Daily Routine

The attractive shopfronts of Patisserie Deux Amis

and Bloomsbury Cheeses are side-by-side,

although the second space now contains offices, not cheese. At least the current tenant has kept the old sign, and after I saw an older photo of the cheese shop, I noticed that Bloomsbury Design has merely erased the word "Cheeses" from the window and replaced it with "Design." As Bob and I walked toward the Thames, we passed the imposing, chaotic facade of the Hotel Russell, built in 1898:

Russell Square was busy with people picnicking and walking dogs, and we sat for a while and had a picnic of our own

while we watched some pups get in a good dose of play time.

Books? Coffee? Okay!

We browsed for a bit in the London Review Bookshop and were tempted by their attractive café, but had another coffee destination in mind, so we kept our minds on their wonderful selection of books instead. Further along, we passed this blue plaque on Bertrand Russell's one-time residence

before arriving at Monmouth Coffee for our coffee treat. Amazingly, one of their three regular booths (they also have a very wee booth for one) was actually free, which has never been the case on any of our visits. In fact, today was the first day that we haven't shared the booth with two other people! (They're quite comfy for two, but a bit on the cuddly side for four.)

We walked along the Thames for a while, through Victoria Embankment Gardens,

before heading up into nearby streets on which we'd not yet walked.

The Art Deco Adelphi building has many lovely details,

and when I walked over to take another photo of the building, I smiled when I noticed that Bob was being watched . . .

The murals

and small reliefs that adorn the building are fantastic.

This one is my favourite:

We only walked on a few streets between the Strand and the river, but there certainly wasn't a shortage of attractive buildings.

Finally, it was time for us to head to this next building, the reason we were in the neighbourhood.

Since the doors were open, we didn't have to use the fantastic knocker,

and we were given name tags before heading up to "The Great Room." When we were handed our tags, Bob was a bit disappointed: "Ohhhh, I don't get my name on mine." I had given both of our names when I booked our places, but Bob was still labelled as my "plus one."

The RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce--don't ask me where the M and C went in the acronym) was established in 1754, and its members have included Alexander Graham Bell, Dame Judi Dench, Charles Dickens, Benjamin Franklin, William Hogarth, Nelson Mandela, Karl Marx, Lucy Maud Montgomery, and William Thackeray. Considered a radical organisation throughout its history, the Oxford English Dictionary credits the first use of "sustainability" in the environmental sense to a 1980 edition of the RSA Journal, and the society's current motto is "working to remove the barriers to social progress." When we got up to the Great Room, it turned out to be, well, pretty great, with James Barry's late-18th-century paintings The Progress of Human Knowledge and Culture wrapping around the lecture hall.

We were here for a free reading by Julian Barnes, and found him to be personable, funny, and thought-provoking. His current book deals with considerations of family and death, and Barnes himself admitted during the course of the night that he "thinks about death once a day; it's like marmalade on toast--it's part of my daily routine." After the Q&A period was over (complete with the there's-always-one-at-every-reading unbelievably pretentious question from a particularly pompous audience member), we were free to roam the 1774 building, so we wandered through the different levels, taking in the architecture and art as we went.

One of the last pieces of art we saw before we left was Justin Mortimer's Portrait of Her Majesty the Queen, completed in 1997 to commemorate the Queen's fifty years of involvement with the RSA: