical of the Brit Upper-Middle, but they defy the norm by being rather sweet. Maybe next time – or take your friend to lunch there (she can pay, somewhere in her life there must be a London Salary, surely?)
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