Rain and dark thoughts

When travelling I find a lovely day is often followed by a trying one, as though the patron saint of travel sees the need to cut you down to size.  Today began by my discovering I had lost my wallet in the restaurant last night.  I remembered putting my handbag under the table in the tight space and cleverly manipulating with my feet to retrieve the special bottle of wine we’d bought from Greece as a present for Frank.  I had knocked my wallet out then, it seemed as Anna, the restauranteur had it.  I castigated myself as this was the second time on this trip I had carelessly lost a crucial thing.  People like me shouldn’t be allowed out except on a lead, I thought, and Grant’s restraint as far as mockery was concerned only made it worse.

Then we went to Fortnum and Mason’s, a place I remembered as the epitome of a lovely London city food shop, full of all the food smells that evoke the good life.  My mother once remarked that even if a tramp went into Fortnum’s he (or she) would be treated like royalty.  It was a principle of the place.  Indeed as a fifteen year old girl I had decided to spend my first pay packet on food for a celebratory feast for the family. After all I had a pay packet.  I was grown up. As a salesgirl at David Greig’s grocer’s shop I didn’t get much but I bought a little duck and meringues and I remember the respectful service I received from the uniformed gentleman who helped me.

Nowadays, however, Fortnum and Masons doesn’t stock much ordinary food any more, quirky luxuries, teas in special tins, obscure brands of gin and weird beers have taken over. Mustards and vinegars and nostalgic reproductions of wartime tins sent to the trenches.  The luxury it represented for me all those years ago has gone uber, canned and bottled and in a real sense untouchable and unsmellable too.  To be fair though, the gentlemen (and ladies now too) are still uniformed and kindly and they rather surprisingly did have quail eggs which we wanted as part of a dainty entrée for the meal we were cooking for Frank and Julia next night.

Out in the street it had begun to rain heavy icy drops so we huddled in a doorway for a while before finding a 29 bus and heading home.

While I think of it, a fact anyone going to London should know is that you don’t need to buy an Oyster card to travel.  Just tap your visa card on the buses and trains and it works like magic.  With buses you only need to tap on, but trains need tapping off as well or you get massively charged.

After a catnap we went out again and visited Jake and Lizzie in their lovely flat which looks out on to the London skyline with St Pauls, the Gherkin and the strange translucent Shard on the horizon.  Above them all rolled the moody clouds and I thought if I lived in this flat I would spend a lot of time just gazing at all this. Jake says it’s different every day.

It was tipping down again when we reached Blackstock Road and we sheltered under the front a building near the passage to our flat.  There was a group of men of middle Eastern appearance in animated discussion beside us. They were seated on the step and looked as if they had been there a while. I wondered why they weren’t in their homes on a night like this and wished I could understand their language.   What were they up to?  I caught the eye of one of them and I grimaced and made a shiver gesture pulling my jacket around me and looked up exasperated at the sky.  He smiled and I relaxed.  We had communicated and likely as not we were allies on this rainy English night.