Christmas approaches
Dec. 15th, 2024 04:43 pmWe are paying our traditional pre-Christmas visit to London. As I have already remarked, it falls early this year, but we are doing our best to get into the spirit, with the help of the neighbours:
There's one house near the tube station which always makes an effort, and they have outdone themselves this year!
The flat which we rented last year was not available, and I did not expect to find anywhere else as convenient: but this year we are even closer ("Ah," said![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
boybear, "that's what happened to the back rooms of the Tufnell Park Tavern!") so all is well. This year's accommodation doesn't quite have rhe charm of last year's, but nor is it up two flights of stairs, so what you lose on the roundabouts...
We arrived on Thursday, later than I would have wished, but not horribly so. On Friday, whileboybear was teaching, GirlBear took us to Eltham Palace, which they had discovered on one of their London walks, and talked about with enthusiasm ever since. Originally a medieval palace, it was derelict and only the fifteenth century Great Hall remained when the lease was bought in the 1930s by Stephen and Virginia Coutauld, who spared no expense in constructing a luxurious country house around it. The juxtaposition is striking, and was, of course, criticised. Historian GM Young wrote to The Times complaining "the other day I found myself confronted with what at first I took to be an admirably designed but unfortunately sited cigarette factory." This is harsh, but consider buildings like the Wills' Tobacco Factory, which is one of the architectural stars of Newcastle upon Tyne... The interior décor of Eltham Palace is luxurious, in a slightly impersonal style, rather as I imagine the great ocean liners to have been - but with the fashionable addition of an exotic pet, a ring-tailed lemur (purchased from Harrods pet department) who had a habit of biting people. In the middle of all this, the Great Hall constructed by Edward IV, where Henry VIII and his sisters played as children, and the attendant member of staff and I indulged ourselves in working out whe genealogy of all those involved.
Yesterdaydurham_rambler and I went to the British Museum: it seemed appropriate to follow up our visit to Sutton Hoo by looking at the treasures excavated there, which durham_rambler claims never previously to have seen (I find this hard to believe, but there you are). The museum is so designed that you can't head straight for the thing you want to see, but have to approach through other galleries, and are liable to be distracted by many other wonderful things, some familiar and some not, and perhaps that will be a post of its own, one day. For now I'll say only that I wore myself out looking at a fraction of what is in the museum. Then we went to Borough Market to eat tapas with helenraven: tapas excellent, shouted conversation (over the vibrant nightlife of Borough Market) limited.
And now we are due across the road for an evening of carols.
There's one house near the tube station which always makes an effort, and they have outdone themselves this year!
The flat which we rented last year was not available, and I did not expect to find anywhere else as convenient: but this year we are even closer ("Ah," said
boybear, "that's what happened to the back rooms of the Tufnell Park Tavern!") so all is well. This year's accommodation doesn't quite have rhe charm of last year's, but nor is it up two flights of stairs, so what you lose on the roundabouts... We arrived on Thursday, later than I would have wished, but not horribly so. On Friday, while
boybear was teaching, GirlBear took us to Eltham Palace, which they had discovered on one of their London walks, and talked about with enthusiasm ever since. Originally a medieval palace, it was derelict and only the fifteenth century Great Hall remained when the lease was bought in the 1930s by Stephen and Virginia Coutauld, who spared no expense in constructing a luxurious country house around it. The juxtaposition is striking, and was, of course, criticised. Historian GM Young wrote to The Times complaining "the other day I found myself confronted with what at first I took to be an admirably designed but unfortunately sited cigarette factory." This is harsh, but consider buildings like the Wills' Tobacco Factory, which is one of the architectural stars of Newcastle upon Tyne... The interior décor of Eltham Palace is luxurious, in a slightly impersonal style, rather as I imagine the great ocean liners to have been - but with the fashionable addition of an exotic pet, a ring-tailed lemur (purchased from Harrods pet department) who had a habit of biting people. In the middle of all this, the Great Hall constructed by Edward IV, where Henry VIII and his sisters played as children, and the attendant member of staff and I indulged ourselves in working out whe genealogy of all those involved.Yesterday
durham_rambler and I went to the British Museum: it seemed appropriate to follow up our visit to Sutton Hoo by looking at the treasures excavated there, which durham_rambler claims never previously to have seen (I find this hard to believe, but there you are). The museum is so designed that you can't head straight for the thing you want to see, but have to approach through other galleries, and are liable to be distracted by many other wonderful things, some familiar and some not, and perhaps that will be a post of its own, one day. For now I'll say only that I wore myself out looking at a fraction of what is in the museum. Then we went to Borough Market to eat tapas with helenraven: tapas excellent, shouted conversation (over the vibrant nightlife of Borough Market) limited.And now we are due across the road for an evening of carols.
