Bye for Now

It's time for my usual way to let you know something:

Bob and I are catching an early plane tomorrow morning--we're spending nine days in Oslo, Copenhagen, and Stockholm. It's been a really long time since either of us travelled somewhere where we speak none of the language, will be using three unfamiliar currencies on the same trip, and will move around so much in a short space of time (those Scandinavian countries are big!), but it should be an adventure. You can look forward to a full photo report when we get back. Until then, ha det/ hej hej/ adjö/ goodbye!

Do You Know Where Your Americium 241 Is?

We changed the batteries in two of our three smoke alarms today and while Bob was balancing on a chair snapping one back into the ceiling, I read the back of the other one and was disturbed to find a familiar symbol along with a warning: I'm no smoke-detector expert, and maybe all the smoke detectors in places I've lived have carried the same matter-of-fact statement of radioactivity, but it's still somewhat disconcerting to see the words "contains radioactive material" on a household device. It's supposedly just fine, with a radiation dose to house occupants of "essentially" (don't like that word) zero, and the detectors themselves can be put in regular landfill when they're no longer useful, but I still feel a bit strange about this discovery. The websites say that you could even eat the radioactive component and be completely fine, but I won't be doing that anytime soon!

The Clerk's Well

I know you're probably thinking that we've become a bit too attached to these self-guided walks around London, but we really are finding that the more of them we do, the more we want to do more! Today's walk was yet another example of an interesting meander along roads and tiny alleyways (Can we go through there? Surely that's a dead-end . . . oh, no, it isn't!); into parks and amazing structures; and through an area of London that is so close to home, yet, as Bob said halfway along the walk, "We could live in London for ten years and never, ever stumble upon any of this. These walks are pretty great." Anyway, enough glowing praise--on with the walk! Probably the only strange thing about our walk through Clerkenwell is that we didn't see the namesake Clerk's Well, which is now very bizarrely contained in the basement of an office building and is apparently visible through a window! Even though we missed out on this highlight of the neighbourhood, we still saw plenty along the way, starting off with this interestingly named pub, on a street of the same name:

Bleeding Heart Yard has a fancy restaurant and also disguises its rubbish bins in a nice way:
Oh and characters in Dickens's Little Dorrit (which I haven't read) apparently lived here. (It's not a walk through London without a Dickens reference!) This small park had a series of benches that I almost didn't notice, and then one bench looked a bit odd
and then another,
and another!
(Bob sat on the one above and said it was actually quite comfortable.) I liked this cartoon character in the middle of a sea of tagging
and when I spotted a pair of school doorways, I thought they would be the usual "girls and infants" through one and "boys" through the other. I was half-right.

This lovely curved street was full of a mixture of offices and flats
and the white building was quite striking--our guide informed us that Dickens (yes, him again) once had an account at Finsbury Bank for Savings.
This kind of urban layering is one of my favourite things about walking around in a city--thinking about what once was or what once happened right in the spot where you're standing. Usually this is experienced in a slightly less literal sense, but I quite enjoyed the push to remember the past as marked in this square:
The outline on the pavement is of the "circular shape of the 1140s church" that stood here before being rebuilt nearby after suffering damage in WWII bombing. Just across from here, we peered through locked gates at a lovely garden--I have no idea what it is though!
The arch of St. John's Lane was a perfect place to escape from the rain that had just started, if only for a few minutes.
Nearby is this very fancy restaurant, whose website contains almost exactly the same photo as the one I took today! (I think mine is better ;-))
I had vaguely heard of the restaurant before, but I didn't take the photo because of it's renown; rather, I just enjoyed the sign that advertises bread sales alongside wine sales. Bread often doesn't get enough respect! On a sidenote, a quick glance at their menu led me to Google one of the ingredients because I had no idea what it was--a plant that tastes like oysters? Intriguing. Next up was the imposing Grand Avenue of Smithfield Market:A meat market for more than 800 years, the 1878 building is beautiful:John Betjamin lived in tiny Cloth Fair (you can just see the blue plaque on the left),
an atmospheric alleyway with a cosy pub that was full of people on this rainy evening.
This building doesn't look like it belongs in London, what with its pastels and Art Deco flourishes:
This is more London-like: After all, London isn't generally a land of Miami-Beach hues and sunny dispositions; it's a place where tripe needs dressing and offal needs selling. The menacing wooden structure on the roof and the proximity of the "men's lavatory" to this slaughterhouse complete the stark image. Nearby, another fancy restaurant places their chalkboard menu in an enticing passageway that is easily noticed even before you peer into the courtyard to see the restaurant itself. All in all, Clerkenwell has some interesting history and lovely buildings--well worth a walk. However, it also houses a lot of pretension that caters to young, wealthy City-workers who are stressed from their long work-weeks and have money to spend and want to do so with as much flash as possible! This last photo of one of the last sights on our walk, sums up this sentiment pretty well:A hotel/ bar/ restaurant with the achingly pretentious name Malmaison, their website contains the most painful hotel blurb I've ever read, on their "About Us" page. The over-the-top writing makes my teeth hurt, and the image over their link to their "Food philosophy" demonstrates a distinct lack of humour in addition to a lack of taste! And I'm sorry that I'm having a hard time letting this one go, but what exactly do they mean by "converting you from a white to a red man"? Are they talking about wine? Even if they are, the way it's phrased seems to imply a clientele of white men in search of . . . I'm not sure what. Anyway, I seem to have gotten a bit off-topic, but I just wanted to give you a sense of the scale of very 80s excess that still exists in London. Not my cup of tea, but I guess there's enough of a demand to keep all these places in business, so I'll just have to chalk it up to (very very very) different tastes.

Barnsbury

The rain never got worse than a fine mist today, so we decided to do another walk from our favourite lists of self-guided walks, this time in Barnsbury. We ended up seeing parts of this area close to home that we've never seen, and Bob summed it up best when he said, "Ohhhhh, so this is what people mean when they say that Islington has posh bits!" I liked Sidney House's elegant glass and we walked around and through many peaceful, leafy squares, which are kept up by Islington Council and are thus open to the public (unlike all those private squares elsewhere in London).

We didn't see many people on our walk, and came across many isolated pubs and lovely streetscapes.

Strangely enough for someone who doesn't spend much time in pubs, every time I see a pub that's been converted into a residence, I want to live there! I don't think my photo succeeds in showing the lovely green hues of this building, but they were lovely as they changed in the light. The greenery on this home was spectacular--the window seemed like the perfect place to sit with a book and a cup of coffee, all cosy in a blanket of green:
The seahorse knocker on this door added an unexpected twist to the usual lion, and it wasn't until I got home that I noticed the additional bell-pull on the left:

Being a good Winnie-the-Pooh devotee, I was of course reminded of Owl's house, an "old-world residence of great charm, which was grander than anybody else's . . . because it had both a knocker and a bell-pull." (Don't worry though, the bell-pull we saw today wasn't made out of Eeyore's tail.) Next up was this great wall of old adverts for long-gone shops:
Although we saw many colourful doors along the way (indeed, the shapes and colours of doors are often highlights of any walk around London), this church door's piercing blue was especially pretty:

Before we knew it, there was our usual Sainsbury's almost right in front of us--we'd never approached it from this direction before and it seemed strange to be right back in the middle of the extremely familiar street, thinking about what ingredients to buy for dinner . . .

Ere Jeers Cue Din, Giver Darns Tiny Tat

Well, the weather seems to be conspiring against us these days, as our plans for walking explorations around town have been rained out two days in a row. Tomorrow's and Saturday's weather forecasts are much better, but we'll have to wait and see what happens. For now, today's extremely rainy afternoon was a good excuse to dig out the Scrabble board. Now, playing Scrabble with Bob is always an exercise in making things up--or, in my case, shooting down things that he makes up. He's not quite as bad as a certain regular reader (who shall remain unnamed to protect her reputation) who has been known to use misspelled words because her opponent doesn't notice! Surely that goes against all things Scrabble?! Anyway, sometimes I think Bob likes putting down fake words more than he likes making real ones. Here's a typical example:

Bob's explanation for trying to add an R-E to the existing word was that "they all rejoist when they heard the good news." Next up was: "But I hear it all the time in schools and on the street! C'mon bruv! Innit!" I had to agree that we've heard it used many times, but that doesn't make it a Scrabble word. Somehow, with all of Bob's attempts at getting questionable words on the board, we got through the game just in time for the pouring rain to stop as the wind blew away all the clouds.

Gazumping

As in Vancouver, the housing market in London is booming, so much so that it can sometimes be difficult to see the buildings themselves through the estate-agent signs. Of course, like practically everything else here, buying a flat or a house works in a slightly different, much more stressful way: once your offer on a property is accepted, the sale of that property becomes "subject to contract."

This doesn't mean that the sign outside gets taken down; on the contrary, the sign remains up, with the phrase "subject to contract" added to the sign under the word "sold." In theory, this protects the buyer and seller, as either party can pull out of the sale, subject to issues like building inspections or finalisations of mortgages. In practice in a sellers' market like London's, it means that the estate agent can continue to advertise the property, with the effect of an auctioneer calling out to other potential buyers, "Going once, going twice . . ." and even though the buyer puts out additional non-refundable expenses (surveyor's fees, solicitor's fees, mortgage fees) in the period between having an offer accepted and signing the final contract, this money can disappear if the seller accepts another higher offer in the interim. This horrible experience, along with a seller using a higher offer to then get you to up your offer after it has already been accepted, is called "gazumping," as in: "I got gazumped." Of course, if you're part of a chain of buyers and sellers, whose purchase depends on selling another property, any instance of gazumping anywhere along the chain could affect your transaction. The whole thing must be immensely stressful, and in fact, the English housing market sounds like a tangle of red tape, waiting, and gazumping. Apparently the London market is the most notorious for this, probably due to the fact that in the typical amount of time between a buyer having an offer accepted and finally signing the contract, the value of the property can increase by a substantial amount. As for other parts of the UK, I couldn't believe it when someone first told me how the housing market works in Scotland. If you don't already know, I'm guessing you won't be able to believe it either! Properties are advertised without a selling price; instead, "offers over" a certain amount are suggested, along with a deadline. Then, if you're interested in the property, you submit a sealed offer by the deadline. After the deadline has passed, the seller's estate agent or solicitor opens all the sealed offers, and the highest offer is accepted, immediately forming a binding legal agreement. The problem is that potential buyers have NO idea what anyone else is offering, and that information remains private, so whether you get the property or not, you never know how much more or less money would have been required to have your offer accepted. Buying a property in Scotland isn't a series of negotiations; it's just a one-time bid into the real-estate unknown. So when you buy a property in England, Wales, or Scotland, you apparently have your choice between fear of gazumping and fear of misbidding. Suddenly the life of the lowly flat-letter doesn't seem so bad!

S-->

Sometimes when we're feeling a bit tired of how long it takes to get around London, I think we subconsciously choose a destination that involves the Victoria line tube--it's only minutes from home to Highbury & Islington station by bus, and then the Victoria line is very quick, albeit one of the most rattly lines, especially between Highbury & Islington and King's Cross-St Pancras stations--Bob can barely do his sudoku (yes, folks, supply teaching in far-flung areas of London has made him a sudoku commuter). Anyway, today we started off at Tate Britain (seven stops south on the Victoria line, but they only take about fifteen minutes to travel), where we spent some time taking in the current survey of British photography. It was much less crowded than the last time I tried to see the exhibit, when people were crowding four- or five-deep in front of each photo, but then again, that was a pouring, cold bank-holiday in March, and today was a sunny, warm July weekday! We also stopped by the nearby Chelsea Space to see what was currently on show, and found the gallery strewn with all sorts of clutter:

Frank Sidebottom has a papier-mâché head and creates all sorts of silliness in various media--to use a phrase that we often hear on the street, he seems a bit mad, really. By now it was time for a bit of snack and we started heading toward a place that I've been curious about ever since it opened recently. But in order to get there, we had a bit of walking to do, so we started randomly heading toward it to see what we'd encounter along the way. The gorgeous St. John's, Smith Square is at the centre of a quiet, lovely neighbourhood, and the street in the above photo held a few sights that were worth extra photographs. The first was this pair of WWII bomb shelter signs, almost too weathered to read on the brick: "Public shelters in vaults under pavements in this street" and "S-->Shelter."
The second was a blue plaque marking Lawrence of Arabia's residence from 1922-28: Next, we came upon Westminster School, former school of notables such as Ben Jonson, John Dryden, John Locke, Christopher Wren, A.A. Milne, John Gielgud, Peter Ustinov, and Helena Bonham-Carter. (Yes, they did finally start admitting girls to the school in 1967, but even today, girls are only admitted (along with boys) to the sixth-form college at age 16, rather than at the other boys-only intakes at ages 7/8, 11, and 13.)
Just a bit posh . . .
Oh and Westminster Abbey is just around the corner from the school.
Not a bad address:
We'll have to have a look inside Westminster Abbey one of these days, but not on a day when we're aiming for coffee and treats (living here rather than being here on vacation allows us to have such skewed priorities)! We kept walking, cutting across a bit of St. James's Park, where we spotted the pelicans sunning themselves and a bit of a bike race:
It's not quite the display we saw over the weekend, but it was still cute. Finally, we arrived at our destination!
I had heard that the Nordic Bakery had great coffee, delicious food, and a lovely overall design, but I didn't realise that it was getting so much good press. In any case, it's now our new favourite place for coffee and treats! Fantastic strong coffee (Illy or Monmouth apparently, and regular readers know how much we love Monmouth coffee)
and the best carrot cake I've ever had (very different, very dense, very addictive),
along with an amazing-looking assortment of open-faced sandwiches and other goodies mean that we'll definitely be making a return visit. When we paid our bill, the man asked us how we liked the carrot cake and after we said how great it was, I added that it was a good thing Nordic Bakery was just far enough away from home that we wouldn't be passing by every day. "We're planning on expanding," he said, and I said that if they opened up in north London, I'd be in serious trouble, which he seemed to enjoy hearing. We decided to head home to do some things around the house, and along the way, we came across more of the Grand Tour prints than we'd seen before. They're really great, in their disjointed everyday settings--we've only seen one other person looking at a print while we were around, suggesting that for many people, it's being in the institution of art (museum, art gallery) that signals when to look around for upper-case-A "Art"!