London

     We have now been in London since May 4, and we have done the sorts of things we always do when we are in London. We are in an apartment on Kensington Church Street, just above the intersection with Kensington High Street--close to shops, restaurants, the Tube station, and in easy walking distance to Kensington Gardens and Notting Hill--where we often take the Central Line or the 94 bus to get us into central London. Alternatively, the Number 9 bus on the High Street, a very short distance away, also gets us into the area towards Aldwich and Trafalgar Square via Hyde Park Corner and Piccadilly.

    We have done several Thames path walks, on both the north and south sides of the river, and a couple of walks on the towpath of the Regent's Canal. We have been to two plays--one in Richmond that was a real dud--while the other--in the Hampstead Theatre--was excellent. And we have been to two chamber music concerts in Wigmore Hall and one piano concert of film music by a superb French pianist.

    My walking has generally exceeded my four mile daily limit--although once or twice I have deliberately taken things more easily.

    Today is the first day when it has rained most of the day, and we have been confined to our apartment--though Joan had a long Zoom call about one of her arbitration cases, starting at 9.00am, so I slipped out and went around the corner to a restaurant called 'Joe The Juice,' where I had a breakfast of mushed up boiled egg, with sliced tomato and spinach, and a coffee, taking my time there with a newspaper--The Times--which I bought from the shop across the street from the apartment.

    And for the rest of the day, as it began to rain during the morning, we have been confined to the apartment. The major disadvantage of the apartment, which is excellently furnished and equipped, are the stairs. There are two layers of apartments in the building, above a hairdresser's establishment. The second floor is one apartment on one level. Our apartment is two layers, one bedroom floor on the third level, with two bedrooms and two bathrooms, and one living room/kitchen level on the fourth floor. This means a lot of stair climbing...up and down in our apartment from bedrooms to living room, and the flight from the front door to get past the lower apartment. Got it?

    So what have I done all day? I read the newspaper. I did the usual sequence of daily puzzles: Spelling Bee, the mini-crossword, Wordle, Connections (which I rarely solve) in the New York Times, and KenKen and Waffle on the Internet. I failed to finish the Quick Cryptic crossword in the Times, but I did succeed in doing the Codeword. All of which, I suppose, exercised my eighty-nine-year -old brain--which is something we are urged to do.

    And now, at 4.30 pm, the rain is coming down much more heavily, just when we were starting to think we might put on our rain jackets and take a bit of a walk...

    Most evenings here we take a post-prandial stroll around the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens, which is a distance of about a mile. On a sunny evening the Park is full of people, but it is actually very interesting to see the ethnic variety of the populace--many of which, I suppose, are tourists--and you certainly hear a lot of different languages. Of the groups sitting on the grass, the most notable are the Moslem women--all black-robed and many with their faces covered.

    All for now...