Living in London

Today we complete the last two “to do’s” for our time in London – turned off the utilities on the Hampstead flat, and now write our last post to the Living in London blog. We will keep this site up for a little while as we figure out how to turn the content into a coffee table book to remember our wonderful time here. After that, new adventures may result in a new blog – who knows?

Thanks to all our readers over the past two years! We wish you many exciting adventures wherever you live in the world.

Linda & Heather

London has very strict building codes designed to preserve the historic look of the city. For builders who want to tear down and rebuild out of date buildings, the challenges can be enormous.

This photo is of a building façade on Baker Street near the Baker Street Underground Station. It is an amazing sight to see only the façade and steeple of a building preserved while the entire supporting structure of the rest of the building has been removed. Eventually, a brand new building will be attached to the existing façade. Wow!

I have walked and ridden past this structure many times in the last few years. Today the light was good and I finally had a chance to take a decent picture.

Today we visited the church of St. Dunstan-in-the-East. This charming and serene garden-inside-a-church is wonderful. A church was originally built here in 1382. It was severely damaged in the Great Fire of London in 1666. Rather than being completely rebuilt, the damaged church was patched up between 1668 and 1671.

A steeple, designed by Sir Christopher Wren, was added 30 years later. This was unusual in that Wren designed it in the gothic style, to match the old church. It has a beautiful and unusual design, with a spire that is supported by four buttresses.  

Sir Christopher Wren always believed that the flying buttresses and four pillars that supported the steeple made it one of his strongest creations. The combination of beauty and strength in this gothic tower made it one of his personal favourites. Someone once hurried to tell Wren that a hurricane had injured all his steeples. 'Not St. Dunstan's,' he replied confidently." When German bombs destroyed the rest of the church in 1941, the steeple proved Wren correct. The bombed out site was turned into a public garden in the 1970s.

Samuel Pepys mentions the church in one of his diary entries in January 1663, “where a sermon, but I staid not, but went home . . .”

Today we drove up to Warrington so that Heather could turn in her laptop and say goodbye to the folks she has been working with for the past nine months. It was a rainy, overcast day so, except for the road spray from all the trucks, not a bad day for a long drive.

We had two delightful surprises en route. One was that our driving route took us along the north side of the Peaks District National Park. Wow, what a fantastic looking place, with lots of old stone fences and hedgerows stretching across beautiful rolling hills. We want to come back and take some rambles there.

The second surprise was the best fish and chips we have had since we arrived here 20 months ago. We have been to every “highly rated” fish and chips restaurant we could find and have been consistently disappointed by mushy fish and bad chips. Today we went to “Ye Old Mottram Chippie” on the way to Warrington — the proud owners of the Love Chips website. Its a little hole in the wall that closes at 2:00PM and reopens at 4:30. We arrived at 1:55, just in time to order lunch but only to discover that they have no tables. Naturally, we had take out wrapped in paper – I had cod and Heather had haddock – that we carried back to the car in the cold and rain, and then ate with little plastic forks.

What a delight! Crisp, not greasy, sweet firm fish ... Finally, some fish and chips that can make England proud! The owner of this shop is named Lez Brierley, and of course he has a secret-recipe batter.

We have spent the past week exploring New Jersey, getting acclimated, and learning about the next place we will call home. We bought cars, obtained mobile phones, got a post office box, opened a bank account, toured about six small cities, and generally had a very productive week with a minimum of frustration. Everything we tried was can-do. No paperwork, no bureaucracy. But the single best thing (so far) about New Jersey has got to be the fact that automobile owners are not allowed to pump gas ... yes, at every station there is an attendant and you don’t even need to get out of the car!

Now we are back in London for about ten days, during which time we must pack, move, and say goodbye to some of our favourite places in the city. Its hard to know what we will miss most about our life in London; we are already anticipating missing:

• Roundabouts, because they are vastly superior to the regular intersection in every way
• The Tube and trains running at all times, to all places because its great to have alternatives
• Single cream, because the American “half-n-half” cannot compare. And tea, oh my gosh, Americans have completely missed out on the tea thing
• The wondrous multitude of British accents because its so much fun guessing what part of the country people originate
• The British sense of reservedness because Americans really are intrusive with their friendliness
• British weather, because England has taught us that we want to live in four seasons again
• Real diversity of cultures because there is nothing like a ride on the tube — listening to a chorus of foreign tongues — to appreciate the absolute multitudes of people in the world
• The yellow light between red to green to "get ready" because well, it allows you to “get ready”
• Floor numbering that begins with the ground floor on the ground, and floor number one up one from that, because it makes sense
• The double decker buses, because we can say “front row, upper deck #10” and know exactly how that trips feels
• Full length doors on all toilet stalls, because privacy is a wonderful thing
• The fact that every filling station has little plastic gloves at the pump, because now I never get gasoline on my hands
• Wonderful heated towel racks in every bath or shower room, because really there is no greater luxury at any price than a warm towel