Kew Gardens

30 June 2008
London

It was a cracker of a day today, so after a leisurely breakfast and a quick stroll to the supermarket to get some fresh bread for lunch, we headed to the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, otherwise known as Kew Gardens.

The Kew Gardens date from the 1760s and the days of the Hanoverian kings, and have been added to and extended over the years into around 300 acres of parkland, gardens, glasshouses and displays containing over 40,000 species of plant, and is one of the finest plant collections in the world.



The Gardens receive about 1.5 million visitors a year, and it's a great day out to get away from the industrial greyness of the city.


We took advantage of a little "Granny Wagon" which takes visitors for a spin around the borders of the Gardens, and is a great way to see the spread of the 300 acres. (If you look carefully at the photo above, you can see Mum and Dad sitting in the corner, waiting for the Granny Wagon to arrive). The tour took us up to the bank of the Thames, and past crazy pieces of architecture built by various architects for one over-indulged Royal princess or other, including a Chinese pagoda, a Japanese ornamental bridge, and Kew Palace (which was lived in for a while by George III's wife Queen Charlotte and her sprogs).


On the way, our driver pointed out the site of one of the tea rooms, explaining that the old one was burnt down by the English suffragettes as part of their struggle to win the vote. Good for them, we thought, although we were pleased that they built a new tea room, as we were feeling a bit thirsty.

The Gardens contain some impressive botanical greenhouses, built in the Victorian era, which housed the collections of the great 19th century explorers (including those of the voyages of Captain Cook around Australasia and the South Pacific).



Mum and Dad were awestruck by the Palm House, which contains massive palms and tree specimens from all over the world, including this banana tree. We thought Dad's hat made him look a bit like the explorer Dr Livingstone, and that all he needed was a machete to cut through the undergrowth. 



As it's midsummer here now, most of the spring flowering of camelias and rhododendrons had already passed, and apart from the rose gardens, there weren't a lot of flowers in bloom. We did come across some impressive lavender plots, though.



The layout of the Gardens varies hugely, reflecting different historical styles and fashions of horitculture - from wild grassy knolls (very hip in the Romantic period) to carefully manicured and labelled gardens, such as the Order Gardens, below.



The Gardens are dotted with small Grecian temples, gazebos and park benches, artfully placed to give visitors a place to catch their breath and enjoy the view. Here's Mum and I checking out the map to see where we were (we were actually in the Mediterranean Gardens).



Of course, it wouldn't be a day out without at least two stops for a cup of tea. One of the cafes had a lovely outdoor area, so we found a table and chair in the shade (knocking back a few old ladies with Zimmer frames who wanted to sit there as well) and had a cup of tea and a slice of Victoria sponge cake in the sun.


On the way to Kew Gardens, we hit a few straggling hippies with backpacks, making their way back from the Glastonbury Festival. On the way back from Kew, Mum and Dad got to experience the joys of Victoria Station at rush hour, but again, people were very gallant about giving up their seats for them. 

After dinner, we tuned in to watch the nail-biting tennis match between Andy Murray, Britain's sole hope for a success at this year's Wimbledon tournament, and Richard Gasquet.



Mum and Dad got a bit of a kick watching a game that was being played just down the road from my flat (well, a mile or so down the road) and at one point, we tried leaning out my living room window to see if we could hear the roar of the crowds. 

Another great day, with sunburnt noses to boot, though it's hard to believe that tomorrow is July. 

A Great Weekend

29 June 2008
London

On Friday, following our Edinburgh visit, I had an afternoon off by myself in town, and left The Olds at home to clean my oven and do all my ironing. (Well, I didn't ask them to do it, but I didn't exactly complain when they did. I'm going to miss this!)

By the time I got home, Mum was rearing to go, as she'd been in the house for most of the day, other than a trip to the supermarket, and I suspect she wanted to be doing something a little more energetic, like water-skiing down the Thames and power-walking through Hampton Court Palace. The old girl is, I think, at the stage where she realises the holiday is coming to an end, and wants to pack in as much as she can before they go, bless her. Dad, on the other hand, seemed pleased to have the day at home. We had dinner, and settled in to watch some mediocre Friday night British television - a fairly awful one-off "reunion" episode of To The Manor Born, and some of Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday concert which was being televised from just across the river in Hyde Park. I had the priceless experience of watching Mum and Dad trying to make sense of Amy Winehouse, who now looks like a tattooed skeleton being operated by puppet strings.


I packed them off to bed, promising Mum that we would have a big power walking weekend after which they'd be so tired and over-stimulated that they wouldn't be able to speak, let alone walk. She seemed happy, and Dad didn't say anything and just gritted his jaw in preparation for a weekend of walking behind Mum and I, poor old sausage.

We didn't quite get that exhausted, but we did have a fantastic weekend. On Saturday, which was a gloriously sunny day with just a breath of wind to taking the scorching heat off, we headed again to Borough Market, where Mum and Dad marvelled at the displays of fantastic gourmet meats, fruits, vegetables and a seemingly endless array of cheese. As it was their second visit, they got more into the swing of things, merrily trying free samples of food everywhere. 

Mum got a bit carried away at one point and wanted us to start buying cheese to take home, until I explained that we'd be carrying it around in our bags for five hours until we got home, by which time it would probably be melted (well, to be more specific, that I'D be carrying it around in MY bag for five hours, as I was the only one with a big enough bag).



I felt a little mean, as I didn't want to cramp her style, especially as it's so rare to see them getting enthusiastic about buying things. We did settle on getting a pottle of very tasty green olives flavoured with basil and garlic, which we've been nibbling on for the last day or two. And here's a very nice picture of some artichokes, which look far nicer than they taste.

We took a stroll along the South Bank to see St Pauls, and into the Tate Modern Cafe for a sit down and a coffee.



Then we walked down following the Thames Path to Gabriels Wharf and to the Royal Festival Hall complex, where we met my friend Stephen for lunch at a groovy little French patisserie built under the arch of one of the Waterloo railway bridges. There was an interesting sculpture installation outside the Hall, with long steel bars which changed colour and emitted strange music when people walked around them, which Dad rather liked, so here we are standing in front of it. I've strategically cropped this photo to not show my potbelly, which I blame on a month of afternoon teas with Mum and Dad.



It was a beautiful afternoon, with hundreds of people strolling around in the sun - so naturally we went home for a mid-afternoon nap. Here's an action shot of Mum and I power-walking ahead on the way back to the Tube. Under the arch are some very persistent Peruvian buskers who play Girl From Ipanema on the piano-accordian every time we walk past.

Once at home, Mum needed walking again, so while Dad had a snooze, Mum and I took a great mid-afternoon stroll through a couple of the commons (parks) around my neighbourhood, which was swarming with yuppies, pushchairs and expensively dressed children. 

In the evening, we went back to the South Bank to go and see another George Bernard Shaw play, Major Barbara, at the National Theatre. I saw it a few months ago and loved it, and it's been one of the hits of this year's London theatre season. It's a political comedy about the daughter of a wealthy Victorian family who renounces her wealth to go and work with the Salvation Army, only to discover that her estranged father, a wealthy arms manufacturer, is one of the Salvation Army's chief sponsors. It sounds rather dry, I know, but it's incredibly funny, and Mum and Dad loved it, and are still talking about it. Here's the three of us looking very glamorous as we walked down the South Bank on the way to the theatre.



On Sunday, we slept in a little, and then rolled up the hill to go and visit my old haunts in the East End of London. I had some fun telling Mum and Dad not to wear flash clothes, and for Mum to take off her gold jewellery and Dad to leave his camera at home. Dad suggested that we take a baton or a kitchen knife with us just in case. 

The East End has traditionally been one of London's poorest areas: it started as an industrial area outside the walled old city of London, and factories were usually located here as the English winds tend to blow west, blowing chimney smoke away from posh West London houses and into the poorer East. Being located close to London's docks, it's always been the home of generations of immigrants who've settled here. In the eighteenth century, it was the French Protestants escaping from persecution in Catholic France, who set themselves up as weavers and textilists. In the 19th century came Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, and in the 1950s and 1960s, Bengali communities, making Brick Lane the unofficial capital of Indian and Pakistani London.

The East End still isn't as flash as other parts of London, or as obvious a tourist destination as the British Museum or Kew Gardens, but it's a great melting pot of London life, and an interesting place to explore layers of local history. 

We started at Whitechapel tube station, took a quick look at the Royal London Hospital (one-time stomping ground of nurses Florence Nightingale and Edith Cavell, and the final home of Joseph Merrick, better known as the Elephant Man). We then walked (rather tentatively, in Mum and Dad's case) down Whitechapel Road, where I pointed out a pub called the Grave Maurice, which we thought was hilarious, and Dad dutifully posed for a photo, not looking at all grave.



Mum and Dad's eyes grew larger and rounder as I explained that Whitechapel was gangland in the 1960s, ruled over most famously by twin brothers Ronnie and Reggie Kray, who lived on Vallance Road (just off Whitechapel Road). I think it's fair to say that many Londoners, young and old, romanticise the days of 60s gangland, and the Krays are fancifully remembered as nice boys in sharp Saville Row suits who helped old ladies across the road, hung out with film stars (Reggie once dated Barbara Windsor and Diana Dors), and were folk heroes. 

I think the evidence points more towards the Krays being brutal psychopaths who terrorised East London, but who needs truth to come in the way of a good legend, right? Something of that rough history is still on display, usually at the Sunday morning markets on Cheshire Street, where cockney traders with two teeth attempt to flog you merchandise that you suspect was probably acquired off the back of a van the night before, and (if you listen carefully) you can hear negotiations between tough sinewy men with big gold chains to arrange for someone's neighbour to be roughed up.

Just on the corner of Whitechapel Road and Mile End Road is The Blind Beggar, where the Krays shot and killed a member of a rival gang in 1966. The Krays blackmailed a cabinet minister of Harold Macmillan's Conservative government, which more or less gave them immunity from police prosecution until 1968, when they were finally convicted of murder and extortion and sentenced to life imprisonment. 

We turned left at the hospital into New Road, which aint new any more, and mostly filled with old brick social housing blocks. At the end of the road, there's a plaque commemorating the house where the Salvation Army had their first meeting. (They also gave their first sermons outside the Blind Beggar, too). Then we went up Fieldgate Street, where I used to live in an old workhouse. Well, not quite.


On Fieldgate Street still sits the old Rowton House, an imposing looking red brick building which was built by Lord Rowton in 1905 as a workingman's boarding house. The author George Orwell lived there while he was a young struggling writer, and wrote about it in his memoir Down and Out in Paris and London, and Lenin and Stalin lodged there while they were planning the Russian Revolution. Now, of course, it's been turned into swanky apartments for rich white city lawyers, and Lenin, Stalin and their kind are probably clawing on the lids of their coffins in disgust. The red brick exterior of the building has been restored, but the building has a lingering smell of fried chicken from the Indian restaurant next door. Our apartment was on the fifth floor, which gave us a great view of the class struggle below. Next door is the East London Mosque, wedged right up next to an old synagogue.


Around the corner on Whitechapel Road is the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, the oldest continuing manufacturing company in Great Britain. Bell makers have been around in Whitechapel in one guise or other since 1420, and the current building is based on premises that have been around since 1670. The Liberty Bell was made here (although the original one cracked, and the bell makers made another two versions before they got it right), as well as Big Ben.  



A little further up Whitechapel Road, we turned into Brick Lane, one of the main drags of the area, and now known for its burry houses, where little Indian men with big moustaches stand outside and invite you to come inside for free poppadoms and warm Thai beer. Despite the garishness of some of the restaurants (my favourite one has a velvet painting of Princess Diana on one of the walls), Brick Lane is the heart of the Bengali community, and on weekends is a strange mix of old Muslim men walking around in pyjamas, women in head-to-toe veils somehow speaking into cellphones, cool college kids, tourists and the occasional toothless drunk trying to sell copies of The Big Issue. As Mum pointed out, it's also one of the few areas of London where you see older members of the community interacting with the young. It's true that London is a young person's city, and mostly pretty uninviting and unaccommodating for the elderly, so maybe the Brick Lane locals are onto something.

From Brick Lane, we turned left into Fournier Street. On the corner is one of my favourite buildings in London - the Jamme Masjid or Great London Mosque, which has been a holy building for almost 400 years, but changed to accommodate each wave of immigrant community in the area.



Originally founded in 1743 as a Protestant church for French Hugenots, it was later used by Methodists. In the late 19th century, when Whitechapel became the centre of the Jewish East End, it became the Spitalfields Great Synagogue. With the dispersal of the Jewish community and a new influx of Bengali immigrants, it became the Great London Mosque in 1976. Some stained glass from the synagogue remains, and on the south side of the building, there's a sundial set into the top of the exterior wall with an inscription in Latin that seems to speak to the transience of human existence: "Umbra sumus", meaning "All are shadows."

On Fournier Street itself, there's an almost complete row of original 18th century Hugenot houses: tall thin brick and wooden four storied buildings, which would have once had a shop on the ground floor, with underaged seamstresses working in sweat shop conditions in the lofts above. Twenty years ago, the area was a dump and inhabited mostly by hookers and the homeless - much as it was in Victorian times. Then the artists moved in (including Gilbert & George, two artists who are only ever seen in public together wearing matching 1950s suits), and then suddenly it became cool to live in the street. Since the rapid gentrification of the area, it's now one of the most expensive parts of real estate in London, and lived in by celebrity artists and bankers. GIlbert & George are still around, and we saw them walking back to their flat at No 12 this morning. (Their house doesn't contain a kitchen, so they walk to the same greasy spoon restaurant to eat every day). When Gilbert spotted us, they went inside their house and locked the door.



The street's peaceful sense of privilege obscures its racy history. At the end of the street, intersecting with Commercial Street, the Ten Bells pub still stands, where Jack the Ripper met two of his working girl victims.



Across the road, the truly glorious Christ Church at Spitalfields, designed by Nicolas Hawksmoor was once the hang out of prostitutes, who loitered outside, no doubt hoping to pick up a man of the cloth. The church has now been restored and has a beautiful interior, and is now a popular venue for music recitals and weddings.



From there, we headed across the road to the Old Spitalfields Market, which was heaving with hippies selling bead purses and handmade paper and joss sticks. I tried in vain to get Mum and Dad to buy (me) a nice rosewood coffee table, and to butter them up, took them to lunch at Patisserie Valerie, a cute little French restaurant that does a great Eggs Benedict, some very good coffee and some killer strawberry custard tarts.



After lunch, we wandered through a few dark Victorian nooks and crannies, with a quick whistle stop tour of a few old workhouses for derelicts, an old soup kitchen for the Jewish poor, and Petticoat Lane Market (where, so the story goes, you can enter the market at one end, have the petticoat fleeced off your back and have it sold back to you at the other end).



After all this history, poverty and diversity, we headed back to the comforting blandness of nice leafy green Clapham, where Mum and Dad congratulated me of moving out of Whitechapel. Nonetheless, we enjoyed the day, and spent the late afternoon (after Dad's nap and Mum's walk) watching Neil Diamond rock the crowd at the Glastonbury Festival. A truly great day, and a fun (final) weekend.

Meeting the Judges

26 June 2008
London

A quietish day today, but we went into Covent Garden this afternoon to meet up with Peter and Jan's old friend Chris Judge, and Chris's parents who moved out of Zimbabwe and relocated to London just under a year ago. Here we are in a cafe in the old apple market.



As waiting staff were in rather scarce supply, the pigeons were doing most of the table clean-up.



Quite by coincidence, as Mum and Dad and I walked past the Strand back to the tube, we saw this makeshift commemoration to the victims of Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe.

Dunedin of the North

Edinburgh, Scotland
25 June 2008

We're just back from three days in Edinburgh, which was a last-minute and very fun change to our travel plans. 

Much fun as it was tour guiding Mum and Dad through Vienna and Prague, I was secretly dreading trying to navigate them through Madrid in our planned trip to Spain in week 3, a city (and country) I'd never been to. Fortunately, on the train on the way to Luton Airport for our Vienna flight, Dad commented that he loved travelling by train, and that he wouldn't mind a trip to Edinburgh for a few days. 

Apparently when Mum and Dad did their big tour of the British Isles in 2005, they had a disappointing couple of days in Edinburgh - a city they'd looked forward to seeing. Their hotel was out of the city, it rained for the two days they were there, and when they opted not to go on an overpriced haggis dinner evening, they were left to their own devices in the rain for most of the day, with their only view of Edinburgh Castle seen from through a rainy window at a local Starbucks. Since then, they'd been keen to go back, especially since I've been raving about how great Edinburgh is ever since I worked there for the Fringe Festival back in 2003, and have visited it regularly ever since.

I was about to open my mouth in protest that they would dare to change a trip I'd spent weeks organising (including a long and painful correspondence with our hotel to try and get the room booking confirmed), and I think the speech bubble with "You annoying old farts" was almost in the air, and then I realised this would be a lot easier to organise, and probably more fun. We'd also avoid having to go through airport security, which seems to be disastrous for Mum, who sets off the metal detectors every time she goes through, and regularly gets patted down by scary looking female security guards with moustaches. Edinburgh was much less easy to get to, although there may still be a risk of women with moustaches. 

Edinburgh has a special place in my affections, largely because of the three very fun months I spent there in 2003, but also because of its similarity to Dunedin, my New Zealand university town.



Dunedin was, in fact, built by Scottish expatriates to resemble Edinburgh, and has the same street names, a river called the Leith, a similar geographical positioning close to a harbour, and the same relaxed "university town" ambiance. The Scots influence is still strong in Dunedin, which has a statue of the poet Robert Burns in the Town Square, a mostly Scots or Irish descended population, and annual displays of ridiculousness with men in tartan kilts dancing around swords and throwing haggis around the room. It seemed like the perfect place to take Mum and Dad - only five hours train from London, reassuringly familar, and with everything easily and centrally located around the main boulevard of Princes Street. 

After our Hotel from Hell experience in Prague, I took the liberty of spending more of Dad's money and booking them into a nice centrally located hotel on Princes Street, the Old Waverley, which was charmingly furnished in old-lady friendly florals, had great views of the Scott Monument, the Princes Street Gardens and the city scape, and had some of the friendliest hotel staff I've come across for our whole Eurotrash excursion.



Mum was happy that the room had a kettle and teacups to make a cup of tea (you have no idea how many times I've heard about the horrors of their luxury 4-star hotel in Los Angeles which Had No Kettle!), Dad was relaxed because we were staying in the central city and could get to and fro easily, and I was happy because I was staying at a friend's place around the corner and could have a snore-free sleep. 

We got into Edinburgh on a sunny Monday afternoon, and Edinburgh was looking spectacular. The railway station is right in the centre of town, and takes you out into a view of the city and the Princes Street Gardens, with Edinburgh Castle looming on the hill. 

We checked in, and I took Mum and Dad for a stroll along the main drags of the city - George Street, which is flanked on either end by St Andrew's Square and Charlotte Square, down pedestrianised Rose Street, and then down through the Princes Street Gardens. 

Mum and Dad were particularly impressed with the new square built next to the Royal Scottish Academy (more on that later).

We headed back to the hotel for a very nice dinner at the hotel restaurant, and I headed back to the flat for a nice long nap. Mum said that she couldn't sleep, but got up in the night and looked out the window to see the whole of central Edinburgh lit up (as with Vienna, they backlight the buildings with spotlights for dramatic effect), like a big Christmas tree. 

Tuesday was our big sightseeing day. After such glorious weather the day before, Mum was certain that we'd get sun on Tuesday, but the weather forecasts promised rain. Sure enough, it was dour and grey in the morning, and threatened rain all day - but fortunately for us, never did.

After a quick coffee at Caffe Nero, we hopped on a tour bus which gave us unlimited 24 hour hop-on hop-off access all around the city. We had a great tour guide on the first ride around, who took us up to Edinburgh Castle, into the Old Town, out to Holyrood Palace (one of Queenie's residences, one-time haunt of Mary Queen of Scots) and up to Calton Hill and into the New Town.



Edinburgh is roughly divided into the Old Town (the side the Castle is on, which was inhabited some 500 years before the time of Alexander the Great) and the New Town ("New" being relative, as it was developed in the 1700s, with smart 18th century neo-Grecian architecture). 

Throughout the day, the tour guides were very well-schooled on local history, full of folklore about the goings on and grisly demise of graverobbers Burke & Hare, the visit of the flatulent pie-eating Prince Regent, and plenty of pitch-black Scottish humour -the architect of St Andrew's Church, one guide said, built the church circular so that the devil would have no hiding place, but the locals suspected it was built circular so that Scotsmen couldn't hide when the collection plate came around. 

After our first lap around the bus route, we headed for the Castle. It started spitting with rain when we queued to get our tickets, but undeterred in true hardy Scottish spirit, we pressed on, and joined a walking tour around the Castle with another funny, tartan-trouser wearing tour guide (Edinburgh seems to be full of them, and their wives apparently all work in department stores, terrifying tourists into buying over-priced tartan scarves). 

Mum and Dad loved the Castle - Dad particularly, who walked up the (steep) hills to see the lookout over the city or up to St Margaret's Chapel and the gun ramparts with more speed and enthusiasm than ever before. Like Prague Castle, it's a walled city that's been added to over successive generations of royal inhabitants, and yet much less opulent than the castles of Europe - it's still a rugged, unadorned war fortress and still used as a military barracks. Despite the spartan surroundings, we were very impressed by the presentation of the Castle, the helpfulness of the staff and (a crucial winner or loser in any tourist attraction) the cleanliness of the loos. 

We stayed around till 1pm to hear the daily firing of the cannon (an old custom to ensure that locals and fishermen can tell the time, and a source of continual terror for unwitting American tourists), we strolled down the Royal Mile, had a haggis-free lunch at a little deli, and back onto the bus to go and visit the National Museum of Scotland, and out to Holyrood to see the magnificent peaks of Arthur's Seat and the hideousness of the new Scottish Parliament building.



One of the royals was in residence at Holyrood Palace, so we couldn't get to see inside, but we had a quick sniff through the Queen's Gallery, to see some of her booty of Italian  Renaissance paintings. (It was a little overrated, especially considering the high entrance fee, and we thought it was a bit cheeky of the old bitch to charge for entry). We didn't get any pictures of the palace, so here's a completely random photo of Mum and Dad back in the Old Town, in front of St Giles Cathedral.

Back into town for a quick snifty through a far more reasonably priced Scottish institution - the department store Jenners - and then to the hotel for dinner. 

On Wednesday morning, I joined Mum and Dad at the hotel for a stonking, artery-hardening Scottish fried breakfast, while they picked away daintily at some muesli that looked like horse feed and a bit of pro-biotic yoghurt. 

We headed back to Jenners, where I bought some new bedsheets in their sale (I always end up shopping when I go to Edinburgh, as it's so much easier to get around than in London) and Dad bought a new wheelie bag for the bargain basement price of £8, which he was very pleased with. 

Then we headed to the National Gallery of Scotland, a gorgeous Georgian pillared building containing a seriously impressive collection of European art.



Mum and Dad loved the Dutch landscape paintings (give Mum a peasant in a funny hat, a broken down peasant's shack with a thatched roof and a couple of cows, and she's in heaven) and some very beautiful still lifes in the manner of Vermeer;



a spectacularly coloured Raphael of the Madonna and Child;



and a world-class collection of Impressionist paintings by Monet, Gaugin, Van Gogh, Sargeant, Pisarro and Degas. Here's a rather nice Monet, which we thought would look quite nice in Mum and Dad's living room. Unfortunately, the going rate for a Monet, as advertised in the morning's papers, was around £40 million. Oh well.



We had a restorative cup of tea and a sticky bun in the new downstairs floor of the gallery. As the original building was constructed on wooden pillars which have been sinking for years, the gallery trustees burrowed into the earth, reinforced the pillars from below, and while they were there built an entire two new floors to the gallery, housing storage and archive areas, lecture theatres, a cafe and restaurant, an outdoor area that links to the West Princes Street Gardens, and a nifty connection to the Royal Scottish Academy Building next door. 

We headed back to the hotel to pick up our suitcases, and down the road to the railway station for our 3 o'clock train. We had a lovely sunny afternoon for our trip, and Dad got trigger happy and took lots of photos out the window. Some of them were less successful than others. Here's a particularly good one of an ugly industrial landscape, with me half-asleep and drooling in the corner.

Here's a nicer one of Berwick-on-Tweed, a lovely little village on the border with England and Scotland (officially it's English) which looks out over the eastern sea coast.

After a fast and furious tube ride back to Clapham, on a crowded Northern Line, we were home. Hoorah!