Let's Get This Show on the Road

Well, I confess, I thought my circadian cycle would have adapted by now, but no, I awoke again at 3am and this time, unlike the night before, I could not go back to sleep. I spent the few hours till 5am solving problems and imaginaing scenarios; scenarios that did not need imagining at any time let alone in the wee small hours of the morning. Fingers crossed for tonight.

This morning we headed back to our old haunt from last year, Vauxhall, there for Chris to have a massage, and me to wait for him. I sat happily in the Kenington Lane Cafe - they don't pronounce the e in cafe here - had two lattes and a cherry muffin and wrote some stuff and read the papers back home. I am disgusted with the No campaign on the Voice referendum and I see in today's SMH that Warren Mundine, the most compromised man in Australia, will probably be preselected to replace Marise Payne in the Senate. I have a visceral reaction to that man's treachery.

In due course, Chris arrived and we had coffee together and planned our day. We decided we would go into the city centre and go to the National Portrait Gallery which was closed when we were here last September. Like its cousin across the street, the National Gallery, the NPG is huge. We covered only a small part of it, but chose the 19th century portraits of famous people, the Tudors, some famous 20th century people, some WWII portraits and colonialism. That was enough. It was educative and fascinating to see famous portraitists of the time paint the Kings and Queens of England which gives us as close to a photograph of them as we might get. I snapped a few pics but they don't do the subject or the portrait itself justice.

Time for a beverage, so we returned to last year's watering hole, the Chandos, where we sat upstairs in the Opera Bar and cooled ourselves with a beer. It's really hot here right now. The sun beats down and the fair skinned will easily burn.

A quick look for me through the St Martin in the Fields Church which was open. Stunning low hanging simple chandeliers down a centre aisle, surrounded by dark wooden panneling, and an ornately decorated white ceiling with a giant Dieu et Mon Droit arms at the front. I think the famous classical music Academy of St Martin in the Fields must perform there as their home base? Not sure of that. Anyway, very glad I saw it.

The church overlooks Trafalgar Square, so it's hard for two Australians not to wander over and look at Nelson's Column and the fountains and lions. It's pretty splendid to be sure. From there, we hightailed it back home to rest and then head out to Brewdog, a local where we ate burgers and a small enamel cup of chips washed down with craft beer served to us by a young guy from Melbourne. Very nice.

So full were we that a post-prandial stroll around the district inevitably took us to the brutalist Barbican. I did not know what to expect, but seriously, this is something I have never seen before. The Barbican is a huge living complex of towers and rectangles and circuses and crescents, floor after floor. It is dark and ominous and it looks like it would be right at home in Gormenghast or Soviet Russia. Yet, it has a long common with pools and fountains and eateries, people milling and lolling about drinking champagne and wine and full of discussion. I still can't make the whole thing out.

A lovely walk home and a relaxed evening awaits us.Read more