The bird scene in London

London's best bird, seen on a side wall off the Essex Rd, N1

The birds of London are noisy – they have to be in order to hear each other above the traffic, the trains, the sirens and the ever present, but no one knows why, helicopters.

Among the noisiest, the most quarrelsome, are the crows and the ravens, large and black and almost impossible for a short sighted amateur to tell apart. One tip, if the black bird is smallish and making an agreeable sound, it is just that – a blackbird.

Of course, the most noticeable bird in London is the pigeon. This multicoloured bird, once un-amiably described as ‘a rat with wings’..is a joy to children and sedentary old people everywhere. The latter often feed them, leading to great numbers in one place. Then the children chase them with whoops of joy.

Sadly, pigeon shit is far from being guano, it is much disliked by motorists and owners of important buildings. That is why so many of them have spiked ribbons glued to window sills. The Royal Automobile Club even has a couple of imitation radio guided hawks that glide over its back garden to keep the pigeons away.

So far, I have not heard a turtle dove but will continue to hope.    After all, love is always in the air of London.

TV man saves old couple's lives

The headline is not a total exaggeration but very nearly true.   One of the major disruptions to our lives, now that we have come back to London after a two e- generation time span away, was our inability to manipulate the television.  We could not find the programmes we wanted, at the time we wanted.  Also most of them were totally incomprehensible: most the programmes concerned other people making food, doing up and selling houses, minor public personae making public fools of themselves; 'urban' characters starting public 'wars' over minor commercial services.  Forget the spy scandals or 'people' coming back from the dead.

It seems we are in the Voyeur Age of TV.

With desperate bravery I tackled Google to find someone local who could fix our TV aerial - it was the 'smart' TV that had told us this was the problem.   Enter David English and his son Alfie.  After some time lifting up shelves and opening up skirting boards to reveal vast viper nests of unidentified cables, the problem was identified.    

The previous owner of our house - may all the Gods look kindly upon him because I do not - had taken his SKY box with him, thus leaving the TV aerial cable unconnected to the aerial discreetly and perilously balanced on our (Grade II listed) butterfly roof.  Dave and Alfie re-connected the two halves.

Now we can see TV programmes as they are being broadcast, get the news of the last 12 hours in which it happened.  We can both operate the TV remote.
Not to exaggerate too greatly, Dave and Alfie saved our sanity, our marriage (oh, the squabbles because we could not work 'it') and very probably our lives.
Absorbed in watching the moving screen, rather than crossly pondering over many times read books and newspapers, has somewhat reduced our consumption of wine - a.k.a 'alcohol'.

Of snails, spiders and chalk trails

Back in London after an exhaustingly hot summer in France, so hot I did not even feel like lighting the new tandoor oven outside. The sheep grumbled and sought the shade and Roger the ram gave up jumping over fences.

Our return travel took over nine hours, door to door via train and plane, even allowing for the catch up hour between France and UK. Unlucky, no one really to blame (apparently) but at least we got to see the storks’ nest at Coutras station and then the darkened countryside between Gatwick and north London – the latter cost £111.00

To cheer us up our favourite toll-gate spider is back. So we have carefully to lift his single thread that spans the path and put it back near his starting point in the ivy each time we pass. Some weekend we must go away if only to see whether he manages to make a multi-strand barrier across our steps.

Here he is, in his ivy departure point - how do you apologise to a spider?

London is still a-building. A near neighbour appears to be digging out not just his basement but also a large part of the garden – sack after sack of rubble piled up along the front garden path. Tender memories of the time we did the same in another part of London. So far, it is all happening quietly.

Unlike the immediate future for my beloved Club, the University Women’s in Audley Square, Mayfair which is facing years of noise, dust, lorries  and general disturbance.All to create another n number of high value apartments  complete with underground parking and pool. The demolition contractor explained that the car park, which takes up about half of Audley Square would be taken down ‘by hand’, gently sliding over the fact that those hands would hold pneumatic drills. Let us not even think of the noise made  when the rest of the site is knocked down by machinery. This to be followed by the joys of building it back up again. 

hieroglyphs that can be seen all over central London

A small pavement sign makes me wonder whether possibly negative implications of Brexit for the London property market are beginning to be considered. London pavements, in areas of building work, are well decorated in coloured chalks with meanings only for initiates. They are skilfully executed in quality red, yellow, blue and white chalk by people who have obviously learned to draw circles freehand but who are may not be future distinguished graffiti artists. The local scribbles in N1 – and Audley Square – are roughly drawn in chalk that can be scruffed or rained off. They are tentative, impermanent signs….it’s just a hope.

Rub it out and do it again!

One sad note on our entry into the flat: a snail had died trying to get into the jar of black truffle pesto - what was it thinking?

The one below, at least, was joining us for a drink.

A London spring

So Country Mouse flew into London a new way, landing in a soft glide along the side of the Thames to London City Airport. Fortunately the plane was small and the pilot knew how to drive in straight lines as well a fly in circles in the sky.

London Transport was on its best behaviour and took me home by bus and by overground in what seemed like less than an hour. I had not realised how big and how dense, low rise greater East London is. That is the joy of bus rides – seeing houses and shops and markets and hundreds of uniformed children. Generation Y (earphones attached to Ipod/phone) has become Generation D with official ID cards hanging round their necks.

Reaching for the sun

London was in brilliant bloom, a joy to the eye but hellish for hay fever sufferers. Our North London garden had repaid the winter love we gave in a magnificent show of blossom and greenery. Like so many inhabitants of Britain the plants are trying to escape to the sun.

My two small efforts at gardening had mixed results. The mint plant has taken well but is obviously short of water. And my salad dandelion – salade verte, pissenlit, endives, noix & lardons – had had too much rain and was too big to eat.

too large to be edible - a survival technique?

However, my guilt feelings for having encouraged the tearing down of the hydrangea that had climbed up from the basement to colonise the roof, were a little assuaged. I save a few sticks that showed little points of green. They seem to have rooted and hopefully will clamber all over – horizontally – the front garden fence.

Only one sad note: one of my favourite local shops has changed hands. But the true, underlying sadness is not the change of personnel but the change of shop layout.

As you come through the shop door, access to the right hand area, where all the newspapers and magazines were displayed, has been blocked off. Customers are steered into the shop and cannot access any goods without being seen by the cashier. Later I noticed other shops had the same layout. Pessimism leads me to presume that there has been an increase in snatch and run theft.

Odd thing: there seems to be a rash of strange, multicoloured hieroglyphs on London pavements. Slightly alarmed as this may indicate digging works with consequent inconvenience for pedestrians. No visible date on any and perhaps change of Mayor will delay works.

younger than policemen

Younger than policemen

One of the unexpected difficulties of coming back to London, speaking perfect English if with a slight Surrey (surreh) accent, is that no one explains anything. Even when one explains that one has been away for most of the last 40 years (Surrey-speak, sorry, will switch) you will be greeted by blank looks. If you speak English, especially educated English, it is assumed that you know.

Everything gets immeasurably more complicated when you get entangled with England's pride and joy, cynosure of health systems world-wide, the National Health Service. And it is not because, seemingly, the majority of its employees are from outside the UK, for they are all very young and speak good English.

It is because the systems imposed on it fall over each other:

random people telephone you offering hospital appointments but the caller does not know what for;

your General Practioner should because s/he would have initiated it;

but s/he is not always in and may not have left notes on the surgery computer system;

sometimes you get a letter confirming the appointment you have already kept (the Post Office must be so comforted by the NHS' faith in its service);

and the results of any tests inflicted on you will be communicated electronically to your doctor's practice;

you make an appointment to get the doctor's interpretation of the results but appointments are limited to 8 minutes...

Pride & Joy

These systems are obviously designed by Very Clever People, those who have always known the answers to every examination question. They are now convinced that they also know all the questions as well as how other people should do their jobs. (It reminds me strongly of Common Agricultural Policy regulations.) There is a 'System' which has a Virtual Life; then there is Reality dealt with by the people on the ground, farmers or doctors or policemen. (In the case of the CAP it is helpful if you have been taught maths in France.)

Doctors and others, the 'health professionals' try to do the job for which they trained (keeping people alive and well). Are policemen now 'security' or 'safety' professionals? But both also have to account to the 'System' for which there is no training.

When I left London, around forty years ago, ambulances were white and police cars were blue.

Now ambulances are covered in ugly rectangles of yellow and green, with red stripes on the back. Police cars seem to be any colour as long as there is a garish colour (usually red) stripe along the side. And seldom does one see a real policeman, complete with traditional helmet, on the street. So I cannot really test my new returnee's theory: doctors are now younger than policemen.

London tittle tattle observations

To be a female in winter in London, it would seem one has to wear a woolly, knitted pull-on hat with a pom-pom at its apex.  Not just any pom-pom, a large, very finely furry pom-pom. All colours acceptable. 

Men wear pull-on knitted hats with large turn-up also, but definitely no pom-pom.  Mostly in dull colours or stripes, worn well down over the ears.

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A couple of forays to popular chain restaurants around London has reminded me of a very useful piece of advice.   If you think you might need the 'facilities' whilst in the restaurant, best go whilst you are still relatively sober.  Most of the ground floor restaurants have the kitchen and the 'facilities' in the basement.  The kitchen may have a food lift.  But the customer will have to negotiate a steep, downward, often ill-lit,  flight of stairs with narrow treads.

Memories, memories - the most memorable such a venture (for me) was down to the basement facilities of the lamented 'Hellenic' restaurant in Thayer Street.  A light could be switched on by the descending customer.   The walls and ceiling appeared to be held together by many layers of anaglypta paper.  But the 'Ladies' was relatively capacious, had a good, secure lock, a good mirror and a heater.

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Two elegant London buses in a row

As any tourist soon finds out, the London buses are wonderful, not least in stylish design but also in flexibility and numbers.   There I 
was on a 38 bus going across London from Islington ( very north) through Bloomsbury and Soho ( very central) to Victoria (very nearly south).  Once in central London the route was contorted by roads of varying width,  cluttered by building works,  consequent traffic clog-ups and seemingly suicidal, possibly foreign pedestrians.
Somehow the bus driver managed to make his vehicle slimmer, shorter or more flexible according to need.  I felt compelled to congratulate him when I safely debarked.  He grinned, all in a day's work.

And another thing:   it seems that for bus drivers red lights are an optional stop sign, depending on judgement of opposing vehicles or pedestrians.  A sensible idea, it does speed up the journey.

And this is another way  London buses earn their keep 

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Despite a slight mishap last week I am still in love with the London over-ground.  It/someone had decided that the fact that two trains, on different platforms, by different routes, would reach Clapham junction, was too confusing for passengers.   After 20 freezing minutes at Canonbury station, with all trains on my side going only to West Croydon, none via Peckham, I felt compelled to enquire and got the above explanation.  I had to go to Dalston Junction (one stop) and change.  To go direct, I shall have to go backwards before finding my train.