Visiting London in Winter

The Joys of London in Winter

There’s nothing like spending a few days in London when the weather is wet, cold and miserable at the end of January. Although, I’ve been told, the weather continued with rain, hailstones and thunderstorms in Bristol, while I’ve been away, in London, we had one night of rain. We did have quite a brisk, northerly wind but, it was really quite pleasant…..for January!

My first grandchild is now 2 months old and it was delightful to be able to spend time with him. He is just reaching the stage of responding to chatter. He smiles and gurgles when I talk to him. It is wonderful to be able to spend time playing with him when I never had the time to play with my own children when they were babies. But, as someone once said to me – before you can enjoy being a grandmother, you have to serve your apprenticeship.

After I had spent a few days with my daughter and her son, I spent the weekend with my elder daughter who, although expecting a baby in May, is still free to enjoy some of the delights London has to offer.

We visited the Manet exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts on Piccadilly. This exhibition, titled ‘Manet Portraying Life’ has stepped away from previous ones to ‘focus on his practice as a portrait painter’ and, while many of the pictures exhibited are well known, most of the works were new to me. The exhibition started on 26^th January and will be available until 14the April 2013. Well worth a visit if you are planning a trip to London.

There is also an exhibition of the work of Constable, Gainsborough and Turner – the making of Landscape which is available until 17^th February. While Constable and Gainsborough don’t really stir me, I do love Turner. I don’t think I will be able to visit that particular exhibition but, I’m sure Turner will be around again frequently.

Of course a visit to London would not be complete without some foodie experience. This time we decided to explore Dishoom – A Bombay Café in London. The restaurant had been recommended to us some time ago but, circumstances got between us and this gourmet delight. There are two of these restaurants – Dishoom Shoreditch – 7 Boundary Street E2 7JE and Dishoom Covent Garden – 12 Upper St Martin’s Lane, WC2H 9FB. Their website – www.dishoom.com can give a great more detail than I can but, if you like Indian food this is so different from your local Indian takeaway food [though I do like that too], and well worth a visit. The best samosas I have ever tasted, even in India! And do try some of their drinks, the chai is amazing. The service is charming and attentive.

Of course, for me, no trip is complete without a journey on one of the London Clippers. This time we returned home in the dark. The London skyline is lit up and the view from the river day or night could beat that of any city anywhere. Even now, after all these years, I still get a thrill from gazing at it.

It is good that the trains are running normally again. While I was not surprised that the snow affected the train timetable, it was a definite pain that trains into Paddington [my line] were cancelled or seriously curtailed by a fire in a signal box [or something like that – it was never quite clear. We were told at first, it was a rock on the line !] in mid December.  It did seem to take several weeks for the service to return to something like normal. I can catch a bus and it is a lot cheaper but, it is so much slower and is definitely not as comfortable or as convenient.

When I returned home, I had several parcels waiting for me of my last seed orders – tomatoes, peppers, chillies, pumpkins, squashes and some herbs. The pepper and chilli seeds should really be sown now for the earliest crops but, although I have an excellent propagator, I don’t have anywhere suitable to grow on the young seedlings which will give them enough warmth with the necessary light so, I will wait until mid February before I set up my propagator.