Subscribers Only

Even though the weather looked less than ideal, we hurried down toward Bank station to join a walking tour being put on by the Museum of London in conjunction with the East festival. Entitled "East Is Best!" the walk promised to explore "the East End of London . . . . Meet some of the people who lived, loved, rioted, went mad, lost everything, and made fortunes in this area." Sounds great, right?

Well, we wouldn't know. When we arrived, we were asked if we had tickets--a question that confused me, because the festival guide listed the walk as free and not requiring prebooking. When I mentioned this, we were told in an unapologetic tone that this had been an error (not the museum's error), the walk was not free, that in fact it was already overbooked (the original limit had been set at eleven participants), and they were unable to add anyone else to the tour. While we stood there, taking in this information, the curt man repeated, "These people have all PAID," as if to further guilt us into moving away from the crowd. As we listened to "our" tour beginning, we were a bit disappointed and frustrated, but decided not to let the mixup ruin our day. If east London doesn't want us, well, we'll head west! That'll show east! :-) We got on the tube without deciding where we would get off, and ended up heading clear across London, emerging from Holland Park tube for a bit of a wander. The first thing we noticed is that the rich must have their booze, no matter what time it is, and whether they get it by bike

or by car!

We decided to walk around the centre of Notting Hill, with its concentric greenspaces neatly laid out on our A to Z. What we found was a very posh, very clean, very quiet neighbourhood--and as the rain stopped and the sun came out, we forgot all about our walking-tour snub and were glad to be in Notting Hill!

Amongst all the landscaped front gardens, fancy cars, and rows of pastel houses, this surprising sight sat quietly in front of a house that was undergoing renovation work:

"Why is he here?" Bob wondered aloud, and I couldn't really come up with an answer.

This house must be quite the sight when its impressive creeping greenery comes into bloom:

We soon realised that all the snippets of green we saw on the A to Z are, in fact, private gardens that we were able to peek at, but were unable to access:

As we kept coming upon locked garden gates, one consolation was that a steady stream of "subscribers" kept using their precious keys to enter the various gardens. Unlike completely deserted private gardens we've seen elsewhere in London, Notting Hill's gardens seem to be well-used by its residents. At least someone's using them!

We walked the length of Portobello Road, which was nice on a non-market day, and passed by this nearby laundromat, which brought the Hanif Kureishi film of the same name to mind:

On our way to Notting Hill station, we passed this run-down house for which renovations didn't seem to be in the works anytime soon!

Still, it appealed to us, in a crumbling Wilton's kind of way . . .