Bloggo Indeterminato: Between Travels

I should be in Bath right now, along with the others from ICLC, but I opted out of that excursion. It's a great trip, with stops in Avebury, Glastonbury, Wells, and after Bath, Stonhenge, but I've made the trip twice already (once last fall, and once in fall 2005), and I'm just as glad that I'm not along with them. But I'm somewhat perplexed and more than a little frustrated. Not bewitched, but surely bothered and bewildered.


I DID have two good long walks Friday and Saturday, Friday's to a part of the walk along the north bank of the Thames, part if which I'd not yet covered, Saturday's simply a brisk walk around a good portion of Hyde Park, then heading back to South Kensington, stopping at a nearby Saturday market on Bute Street. 

You KNOW when you are entering the City of London
taken alongside the Thames

In fact I think I'll put a few photos up from those walks, such as the one just above, that will have nothing to do with the following narrative written in the confessional mode, but which will probably be more interesting to whomever decides to read this than the narrative itself.


Now that I have actually turned 65 (who'd-a thunk it?!), and am really in my last semester of teaching (boggles the mind!), I realize how very very close I am to retirement. 

Memorial to W.S. Gilbert
along the Thames

Of course I've known it was coming, have been excited for it to come, thought about it to a point last semester, but now it's like I've run up against a wall. Matters regarding retirement are preoccupying me to the point where I don't seem able to enjoy London as much as I should. Instead of planning trips, living in the moment, making the most of my time, I worry about which apartment I'll end up in back in the States, in Greenville SC to be specific, about furnishing that apartment, about social security, medicare, making ends meet -- making a new life.


Someone, I don't remember who, wrote me recently and noted that "transitions are hard." Whoever it was, s/he was right. I've been in transition most of my life, learned to cope with change when I was a wee one, being uprooted nearly every year as we traveled from air force base to air force base, I've covered this ground in earlier posts, but this particular change seems the most daunting of all. 


And yet at the same time it's potentially the most exciting of all. 

I ate my lunch on a bench with this in sight:
the Globe and the Millenium Bridge

I have a good twenty years yet (here's hoping, and for even more than that) and the world may very well open itself up to me and, as the saying goes, be my oyster. After all, during my few months on this side of the Atlantic I've visited Bratislava, somewhat near the home of my mother's side of the family, and I've been friended by Andrijana Hrkać, in Croatia, who I now know is related to me on my father's side of the family! A time of discovery, yes? Of course.


But still I get bogged down. It's one of my great frustrations about myself. 

A look down the Thames
from an unusual angle for me

I'm sure everyone has their own peeves about their own lives. My life would be just about perfect (except for the fiscal side, which barring a miracle will never improve) if only I could shake this tendency towards becoming mired in concerns that seem mighty whilst in the mire, but that once out of the mire, seem petty and inconsquential. True confessions, Dottore Gianni style!

I'll end this on an upbeat note. Whereas I have had to curtail my travel somewhat this semester, still, I've already been to Bruges. 

An obelisk along the Thames
from ancient Alexandria

And thanks to official ICLC trips, many students and I are heading to Edinburgh in just under three weeks, the first time since my very first visit in autumn 1999 that I'll have seen the city NOT during the festival; then a month later, in mid-March I am traveling to Paris with students for my French Revolution walk etc; and the weekend after that I'm off, again with students, to Stratford-Upon-Avon, one of my favorite towns in the U.K.! Granted, I will not be able to travel to Croatia, but that is because before I knew about that connection I had already booked a spring break trip to Italy. 


For God's sake man, what's wrong with this scenario?

A few brief words about my walk along the Thames on Friday. 

Ragazzi scavenging along the Thames

I have now covered a good portion of the Thames along both its banks, a good bit of which I'd seen before, but some of which I'd not yet encountered. I am not finished with this walk, yet, in fact I'll soon be back on the South Bank, but farther south than I've ever walked along it. That will be an adventure. And on my Thames walks I've discovered odds and ends that will probably never appear in usual touristic photos of London, but which for some reason or another give me a bit of a kick. If you've walked along the north bank, you know that after a point you run into dead ends. One restaurant has been very clever about exactly where they are, through the use of two signs:

I for one find these rather funny! 

And now, just a few more comments, about my walks in Hyde Park.  One of my very favorite experiences in the theatre

The Italian Gardens, Hyde Park,
not much now, but spring's on its way!

was performing in an adaptation of a Noel Coward short story called "Ashes of Roses." In it he wrote, "There is much to recommend Hyde Park on a Sunday afternoon, particularly in the spring, when the grass is newly green, and there is a feeling of lightness in the air."  It's not spring quite yet, but I have so enjoyed being near enought in the vicinity of this beautiful park to enjoy walks there whenever the feeling hits me. And yesterday, a Saturday morning, not a Sunday afternoon, I had a chilly brisk walk through a good portion of it, about an hour's worth -- and believe me, even a very brisk walk taking that amount of time does not cover all the park, not even one turn around it. Another reason to look forward to the few remaining months I have left in London is to continue my walks there, "particularly in the spring..."

 At the end of my Hyde Park walk I stopped, as noted in the very beginning of this post, at the Bute Street market. I've written about this place and the market before.

The Institut Français in South Kensington

It's a very "Francophile" block, with boulangeries and French groceries along it, primarily because it is very near the Institut Francais. I almost feel as if at one turning of a corner I've stepped out of London and into Paris every time I stroll through it. A tale of two cities, rolled into one! Yesterday I stopped and bought a half chicken with stuffing and gravy, elegantly prepared, for £7. Pricey, but I made two meals of it, one last night focusing on the leg and thigh quarter, and later today very much looking forward to the breast, both meals with generous dollops of dressing, all covered with the delicious gravy. They also do beef, and it is very likely that next Saturday I will take a small pot of that back with me to 35 Harrington Gardens.

I began this post in a brooding, confessional style, but seem to have written myself out of it. In fact I just remembered London is celebrating Chinese New Year today, and I should get over to Soho, where the festive crowds will be.