Big birds

Early morning, about 7am.

After about an hour I always stop to have a little walk around, since the drive to work is so tiring.

Looking up, I saw on top of the battered old Victorian warehouse a line of big birds.

Not a merl of blackbirds, still less an exaltation of larks, but a humble flight of pigeons.

How grey the morning seemed, but these birds cheered me up.

The plants seemed to shiver

My new job (three days per week) means I have to get up at 5 each morning and it is a long drive to get to the office - but the money is so good it is worth the effort.

Usually I stop half-way to stretch my legs.

And on one of these little walks I noticed this flower bed.

Keeping up a pretence that it is still summer.

And yet the morning was so chill that the plants seemed to shiver.

A couple more weeks and the show will be blackened with frost.

The other two days a week I work for Alec Nussbaum (not the Institute).  Although I suspect that it is not Alec Nussbaum who is paying me.  But over the last few years I have never been really sure who is paying me.

The night very black

Yesterday evening I attended a meeting with a small charity I do voluntary work for.  During the meeting I began to feel very uncomfortable with a heavy tightness in my chest.  It was a warm evening but I felt cold.

End of the meeting I walked back to my car half a mile away - this was about 8 o'clock.  As I walked I felt progressively worse.  By the time I got home the pain in my chest was unbelievable and I thought I was having a heart attack.

After consulting with my brother I dialled 999.  An ambulance arrived and in this vehicle various preliminary tests were done.  Then I was taken to the local hospital for more tests including blood tests and scans and an x-ray (all sorts of wires connected to me and a drip and a clip on my finger).

 

They could not find any obvious reason for the pain but said it was not a heart attack.  Given a pain killer in the drip which made my chest tolerable.  Wheeled on a trolley down long gloomy corridors for the x-ray, then back to A&E again.

Discharged at 2am, the night very black.  I went home by taxi, the young taxi driver more helpful and solicitous than any of the hospital staff.  Very grateful to get home, and felt as if my life had been given back to me.  

 

I went to bed at 3am.  Painful night and hardly any sleep.  I got up at 7am and went to work (it is a new job and I can't risk taking time off sick so early).

In pain most of the day.  Luckily I was in an office on my own, as I was falling asleep at my desk.  And yet I managed to get a reasonable amount of work done.

To Do

Each morning I write my To Do list.

I only include urgent items that I MUST make progress with.

And within a few minutes the list is so vast that it can never be accomplished, and I become disillusioned and lethargic (the "why bother" syndrome).

Kenwood

After the meeting I walked back to Archway and got on a 210 'bus to Highgate and along Hampstead Road, getting out at Kenwood House.

As I entered the grounds of the mansion the drab damp day was transformed, so that every element became refined by the exquisite Kenwood aura.  The grey clouds arranged themselves into a subtle grisaille of silver, ash and slate.  The fine rain fell as delicate precipitations that felt like a gentle cool anointing.  The crushed gravel crunched satisfyingly underfoot.  Damp vegetation, normally so uninspired, exuded an aromatic fresh scent.  Among the camellias a precious first bud, blood-red, about to burst.

Entering the house, I had the place to myself apart from the volunteers (who seemed grateful to see someone new).  Although I only wanted to see The Guitar Player, I wandered around the other rooms - upstairs Jacobean portraits, downstairs old masters, the Adam library with a pink ceiling.  It all seemed completely different from my previous visit.

You would expect The Guitar Player to be in a room of its own, with two security guards either side.  But it was just on a wall with lots of other art.  Perhaps English Heritage has become blasé about Vermeers.

To get to the tea shop you had to go back out the front door and then right round the whole house, along the elegant terrace with its stupendous view, and down some steps to the old kitchen area.  Tea in a pot, with a plate loaded with gooey raspberry meringue and a big slice of walnut cake.  Yes, I know this was greedy.

You buy a present for someone and then badly want to keep it

Secret Santa time in the office.

Have you ever had that experience where you buy a present for someone and then badly want to keep it yourself?

This is for one of the campaigns managers.

It looks excellent - Enoch at 100 edited by Lord Howard of Rising.

How every high street should look

Afterwards I walked along Amersham Broadway, fabulous mix of buildings, no chain stores.

This is how every high street should look.

It was like June, not November.

I went into St Mary's church.

Yesterday was All Saints Day (today is All Souls Day).

O higher than the cherubim, More glorious than the seraphim, Lead their praises, Alleluia!

Inside the church the door to the Drake chapel was locked.

In a private room

The hotel was comfortable, but entirely without any architectural distinction.

Big and rambling with 50 bedrooms.

I arrived about 6pm, and had a rest and then went down to the bar to drink Long Island cocktails.

The dinner was held in a private room.  The waiters kept leaving the door open so that Alec Nussbaum had to keep getting up to shut it.  I was shocked at some of the indiscreet things that were said.

Restless night, so hot I kept waking up.

Apart from our party there were no other guests at the hotel.

The general manager saw me in the garden and told me how much he admired what we were doing (I could not remember whether he was a member or not).

The Alchemy cafe in Carter Lane

I was ridiculously early (I was afraid the trains might be delayed) so I went to the Alchemy cafe in Carter Lane.

So late in the day all they had to eat was carrot cake, which I would not normally touch.

The coffee was fabulously good.

Presentation

I am working flat out on a presentation.  Have been for days.  It has to be ready by Friday.

It's an extremely exciting idea, but supported by such complicated and boring evidence that I am afraid the data with drag it down and make it flat.

Only forty-five minutes to deliver it, and already I have sixty slides - all of them important.

Cakes

It was kind of Alec Nussbaum to remember my birthday (which is tomorrow).

He brought into the office these cakes.

They were like a sort of jam roly-poly.

Jellies

Another day of meetings that went on so long there was no time for lunch and no time for dinner, and I barely had time to grab this packet of jellies before Alec Nussbaum offered me a lift as far as Finsbury Park (it would have been easier to go to Kings Cross, especially as Alec Nussbaum refused to let me eat in his car in case I got sugar everywhere).

A whispering huddle in the loos

I am getting fed up with all the conspiratorial meetings that are held in the toilets at Head Office.

There is nothing more off-putting than being asked into a whispering huddle in the loos on the third floor.

In any case, this violates the Head Office policy on openness and transparency since women can hardly be asked into the Gents (or perhaps they have their own loo-based conspiracies?).

No, it was never open to the public

On the Today programme's Thought for the Day (BBC Radio 4) the Curate of St Mary's Amersham talked nonsense about the nature of evil and seemed to contradict the words of the Scriptures (this is so commonplace among Anglican clergy that it is hardly worth mentioning - they seem to have lost their way and are mostly interested in being social workers or corporate administrators or diversity awareness lecturers).

What interested me was the mention of St Mary's Amersham.

As a shy ten-year-old I travelled by 'bus from Chesham to Amersham and entered this church and sought out the incumbent (I can't remember if he was a Rector or a Vicar).

Eventually a towering (to me), grey-haired and formidable figure in a black hassock appeared and irritably asked me what I wanted.

Perhaps I had dragged him away from writing his sermon.  Or interrupted his prayers.  Or brought a halt to a sherry and gossip session with the head of the Mothers' Union.

Timidly (I was very timid in those days, my voice so quiet that most people could not hear me) I asked if I could see inside the Tyrwhitt-Drake chapel.

No, he could not admit me to the chapel.  It was a private mausoleum and the family wanted the door kept locked.  No, it was never open to the public.

I must have persisted as eventually he relented and said I could poke my head round the door for a few seconds.

The huge key rattled in the lock, the colossal door opened and the priest stood aside while I looked into the mysterious interior - experiencing a stab of excitement akin to what Howard Carter must have felt when he first broke through into the tomb of Tutankhamen.

I can't remember what I saw.  I have dim memories of marble shelves crowded with marble urns but these must be false memories as Google Images tells me the chapel is actually full of sculptures and memorial tablets.  Perhaps in my mind the Tyrwhitt-Drake chapel has become jumbled up with later recollections of the Capuchin Crypt in Vienna.

I am sure, however, that my brief glimpse saw dazzling white shapes and scintillating white lights.  The dazzling shapes and lights may have been all in my imagination.  But to me, at that moment, they were real.

 

European buns

As it is European Election Day I stopped at a local bakers and bought Belgian buns for the office.

The Bath bun is in case anyone objected to having European buns forced on them.

Bevy

Even at six in the evening the heat was intense.

Even by the river there was no relief.

The collective noun for a group of swans is a bevy.

Torrential rain, the raindrops stinging

Despite the weather forecast I thought I would chance walking the dog this afternoon.

The sun was shining intermittently inbetween the clouds racing across the sky.

The air was mild from a southerly wind.

So we set off, and walked a mile and a half, the usual way, along an unfrequented lane between wide fields.

Half-way back it began to rain.  Torrential rain, the raindrops stinging they fell so hard.  The poor dog cowered when normally he is so brave.

There was nowhere to shelter.

Ten minutes and the rainclouds blew over and the sun shone and the mild wind blew.

By the time we were home we were both almost dry.

Me me me

Driving to work along rural roads one becomes philosophical about road-hogging lorries and slow tractors.

At least this lorry driver, with his "me me me" message, is open about his intention to block the road and not let anyone pass.

The lyre-shaped tree

One of the nicest things about the milder weather is that I can take the bigger dog for really long walks (the little dog doesn't like to go too far).

Sometimes we walk for nearly four miles.

Until we can see the lyre-shaped tree.

Over

Despite the French name and the famous sauce, it's still steak and chips.

Early evening drive to a country restaurant to say goodbye to a friend who is going overseas.

The heat was almost unbearable.  The countryside very beautiful, fields of golden corn and magnificent oak trees.  The village centre consisted of thatched cottages painted pastel colours.

The restaurant was in a former pub, superbly refurbished but keeping all the period details.

We had drinks outside (the low sun in my eyes so that it hurt me to look at my friend).

We were called indoors when our table was ready.  We were on an upper level of the restaurant, near the french windows, away from other diners so we could talk frankly.  A sort of risotto, followed by steak, followed by a sweet heavy pudding.

Because I was driving I just had a single glass of Sauvignon.


Because of the big lunch I had earlier (roast chicken) I was not hungry. 

Because we had so little time I kept looking at my watch.

We took our coffees through the french windows onto an enclosed terrace.  We were the only people out there.  Wooden chairs, candles in glass holders (despite the evening daylight), square slate planters filled with lavender, pelagoniums, pink petunias.

Tiny zephyrs modified the heat of the evening.

For the first time we split the bill.

And then?

And then it was over.