London Calling

So after taking a week to settle in Yorkshire I'm off for a week in London.  It js funny that, despite my undying love for England,  I have never been a huge fan of London.  I cam't pinpoint why.  Maybe, if Johnson is right, I am simply tired of life.

The bjt of london I do enjoy is wandering about the slightly more off thd beaten track residential bits.  For that reason I am verh excited to be renting a flat this time round, rather than staying in  the traditional bugdt pensione in Bloomsbury.   Not only do I get a room to myself (oh the luxury!) but we get to explore one of my favorite bits of  London, West Hampstead. It's brilliant; like a village in the city!

For now, though, it's off to take advantage of the free museums, and then do a tour of london's hidden pubs; both educational & intoxicating!

The Morning Chorus

There is something truly magical about an English dawn. It lies not in the showyness of a magnificent vistas set ablaze with light, but in the ordinary awakening of a back garden; a moment of serenityas the sky slowly changes from black to blue to violet. It is the sounds of the birds slowly waking, the first melodious whistlings of the blackbirds joined by larks and thrushes in an oddly soothing cacophony.   There is a certain scent to it, too: a clear freshness, the day scrubbed clean.
 

I vividly recall one morning at my student digs in Leicester.  I had passed a restless night, tossing and turning, preoccupied with worry.  Then, into all that sleepless anxiety came the sweet, lyrical song of a blackbird. I went to the window to open the casement so as to hear it better, and found that outside the night was beginning to pale.  Everything was so still, like the world was holding its breath, and suddenly it wasn't enough to be watching it from my window.  Wrapped in my dressing gown against thd chill and clutching a fresh cup of tea, I sat on the low wall of the front garden as the day brightend.  For that little while, at least, I was able to put my anxieties to one side, and it was only me, and a cup of tea, and the birdsong in a lightening world.