Alan Road
Mission accomplished. Bog garden complete and a successful paella under our belts.
T-22.5 hours
Alan Road
Off again. Already crawling past the Olympics with a touch of champagne head after last night’s Condé Nast Traveller Awards back at St Pancras Station. But this time it’s the Renaissance Hotel, previously the Great Midland, an undisputed London gem.
VMFA was shortlisted for the Culture Award, won by the new (not yet even open new) Barbara Hepworth Museum in Wakefield by Mr Chipperfield.
All sorts of great and good included a de riguer rather orange Tracey Emin fresh from Downing Street.
Nice to see not too much changes. 
Alan Road
T-0. We’re off again.
Meanwhile, Heathrow looks like a high security prison today.
TTFN, UK of GB & NI
Alan Road
I’m reading all about the Green Man aka Jack in the Green from Ludlow to Rajastan. Seems to me its time the guardian of the forest made a comeback.
Meanwhile the Today Program is covering the resurgence of New Orleans but also the corruption of the police. What will become…?
Alan Road
Back in my London home from home. Although it’s a shame to be separated from PC World USA, this is a super comfortable set up and it’s nice to see plenty of Valerie and Mike these times.
The new arrangement at 123 CHS is also a relief, although most people don’t seem to know there’s any difference.
Left there today at 4 to get back to other work.
Alan Road
Perhaps the sun is back today. We’ll see…
Alan Road
Back in London.
There’s a bit to sort out. Hoping to feel a little enlightened but we’re having a solar eclipse this morning…
Alan Road
Hmmm. That huge suitcase is looking back at me.
Snow has nearly all gone, now. And Camden is looking, er … back to normal.
On a more elegant note, last night after yet another of Mike’s virtuoso suppers, Valerie and I put together the cardboard Cinderella kit she had bought for a little Christmas Day children’s entertainment. Once we had finished we slid seamlessly but unplanned into a dress rehearsal. I did the scene changes whilst Valerie acted out all the characters in humorous different accents. I was very impressed. It gave a welcome new old meaning to Home Theatre. Mike seemed less excited though when he returned to learn that he would be doing the scene changes for the actual première.
Alan Road
Aching a little after a go at the gym but I guess that’s a good sign.
Last night was like a trip down Memory Lane, or well, across Hungerford Bridge. I used to walk this way at night often during the Iliffe years. Anyway, it was interesting to see what was happening down at Southbank Centre, keeping tabs and all that. In fact the Christmas market is right along the Queen’s Walk and you can hardly see the river. I’m thinking of that ‘Favella Plan’ from Miami again.
Alan Road
And again.
Alan Road
Back in London and everything’s a problem. Someone described this as ‘Christmas from hell’. I thought that was a bit strong, but it certainly does require a deep breath here and there. Stories of people abandoned on trains and in airports overnight and stuck in traffic for hours…
It always seems funny the closeness we are prepared to accept, though, in order to get where we want to be.
Yesterday was pretty busy. David and I started with ‘fitness’, warm up sit and press ups, then a 1 hour run around Moor Pool doing ‘drills’ as we went. I liked the system of narrow passageways weaving between the roads so you could almost avoid them all. It reminded me of Walter Burley Griffen’s garden suburb of Castle Crag in Sydney where you can do the same. Perhaps the similarity stops there as he wanted no boundaries between the houses, to be harmonious with the natural bush landscape. But then I suppose the rural approach to dealing with land here has been more one of hedgerows and lanes for long enough that it seems like its natural too.
Alan Road
There’s a lot to do before packing up at the end of today.
Yesterday we got to see the Boston Lady in her wintery resting place. She’ll need a lick of paint before dropping back into the water in the spring.
I also got to see catch up with my God Daughter.
Alan Road
It’s 10:59 on a Sunday morning and so far I’ve been on one overland train, the jubilee line, the northern line, the central line, up for air at Liverpool Street to be directed back to the central line, on to a bus replacement service from Newbury Park to commence the real journey, finally, at Ingatestone. As we boarded the train the man behind me was fined £10 for not having his ticket despite all the muck ups. It’s true, the UK public transport system doesn’t seem all that.
But the journey was quite interesting. Although I’d lived full time in Essex for a good 16 years I’ve never understood the ‘nuances’ of its London fringes: Hainault, Leyton, Maryland, Gidea Park, Redchurch. Wanstead? And these are just on one branch of the central line.
Chingford I do have some concept of but only as the home of footballers and Rod Stewart.
Alan Road
I slept in till 8.
Today will be a nice day ‘at home’ after Nathaniel and Rana business before and after Camden-time yesterday, ending in a rush to get back from Stoke Newington to Wimbledon (55 minutes by cab) before midnight.
Peterella?
Alan Road
I woke up to the Today Program (BBC Radio 4) as I’d accidentally left the radio on all night. For a second or two you could have told me I’d never been away. I remembered exactly how it felt to live here.
Then I remembered that last night Andrew said Cooper had run off like a lightening bolt and had got as far as the gym when a woman had picked him up. Now I understood why I had a missed call from an unrecognised Charlottesville number as he has my US number around his neck. But despite the international alarm system, I had an image of a Bruegel style painted scene of locals pointing a sprinting and panicked young man in the direction the prized creature had taken through the streets of a close-knit market town.
I wondered if Cooper had gone looking for me but it was probably just a squirrel.
I need to get going for the morning commute to NW1.
Alan Road
I looked behind the curtain to check how light it was and with a jolt remembered I’m in London.
It’s grey, mild and drizzling.
WHEN I WOKE UP 