Oxenford

Well, nowadays, we call it "Oxford", but in days long long gone by, maybe around the time of the monks that developed the city, it was called Oxenford.

Whatever it used to be called, or is called today, I call it magnificent. If I loved London, I adored (in a completely non-religious, but definitely passionate way) Oxford.  So much so that since I have returned to West Hollywood, I have watched  a CD (a gift of Heather) of Inspector Morse's Oxford (where the series was set) and six full seasons of  the series that ran from 1986 to 2000 (the wonderful late John Thaw, I wish I had watched when he was working on the show) and begun seeing the pre-quel, Endeavor, just to see the places where I trod in my short two and a half day diversion there.



My wonderful host and travelling companion on many days, Heather, was able, with the help of a niece to get us a couple of nights, at 45 pounds (about 60 dollars), in the guest facility for family at her college Worcester (pronounced Were-ster). I had no idea of how beautiful a place I would be staying and how much I would be wishing I could stay for weeks, or even months.

Although the distance is only 48 miles or so from London to Oxford, we did the travel by two buses, the first a local bus to the travelling bus station and then a tour like one to the university town, which consistes these days of 38 colleges surrounding the city centre and its environs. With the exception of about four colleges, all are for undergraduates, and some go back in their foundings to the 11th century. If you saw Oxford twenty five years ago, thus, it will look pretty much the same today, as it probably did, twenty five years before that. And so on. The fashions of the undergrads might change over which they place their gowns (which they happiily still use), and hair for that matter, but the stone, and cobble are the same, for students and visitors as they were for people like TS Eliot, (Merton) or CS Lewis (Magdalen, pronounced, "Mawd-lyn"), or John Henry Newman, (Trinity and Oriel),and so many before, up to and including that old rascal Wolsey who founded Christ Church, formerly called Cardinal College (he was a humble guy), until Henry took that away from him probably around the same time as he took Hampton Court.  Christ Church is one of the wealthier of the colleges, and also the one at which many scenes of Harry Potter were set and filmed. I had taken lots of photos of that, but deleted an entire 200 or so shots accidentally, including some that I surely would have treasured from Littlemore and Blessed Newman.

We arrived with our bus at Gloucester Green station.

This is the other side, the store and market (on Wednesdays), where there are coffee shops and a few eateries and a kind of common you pass through on the way to main streets.

We got there about 3 or 4 and wanted to drop our stuff in our spare rooms at the modern Sainsbury Building--two dorm like rooms with a bathroom for Heather and I to share. Spare, but light and airy and just the place to sleep after a long day's walk a bout.  Gloucester Green was only a few steps from the college.

 

 

 

 

Bicycles, as those seen against the wall at the entrance of Worcester College, are EVERYWHERE. And here, despite my antipathy for bicycles with traffic, somehow it all works. It is as it has always been. I saw a version of the following postcard, in my case it was a fellow or don wearing a helmet along with his other Oxfordian gear on a bike.

 

 

 

 

That's the thing. The old and the new merge wonderfully at Oxford. I don't know how, but all these modern shops and restaurants and movie theaters (the Odeon chain) somehow fit comfortably with the memorials, and churches and walls and bridges of sometimes ancient times. The feeling is still small protected town, despite its growth and fame.

 

You walk through that iron fence and through a large door and you are in the quad of Worcester College.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Here is a little about the history of the college, 26 acres (no I did not see all of it), its origins going back also to the 13th century.

The thing about England, London, Oxford is that nature is both wild and tamed at once. Each college is different, some more formal than others; and some, like Worcester, more bucolic. There was no place that I walked within the walls (we had an electronic key for after 8 p.m.) that wasn't peaceful country like, with amazing flowers, roses, wisteria.

 

 

 

 

It got dark late, I think I have mentioned, and one night, maybe that first night in Oxford, I sat by the lake inlet, in which this swan and many ducks resided(ducks and swans were everywhere in Oxford).  It was quiet. I was surprised more students weren't around, but it was exam time and so maybe they were studying. There was to be a performance of the Merchant of Venice on the grounds the next day. Two girls suddenly arrived, one with a walkie talkie. I would learn that they were behind the scenes production folks for the dress rehearsal of the Merchant. They seemed to be waiting for something to happen, but I did not know what. They talked about mutual acquaintances and perhaps one young man who was no longer at one of the colleges. Said one young girl to the other, "Is he not?"  This was not how college kids talked in the Bronx. I liked the formality of these two kids in jeans. Suddenly a boat rowed by a young woman in fake chain mail arrived and two young men, also in costume, one with a lute and the other with a flute, disembarked and ran off into the woods toward wherever the rehearsal was running. The row boat was called, "Blind John of Bohemia".  I felt like Alice in Wonderland, whose author as it happened, was somewhat inspired by the grounds of Worcester College.

 

It was also that first night, earlier, that we attended "Evensong", the kind of thing you see in those movies like Shadowlands (yes, I know I have said, and shall say again) I watched these films again after I returned in an effort to re-savor my days at Oxford.  The chapel at Worcester is smaller than several of the others I saw during my sojourn, but large enough and old enough to be impressive all the same, with its wooden seats and candelabra with actual candles.

 

I wasn't much fond of the piece, relatively modern, as has been the one in the Catholic Cathedral in London, but the hearing of these strong voices of college men and women in their robes, was a fantasy come true.  I was standing here. I was hearing these sounds. I was in heaven on earth.

 

A rather pedantic middle aged woman we met on the tour bus (we did a swing around several times to get familiar with the place and hear the history), said that it was Merton that had the best choir, and so one evening after I had tooled around for hours, I took my sore feet and met Heather at Merton, and its large chapel and larger choir than that at Worcester. We waited about a half hour before the proper time, sitting on a bench amid long grass and manicured flowers.

 

I was all over. Baudelian Library (no, the four original copies of the Magna Carta were not available for viewing), Blackwell's, a bookshop with a long history of sales to the students and us tourists.  Next door was the White Horse pub, also I would later discover, a set for the Morse series, where I had a half pint and the Ploughman's lunch, yum, cheese and bread and various delicacies.

 

And the

I was not, however, done with pubs, as on the bus tour another pointed out was the Eagle and the Child, on St. Giles Street, near the Martyrs' Memorial. This had another literary connection of pleasure for me, one of the several places that the writer, CS Lewis and his friends, including JRR Tolkien (whose sketches for his science fiction I saw at the Baudleian) frequented. Their group was once known as The Inklings. I was surely going to have a little something something cold there and take in the atmosphere. As I jumped off the tour bus, my feet were pretty tired from the walking I had already done and I was actually looking forward to a full stop, but then I noticed across from the Randolph Hotel (the only five star one in Oxford), the Ashmolean Museum. There was a banner hawking the sketches of people like Rembrandt and Da Vinci, so feet a pouting or not I decided to take a look. All of this reignited my desire to paint when I got back home, which I have, after a fashion.

 

 

What I saw was so little of the inventory, but it did not matter. My view on these few trips I have taken is that whatever I do see is more than I ever have and a sculpting of my soul, so "no worries."

 

 

 

               

 

 

I was a little embarrassed going in, another tourist on a quest to touch a bit of writing history, but a lovely man with a true cockney accent was so inviting, "Anywhere you want, luv", he said as I walked inside and ordered something light and cold. I sat in the back, past the picture just above, which was a little disappointing in that it looked like a modern add on. Still, there I was and it felt nice to rest among the ghosts of the Oxford fellows of the early 20th Century.

 

Funny, how in just a bit over a month and a half since I returned, it seems as if I am forgetting something in my tale of Oxford. Well, not forgetting exactly, as I will have a second part about my side trip to Littlemore and the small "college", really a kind of retreat house that he formed while he considered his conversion, of John Henry Newman (1801-1899).

 

So, in conclusion for today, OXFORD RULES!  And I have denominated myself a two day alumna of Worcester College. 

 

 



 

Sunday at Westminster Cathedral

Let me first avoid any confusion. Westminster Cathedral is different from Westminster Abbey. The Cathedral's parishioners are Catholic. The Abbey, Catholic from something like the 11th century, was converted into King Henry VIII's branched off faith, which fully merged then with the state, and became known as the Anglicans. There was a lot of back and forth after Henry's self denominated Supremacy. On both sides of the battle, alas, there were martyrs.  But ultimately a combination of Evangelism, Calvinism, and Anglicanism took hold and Catholics became the minority. Luckily, things became a bit more tolerant on all sides.

So sometime in the mid 1800's a Catholic Cathedral was built off Victoria Avenue, about a mile and a half from the Abbey. It's style was, and is, completely different from that of the Gothic Abbey (and man I love the Gothic Abbey as you will recall), more Byzantine. But like all the Churches in England it simply is so much to look at. It is deep and comfortingly dark.  Well before the altar hangs a most dramatic Franciscan Crucifix that constantly refocuses the eye of the heart.

Oh, dear, as I searched for the photos I took of the outside of the Cathedral, I realized that somehow I deleted them along the way. But I guess the most important part of going to the Cathedral is in some ways less about the edifice than about sharing a beautriful choral Mass at 10:30 celebrated by the Archbiship himself, and joined by my friend Freddy, who mved back  to England, his land of birth, last summer.

I have long known Freddy, probably close to 30 years. We were parishioners, servers and choristers together at St. Victor's.  He even rented the place I now live in from me for a couple of years before he returned to England.  So there was something incredibly joyous about sitting next to him in the crowded Cathedral as of old in our small parish. 

After Mass, Freddy asked me what I wanted to do. He suggested Covent Garden (you know, of My Fair Lady fame), but I had actually been there on one of the days on which Denise, Heather and I saw our first play. It was fun, but not unlike many tourist like markets, with food, trinkets and entertainment, I have seen in many other places including Los Angeles. I wanted to go toward Notting Hill, (yes, it is because of th\e movie with Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts which I STILL love). As it turned out Freddy used to live on the border of Notting Hill and Bayswater, so being so familiar with his haunt from a time before he had even mved to Los Angeles, he took me around.  We stopped first at the Pub he used to frequent and had a Sunday Lumch, a massive thing of roast beef and bread. And of course a pint.

I rather wanted to see where Freddy had lived as a young man, and so he took me to his former "flat". He had owned it, and when he sold it in 1980 somthing to move to America, he received about $26000 pounds, in today's exchange rate, about 40 thousand dollars.  Suffice it to say that his neighborhood, like neighborhoods in so many places all over America and Europe, the cost to buy today would be well into the million or more range.

I loved the neighborhood. And saw all those little private gardens that were featured in the movie Notting Hill. Many in London have become public but there still remain a few attached to the homes and apartments in the area. I could live here. Oh, except for that darn weather again. 

 

Freddy walked me through Kensington Gardens, and there was the palace at which young Will and his bride, and mother to be, live. Hyde Park. Everything was perfect and the people were all over enjoying the uncustomary sun. Water, and plants and picnics and blankets, and bicycles. At St. James Park (after we stopped for a spt of tea and a rest) we passed over a walking bridge with a view of water and lily pads. 

 

In the distance, Big Ben and the London Eye. 

 

Freddy and I walked toward them, he to pass over Waterloo Bridge and his train and me to the metro to get back to the Penn Club and a much needed rest of my feet.

 

In addition to rest, Heather and I shared wine and bread and cheese in the dining room of the Club. It was easy, pleasant and I felt like I was home.



 

 

Henry's Shack

Sorry. I've been away for a few days. I brought home a little something from London besides Guides and Souvenirs. I brought back strep throat. And then the antibiotic I was taking to inhibit it, inhibited me with a grand case of nausea which rendered me a porcelain princess for several days.

So, where were we in London's environs?  Just so you know, I'm getting confused on when I did things. I've already written about Peter and Alice, the play we saw, but that was actually a day later than the events of this entry.  Oh well. I've been sick. Too exhausted to regroup.

Heather and I were off to Hampton Court. From something around 1509 to 1547, it was one of the hunting, jousting, resting after jousting residences of the Tudors. Later it would see other kings and queens, including William and Mary who began to rebuild something in a Georgian style but ran out of money, and then frankly their lives, so it would not be completed. There are therefore two distinct styles in one large palace. Oh, dear, my very first palace!  Stepping into history in a big way, with the Thames still nearby. It's about a hour or two drive from London proper. We took the metro to Richmond, and then a bus the rest of the way.

So, first cool thing, for you New Yorkers.

 This is Kew Gardens. Nope. Not the one in Queens, New York, of the same name, but the one in the outskirts of London. I loved this.  I loved the commonality.  But this is clearly the "Underground" of London by virtue of the sign's logo. Now, then, "Mind the Gap."  Those of you who have been in the area, know what that means!

Once off the bus at the entry way of the lavish Hampton Court, I could see why it was so prized an environment, by the kinds of old and in the 20th century by the folks who had apartments there, usually relations of royalty.

In an even grander way than the many parks I had already seen in London, this was bucolic, peaceful, a place where deep breaths could be taken and nature absorbed fully. And then there was the grand courtyard and the gravel on which my feet crunched, where princes and kings and queens paced and pranced.

 

 

That clock, that's not a recent creation, and it's based on the idea that the sun circles the earth, not the other way around. Cool, huh? 

 

 

Turrets, lots of Turrets

 

Prisoner of Zenda anywhere to be seen?

 

This ISN'T the real Henry, but a facsimile backed by another young fake royal. They were running around the castle talking about some unwanted visitor, like Jane Seymour or something. And the king was looking to marry Cathryn Parr,

 



 

This coat of arms was outside the castle and if I read it right had been obscured by Henry as it is the coat of arms for Cardinal Wolsey, he who fell very far from Grace, and his grace (meaning the king's). Because it had initially been built for Wolsey, not big on humility nor apparently did he take the remotest vow of poverty, there is a cloister and church size chapel within.  The chapel was one of the spaces in which we were not allowed to take photographs, and frankly it was one of those places where one was most tempted to do just that. Indeed it was here that Edward, Henry's son by one of his wives was baptized; here he married his last wife who outlived him (lucky girl). As in all ancient places, there have been many changes over the years; for example, what had once been a great stained glass window was covered over by heavy wood, just as impressive for my speculative money. But parts of the original ceiling, under which these separated (by Henry's self deluded hand) prayed, remain. The essence remains.

No movie nor created set (as much as I realize some things were recreated here), could possibly compete with this real thing.

Trivia:  Did you know that there was a really great job back in those royal flush days?  He was the Groom of the Stool.  Guess what that was. And it really got you about as close to a king as one could ever imagine.

We are not talking about furniture here. Well, we sort of are. They did show us a 17th century chamber pot, which was like this plush chair with a hole over the pot.   So, getting a sense of what the Groom did? 

So, after halls and paintings and stained glass,

 

 

I was in the "back yard",  mostly created from hunting land into the gardens for walking and whispering state secrets, in the 18th century. If the inside was exceptional, the outside was a marvel.

 

And I got to take a ride around the entire perimeter thanks to a couple of Clydesdale's.

 

Heather had the idea of our taking a boat back to London, on the Thames. As you can see the weather was getting pristine. And for the English after a most rainy winter, this day was like unto summer for them. As we rode back up to London proper for a three hour trip (and it really ended up that way, no Gilligan Island wash ups) in a boat that had in fact been one of the evacuating vehicles at Dunkirk, it was a little cool, but I felt a sense of utter joy at having finally made a trip to Europe after 22 years. People lined the edges of the water, picnicking, or eating at the many built up, umbrellas nearly glistening in the sun. In places the Thames was wide and calm; in other places, wild and narrow, or vice verse. There were even a couple of locks, something I had never experienced in my life.

 

There was the Teddington Lock, and the Richmond Lock. I actually forget which one this is. Kids and their parents watched as the water level dropped along with the boat. At this point, we were completely surrounded by the lock walls, feet, before the gates were opened and we could proceed.

 

And then we were back approaching Westminster. 

 

 

 

Oh, Britannia, I was falling in love with you. And I am currently reading the history of the Tudrs. Quite the fractured family who fractured history.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lunch, A Show and Dinner

By Thursday, June 1, the rain was, wonder of wonders, dissipating and there were extended "Sunny Spells", with promises by the weather folks of more to come. I was happy taking one day at a time on that score, and on every other one for that matter. But this day was a scheduled one,to be centered around a play, "Peter and Alice". 

Until the day before, I had no idea what the play was about and I didn't care, as it starred Judi Dench. Dame Judi is a legend I wouldn't miss, regardless of in what she appeared. Aside from that, there have been more and more confirmed rumors that because of her macular degeneration, this long time actress was going to limit, if not curtail her continued appearances on stage and screen. Those of you who saw the last Bond movie know that her "M" was killed off after many years of her heading MI6 on screen.

As I sat with Denise, Heather and her husband Chris in a converted alley full of restaurants having a mimosa and watching the stage door of the theatre (we wanted to be close) filled with autograph seekers, a young man came out, friendly and content with being sought after. He was slightly bearded, and lightly handsome, but I did not recognize him. I asked the people next to us who he was. He is, I was told with a concomitant lilting excitement that it was Ben Whishaw.  "What's he been in", I asked, oblivious to the fact I had indeed seen him, and recently, in that selfsame Bond film, "Skyfall".  He is the fresh new "Q", wet behind the ears computer genius.  He clearly already has significant fame on the Isle, judging by the hugs and waving pens. Ah, I would soon find out, this was a bit of a Bond reunion engagement, as the writer of the play was the writer of the last Bond film and at least one to come, John Logan.

I still did not know what the relationship of Peter and Alice would be, or who these characters were in the first place. Ir was as it happened the penultimate performance. The play closed that night after a multi month limited run.

Presumably, Alice Hargreaves and Peter Davies really did meet once in the 1930s. She was elderly. He was about 35.  In this imagining of what their conversation (and experience) might have been, the model for Alice in Wonderland meeting the model for Peter Pan, there is little happiness, or joy in fantasy. Whether the models were happy children, whether in either a physical or emotional sense they were abused, whether there is any real pleasure in childhood, or adulthood, these seem to be the themes around which Peter and Alice encounter one another, as well as their alter egos and the men, both lonely strange men, it appears, who created them, J.M. Barrie, and Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson).

In the beginning, it seems that Alice is the bitter one and Peter is at peace with his after Pan life. But by the end of the play, it is Alice who seems to have accepted her shadow fame (and real life loss of children in the war) while Peter's troubled family life (early loss of a father who is represented in his dying cancerous days) and inability to find an adult niche (he started the book store in which the two of them meet I believe), leads to his ultimate suicide, as we are told.

I thought it was all done better in the movie with Coral Browne, "Dreamchild", without Peter's involvement. But I didn't hate it, and it was worth everything to find myself sitting in a West End London theatre, applauding the probable last stage work of a great Dame. She received a standing ovation, likely more in appreciation of the body of her work, than for this vehicle. I stood too.

I wish I had taken more time to absorb the surroundings. As is true in many older New York theatres, this one was ornate and small. It has had several incarnations.

 But that I was there, walking with the adoring crowds (many of them in costume trying to get last minute tickets for the last show), in the cacophony that is London, was almost a surprise to me, a kind of personal cheerful fantasy.

And then we were off to a local Bar/Pub, where I sampled a dark beer that I'd call "interesting", and shared a congenial meal with Denise, an old friend, and Heather and Chris, new ones, kind to me in every way, as if we had known each other forever.

Another delightful day in my own kind of wonderland.

Of Oyster Cards, Big Buses, Cathedrals, History and Meeting Up With a Friend

It was still raining, and threatening to some more, when I woke up early again the next morning. This time, I was not so early as to miss the Continental Breakfast in the dining room. This was a Club, a religiously founded one, and its idea was that quiet was provided, but if people wanted to speak and meet up, they were encouraged to do so. So, there were tables that were solo and those that allowed for "can I join you". 

Although at heart (I know some of you are laughing, but it remains true) I am a loner, when I am in these environments, I feel it incumbent upon me to be social. And so I found myself saying hello to various people, as I ate my cooked scrambled eggs and bacon and hash browns. This was more than the average continental breakfast, even though the bacon was a rounded affair, and the hash browns were a single knish like item. Still it all tasted good and I was fortified for my next outing.

The first thing, I needed to get an Oyster Card. You pay for what is essentially a pass for the metro and the buses. I was a little intimidated as I went into the station at High Holborn because it was faster paced than even New York as people got their fares and pushed through the access gates. I knew that I was the kind of individual in the facility that I as a New Yorker, hated, slow and unsure and in the way of people trying to get hither and fro.  So rather than stand at the machine trying to figure out the directions, I went to the information window for a live person who could hear my tale and get me the right thing.

And now, I was ready. Except now also I decided to go to a kiosk on Southampton Row to buy a ticket for the "Big Bus" which, like in Los Angeles, and other cities, is a type of tourist transportation that allows you to "hop on, hop off" when you see a site that you wish to spend more time exploring. 

I had to go to the top of the bus for a full view of the sights of London, which was some doing with the continuing rain (and may be the reason looking back that I am now fighting sore throat and cold back here in LA). I had an English style cap and that seemed mostly enough. You could get this plastic parka, but it looked too unwieldy. 

Happily though, I found my first spot of interest almost immediately, St. Paul's Cathedral, its rounded dome a bold invitation. This edifice, like so many, damaged during World War II but managing still to survive mostly intact. As the days passed during the trip, I was more and more in awe of the British, so close to the tyranny and destruction of those days, and yet managing not only to survive, but after years of ration and dreariness and danger, to thrive.

Here you are looking up at the "Whispering Gallery".  When I was told that once up there you could not turn back, my fear of heights announced, "You can see it from here."

The Pantocrator. I love this and printed it out to frame for my room.

I was actually not supposed to be taking pictures inside St. Paul's and stopped after I saw the prohibition sign. Some places allow it, if you don't use flash. This one, did not. Still I had my innocently taken inside pictures, and they were going to stay.

It is here in St. Paul's that you will find the tombs of two amazing historical figures, among the many in the Isle, the Duke of Wellington (whose painting by Holbein, I think, I would later see at the National Gallery) and Admiral Horatio Nelson, the hero of Trafalgar, who died of his wounds on the HMS Victory (which I would later see at Portsmouth). 

Let me digress here, just a bit. The thing this trip did for me, whether a lasting impression or not, was to remind me of the sheer number of us alive and dead, all vying for making our places in the world. I know, it's a theme that seems to preoccupy me in this blog, and on other entries about this trip--that no matter how famous, if famous, we become, no matter how accomplished , no matter how big the tombs and cenotaphs, our end is precisely the same. And we are either resigned to there being nothing after that equalizing end, or we see that it all pales in comparison with the Reality to come. And for that we have no evidence sufficient to our human reason.  So here we were modern dayers walking all over the graves, on the floor below us, of people with long epitaphs merely curiosities to us today, who hoped that the words would make them more known down time. But even if known, only a footnote in history. When I was in the National Gallery, one of the paintings I saw and listened to the description of, was this one:

 

 

It is another Holbein, and it is called, "The Ambassadors". The two young men are wealthy and happy, but there hovers below them an almost hidden, elliptical insert, a skull. The point is to note, according to the audio lecture, that all we collect endlessly and greedily, is ultimately for naught. It is all transitory. Sorry. Maybe that's what art is, a freezing of moments of time and people, long since gone. It is not really a morbid thing. Just a reality that may or may not direct our lives to more philosophical climes.

 

Ah, well. As with the British Museum, there was no way to take it all in, but only the overall majestic feel of the place and its effort at immortality. And then I hopped back on the Big Bus and was off, to stop at another amazing piece of history, begun when in the 10th century by Benedictines and the site of coronations, weddings and funerals of figure after figure, Westminster Abbey.

This time, seeing Big Ben in the immediate background of this astounding ancient church, I felt somehow that I had stepped into an old English movie. I have to admit that once I came back I watched several of my favorites, having now trod in some of the tracks of the actors and producers, nay the historical figures. But the Abbey, which I wistfully wished remained a part of the Catholic tapestry, rather than an annex of a very piqued Henry VIII, met every and any expectation of prayerful grandeur I could have had. I wanted to, but knew I could not memorize its great spaces and cloistered ones. The oldest door (sometime in the 10th or 11th century), the many amazing beings long laid to rest, including Queen Elizabeth and her half sister, Mary, Anglican and Catholic, Elizabeth on top, and Mary, below her, with a prayer for the resurrection for both of them.  John Donne preached at St. Paul's. Edward the Confessor, a saint, is he not, is in a fragile tomb that we could not get close to for fear of its deterioration.

 

 

 

,

The last of my views was of Poet's Corner where Chaucer and endless other wordsmiths lay.

 

To say I was exhausted after winding my way through the halls of two massive Churches is an understatement. I had not even eaten for wanting to absorb the sights and echoes. 

 

When I got back to the Penn Club, Heather had arrived and rested a bit and was ready for dinner. I had seen two or three enticing Indian Restaurants along Southampton Row and we picked one that seemed the most inviting, the door opened by one of the proprietors.

 

 

The Chambeli. I love Indian food, but in Los Angeles, too often, the fare of a country is not prepared by its countrymen, but here, it was so clearly a family place and the several dishes we tried, curries, both meat and vegetable and the accompanying garlic naan, was, well, earthly nirvana. Bravo The Chambeli, the first of my dining experiences in London. Which brings me tot the second myth, that the food in England is bad. Whether you approve of the EU or not, the fact is that London is a multicultural phenomenon, and you can eat anything from anywhere, and the old time English food, I sampled that as well, Ploughman's Lunch, Sunday Lunch, a big slab of roast beef and fixings that was comfort food personified, it was a feast in each and every place I or we chose spontaneously.

 

Oh, yes, by day two and a half, I was falling in love with London, despite the rain. And then, I got even luckier. For the rest of my trip there were clear spells, sunny spells (as they call them) and outright sun to accompany each of my sojourns in each of the museums, churches and parks.