I don’t know why I was surprised by the amount of birdsong in the morning, but I was. Maybe it’s because I have this mental image of England that’s primarily urban; but C was woken in the middle of the night by foxes in the Clapham Common flat where we were staying, and she described them as “the pukeko of the northern hemisphere”… though you may need to have been woken up by pukeko to be able to appreciate the severity of this statement.
(I was completely oblivious to this; whether that is due to the fact that I’m a much heavier sleeper than C, or because of my 50+ hour sleep deficit, I’m unsure.)
We didn’t get into town very early, but we did manage to make our way to the tube station just as it started to pour down; it made me wish that I’d packed a raincoat with a hood, no matter how bulky I thought it was. As you can see in this picture, it did stop, but we were still a bit damp; but as you can see in this other picture, we didn’t let that stop us enjoying ourselves. (The reproduction of the Monet that can been seen in the background was made up of growing plants, by the by.)
Some of you may recognise the location from the pictures – we managed to wander around Trafalgar Square, St Martin-in-the-Fields church (where there was an interesting Big Issue photo exhibition in the crypt), and the National Gallery. We didn’t even skim the surface of the collection; we just wandered through the Impressionists and related painters, feeling slightly off-kilter as we looked at Monets and van Goghs, trying to read the character of people whose portraits have ended up being national treasures.
One of the things that struck me was how fluid paintings are – people getting medals added to their official portraits, busts of politically inconvenient people being painted over with curtains, paintings started in one style, abandoned, and then finished in a different style. I mean, you can change photographs, but I think that’s different somehow to changing paintings. Maybe it’s because there’s no “real” version of what you’re seeing, in some sense?
Then it was back to the flat, off to a pub dinner with the people we were staying with, and then home to go to sleep.
The next day we intended to try and sight-see before catching a train to Leicester. This was defeated by several factors: not the least of which was the left luggage people wanting eight and a half pounds for each bag they would be looking after.
But to be fair to the baggage people, one of the major issues was C trying to work out how to explain to her bank that she actually wanted to be able to use her credit card while overseas — as she said when she first got the card, and when she went into the bank in person to find out why it wasn’t working just before leaving the country, and to the credit card center (after being on hold for an hour) when she rang them after being told in the bank, “There’s no problem, but ring them to be safe.”
(Margie has since worked out that the bank seems to have, in the course of this discussion, cancelled the card that C actually has, and issued another, different card, which they presumably tried to send to our empty address, and have now activated… how they thought this would help is unclear. It is hard to imagine how they could have got it much more wrong, basically. Luckily, she is travelling with a bunch of people, is able to get money out on her EFTPOS card, and has some Travelex money cards; so if C’s mother is reading this, don’t worry, she’s fine and being assertive in her bank mail.)
We got to Leicester without hassle, and immediately plunged into the swirl of wedding prep. I somehow found myself tramping through an English wood with a practising ecologist, with hair full of leaves and arms full of ivy, as the light slowly faded. Other highlights include storing picnic baskets in a British yurt, and an English carvery lunch. (No pictures, I’m afraid; I’ll see if I can make up for it tomorrow.)
Anyway, that’s enough for now. I need to finish off the FAQ for dealing with our house, and get some sleep… since I don’t actually know how I’m getting to the wedding tomorrow. Next time, I’ll try to include a basic itinerary, insofar as we’ve decided anything.
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