KYQ4: London: home of the Money Tree

St Pancras

My first trip of the year was to visit family in London. It was to be the anniversary of Aileen leaving us. My daughter had proposed coming north but with her work and family to consider, I thought it better to go down to London. The LNER train arrived ahead of schedule and I had to decide how best to get to the new house, I would no longer be greeted by the happy drumming at Brixton underground station close to the old house. I decided to travel overground from St Pancras, one of my favourite London buildings and terminals. I crossed the road from King's Cross and entered the magnificent Victorian building, its roof vault encasing many high-end cafes, bars and shops. It was probably a mistake, Aileen and I had whiled away part of an afternoon in one of the cafes with a live pianist a few years earlier, but no, it rekindled a fond memory. I caught the Thameslink train from the expensively modernised station below St Pancras, it wasn't just a terminal. I arrived at their new house that was undergoing a major refit, I had been warned.

The next morning, I left early and travelled across London by overground train to Chiswick where my friends from France have an apartment. It was a 4-kilometre walk from the station to the apartment, mainly along the north bank of the Thames. It was grey and cold and the tide was out as I arrived at Hammersmith Bridge, it looked strangely familiar although I had never ventured here before. I then realised I was standing where the body had been found in an episode of Silent Witness the previous week.

We had a long brunch, Ian had unwittingly introduced me to Aileen 45 years ago and we had seen him often since and Beatrix too for the past 30 years. They were life friends. During Aileen's final weeks, Ian and Beatrix had flown over from Marseilles to visit her and they FaceTimed every few days. Aileen had always been besotted by France, Beatrix understood this and sent postcards of typical French scenes almost daily. They were stacked on her bedside table for constant viewing. Ian and Beatrix were only over on a short visit to the UK so I left them early in the afternoon and caught the underground to Green Park.

I was heading to John Lewis in Oxford Street, one of the few department stores left in Britain worth visiting. It also gave me the chance for a meander through Mayfair. It never ceases to amaze me how many top-of-the-range diplomatic cars are on the streets in this part of London. Apparently, the United States has over 600 diplomatic vehicles and both Saudi Arabia and the UAE have over 300. They mostly have high-powered Internal Combustion Engines (ICE), receive tax concessions and seem to dominate parking places in this part of London. It is allegedly a low-emission zone, an area where even most of the taxis are now electric vehicles. The garage franchises for Bentley, Ferrari, Bugatti, and Aston Martin suggest that Mayfair really is the UK's epicentre of untrammelled wealth and mega carbon footprints and not only diplomatic ones. Even wine sellers acknowledge this by trading under the name Hedonism Wines. I stumbled through the streets, agog at the widespread upgrading of immaculately maintained buildings, the blue plaques festooning the buildings were even more common than Ferraris. Mayfair was a veritable money tree. Talking of which, Carrie Johnson did not feel that John Lewis was expensive or special enough, more of a nightmare. I thought it was normal, more like Jurgen Klopp than Jose Mourinho.

We went to a local pub on Friday evening for a fine meal. The extensive range of eateries in London is one of the examples where competition between small businesses seems to work to the benefit of customers, I just wish the government realised that this type of competition didn't extend to the large corporations, privatised companies and monopolies who were more concerned with wiping out competitors and ramping up prices for their clients. The good food theme was repeated the following evening when a carry-out from a local Indian restaurant produced the best Indian meal since pre-COVID days. The rest of Saturday was spent visiting the excellent library and workspace that hosted a community-run coffee shop, taking grandchildren to various activities and exploring parks near the new house on a day when temperatures barely exceeded freezing levels and that included the house that was awash with plumbers and builders.

The next day brought some sunshine and we worked all morning in the garden taking down overgrown trees and bushes and running garden rubbish to the local tip. And then a walk for lunch at a favourite Italian cafe before exploring Dulwich and Sydenham Hill where we happened on a blue plaque for the man who invented Bovril. My step count in London had mounted without any mountains. I returned home the next day, and London was sparkling in the morning sun as I crossed the Thames. It was another comfortable train journey and on time. As we crossed the River Tweed at Berwick, I felt a pang of joy to be almost home alone again.