12. Permutations and combinations

On Monday, I took the tram to Wimbledon with the intention of taking the District line straight up to South Kensington station. But when I got there (at 8:30am, so the station was packed), there was an announcement that the entire District line was suspended (because of signal failure or something – that’s usually the reason), so everybody piled onto an overground train (so crowded that I couldn’t even fit into the first and had to wait for the next, and only just squeezed into that). I was going to change back to the Tube at Vauxhall,  but when we got there and lots of people got off, there was an announcement that the Victoria line was also suspended, so everyone made a mad dash back into the train before it left again. So when we arrived at Waterloo, I decided to walk from there to the Royal College, having had more than enough of London’s public transport for one morning. It took more than an hour but it was worth it (and I broke the journey in the rose garden in Hyde Park, where I sat and read a book in the sun for a while).

This morning, I decided to take the Northern line from Morden to Stockwell, then the Victoria line to Victoria, then the District line to South Kensington. But when we were about to cruise into Stockwell station, we stopped, and there was an announcement to the effect that there was a ‘London Fire Brigade Incident’ at Stockwell station, which was therefore closed, and we would remain here ‘for some time’. Believe me, sitting in a tube train somewhere in the tunnel between stations, when you can smell smoke and have no idea whether ‘for some time’ means five minutes or an hour and you’re due at the Royal College in 25 minutes, is not much fun. Anyway, in the end I got there only a little late, due to some creative journey replanning. At least considering all the possible ways of getting from Clapham North to South Kensington helped pass the time. Then this evening – we finished late, at 8:30, having worked straight through from 2, and I was very tired – I took the District line back to Victoria, went to get onto the Victoria line… and found the train sitting helpless at the station, with an official wandering up and down telling everybody to get off and ‘stand clear of the doors’ because this defunct or terminated train would be leaving in one minute and there was another train right behind. She continued making this announcement for five minutes before the train gave a pitiful sigh and tried and failed utterly to move at all, at which point I returned to the District line and some more creative journey planning. Finally I made it back onto the Northern line and another jam-packed train, and I’d just managed to get a seat when there was an announcement that ‘this train will now be terminating at Tooting Broadway’ (which is, just by the way, one of my very favourite London suburb names). So we all got off (‘All change, please, all change!’) and drooped around the platform until another train came along and finally managed to convey me to Morden.

So, all in all, not the best week for London public transport, or at least my experience of it. I am so very glad that I do not work in the middle of the city and commute every day. Four days in a row is so much more than enough.

Amidst all this, I’ve been producing a CD by a Portuguese pianist, Luísa Tender, a friend of Roy’s and a RCM graduate who lives in Lisbon and has flown here to record this disc (Schubert – Wander-fantasie, Bach – 3^rd English suite and Italian concerto, and Debussy – Suite bergamasque and Pour le piano). Unlike Roy, Luísa doesn’t want to do too much listening back, and unlike Kevin (who produced Roy’s Fauré CDs) the nice young chap who’s doing the tech stuff isn’t concerning himself at all with the musical side, so the whole recording process, selecting and requesting and encouraging and advising, is all mine. It’s a little stressful and incredibly exhausting, and I hope it will all sound ok in the end. You lose your perspective after a while. But Luísa is lovely and I am very much enjoying working with her. She’s tiny, and how she manages to play the Wanderer-fantasie I don’t honestly know, but she has amazing stamina and control, and a beautiful touch, very clear and expressive.

Roy is in Zurich today and we will both be in Paris on Sunday. On Tuesday he was at Keele University (Staffordshire) on Tuesday night. It snowed! We didn’t get any in South London but when he came back on the train yesterday it was still on the ground, even in the northern suburbs. First October snow for 70 years apparently and everyone is very excited – at least everyone who lives north of the river. And this time last week we were… pitching up and down against a Force 9 gale and in 6m swells, somewhere off the Portuguese coast. This is why I didn’t write anything after Gibraltar. When the internet room is in the bow of the ship and you’re sailing head-on into a Force 9 gale, believe me, you don’t want to be in there any longer than you can help. Anyway, I can report that my monkey bite is slowly healing. I was a little worried that it was getting infected the other day so went to register at the doctor’s surgery in case I needed to get it checked out, but was told I couldn’t register because I didn’t have proof of address (because I was still waiting for my bank card to arrive and we haven’t yet got my name on the bills), and even when I did register I would need to make an appointment for a general health check with the practice nurse before I could see a doctor. So, fortunately, my arm seems to be getting better by itself (and I still haven’t got my bankcard…).

However, that little piece of bureaucratic awkwardness can’t even begin to match the letter Roy had to post today: in order to get his royalties from Durand, Durand had to send him a bill, which he had to print out, exactly as it was, then send straight back to them (together with another page with his bank details etc.). The French do have a certain predilection for useless paperwork.

Still, at least their Métros tend to run.

11. Apes of various persuasions

I’m writing this looking at Africa – the Atlas Mountains. We’re sailing through the Straits of Gibraltar. The Ancient Greeks believed that the Straits were the end of the world, that if any boat tried to sail between the Rock of Gibraltar and the Atlas Mountains, the two opposing mountains would crash together. It’s surprisingly easy to imagine this happening…

 So we stopped this morning in Gibraltar, mostly so the passengers could stock up on duty-free beer and cigarettes! It’s a strange place – if you took away all the accretions – signs, tat – it would look Spanish, but of course everything’s in English, English shop names (Sainsbury’s, Morrisons’) and a mixture of English and Spanish voices (lots of Spaniards live and work here). We managed to find a cafe that was just Spanish; the owner greeted us with a challenging hola! and when we replied in Spanish she became markedly more friendly. We had coffee and churros and enjoyed them both. Then we wandered in an upwards direction, away from the tat of Main St and towards the Rock itself – stairways and passages and interesting houses and very quiet! Steep, too. We pottered around the fortifications – the ancient Moorish fortress, halfway up the Rock (from the 14^th century), the remains of the British siege in the late 18^th century (graffiti dated ‘1794’) and the tunnels made in the rock by the British during the Second World War, when Gibraltar was of course so important a base, helping to keep the straits accessible and particularly protecting convoys to and from Malta. It was extraordinary, all that history, all those different wars and sieges and the same rock, the same fortifications holding them all in.

Amidst all this I managed to acquire one of the strangest injuries I am ever likely to receive: I was bitten by a Barbary ape. This was entirely my own fault. The apes live mostly up the very top and we weren’t going to go near their colony, but a couple had come down to hang around the fortress; they were the first I’d ever seen so I was admiring them (from a distance), then suddenly a family swung down quite near us, a female with a little baby, which was incredibly cute, and so I grabbed my camera and took a photo… forgetting that the father had also come down and was keeping a good eye on us; I didn’t even see him coming at me until I felt the bite (on my upper arm)! It’s quite impressive, I have to say, and rather painful. But when we went back on board I had a tetanus shot and got it cleaned up, so I’m fine, just a bit embarrassed… Fortunately it’s my left arm and not my right, since we have to give our last concert tomorrow night and it’s better that the arm the audience will see doesn’t have large bloody slashes and an enormous bruise on it…

I like this picture because the man on the right and the ape are doing such similar things! The ape spent a long time up there, just keeping an eye on what was going on and enjoying the morning sun, I think.

 

About two seconds before I got munched (we were nothing like that close, I just have a good zoom)

Leaving Gibraltar we had a ‘Great British Sailaway’ – ie everyone had those flags out again and they hung around the pool and sang along to poppy versions of ‘Rule Britannia’ and ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, then put on their cockney accents and launched into ‘Roll out the Barrel’ and ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’. I took a couple of photos but they’re a bit too cruel to post…

So instead I’ve included a couple of photos from Alicante, in southern Valencia, where we stopped yesterday – again we escaped the main tourist areas and wandered up towards another old fort – we didn’t reach it but enjoyed ourselves very much in the maze of alleys and stairways – colourful houses with beautiful Moorish tiling all around the doors, pots of flowers outside, friendly people (it reminded me a little of Girona). We liked these two dogs, who were sitting in their window sill in one of these laneways, keeping a good eye on the world.

10. In Italia

The villa on the second point is where Napoleon lived

A sleepy, sunburnt and slightly hungover missive today. When you’re sitting on a windswept terrace on the harbour at Civitavecchia and you ask your waiter for some house wine and instead of a glass he brings you a bottle, what can you do but work your way through it, together with your bruschetta (miste) and your pizza (melanzane, zucchini e funghi), even though the sun suddenly and decisively emerges and you’ve left your new hat (bought in the market in Elba) back on the ship?

 

 

 (The proof that I’m hungover is in the sentence construction.)

We like Italy. It may be crowded and messy (in all sorts of ways), and when you are sitting on the toilets on the local trains you may have to expect sudden gusts of air from unexpected angles (since there is no plumbing; what goes into the toilet goes straight out onto the track) – but it’s wonderful. On Wednesday we were docked at Livorno and we went to Fiesole to have lunch. This involved a three hour trip each way:  first bus from the boat to the centre of Livorno (the driver took us on a bizarre route that involved a tour of all the backblocks of Livorno – on the way back we had a different driver and it took 5 minutes instead of 20), then a local bus from the Duomo to the train station, then a train to Florence (was meant to take 80 minutes but we were 20 minutes late because we got stuck behind something slow), then a bus up the hill. So we had an hour in Fiesole before we had to repeat the process in reverse. But it was worth it. We hadn’t planned to go to Florence at all, as it happened, just to go to the train station at Livorno and take a local train to somewhere small – but we got there and there was a train about to go to Florence and it was so cheap (6.50 for each of us, each way – 26 for 2 returns) and it wasn’t going to take that long… so we just grabbed it. Then when we got to Florence, around the station and the Duomo it was so crowded and unbearable and we knew we didn’t have that much time; Roy had never seen Fiesole (the little hill-top village a couple of kilometres out of town, with amazing views of the city) and I had the happiest memories of visiting it when I was in Italy in mid-2006 – so we saw a bus coming and ran for it, dodging between hordes of Japanese tourists… When I came two years ago, I walked up to the village from my B&B, which was on that side of the city – it was a wonderful walk, up back lanes, steep and winding, looking at all the old stone walls and the olive groves. This time we just took the bus, but it’s a lovely trip. And the village itself was perfect, the air was fresh and cool and it’s so old and so beautiful. We sat in the main piazza and had pizza and coffee and thought of the seventeen year old Debussy, who spent the summer of 1880 in Fiesole (working for Madame von Meck, Tchaikovsky’s patron) then made a dash up to the top of the hill where there’s a beautiful old church and cloisters, goggled at the view then dashed back down again and caught the bus. It seems funny, to have spent 6 hours travelling for that brief meal, but it was just perfect – and the travelling was fun too, the local trains and local buses, the glimpses of beautiful countryside (between the clutter…), listening to the conversations and trying out our own few words.

Then the next day we woke up and we were in Elba, at Porteferraio (the biggest settlement on the island). Elba was – one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen… the photos can’t begin to capture it. Just what you imagine a Mediterranean island to be – mountains and bays and the bluest sea and oleanders and vines and olive groves, lizards, bougainvillea, winding paths, cliffs, yachts on the water, clear air – just perfect. And, because it’s Italian, fabulous coffee, friendly people and a superb local market (not just fruit and vegies but Italian good leather shoes, all sorts of clothing and household stuff). Roy bought walking shoes and I bought my nice hat, we got a big chunk of fabulous parmigiano, some fruit and (are you surprised?) a big, three-litre bottle of good local olive oil… Then after lunch we found a wine shop and got 6 bottles of Tuscan (some Elba, some mainland) wine. So we are happy. And also glad that we drove the car to Southampton and will not have to try to carry olive oil and wine back on the train. We went for a long walk, finding ourselves quickly out of Porteferraio and wandering on country roads with wonderful views of the coast, then came back into town and had lunch sitting at a restaurant on the harbour, eating fresh pasta with more olive oil and very simply dressed, very fresh local fish (then gelati)… it really was idyllic.

this amused us!

 

The pilot who took us out brought his wife and young child out with him on the boat. So when we were edging out way out of the harbour, taking photos of the gorgeous sunset and amazing views, we could see his family sitting in the little boat below us, taking pictures of us! Very Italian… the picture shows them zooming back into the harbour.

Yesterday we were at Civitavecchia, which is the port for Rome and we were planning to go to Rome (an hour by train) but Roy woke up with my cold and was feeling miserable, so we decided to stay in Civitavecchia. It’s an assuming place, not the most attractive of towns but a real place, not very touristy, with another great local market (we had had our fill at Elba, though). And we discovered some lovely things hidden in corners… a church by the train station dedicated to ‘San Giovanni and the Japanese martyrs’. We still haven’t worked out who the Japanese martyrs were, but the church was fabulous – only 100 years old, but in the 1950s a Japanese painter came across and painted the whole interior with frescos it a rather gorgeous mixture of Japanese and Italian styles. So the Madonna on the roof of the dome, at the altar, is wearing a sky-blue kimono, and the disciples all have a distinctly Oriental appearance – the pictures really more like Japanese prints than anything else. Very beautiful and very unusual. Then, in the older part of town, we suddenly found ourselves in a little piazza with a whole mixture of buildings, and in one corner an arch that was obviously part of the old city walls, with a sign saying that Civitavecchia was the last city to fall before the invading Saracens on their way to Rome in the 800s sometime, and that they passed through the walls here… It was quite amazing. Italy is like that. (Just behind the piazza where we ate lunch in Fiesole are the remains of the Roman theatre, and I remember from my visit two years ago that there are Etruscan remains somewhere around the village too. Elba was mined by the Greeks as well as the Romans – it’s very mineral-rich, hence Porteferraio)

So while pretty much everybody else on the boat has spent their three days in Italy being carted around the sights on coach tours (the boat’s guide for Rome that we looked at yesterday counselled visitors to ‘descend the Spanish steps and stop at the [something or other] Tea Rooms for a cup of Earl Grey and a scone’. When in Rome…), we’ve had a lovely time pottering around, walking a lot, speaking as much Italian as we can manage and eating and drinking much too much. And we’ve loved it.

9. Monte Carlo

I have never seen such a concentration of Jags and Bentleys as we encountered in Monaco/Monte Carlo (all black, of course), nor so many poodles in the streets. And the marina is filled with yachts that are basically junior (and not so junior at that) versions of our massive cruise ship, and the botanic gardens sported a sign that seemed to be telling people where to make their dogs pee. (Whoever did that didn’t know much about dogs, or perhaps Monaco dogs are particularly well-behaved.)

But we enjoyed our day in Monaco. The old part of town (the Grimaldi/Monaco bit) was pretty crowded, but the botanic gardens around it were just beautiful, right on the harbour with gorgeous views – and because the place is so wealthy everything is spotless and done in the best, most expensive fashion possible (the campest public toilets I’ve ever seen). And the scenery is stunning; it’s the edge of the Alps and they just come straight down and fall into the sea…

here

Because the city only became popular and wealthy a century ago, when the Casino was built (by Charles Garnier, who built the Opéra in Paris – as soon as I looked out my window in the morning, when we were at anchor, I could spot the Casino amongst all the buildings, because it looks just like the Opéra) – so most of the main part of town dates from the late 19^th century. And it was built by rich people – plenty of old money and taste and elegance – so it is beautiful, but not ostentatiously so, not obnoxious or kitsch (you can find more of that in the newer parts) – just big villas with lovely gardens, and elegant art nouveau apartment blocks. And we found also, that while wandering around these bits, which are more residential and less touristy, that in the shops – the bakery, the tabac – people were so friendly, more so than I’d expected in such a place. In these local shops, it was just France, it could have been anywhere in the south (though not Paris – they’re more open and friendly down here, as a rule). We caught a bus to Eze, which is a little village a few kilometres along the coast, perched high on an outcrop above the sea – one of those famous beautiful villages, too steep for cars and mostly touristy – but not bad at this season and pretty amazing to see.

Amidst all this we’ve been trying to practise and give concerts; they’ve been going pretty well (in fact we’ve been told they’ve never had such big audiences for the classical concerts on this ship before, so that’s nice). Unfortunately they’re happening in quite an open space – I like it, but the problem is that people can walk through from the back and there are a fair number of people who clearly can’t tell the difference between a classical concert and the background mush that gets played in the central Atrium in the evenings, so they talk at the tops of their voices – distracting for us and annoying for the audience. We’ll see if they’ve managed to fix anything up about this for the next one.

8. Homage to Catalunya

The view from where we eat dinner, sunset yesterday

Gourds at the Boqueria

Mushrooms at the Boqueria – I couldn’t take a picture that showed how beautiful they really were

I have caught a cold, which is not really the best way to enjoy a cruise on the Mediterranean. Still, after a miserable day yesterday I did manage to have a nice time in Barcelona today, though I had no energy for anything much. What I did have energy for was sitting in cafes drinking coffee, and that we managed admirably. We met up with one of Roy’s good friends, a composer, just by the Boqueria (the wonderful market – about the closest I’ve ever seen to our Central Market, but more colourful). He doesn’t speak English and Roy, although he can make a game stab at Catalan, can’t really understand it, so the conversation was in French, which was lovely (and good practise for Monte Carlo tomorrow). Then we had a blissfully happy (well, on my part at least) wander around the Boqueria. I figured I’d already seen Barcelona and didn’t have the energy to be touristy anyway, and all I really wanted was to enjoy the market. We bought a beautiful big shopping basket (I’ve been regretting the absence of one in Morden) and filled it with good local olive oil (yay!), ripe nectarines, oranges, dried morilles (um… morels, I think – frilly rich gorgeous mushrooms) and my favourite pêches plats (‘flat peaches’, which are called paraguyos here, for some reason). And we gazed longingly at all the things we couldn’t buy – amazing fish and a truly spectacular array of fresh mushrooms – pine mushrooms, cêpes (very similar to porcini), chanterelles, pleurotes  (like oyster mushrooms) – piles and piles of them. And we had a second coffee (un cortado  - macchiato – , and oh it was good), and got lunch from the organic vegie takeaway place and a gelati. I was very contented. And we both had a nice time trying out bits of Spanish, or Catalan (I mingle the two indiscriminately, with various words of Italian and French that fill in the gaps – I don’t know how anyone understands anything I say, but we did manage to get everything we wanted). It’s one of the most exciting and wonderful things in the world, to wake up in the morning and be in a new country, a new language, different people, different air, different sounds and smells (and in Barcelona there are plenty of smells to be had…). I don’t think I’ll ever lose that sense of excitement, and the love of trying to find the words. It was a bit of a shock to the system, when we were painstakingly ordering our lunch, to hear the broadest of Australian accents saying, ‘yeah, we’ll have one of those… and one of those…thanks mate!’ Also to sail out of the harbour this evening with the DJs at the pool playing awful poppy music at a sound level that I’m sure breached OHS guidelines, with the ‘entertainment officers’ doing preppy dances and getting everyone to join in. (I think that must be high on the list of my Worst Possible Jobs, Entertainment Officer on a cruise ship, having to be perpetually, unendingly jolly and do stupid dances and conduct ‘Battle of the Sexes’ quizzes…)

Anyway, we grabbed our glasses of wine and made a dash for the highest deck, to watch our departure in relative peace.

Monte Carlo in the morning, which I am looking forward to, partly because it is French and partly because it seems like such a completely bizarre place. We’re doing a concert tomorrow evening and in any case I still won’t be very well, so we won’t spend all that much time there, but a morning and lunch will be fun.

7. Down to the sea in ships

Greetings from the Promenade Deck of the Ventura, the largest and newest ship in the P&O Fleet; commissioned this March, she carries 3000 passengers and 1250 crew. There are 19 decks (actually, there are 18 decks, but the top one is called Deck 19; there’s no Deck 13 – the ship was built by Americans…) I’m being passed at regular intervals by enthusiastic passengers in baseball caps, jogging shoes (and, yes, white linen slacks) doing their morning laps of the ship. There’s one couple that I think have been zapped here from the set of Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot; they’re in their 60s and the woman is always dashing around and chattering over her shoulder while her husband plods along about 5 paces behind her. Come to think of it, there are a few like that.

We’re currently somewhere off the coast of southern Spain, we woke up about 5am this morning and saw lights out the window which must have been the coast of Gibraltar. We were due to round Gibraltar about 6am, but we wouldn’t have seen that from our cabin. We are very lucky; we’re accommodated in the crew cabins but we have a big window – not a little porthole, but a window, with a sill big enough to sit in. I spent most of yesterday afternoon sitting in it, compiling a list of manuscript sources of Fauré songs.

We sailed out of Southampton at 5 on Friday evening. It was the most magical evening, a perfect clear blue sky then a gorgeous sunset, smooth waters and so clear. The amazing thing was that the Queen Mary II and the QEII were both in port and both left just after us, so the three enormous ships formed a convoy out of Southampton Water – I took lots of pictures. It was just stunning, and we were lucky to be first out so we got the best view. Then instead of taking a sharp left at the head of Southampton Water, we did a dog-leg past the Isle of Wight – I think for the benefit of both the passengers (since it was such a perfect evening) and the onlookers on the harbour and the island, seeing three big ships go past. We heard from somebody on board yesterday that it is actually the QEII’s last voyage, so we were very lucky indeed (I think she’s going to Dubai, probably to be turned into a luxury resort or something…) So we stood up on the topmost deck until it was too dark (and too windy and cold) to see anything more, drinking wine and watching everyone run around waving little Union Jacks. They really did this. As we sailed away, they were all leaning over the railings waving their flags. Then for the next hour, around the big pool area up top, they all gathered around, listening to the DJ playing poppy patriotic songs, dancing and waving their flags. I have to say, it was very odd. I just can’t see Australians doing that, somehow (they couldn’t be bothered). Fortunately, Scotsmen think it’s strange too, or at least mine does.

On Saturday morning I woke up sick. There was a big swell in the Channel, and while I rather liked the motion of the ship, when I was lying in bed, when I got up I realised that that enjoyment had not communicated itself to my stomach.  I’ve never really suffered from motion sickness, so I wasn’t expecting to be seasick, but seasick I certainly was. Anyway, I got myself to the medical centre and was given seasickness tablets; they certainly helped with the nausea but the side-effects are sleepiness and a headache, and both of these duly arrived; I spent most of Saturday dozing, and the headache persisted until lunchtime yesterday, whereupon everything magically cleared away. I’m sure the fact that by then we’d rounded Cap Finisterre so were out of the Bay of Biscay and into calmer waters had something to do with that. Since then it’s been beautifully calm, the air is warmer – even though there were a few showers yesterday, it’s still very pleasant out on deck. Yesterday we ate every meal at the very back of the ship, high up, outside on the terrace – for some reason those tables always seem to be free, but we love them. Last night was magical, sitting out there, watching a gorgeous sunset over the big, calm sea. I’ve never really been out at sea before, except on the ferry from Melbourne to Devonport, so I’ve never seen anything like this… it’s so beautiful (now that it’s dead calm, at least) – the changing colours and the sounds and just the vastness of it.

Yesterday evening was the first Formal evening (each night is designated as Smart Casual, Semi-Formal or Formal), so we got ourselves dressed up (dinner jackets, long dresses, the lot) to go eat our meal from the buffet (which I have to say is actually quite good) and sit out on the terrace. Then we wandered back into the central area, where the shops are, all around a big staircase, big atrium area, sort of vaguely deco-ish . This was obviously the place to be; everyone was promenading in their dress-ups. It was really rather fun, checking out everyone’s dresses (Roy was very excited to see that lots of the men were wearing kilts; I’m going to pester him to get his out again…), drinking champagne and just swanning around generally. Then the Captain turned up and gave a little welcome and we all clapped and people headed off to the second dinner setting and we went back to our cabin and fell asleep.

Our first concert is tonight; there’s a nice Steinway in the ‘Club’ where it will be – a slightly odd venue, since it’s all lounge chairs and people walk through it; there’s a proper theatre but it’s enormous and there’s other stuff going on in there. We have a keyboard in the cabin so have been practising a little on that; there’s also a dreadful clattery Yamaha upright with a dangerous stool (every joint is loose so the legs move in all different directions with the movement of the ship) which is located, appropriately enough, in the Ivory Suite (which is where they have weddings; the piano is white, of course).

And tomorrow we are in Barcelona; I plan to make a beeline for the market (Boqueria) where there is 1 euro coffee, real coffee with real milk (only UHT milk on the ship). Oh, I taught the barista in the atrium bar how to make a macchiato yesterday. It’s on the menu but they’d never made one before I think and when I ordered it there was a big conference behind the bar, all of them offering suggestions on how to make it (i could have pointed out that in the menu there’s actually a description…) The first offering was a latte, so I sent it back, and eventually we came to an understanding.

Anyway, so we’ll have good coffee at the market, and I want to try to find the fabulous vegetarian food stall that my parents and I visited nearly four years ago. And I want to buy a new handbag, since the strap of mine broke on Friday evening. It’s repairable (and I will repair it at home), but I just like bags and am glad of the excuse to buy a new one. I remember buying a couple of lovely ones as gifts somewhere on the Rambla, so I’m hopeful.

 

6. Further demographic meditations

I am unsure about what one wears on large cruise boats. Images of white linen slacks and panama hats come irresistibly to mind, but since I look dreadful in white (there’s another good reason not to get married) and have never owned a panama hat, those options have been thankfully discarded. Apparently, Guest Entertainers are Not Allowed to Wear Jeans on board ship, since this apparently detracts from the quality of our art, or something.

So today I went to Wimbledon, to potter around the sort of shops where people who go on cruises might buy their white linen slacks – or, to be precise, where they might deposit them when they’ve finished… that is, the op-shops at the posh end (Wimbledon Village). As a matter of fact, I did end up buying 3/4 length linen pants, but they are not white (nor are they beige, I hasten to add). Then I went to one of the posh department stores and gazed longingly at pretty dresses but couldn’t bring myself to spend all those pounds on them (I checked out the exchange rate this morning, so I was coverting to dollars in my head and groaning). I also had to buy some plain black stockings, to wear under the dresses I do have (these concerts are formal dress; apparently one also Dresses For Dinner). The first pair of sheer black stockings I found cost 18 POUNDS. I stuck them away extremely quickly and dug around the back of the tray until I found the ‘3 pairs for 5 quid’ ones…

Then I browsed around the op-shops in the normal people’s bit of Wimbledon (Lower Wimbledon), which didn’t have designer labels but were nevertheless interesting, not least the Trinity Hospice one, which is remarkable for its attendant (I noticed him when I was looking for kitchen stuff in there two weeks ago). He is possibly the only op-shop worker ever to wear a suit and tie to work, and he has meticulously arranged everything in the shop according to printed labels stuck above each rack. (In contrast to the FARA shop just up the road, which has bags of clothes lying on the floor and books all chucked in a shopping trolley). Unfortunately, nobody else working in the Trinity Hospice shop has paid the slightest heed to these careful labels, so everything in the racks is completely jumbled up anyway. The man in the suit and tie looks as if this pains him very greatly.

I also discovered that there is a truly wonderful second hand bookshop in Wimbledon (not Wimbledon Village nor, really, Lower Wimbledon, but stuck on a sidestreet behind the High Street). It’s called Copperfield’s (but of course) and, in the style of all great second hand bookshops, has stacks of books all over the floor, steep winding stairs, shelves of books all the way up to the high ceiling (so the ones on the top two shelves can never be bought because they’re too high to read the titles let alone fetch down), many sharp turns, tiny corners and unexpected cupboards and an eccentric owner with large hair and glasses reading the TLS behind his desk and never looking up.

There is very much a custom here of buying books in op-shops and returning them when you’re done, like a paying library. Very sensible for those who do not have much storage space. There are a few books, or a few authors at least, you’ll find in every op-shop in Britain – Joanna Trollope, Marian Keyes, Jody Picoult, the Da Vinci Code, Chocolat and the complete works of Ian Rankin. My problem is that I am extremely good at buying books (although I tend not to go for Joanna Trollope, Marian Keyes, Jody Picoult, The Da Vinci Code, Chocolat or Ian Rankin) but completely hopeless about giving them back. I must work on this.

If I was extremely, extremely wealthy, I would buy one of those Georgian terrace houses that overlooks Regent’s Park and take my children to feed bread to the ducks and do my shopping in the organic food stores and French bakeries down Marylebone High St. However, I would also have to put on my designer outfits just to go to the supermarket or else spend the rest of my life being looked down upon by snobby shopkeepers, so maybe I’ll stay in Morden, where there are no French bakeries or organic food stores but there are parks and people are allowed to go to the supermarket in their jeans (even if they have to leave them behind when they go on P&O cruises around the Mediterranean).

5. In Bloomsbury

I have a rather strange system for navigating in central London. It involves burying the A-Z deep in my bag, and walking in the general direction of wherever I want to go. And I don’t tend to get lost. At least, I don’t know where I am on the A-Z, but I know where I am on the map of London that’s in my head, the one that says – ah yes, Gray’s Inn Road… this is where all the solicitors live (in Regency novels at least), yes, I’m in Mecklenburgh Square, that’s where Harriet Vane lived before she married Peter Wimsey… So I know where I am perfectly well. I’m just working on getting the map in my head to overlay the map in the A-Z.

But I have to say that Bloomsbury is a rather nice place to wander in, especially if you are of a literary persuasion. In the space of half an hour – and completely at random – I found where Dickens lived in the 1830s, where Yeats lived (just around the corner), where Lytton Strachey lived, where Virginia Woolf lived before and after her marriage (also around the corner; both she and Strachey lived in Gordon Square, then after she married she moved just down the road to Tavistock Square) and where Dorothy L. Sayers (the creator of Peter and Harriet) lived in the 1920s (just along the street from Mecklenburgh Square, as it happens).

So that is how I passed this afternoon, while Roy was meeting with publishing people somewhere in the vicinity of Oxford Circus (a place that is not on my personal map at all; I avoid it and Oxford St at all costs).

And here’s a question to ponder. Why on earth do you think that the Centre for Assisted Conception should be contained within the Eastman Dental Hospital? (As Roy pointed out, it’s suspiciously reminiscent of those enormous yellow NASAL DELIVERY TECHNOLOGY billboards.)