London 10: Life in London

The last week we were in London was fairly cold and had some bouts of raininess. Fairly typical for our time there. But our second to last week there was glorious. It was bright and sunny. People were walking around in t-shirts. The parks were overflowing. So, I want to finish my memories of London with some of the most simply enjoyable bits. The fun and silly and beauiful bits.

So, let’s start with spring. It sprang. It sprung? It was sprung? Has sprung? Anyhow, it arrived. And it was pretty wonderful. There are a ton of flowering trees both on the streets and in the parks. Here’s just a taste…

But, throughout our time in London we explored a ton of parks, from the major ones surrounding Buckingham Palace and the like (Hyde Park, Green Park, St. James Park, etc.), to little neighborhood parks, to some of the large and beautiful spaces further out from the center. They each have their own sense of style, some with lakes and streams, others with playgrounds, and all with lovely well-tended rows of trees and networks of paths winding here and there.

For the first few months we were there, most of the parks were a bit cold and fairly empty. There were a handful of ducks and geese and such, but not a ton of people. The trees were bare. But they still made lovely place to walk…

However, by the time we left, many of those exact same places had transformed completely. On the nicest days, it was sometime hard to find a place to sit on the grass in a few of the more popular areas…

Some parks, like Kensington Garden, were home to palaces or other such residences of the nobility.

Kensington Gardens

I liked the very geometric sensibility of Holland Park.

Holland Park

And sooooo many parks had football (i.e. soccer) fields. (Though the other day Jessica and I were surprised to see a softball game going on…)

Regent’s Park

One of my favorite areas near our home was Spa Fields. This is actually a series of little parks that have great playgrounds and are popular spots for eating lunch (especially given that they are right next to Exmouth Market). I liked how a lot of the English playgrounds had these odd little hills and other playground equipment at weird angles. It felt a little like being dropped into a Dr. Seuss book…

Another set of parks lay near our place to the north. We made a loop a few times that followed the “New River” (an old canal built for water, not transportation), then went over to Highbury Fields, a big community park, and then down Islington’s Upper Street (where we’d invariably buy treats from one awesome bakery or another), eventually passing Isilington Green before returning home. Overall, a lovely loop.

One of the features of a few parks and waaaay too many people’s yards were various plants that did not look like they belonged in London. Especially palm trees and yuccas. Seriously, people?

Soho Square

One of the best weekend lunch markets in the area was in Victoria Park (previously mentioned here), a good mile or two walk down the canal from us. But, besides the market, it was a lovely place to walk with a couple of odd features. One that particularly stuck out was the Burdett-Coutts Fountain. This was built in the 1800s by a socialite and daughter of a radical MP who was famous for giving her money to charitable causes, especially helping “fallen women.” Here, she hoped to provide clean water to the poor. Elsewhere in the park are a couple of stone alcoves rescued from an older incarnation of London Bridge. Unfortunately, now they are set up so they face into the wind, not providing much shelter. Oops.

Up North of London, I took a lovely walk in Highgate Woods and then joined Jess to wander Hampstead Heath where we eventually ended up on Parliament Hill. Sadly, on that grey day, there was no Parliament to be seen, but it was nice to be up on one of the few hills of any significance in the area.

Another fun aspect of being out and about as the weather improved was all the buskers in London. It really is an art form at its best here. You get everything from crazy escape artists to the inevitable living statues, to just a lone singer standing in the middle of gigantic Leicester Square.

Enjoying our last few weeks, we also took a few more walking tours. One took us through fancy Chelsea to the former and current homes of folks like Oscar Wilde, Keith Richards, and Mick Jagger.

I also continued to enjoy myself by attending one game meetup a week. I got to play some of my favorites, try a few new games, and forced a lot of people to try Space Station Phoenix (though I think most of them liked it OK…)

We made one more run by Borough Hall Market. This time we got some delicious paella. We got the first serving out of a brand new pan. It was fun watching them transition from one ginormous platter to the next…and then slowly resetting the first one up to cook a new batch while the second one was being served from…

We also picked up our pace on theatre-going a bit. I already talked about seeing The Ocean at the End of the Lane (which was awesome). Our other experiences in the theatre were a bit more mixed, though all entertaining in one way or another:

  • Small Island – We saw this play at the National Theatre. It followed the complicated lives of a number of migrants from Jamaica to London during the post-WWII era. It dealt with both the overt racism they experienced and with the more subtle and frustrating racist attitudes of even the white people who considered themselves above such sentiments. Also had some interesting comparisons about the limitations faced by white women as opposed to Black women. The play was a tad lengthy, but well acted and interesting.
  • Straight Line Crazy – This is a new play by David Hare starring Ralph Fiennes as Robert Moses, the designer of New York City’s highways. It was a bit funny to see a play in London about New York, but having just been in New York, a lot of it felt familiar. Most of the play was great and veered between amusing and intense. The only part I didn’t like was the character of Jane Jacobs. Jacobs, if you don’t know, was an activist who opposed much of Moses’ work, particularly his designs on building a non-stop route through Washington Square Park. In the play, she often came on stage between scenes and just kind of babbled about herself without clearly stating where she fit into the plot. It took a while for her role to become at all clear, but she just wasn’t as fully developed a character as she deserved. Otherwise, still worth seeing.
  • Hannah Gadsby – We went to see Hannah Gadsby’s new performance: Body of Work. If you don’t know her, she’s an Australian comedian who made a big splash a few years ago for a comedy show that…wasn’t too funny. Her show Nanette dealt with a ton of trauma. Her follow up, Douglas, was more straight-up comedy. Both are on Netflix and highly recommended. Body of Work was similarly funny–she said it was meant to be a “feel-good show,” but I didn’t think the script was quite as tight or as incisive as the Netflix specials. Nevertheless, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with seeing some queer feminist comedy. And it really was pretty damn funny.
  • The Guilty Feminist – Two days after seeing Hannah Gadsby we went to a podcast taping of The Guilty Feminist. I had mixed feelings going into this, which turns out to have been accurate. The Guilty Feminist is a British comedy/interview podcast I listen to from time to time. I find the host, Deborah Francis-White occasionally funny and insightful, but usually find that her understanding of feminism is super-thin. There’s a lot of talk, as Jessica points out, about “sisterhood” and women sticking together and that sort of thing. Sometimes I appreciate that (and hear echoes of how my Feminist Coalition students often talk), but other times it seems like she’s a bit clueless about what she’s saying. Her co-hosts and guests tend to be a notch better, and a notch funnier (there’s a guest comedian on each episode), and some of the people she interviews are super-interesting. So, it’s a mixed bag. I was actually pretty excited when I heard the guest this time would be Millie Bobby Brown (Eleven on Stranger Things and star of Enola Holmes). Sadly, my expectations were not met. Let’s be clear: there were some really funny bits. The best was actually the comedy by the guest host, Susan Wokoma. Wokoma is also a co-star of Enola Holmes, and learned there that Brown had been reading The Guilty Feminist book. So, Brown was brought on to the show kinda worshipping Deborah Francis-White as some sort of guru of feminism. (She is most definitely not.) Brown shared some interesting thoughts–particularly expressing frustration at how people have seen here as open for sexual exploitation now that she turned 18–but mostly she lacked much coherence to her thoughts and the others didn’t help carry the conversation much. So, there were some very amusing moments, but overall, not an impressive tour de force.
    • I should add that Grace Petrie, who often performs music on The Guilty Feminist, was awesome. She also was the opener for Hannah Gadsby and was even better then. Check her out.
    • Also, the next night, Deborah Francis-White interviewed Hannad Gadsby on her show. They evidently have known each other for a long time. There were some very funny moments in that interview, many at Francis-White’s expense.

Despite all the other wonderful things out there, for much of our time in London, life continued to revolve around the Regent’s Canal, which connected us to spots near and far. We discovered some new things as we ventured further west, past Kings Cross, Camden, Regent’s Park, and Paddington Station, reaching all the way up to Little Venice. All in all, the canal continued to be a source of pleasure as the days went by.

Of course, as the weather got better, other folks discovered the canal as well, turning the towpath into a lively spot for impromptu drinks.

The funniest, though, was one afternoon when I went to meet Jessica at an actual bar floating on the side of the canal. I was walking across the way and was waving to her to look up for a photo…and the people sitting next to her thought I was taking a photo of them. (See them posing?)

They were actually super-nice and we laughed with them for a bit. And later, we were joined by a friendly boat-cat.

And a wonderful kitten he was. But not nearly as cool as this guy. I mean, look at the posture, the eyes, the whiskers. They all say, definively, “This is my boat. I belong here. I have no cares about the rest of the world. This boat is an island unto itself.” He was one cat who was seriously in his element.

OK. That’s all I got. Sorry this was rambly. Not my most coherent writing day (trying to think through the haze of French pastries and the noise of two nephews underfoot), but it’s what you get.

For those who are interested, here’s our final walking map. This version cuts off a few things to the far north and south in the interest of showing more detail in the center. Needless to say, we covered some ground.

Back with a post on Wales soon. Until then…

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