Grizzles London - Vancouver 23

There is no easy way of commuting across the world, just slow ways and faster ways.  For the time being we choose the faster way, burning as we go enough carbons to keep a small foreign country in fossil fuel for a decade, and we don't feel particularly good about that.  We don't feel particularly good about the food we eat en route, and we particularly don't feel terrific about the price of that food either.

Fortunately there are people employed by airlines to remind us that we shouldn't feel good about the way we travel either, so at least we don't have time to get too smug about our lot.  As Al so cheerily reminded us after we arrived tomorrow (work that out!), the motto of his national carrier is (apparently) "We're not happy until you're not happy."  They certainly gave some of the less caring souls working for an airline with a kangaroo on its tail a run for their money in the "most complaints lodged stakes."

Of course being given the only seat that had a non-functioning headphone jack for the entire twelve hour flight didn't do any more for my demeanour than did the three terribly unsatisfactory meals we ate in Airport Terminals did for our pockets.  By the time we were on the second leg, despite the improbability of the odds of finding another headphone jack not working, I came up trumps once more.

A friend who shared many business air miles with me over the years used to remind me that any flight we walked away from was a good one, and I must admit if we were to score our trip from London to Vancouver on that basis, it wasn't bad at all.   Although not only did we walk away from the flight, we almost found ourselves having to walk to our hotel, having not actually received any instructions as to the process of catching our connecting shuttle.

After eventually working things out and arriving at our uncharacteristically not at the bottom of the scale hotel, I might have settled in to catch up on a few blog posts sadly lagging in time, had the wifi facility not been indisposed.   Still, dinner was the perfect salve for our state of mind and jetlagged bodies, and we were in Canada, so things were not too shabby at all, and we needed to get ourselves in a grizzly mindset for the coming week!

Farewell to Old London, probably not forever. London - 22nd September

It was a sort of lump in the throat day really, our last day in London for what may well be a year or two we think, and what better way to spend it that to take a stroll downtown.   If one is strolling downtown on a Sunday morning, there is probably no better way to satisfy one's hunger than snugged up in a pub eating roast lamb, and probably when one has consumed all one can eat in one lengthy and somewhat relaxed afternoon, a bit more of a walk is entirely in order.

While the girls among us chose to walk in direction Regent Street, something they said to do with shops and clothes, but we didn't catch the full conversation, Julian and I, by now in full retreat found a tiny purveyor of coffee, where we sought refuge, working in earnest on some of the world's greater and more complex problems before a long and particularly pleasant amble home, passing quite coincidentally, Little Venice.

Several decades have passed since we were last in Venice, and I am rapidly developing a fascination for all the "Little", and "of the north" Venices in the world.   A week ago we were in Holland in a Venice that looked to us rather like Holland, and now this one which looks for all the world like a Canal running through the back of Paddington.   Perhaps we need to revisit Venice to find the resemblance.

Tomorrow, we shall take one last stroll down Queensway, which has been our London "High Street" for more than a decade, wave farewell to the Union Jack above Whiteley's Department store, which will be apartments when next we see it, and that will close for a time what has been a remarkable chapter in our lives.

Shell and Jules go to the Theatre: Take Two London 21st September

After more than a decade of regular visits we've managed to visit pretty much every London landmark and seen many things that will never make it into the tourist's bucket lists, but are no less important to the patchwork of London's character than are the theatres in West End.

We've even taken in a show at the West end.

How well we remember the lessons learned from that particular adventure.  Therefore when we decided to try our luck again we took our own counsel, learning from what could undoubtedly have been fairly described as a "mistake".   This time we didn't do battle with the touts in Leicester Square trying for the last minute cheap seats, we went to the theatre in search of the best seats in the house and hang the expense.

According to the nice man in the box office however, the best seats were not as good as the second best ones, so we thanked him very much and sent Shelley on a mission to make some reservations on our various behalves, discovering at the same time that the second best seats weren't anywhere near as costly as the worst seats bought at a heavy discount in our previous adventure.

When one is staring at tickets affixed to one's fridge with magnets for several months, (even if it that is a metaphor for a sticky note posted inside a diary), anticipation and excitement builds to the point where, when the day finally arrives, one is quite possibly setting oneself up for a fall.

We left early to see if we could find a place to eat despite being unable to reserve a spot for a spot of pre-dinner refreshment in any restaurant in the entire internet or in half of the telephone book before setting out, opting instead to take pot luck.   We commenced our search at the theatre steps, fanning out in a classic search pattern, knocking on restaurant doors in turn as they crossed our paths.

It didn't take long, just two or three negative responses accompanied by looks that suggested that we may well be advised to skip dinner this evening, until we came across a "cancellation".    Suddenly we were all in the mood for a hearty Greek feast, which was just as well, because that was all that was served on the premises.

Dinner, was sensational, but it paled in the sensation stakes when compared to the show that was to follow.  Fifth row seats, centre stage amid the life-sized horse puppets was an experience that contrasted so magically with the lofty disappointment of our previous adventure in the West End, that further description fails me.   Don't miss "Warhorse on Stage", and don't forget to find the second best seats!

Propellor heads. London 20th September

When in London, we choose to travel on the Tube, the London Underground as it is also known, yet our "first day in London" post to this blog always seems to feature a red bus or a black cab as some sort of evidence that we are here.   Today, with the possibility that this will be our last visit to the City for some time looming, it seemed appropriate to pay some sort of minor homage to our favourite mode of transport.

It was just luck that with camera in hand, we found ourselves on a line with a newish train operating at a time when the usual crowd was not around, and probably the time we were travelling does not really reflect the true emotion of the crowd, nor for that matter the crowding of the crowd, but if one closes ones eyes and imagines say two thousand people in this picture, one could gain a reasonable impression of what peak hours are like.

One perhaps curious fact about the tube, is that the hand-holds in the carriages are coloured to match the colour of the line on the tube maps, so one with a map in hand could see at a glance that we were travelling on the Circle Line when this photograph was taken.

At the time we going round in circles a bit ourselves on our way to find a propellor repair company that we could entrust to carry out a few little adjustments over winter.

Propellor repairing is not something that one's mind immediately associates with London.  We've never actually seen a picture of a bowler hatted banker standing beside a London Bobby with their arms around a propellor repair man, but today we found our man, who it turns out has been repairing propellors since 1958, and who politely chuckled when I told him I'd been breaking them since about then.

He would, he said wait breathlessly for the next few months until we could get our propellor to him.   

We, reassured by his undoubted experience, wandered off into the London sunset, Tube Map in hand.

The path well worn.Paris to London 19th September

It was mid morning by the time the Eurostar brought us safely to a halt in St Pancras.  

We don't think we'll ever get over the novelty of hopping in a door in one country and hopping out the same door a few hours later to find ourselves in another.  It's strange to suddenly find ourselves surrounded by conversations in a language we can understand completely, and it's difficult for a time not to eavesdrop.

We giggled as we wandered down to Shelley's office opposite Harrods to pick up her keys, and marvel as we walk back to their flat past the Royal Albert Hall and Kensington Palace through Hyde Park at how we we will never take the many times we have spent with them here for granted.

As we climbed the last flight of stairs and turned the key to their flat, the effort of the past week or so combined with the nine kilometres we had walked in Paris and London with all our possessions in tow suddenly became apparent.  

Suddenly we felt as though we'd had enough for one day and it was barely lunchtime.  Thankfully the time we have spent here in the past meant that we had no pressing appointments with any of London's landmarks, so a nice sit over a long coffee on Queensway, followed by a snooze in the flat while briefly basking in what I understand from reading about it in books was actual sunlight, rounded out our day nicely.

On the way Lagarde to Paris 18th September

My goodness we woke up early.  Before the alarm.  Before daylight.  Before the temperature outside or anything else was civilised, but we had places to go, things to do, people to see, to say nothing of people to hug and once again to wish a very fond farewell with lumps in our throats.

We don't think too much about our commute back to our other home, but it always starts with big butterflies tromping around our stomachs as we lock the boat and hop in to Maggie's car for the ride to the station.   Once we are actually on the first train, the one that takes us from Luneville to Nancy, things settle a bit and we are in commuting mode, which is just as well, as we are taking a roundabout way home through London, Canada and the USA and our rough count says that we have another twenty or so connections to make before we sleep in our own bed again.

But that is for the future, tonight we are in Paris once again, having shared a splendid lunch with our friend Eric, even stumbling with him down a street he hadn't found before, and for a bloke who's been taking a photo of Paris every day for a decade, that's no mean feat.

Late in the evening we pinch ourselves as we often do, grateful for the opportunities that have brought us along the paths we travel and the people we have been so privileged to meet on them.

We are only in Paris for a night, but we are in Paris, and it's cold and wet and windy.

We are in Paris.  How good is that?

Finished! Lagarde 17th September

As things often do, they worked out in the nick of time.  

The rain turned to storms which brought wind and exactly the opposite of optimum conditions for wrapping a ten metre boat in a series of five metre long tarpaulins, but at least storms relent from time to time, and when they do they allow just enough time to get a four by five metre tarpaulin unfolded but not tied before lashing out again!

It may not have been the smoothest, nor neatest job that's ever been, but by the middle of the afternoon, the outside of the boat was looking almost as shipshape as the inside.

A long dinner with Jacques and Maggie, an early-ish night and a sleep that would be too short was all that remained of our time in Lagarde this year.