Some London Pictures

This is the first properly cold day I think we've had for a while. It's been mostly wet and nippy in the wind, in London, very much the last days of autumn rather than the shift into winter, but this morning coming back from the opticians across the park it was that bright, misty cold that comes off the grass as if it's exhaling. 

It's very near the solstice now - the days get longer from tomorrow. 

I've mostly been Christmas shopping just lately but have spent time in some museums as well. 

All the above from Sambourne and Leighton Houses

Both the above from the V&A on a Friday evening - the best time to go as it's reasonably quiet. 

As you can see here. This is the WC off the café and I genuinely don't know if it has always been like this and I've never noticed because it's usually full of people or they've recently refurbished and reopened - but isn't it lovely? 

Another thing I've never noticed before is the lifts in the Heals in Tottenham Court Rd. This is a very large building that I assumed once had multiple floors of goods but a quick google shows that manufacturing happened on site, so perhaps not. I also assumed it was meant to be a department store but actually it's a furniture store. Either way it always feels like it should be huge when you walk in but actually a lot of it seems to be offices. 

These are the lifts that service those offices though. Unfortunately as the space is quite confined I'm not doing them justice but they really are very nice.  

and obligatory Christmas shot of the staircase, again nicer if you can get there to see it yourself. 

Day Three - again

Thursday morning, on a day I was planning to go into the office and pick up the cake for Christmas at lunch time, then meet my brother (down from Runcorn way) and drop the cake at my cousin's ready for Christmas Day, I tested positive for Covid-19. Cue scrambled arrangements over WhatsApp to get that cake and the main (ready 5pm Friday) picked up, divert my brother (my Dad is testing negative so met him elsewhere) and some cough sweets and more lfts dropped. 

It's come in off the back of a severe cold - which feels like a pattern as the first bout came in on the back of a very severe hayfever, for which I took antihistamines. But two incidents isn't enough for a pattern. It's also come in about seven months after the first lot (I was nine months too young for the last booster) which suggests waning immunity to me. 

It's true that last weekend - when I was still testing negative - was a very busy and crowded weekend. I saw a Beatles tribute band in Carshalton on Thursday and did Christmas shopping on Saturday (Tooting, Clapham, Central London) and went up the shard on Sunday and then Trafalgar Square. Everywhere felt emptier than it should be for Christmas in London, except Liberty's and Foyles, which were chaos. Trafalgar Square had mulled wine and celebrating Argentinians (world cup). 

What I mean is, I could have caught it anywhere. 

So now I'm stuck at home again. I did go for a socially distanced walk over the park yesterday, and I ordered contactless pizza because if I'm missing Christmas I'm blowing my usual grocery budget. It was a Napoli - anchovy and capers and tomato sauce and mozzarella - and incredibly (to me deliciously) salty. Mixed olives and Nutella covered strawberries were ordered as well, but I sampled but didn't finish those. They're in the fridge. 

So here I sit. My symptoms so far are a cough (especially when I lay down), mild sore throat, a slight dip in energy levels - and possibly a dip in mood, although it's tricky to know if that's the virus or disappointment about missing Christmas. This is the third weird Christmas - last year my cousin and her son came down with it, and stopped with the ex and the ex's grandparents who all had it too, while we had Christmas at her home without them, which just felt wrong. The year before we were all locked down of course (being in London, I'm afraid my London-centric brain now can't remember if the rest of the country was locked down before Christmas as well or it was just after. I know we weren't as hard up as Leicester though, which seemed to be locked down for months and months after the rest of us were allowed out). 

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a mild dose - the worst thing last time was it triggered my eczema, which seems to be behaving itself right now, and the exhaustion, which lingered from a month to six weeks I think. 

Anyway it's Christmas Eve, so Merry Christmas, if anyone's reading this, hope you're well and where you need to be, and I should be free by the New Year. 

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas Everybody

Just a quick post to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas

and a Happy New Year - all 366 days of it.

Hyde Park

A beautiful evening - it's very mild for December - and a darkish walk through Kensington Gardens and along the Serpentine (it's never truly dark in London). 

Hyde Park's Winter Wonderland looks even more spectacular than this in real life and looking right I could also see the Shard and the London Eye - the top of the Shard like a Christmas tree in red and green and white and the Eye slowly changing colour. Absolutely magical.

Christmas Haul

Money, wine, marmite, gin, bath stuff. No books because no-one ever buys me books. I’m not complaining though, in my teens I kept getting make up brushes, which always felt more like a hint than a present.  At least I do drink and take baths. Even occasionally at the same time.

Anyway, now that Christmas is over I can hit the bookshops properly myself. I’ve only dipped in and out twice quickly in the last few weeks – bookshops in December are like Gymnasia in January, full of people who don’t know what they’re doing there and won’t be back again for another year.

It’s amazing how many people consider books an acceptable present even though most don’t read enough themselves to want a book, and certainly not one chosen by somebody else.

But People Who Almost Never Read is a blog post for another time. First I need to un-draft my post on crime fiction, which is languishing for having too much about me and not enough analysis, but which I may post as is anyway, because disentangling what I like from why I like it is a thankless process.

And also, of course:

Happy New Year!

The fest and the feast.

So Christmas! I was off for the whole 2 weeks for the first time in I don't know how long. Went back to work Monday this week feeling not completely well, the 5 pounds I put on over Christmas having apparently settled en masse behind my ribcage where it gave me something that wasn't quite heartburn but definitely wasn't comfortable. Too much food and booze of course. It started even before I went off work, with the Christmas lunch on the Thursday.

We went to a pub that used to belong to Gordon Ramsey. Lovely building. Food ok but late. There were a couple of other teams from the same building eating there as well so plenty of table hopping once we'd eaten, catching up with people I hadn't had a chance to talk to in ages. By the time 11pm came round (10 hours after we'd walked in) the the bar staff had handed out Christmas carol sheets and three of us were drinking sambuca (I associate sambuca with Christmas. My family's version of Christmas pud being sambuca, coffee bean and lighted match).

Since the nice thing about being 40, I find, is I no longer worry about behaving like an adult, I set the sambuca alight with the flame from the candle on the table and tiny rolled up spills made of pages from my mini filofax (after all the year’s practically over, and I only really use the thing as a purse anyway). Then, once the singing was over (mostly stuff everyone knows, which was good) I made paper aeroplanes out of the carol sheets. I only lobbed 2 planes though, I didn’t want to make a public nuisance of myself. 

That more or less set the tone for the rest of the break. Someone bought me a bottle of gin as a present, wine poured generously at every house I called, mince pies and roast potatoes and after dinner mints and Baileys and smoked salmon and egg breakfast.. well, you get the picture. I over indulged and also, what with all the rain, I under exercised. 

So the last 3 days I've gone for a few miles walk every lunchtime and after work and eaten light things like vegetarian sushi and peppermint tea, and I feel a lot healthier already.  

I also bought a laptop from PC World over my holiday. They don't like it when you want to set it up yourself do they? They suggested I come back in 24 hours once they'd done it. When probed they admitted Windows 8 would more or less self install with prompts once I switched it on and Microsoft Office and virus protection were a simple matter of going on a couple of websites and entering the id number on the cards they were selling me, but they warned me that what the computer doesn't do is prompt you to do a backup. I promised to do a backup.They threatened me with everything short of it actually turning into a pumpkin if I didn't do a backup.

I said I'd manage. I mean - if I could bother to do one back in the stone age when it meant downloading it all onto CDs then surely I can cope now.

They asked me if I had work to do, and I had to stop myself from pretending I did just so I'd have an excuse. While I was hesitating over whether I really needed to make excuses to take the laptop I had just paid for they asked whether I wanted to bring it back for them to do a back up if I had to have it that night. 

I had to say 'I want to take it home' no less than three times. 

The thing is, I've worked in shops, I know sometimes customers insist on something and then complain when what you said would happen as a result happens, but there is a line between being helpful and giving advice, and actually making the customer feel as if they're being difficult and you think they're incompetent. This was well beyond it. 

The laptop is very nice though, set up really easily. Not sure if I care for Windows 8 yet, but I'll get used to it.

So Happy New Year. And many, many more of them.