my life – Page 9 – Sunshine in London

Are we having fun yet?

It is freezing cold in London today. The sky is sometimes a beautiful blue, the sun shines weakly and the tawny trees are shivering so much their leaves are falling off. My words freeze like stalactites as they leave my mouth and my fingers and toes feel numb. But at least my leaves haven’t fallen off.

I braved the freezing weather to go to my Pilates class last night. I figured it was worth the walk and the frostbite on my ears because I love my Pilates classes. However, when I got to the gym, settled myself and my mat in my usual spot near the front of the class, I discovered that our lovely Pilates instructor couldn’t make it to the class. So we had a cover girl. Not that kind of cover girl, but a young woman who was sent to cover the class. Small problem – she was not a Pilates instructor. So she said she would give us a core strength workout…

Expecting a Pilates class and being offered a core strength workout? We all kind of looked at each other, bemused, and decided, unhappily, to get on with it. I thought I might as well get warm, if nothing else, to brave the frozen walk back to my flat. But I was not happy. It was like ordering a double thick chocolate milkshake and being given a glass of lukewarm tap water. Oh the disappointment.

So our Russian taskmaster instructor proceeded to torture us with work her way through floor exercises that could make you weep. We would groan our way through, like, a hundred leg raises, followed by two thousand leg crunches and then a gazillion pulses of the same thing. She would then say, “Okay, let’s repeat all of that. Set yourselves up. And we’ll start in one, two, three, four …”

A guy near me started to giggle because he was straining his oats so much he nearly burst. Giggling was the next best thing. Our unmoved instructor said, “What’s wrong? I can’t feel anything.” I guess that happens when they remove your heart and replace it with a metronome.

We moved from leg exercises to ab exercises and then she made us do the plank*. The first time we did it, we had to move our feet outwards, then inwards, then outwards, then inwards, then do the same with our hands. And then we had to hold the plank for an hour. She then said we’d repeat all of that and, I swear, she made us hold the plank for a month. It was November by the time she said, “relax”, and the clocks had gone back and everything.

So I muttered into the frozen air all the way home, and my muscles are reminding me today that I had a bootcamp session instead of Pilates. And it’s nearly Christmas. mutter mutter mutter

Sunshine, stiff-muscled and frilly-lipped, signing off for today!

*The plank: for those who don’t know, you start by lying flat on your stomach bent elbows under your chest. Lift yourself up by propping yourself up on toes and forearms. Stay like that until the summer. Oh, and pull in your abs and keep your back flat.

Van is The Man. The End.

I knew it was going to be a great Sunday. I woke to see three swans gliding on the glass water of our dock, in the weak autumn sun of a chilly blue sky. It was a majestic start to a day that ended with a Van Morrison concert at the Royal Albert Hall.

If you have read any of my blog posts, you will know I am crazy about Van Morrison’s music. Like silly crazy. So when my husband got this new job, we celebrated by buying tickets for this one-night-only Classic Van concert at the Royal Albert Hall. He knew it was a big treat for me, as I had eyed this show since it was first announced back in June. I think we got the last two tickets in the house. We didn’t even sit together. And our seats were in the “choir” section, above and behind the stage. We had a fabulous view of the band, and – knowing Van and his propensity to turn to face his band – I was pretty confident we’d see more of his face that way. And we did.

We had to brave the cold London evening and cross the city on unreliable weekend public transport, but we arrived a good hour early. The Royal Albert Hall is a beautiful, regal venue in South Kensington, built as part of Prince Albert’s vision for the promotion of the arts and science. It was completed after Prince Albert’s death from typhoid, and opened in 1871. Directly opposite it, in Hyde Park, is the famous golden memorial to the Prince Consort, described as one of the grandest, high-Victorian gothic extravaganzas anywhere. At night it stands in grand, spot-lit splendour against a dark sky.

We went into the Hall as soon as the doors opened, bought some coffee and hung around the foyer and the corridors. We looked at brochures and framed photographs of stars on the hall’s hallowed stages, reckoning we’d take our seats about 15 minutes before the show was due to start. I was so excited I couldn’t stand still … classic Van, man! Does it get better than that? Seriously? I don’t think so.

Our seats were not too bad, one row and about five seats apart. Enough for me to keep looking at my husband and smiling and waving and winking and smiling and waving and, did I say smiling? There was not much leg room between the rows, and I was glad not to be long-legged, nor to have shoes one size bigger. The seat was big enough for me to boogy in, though, and boogy I did!

I sat next to a stiff-lipped English couple, and a cheerful Dutch chappy in a checked shirt. Turns out he was as much of a Van fan as I am – sheesh, he’d flown in from the Netherlands for the concert – and we soon became new best friends.

The band started to arrive on the stage, the lights went down and that big voice said, “Ladies and gentleman, MR VAN MORRISON!” I like that voice. And that’s when I began to scream. And whistle.

Van, in trademark dark suit, dark glasses and black fedora, walked on to the stage, microphone in hand, harmonica in mouth, and opened his show with a medley of Baby, Please Don’t Go and Here Comes the Night. I felt like crying. He went on to sing his well-known favourites like Brown Eyed Girl, Moondance, Have I told You Lately, Into the Mystic, Ballerina, Bright Side of the Road. My personal favourite was All in the Game, which he teased out into the most incredible arrangement with solos from each of his band members: trombonist, pianist, saxophonist, drummer, double bass player, lead guitarist and acoustic guitarist. The double bass player doubled as a bass guitarist, and Van doubled as a saxophonist and harmonica player. I can’t even describe the music they made – just sublime.

I loved watching Van control his musicians with the flick of his hand and a trilling of his fingers. He did what he does so well – brings the music to a stomping crescendo and then right back down to a whisper. I was with him on his every word, every note and I didn’t want to miss a thing. He closed with a rousing version of Gloria, which brought the entire audience to its feet. It was indescribable to experience a packed Royal Albert Hall, filled to the rafters, with Van-loving punters clapping and screaming and whistling for his music never to end. We couldn’t take photographs, but that sight – and feeling – overwhelmed me as it etched itself in my mind.

I made a note of Van’s playlist, lest I forget, and my Dutch neighbour chipped in when he thought I might not know the title – which, believe me, wasn’t often! If I couldn’t sit with my husband, it was wonderful to sit beside another fellow Van fan. After the show finished, we agreed we had just experienced a very very special concert. I told him I had felt like crying, and he said, “Yes, I had some of those moments too.”

One thing about Van’s music is that it is so difficult to categorise. When I look for his music in a music shop, I never know whether to look in the soul section, R & B, jazz, blues, folk. His music could be in any or all of those. But last night, I was reminded that he is in a category all of his own: awesome. Totally awesome.

Sunshine signing off for today!

This blog’s seriously going south

It’s Friday and I thought it would be rude not to start the weekend with another little lesson in forrin! Grab your coffee, wine or beverage of choice and sit back and travel with me to Africa – it’ll be festive!

I’ll take you to the lands of my youth. So we’ll learn a little more Zimbabwean (the home of my high school days) and a little more South African (my university days, early motherhood and beyond). Some words will take my fellow sub-Saharans back in time, others will make you frown, but let’s just have fun. Let’s.

(My granny used to stay with us for a few months at a time when I was a teenager. She loved her chair in the lounge, and she loved watching TV. She would often say to me, “Shall we turn the TV on?” And I, cocky little teenager that I was, would say, “Let’s.”)

Starting in Zim: my brothers were party animals loved to go out when they were teenagers. (They are bothhhh older than me – seven and five years. Respectfully.) While I never heard all the detail of what they got up to (I’m the little sister, remember?), I would often hear them talk about a festive chick that they met or saw. This usually meant a girl who was easy on the eye, especially if the eyes were covered in beer goggles.

In contrast, we would all talk about graubs (grorbs), who are male or female, and just the opposite of festive. We tried to avoid graubs at the school dances, because the goal was to get lucky and find someone to grapple with on the dance floor. Especially if it was a slow shuffle. Now even I am laughing out loud, because I haven’t even thought about those words for years!

I have some outrageously embarrassing stories about school dances that would send certain family members running for cover, but I will spare them and move on, swiftly!

So, the word graub leads me, phonetically, on to graunch. I know I used this word in my blog post on Monday, with reference to the doobie dude graunching his hubcaps on the kerb. No doubt you guessed, but it means to damage, scrape, or do grievous bodily harm to (caution: exaggeration at work) and its use is usually accompanied by a screwed-up nose and graphic noises and descriptions.

Here are a few Afrikaans words (I won’t overwhelm you with too many) that have snuck into everyday South African English. Well, into mine, anyway:

Dof (dorf): dim, switched-off, not very bright or clever
Onbeskof (ornbeskorf): cheeky, otherwise, difficult, facetious
Deurmekaar (d’yearmakarr): all over the place, confused, disorganised
Ingewikkeld (too difficult to explain pronunciation!): complicated, involved.

In South Africa, and I think again it has to do with the direct translation from Afrikaans, it’s not polite for someone to throw you with a stone. This means to throw a stone at you. I find this turn of phrase hilarious, and it was made more so by a neighbour of my sister’s some years ago, in SA. She told my sister about her baby and how she had recently changed her baby’s diet. The new food regime was causing a, well, disruption to her baby’s usual digestive activities. With the result that my sister’s neighbour was concerned with the consistency of the result of said activities.

“Yoh,” her friend said, “it’s so hard, you could throw a dog dead with it.”

And with that, shall we end this ridiculous blog? Let’s!

Sunshine, dof, onbeskof, but always smiling, will see you Monday!

Forwards, sideways and blogwards

We would really love to go home to Cape Town for Christmas. But last night, I said to my husband that if that isn’t going to be possible, maybe we should go up to visit his family in Scotland for Christmas. And then I said, “Imagine the blog I could write about that!”

Which reminded my husband of how much he had thought about me at university earlier this week. They had a lecture about confidentiality and the lecturer opened his presentation with a cartoon of a Catholic priest in a confessional box, listening to the distressed confessions of his congregant. The priest’s thought bubble read, “I’m so going to blog about this.”

I realised that that’s me! I know that I have always had a keen sense of the absurd and I do notice funny things that others might not. My family have often listened to my ridiculous stories and then said things like, “It could only happen to you.” I disagree. It could happen to anyone, anywhere, but I notice and remember! And I have a compulsion to tell everyone about it. (That’s a topic for another day!)

But that’s me. And somehow lately I have noticed that my blog radar scans the horizon and it beeps and zooms in on everything I see around me. It’s like I have a renewed sense of observation. I also find myself formulating my blog post in my head. Do you do that?

Which also got me thinking about my blog. It’s so freaking random! I know that I write, largely, about being a Saffa living in London. And about Saffa slang. Oh, and Zimbabwean slang. And music. And London. And my husband’s Scottish relatives. And about his Scottishness. Oh, and about job hunting. (Yawn.)

And then I realised that my blog reflects my life right now. It is not going the way I had expected. And the thought occurred to me that my life in London is a bit like my sister’s drag racing. Fast, for sure. Exciting? Of course. Fun? That goes without saying. But not what you would expect. Let me explain.

My sister is married to a champion drag racer. He is one fast dude. He has a rail that could make a grown man cry, and a collection of Chevies that is, well, embarrassingly awesome. With a passion such as this, it’s not surprising his family have all come alongside him. Well, to a certain extent. He and my sister and their son and daughter, have regularly taken part in drag races. Not in the fancy rails, but in street cars and on a straight 80 metre course at the racing track.

We went with them to some drag races in Cape Town when they visited us there on holiday. My brother-in-law’s sweet Chev Lumina caused a stir and he had men lining up to drool over his engine and say, “Please can I race against you?” Boys never grow up. Their toys just become more expensive.

My sister then told me about an experience she had had of drag racing in Zimbabwe. I will relate the story in Sunshine-speak.

My sister is one mean driver. And competitive to boot. It was her turn to race. Out of a dust storm of revving, her vehicle emerged to take its spot in the starting dock. She manoeuvred the car this way and that until she was in exactly the right spot. She eyed her competition with that look that I know so well. Eat my dust, she thought. She glared at her enemy and growled, and that drag racing music came up all around. Eye of the Tiger, I think. And then it all went into slow motion… she watched for the cue of the green light … the crowd grew anxious with anticipation … she revved once more and the light went green … this was her moment. GO!

She stepped on the gas and her car shot backwards. She managed to shift gear and finish the race in second place, but that was not what she had expected to do. It is easy to understand how it happened, and it is now one of my favourite racing stories. Ever.

The parallels with my life in London are just too obvious to mention. And I guess, along with that, goes my blog. I don’t always move forward. I turn down plenty of side streets. And I head off on a tangent when something catches my eye. I hope I don’t take you backwards, and I seriously don’t need to win. But thank you for coming along for the ride. I hope I take you to new and unusual places, that I don’t drive badly and make you carsick, and that the scenery is good.

Am I focused? Not so much. Am I bovvered? Not at all. Am I having fun? Hell, yeah. I really hope you are too!

Sunshine signing off for today!

She’s mad about the royals

I had heard about his mother’s 42nd cousin, twice removed, and we were set to meet her and her husband in their home on the west coast of Scotland. I had heard hints of “royalist” and “talkative” but nothing prepared me for the day we would spend in her company.

We arrived at her wee croft that nestled on the water, sapphire blue Scotland at its finest. We picked our way down the steps to the front door where we were welcomed by a warm, effusive and enthusiastic Scottish woman. I’ll call her Betty. She hugged us and told us she hated what we were wearing. Look, it was the 80s but not everyone loved the big, permed hair, flowery pants and pink, plastic shoes of that era. And my husband, mulleted and moustached, was dressed in his Miami Vice best.

We were invited indoors and soon saw that “royalist” was no exaggeration. “Talkative” took no convincing either. Her little home was beautiful from the outside but sadly tasteless inside. The brightly patterned, textured linoleum flooring screamed in competition with the striped and floral wallpaper, and every corner of the house was filled to bursting with recent royal memorabilia.

The walls were adorned with framed photographs of the royal family, her kitchen boasted tea towels bedecked with smiling monarchs, and a glass-fronted dresser groaned heavily under the weight of her prized possessions. Charles and Diana smiled from mugs, plates, cups, scarves, towels and pictures, while Elizabeth and Philip, along with the Queen Mum, greeted us from more. Betty giggled with excitement at her forthcoming trip down to London for the wedding procession of Andrew and Sarah (Fergie, as she was fondly known).

“Ma frend’s go’ us a seat on the route,” she told us. This, evidently, was access to an office or apartment that overlooked the road along which the royal wedding procession would travel.

Betty talked. Non-stop. For the entire day. When she was wondering what to say next, she would think on her feet and say, “Och, well, so there y’are, well, I don’t know, so, tell me.” That usually stretched sufficiently to bridge her to the next thought, and so she would continue. Sometimes she would just repeat “Och, well, so there y’are ….” until another thought popped into her head. And that way no-one else could get a word in edgeways either.

Mr Betty arrived home from work at 5pm. He walked in the door and, without saying a word or greeting anyone, went through to his bedroom, undid the top button of his work-shirt, removed his shoes and replaced them with slippers, and returned to the dining room table. He sat down and waited for his tea (evening meal). That’s what happens every day. She took him his tea, talking to us through the house as she did so. He said nothing. He never does, apparently.

Betty returned to the sitting room and perched herself on the arm of the sofa, where my husband’s long-suffering aunt with whom we’d travelled that day, was sitting. Betty sat next to her and began her segue-monologue. While she did so, she took out her handkerchief from the cuff of her cardigan and, with a hint of drama, shook it out in front of aunt’s face.

“D’ye like ma perfume? …. It’s a new one. …. It’s called Fergie.”

Och, well, so there y’are …. the colourful tartan of my married-into family. I just love it.

Sunshine signing off for today!

London and fine jazz – a Shaw thing

We battled public transport. We crossed a bulging river. We ran the gauntlet of a cussing hobo. But we got there. And it was worth every ounce of blood, sweat and tears to get there. Ian Shaw is one splendid jazz singer.

My music-mad husband has this thing about Joni Mitchell. He loves her music, her lyrics, her everything. A while ago he discovered that Welsh jazz singer, Ian Shaw, had made an album entirely of Joni covers. So he bought the album. And now he has a bit of a thing for Ian Shaw. Not really, but kind of.

Ian Shaw lives in London and one of his favourite venues to perform at, we have discovered, is the Vortex Jazz Club in Dalston, north London. We bought tickets for his Saturday night gig there earlier this year. Being the weekend, the usual tube routes were disrupted, so our only option was to travel by bus. As we always do, we allowed ourselves an extra hour to get there. Buses were late, diverted and voluminously far apart. We resisted every urge to turn round and go back home again, but we eventually got to Dalston and walked and walked and walked.

We turned around and walked back the way we came and discovered the road to the club was right next to the bus stop where we’d alighted. We turned down the road, and saw the lights of the club. It lifted our hearts and we hoped we hadn’t missed the entire show. Our final hurdle was to walk past a dodgy, tatty and foul-mouthed homeless person who drank from his brown paper bag and called me a word I don’t even like to think. The evening was not turning out the way we’d planned.

We got upstairs to the jazz room an hour and a half after his show was due to start. We discovered that Ian Shaw had not. Yet. Begun. His. Show. Woohoo! We sat at our table, exhaled, ordered two tall, chilled glasses of wine and Ian Shaw walked to the piano. Our timing, as it turned out, couldn’t have been better. The Vortex Club is a small, intimate jazz club with a raised platform at the front with a grand piano on it. The rest, as they say, is music.

We got treated to about two hours of fabulous entertainment. An accomplished, award-winning and crazily talented jazz singer, Ian Shaw opened the show with his version of Joni’s Coyote . Sublime. He then sang his way through a mix of songs from Joni (including a stunning cover of A Case of You – one of my favourite Joni numbers), Elvis Costello (Shipbuilding) and some songs he had penned himself – achingly honest and angst-ridden and wonderfully lyrical.

It wasn’t surprising to learn that Ian Shaw used to be a stand-up comedian. The witty banter between songs was brilliant. We laughed so much and it felt like we’d been treated to a double act. You had to be there, really, but his list of reasons for wanting to lose weight made me laugh till I ached.

He’s something of a national treasure. And such a pleasure to listen to. He loves performing locally and is a regular at the Vortex Club. We’re going to see him again next month. Only this time we’ll travel there on the new overground train. And this time, you’d better watch out, Mr Hobo – shake your filthy mouth at me and I’ll give you something to drink about!

Sunshine signing off for today!

Dude, that’s a car …

Yesterday we enjoyed a beautiful, chilly, Autumn, aromatic afternoon in Brick Lane. Apart from feasting on a delicious curry there – it would be rude not to, really – we soaked in the buzz and the vibe and the air of east London. Just not as much as some people did.

Brick Lane has a fascinating history and today has become known as the curry capital of the United Kingdom. Home to indoor markets, food stalls, curry houses and night clubs, it is also popular for fashion, fine art and graffiti. You cannot walk down Brick Lane without being accosted by restaurateurs touting their “very good deal” meals. I have not eaten in a restaurant there yet, because I just love the vibe of grabbing a takeaway dish, and finding a spot somewhere outside to sit and eat and watch the world go by. We did just that yesterday.

We waved off the formal establishments, and went into the Sunday Up Market. After checking out every exotic spicy food possibility you can imagine, we settled on Moroccan food. Pretty much all the meals – complete with rice or couscous and trimming – cost five quid a pop, you get a good-sized helping and it’s always yummy! We took our brimming foil dishes and plastic forks and went and sat on the kerb outside to eat our meal! It was really funny pulling our feet towards us as cars came past along the narrow road – otherwise we would seriously have had our toes flattened.

Next to Brick Lane — This is how we ate our lunch.

We became aware of a large, navy blue Audi gliding slowly into a parking spot on the other side of the road from us. What made us take notice was the sound of metal on metal as he glided into the car in front of him. With clearly no panic, he unhitched his vehicle from the other, reversed and then glided forward to position his car just right. He wanted to park next to the kerb, and seemingly had no objection to graunching his hubcab against the pavement – another crunching sound of metal on concrete. With no sign that he needed to extricate his car from the pavement, he and his passenger emerged from the car and set off – in slow motion – to the market. He was enormously wide-eyed and nattily dreadlocked, she was just wide-eyed. I have no doubt they had just spent the past hour parked on a middle island somewhere, Cheech and Chong style, their car filled with the sweet aroma of happy smoke. They glided off, wondrous and in awe, dude, of the market that lay ahead and oblivious of the damage he caused as he crash-landed his car.

Near Brick Lane — What you don't have to do in Brick Lane.

When we finished eating, we walked through the other sections of the market. In the busy-ness of Sunday, we looked at hats, paintings, light shades, jewellery, clothing, coats, shoes, T-shirts, lingerie, vintage clothing, designer clothing and anything else you can think of. There were displays and displays of designer watches – large plastic-faced, neon-coloured, cartoon-charactered watches – and I think, on some of them, you could even tell the time.

Sunday Up Market in Brick Lane — Famous for food and everything else.

We soon came across a huge seating area with wooden benches and tables, where we could have sat to eat our meal! I guess we would have missed out on the doobie dude, so I’m glad we sat street level.
Mr Curly Tache walked past us in the market – he had a curly, waxed moustache, his hair was neatly combed and side parted, he wore a checked shirt and purple-striped tie, pink corduroy pants (trousers) and a blue jacket. This sartorial experiment was not alone. Brick Lane is filled with alternative, fabulous, colourful, fascinating, different and beautifully-dressed people. And ordinary folk like us too. This is no place for the fashion police.

In Brick Lane, you can clash your colours, scrape your hubcaps, haggle for your curry and buy second-hand wellington boots. Anything goes and no-one’s watching. Well, there are always people watching, but no-one really cares. It's blogger heaven.

giraffe restaurant, Spittalfields Market — And we always find sunshine in London!

Sunshine signing off for today!

Memories are made of this

Towards the end of the last century, I worked for a public relations consultancy in Harare, Zimbabwe. It was an amazing place to work and I loved my years there. The country was booming and there was much to share.

My colleagues and superiors generously shared their knowledge and experience. I learnt so much. Our clients shared good practice and news and progress and prosperity and hope. I learnt so much. We also shared more than our fair share of laughter. I laughed so much.

Our best laughs were with our wonderful receptionist who laughed until the tears ran down his face, no matter how funny things were! He was perfect affirmation and encouragement for any would-be stand-up comic (no names mentioned). He would have to take a few deep breaths before he could answer the phone when my friend and I were sharing stories with him at the front desk. Wiping the tears away with his handkerchief, he would say, “Ooh, you make me funny!”

I once had the task of gathering information from our local trade association. I called the association and explained to their receptionist what I needed. Very politely she told me that unfortunately their switchboard wasn’t working, she could therefore not transfer my call, and, with huge apologies for the inconvenience, asked if I wouldn’t mind calling back the next day. So taken with her courtesy, I said of course that would be fine, I thanked her for her politeness and attention to let me know what was happening. I then asked her, in light of the information I needed, who I should ask for when I called back the next day. She said, “Oh, you can speak to me.”

After a brief pause, I said to her, “So … do you think I could speak to you now?”

“Oh, yes, I didn’t think of that,” she said. I didn’t have to call back the next day.

One of our clients was the quasi-governmental body that handled the nation’s marketing of grain. They built some new grain silos in a small town outside of the capital, Harare, and we handled the official opening. We commissioned a jeweller to make a silver replica of the silos as an official memento of the event, we invited the media, we arranged the catering and entertainment, we sorted the logistics and the small, dusty town in rural Zimbabwe laid out the red carpet in honour of the occasion.

We got to the venue early and waited as the slew of dignitaries arrived. The media arrived, as did the local government officials, community leaders, businesspeople and others who considered themselves legends in their own lunchtime. The minister of agriculture was the guest of honour and he arrived amid fanfare and adulation from the gathered masses. The master of ceremonies welcomed everyone, outlined the morning’s proceedings and invited the local school choir forward for their opening number.

The boys and girls from the local primary school filed neatly to their spot at front and centre of the outdoor gathering. A few shuffles to the left and right and each one, not a hair out of place and not a sound uttering from their lips, took their place in the body of the choir. They watched in anticipation as their choirmaster strode out to take his place at front.

Nattily dressed in smart suit and tie, the wide centre parting of his hair matched only by the gap between his front teeth (the kind of teeth that can eat an apple through a tennis racket), the proud and grinning choirmaster’s moment had come.

His charges awaited his instruction, chins lifted, chests out, camera smiles at the ready. He lifted his hands in anticipation, eyed his gathered team and, as his hands began to flow, so the song began. With choreographed sways to the left and the right, hips swinging and fingers clicking in unison, the children began to sing, with all their hearts, “Sweet, sweet, the memories you made for me”.

I expected a traditional Shona song in honour of the gathered elders. But as the loud, beautiful and youthful harmonies rang through the dusty rural town, congregated and proud, I realised that Dean Martin’s classic was the perfect song. And I was grateful to realise, in that moment, that my best memories are made of moments like these.

Sunshine signing off for today!

So, as I was saying …

One of the things I was so hoping to do yesterday was to include some photos of our weekend adventures in London. I don’t consider myself to be technically-challenged, but boy did I battle! And then I gave up. Here’s my attempt to get it right today. And by the way, is this a phlog?

Portobello Road Market after market after market!

Portobello Road — Colourful houses, colourful people and colourful stalls

Autumn in Notting Hill - don't you just love it?

And then on the Sunday we went for a walk around our South East London neighbourhood. Here’s what we saw:

South Dock — Our flat overlooks this dock

The Thames at sunset, with Canary Wharf on the far side of the river.

Roadside comb — In case you get caught with messy hair, especially near the Thames!

Roadside loo — Now that's what I call a public toilet! With a river view.

Steamers — In case you didn't know what to do!

Greenland Dock — And the sun sets over our neighbouring dock.

So there you have it! Thanks for travelling on this little journey with me. Tomorrow I will have words again.

Sunshine signing off for today!

How much is that doggy in the tube seat?

I wish I had reason to travel on London’s tubes every day. Not so much for the need to reverse, with force, into a jam-packed capsule that hurls itself at crazy speed through the nether networks of the Big Smoke, but so much for the entertainment that communal travelling provides. Every time.

On Saturday, we went to Portobello Road Market. On the tube ride there, we noticed a guy – who looked like he could have been Rod Stewart’s slightly less talented and largely less handsome cousin – who was seated on the end seat of a set of three seats. The other two seats were empty. Why? Because his dog – if you could call it that, he was more of a small elephant with a brindle coat and not so much a trunk, as a small briefcase – was lying in front of the other two seats. Dog owner was completely oblivious to the interest and annoyance that his dog was causing. I think he was oblivious to everything. Some young girls got on the tube and oohed and aahed over the brown heap of dogness, stroked his head and asked his owner what kind of dog he was. Dog owner remained expressionless, and I couldn’t tell if he answered them or not. Big dog became uncomfortable, pulled himself up to his full height and then climbed on to the seat next to his owner. After carefully turning himself round, he sat upright on the seat. And remained there until they got off at their designated station. Not sure how dog owner knew where they were but off they went. Huge dog in punk collar and gormless owner. It was unclear who was leading whom.

So onward and upward to Portobello Road. What an amazing and fascinating market, completely crammed with antiques, beautiful things, old and new things and things you would never want near your house. And that’s just the people! Actually, when we arrived, a few outrageously beautiful young men walked past us, and then some more, and then … I wondered if we’d missed the memo that Saturday was beautiful people day? Oh no! Then I saw a couple who clearly hadn’t got the memo either, and I felt better.

As you walk along Portobello Road you walk through market after market after market. Antique markets, flea markets, clothing markets, food markets … wonderful sensory overload! My husband, being the music lover that he is, is magnetically drawn to any music stall, second-hand record shop or CDs anywhere. He sniffs them out at about 100 metres, and he cannot walk past without clicking his way through every single CD on the rack! There was plenty of music to look at and he was in heaven, although he didn’t find anything he wanted to buy!

We browsed and we wandered and we bogled and we walked. We saw two cute little pug dogs who were attached to each other by a collar and followed their dreadlocked master wherever he went. Wish they’d stayed still long enough for a photo but their master was walking and they were following. We stopped for the most delicious falafels at Falafel King and then walked through Notting Hill to get back to the tube. We stopped at The Tabernacle (where we saw Diane Birch perform) for a coffee and then travelled home for X Factor!

On the tube home, I saw a young guy wearing a T-shirt that said, “No, I will not fix your computer.” And we heard my favourite station announcer at Waterloo, who I think always wished he worked on the Johnny Carson Show. He is fabulously enthusiastic and bubbles: “Helloooooo! And WELCOME to Wadderloo! Mind the gap between the train and the platform. And wherever you may be going to today, be well, do good work and have a nice day!” Even Londoners, sometimes, pay attention.

Yesterday was a beautiful autumn day in London. Church was great and late in the afternoon we went for a walk around our neighbourhood. I took the camera in case we saw a roadside shoe – Maura at 36×37 publishes photos of random roadside shoes and I’ve been dying to send her a London contribution. We saw a roadside comb, a roadside toilet and then, after walking along the edge of the Thames, watched a chilly sun set on a wonderful week.

Sunshine signing off for today!

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