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 For builders who want to tear down and rebuild out of date buildings, the challenges can be enormous.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 . . .”

This is our boiler. It provides our hot water as well as pumping warmth through the radiators to heat this drafty flat. The entire contraption is only 32 inches high and 25 inches wide, which is downright minature compared to the 50 gallon behemoth that we had in Oakland. The size difference is due to the fact our unit here is “tankless” versus the tanked variety we enjoyed in the US. (The New York Times has an insightful article on the raging debate between the tanks and the tankless.)

Regardless of the technical differences, we actually have no idea how the boiler really works. We have managed to figure out how to set the timers for both the hot water and the heat. We know its 5:00 am when the radiators begin gurgling as the hot water moves around. We also know that the whole thing just quits now and then. We learned this the first time through a very cold shower. The remedy is to reach behind the boiler for the hidden valve to replenish the water that occasionally boils off, leaving internal levels too low for the boiler to function properly.

The best thing about this system is that the “radiators” for all the bathrooms are simply heated towel racks. Nothing beats a toasty warm towel as you step out of a lukewarm shower.

The worst thing is that the boiler is temperamental, unpredictable, and the landlord opted out of installing a central thermostat when he built this palace. The heat is either on or off, with a valve at each radiator to control individual room heat. When the weather changes we make the rounds to adjust the valves again.

We dream of our digital and centrally-controlled heating system in the U.S.  I guess we should be grateful we are not shoveling coal for heat!

For those of you who struggled with wedging that last bowl of salad or leftovers or dessert into the refrigerator these past few holiday weeks, we offer you our sympathy. In London, most refrigerators are less than half the size of those in the U.S. As we prepared our Christmas Eve dinner for ourselves and a few friends we soon discovered that we had more food than our little fridge could hold.

How lucky we are that it has been so cold lately (it has been hovering around freezing for the last few weeks). Our window ledge served double duty as a substitute for extra fridge space. (Note the outside ledge is only about five inches wide, so all goods must be securely anchored on the inside of the window!)

“We are all worms. However I am fairly certain that I am a glow-worm.”

              —  Winston Churchill

A few weeks ago we watched the HBO film called “The Gathering Storm. It is about Winston Churchill’s life just before WWII began. We are exploring an emerging interest in Winston Churchill and we were completely entranced by the film. Albert Finney is amazing in the lead role, and I’d recommend the film just for his performance. Of course, the other performances are wonderful as well, and the subject matter was fascinating. We have been working on a Churchill theme ever since!

What a huge character this man was! Far from perfect, or even proven right about many things in retrospect, he is still bigger than life. He served under six monarchs, won sixteen terms in Parliament, and was Prime Minister twice. A prolific author and journalist who published over 40 titles in his lifetime, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He experienced an amazing range of history during the violent 20^th century – participating in the last great cavalry charge against the dervishes in the Sudan campaign, making a daring escape from a prison camp in Pretoria during the South African war, leading Britain and the world through WWII, and then seeing Britain on to becoming a nuclear power. He is reputed to have started every day with a cigar in bed and then held court sitting propped up in bed – including giving dictation to his secretaries and holding discussions with senior military advisors. His consumption of champagne is legendary, and he drank it daily at both lunch and dinner.  About Pol Roget (his favourite champagne) he said “I deserve it in victory and need it in defeat.

Following on the theme, we recently visited the Cabinet War Rooms and the Churchill museum. The War Rooms are located underground for protection from bombs, and are realistically preserved. It is easy to picture yourself trying to live and work there, around the clock, during the war. The audio tour is very helpful in portraying life “underground.”  The Museum is quite a contrast to the realistic 1940’s era Cabinet War Rooms – very high tech, multi-media based, and gives a thorough overview of Churchill’s entire life before and after the war.

Our next step is to visit Chartwell, Churchill’s family home in Kent for about 40 years, and a place about which he once said “A day away from Chartwell is a day wasted.” 

The web is loaded with great information about Winston. Here is a link that is a great place to start.

Since our last post we have had some challenges with time and space that have prevented us from really exploring London and from putting up any additional posts. The time issues are related to both of us: we are working full time at pretty demanding jobs, putting in long hours in distant locations from one another. The space issues are around the fact that we have been burglarized twice in our new location and are trying to figure out our next steps. We hope to be back soon with new and exciting posts, but for now, we are taking a rest.

Gosh it’s great to be back in England! When we were “out there” it didn’t feel like we had a home to come to, but as we arrived at Heathrow, and saw the orderly queues and the great multi-cultural throngs and drove home via the roundabouts, and came into our light and quiet flat, we realized that we are home. And happy to be living in London.

A few weeks ago, during the early hours of dawn, we heard the tinkling of glass bottles and the quiet whisper of an electric vehicle winding up our street. Upon investigation we learned that there is a milkman who makes home deliveries.

Last week, I returned home late on Thursday evening from my usual week in the northwest. The next morning, as I stirred from slumber at about ten before 6:00, my first thought was that we had no milk for cereal or cream for coffee. As if on cue, I heard the quiet electric open-sided truck pull up in front of the flat. I jumped up, threw on my robe, and ran down the stairs to meet Joe, the neighbourhood milkman. He sold me two pints of semi-skimmed, and signed us up for regular delivery every Friday morning.

Not only do the doctors in England make house calls, but it is delightful to have Joe bring us milk and cream every week.

-HrH

It is a rainy day in London and what a great day to catch up on a bit of reading, take a nap, and watch a DVD. A refreshing break from the long days and travel away from home during the week.

London gets about 23 inches of rainfall annually. This is only slightly higher than the 20 inches of annual rainfall for San Francisco. The difference is that San Francisco gets all its rain in the few months of winter and London spreads it gently throughout the entire year. It is very common to get a short rain shower during the day that gives way to sunshine a few hours later. This means that we rarely leave home without a brolly but find ourselves not needing it most of the time. We are generally indoors people (no golfing and our hiking is limited to a few hours in the heath) and find ourselves outside between showers most of the time. Only once did I get caught in a downpour and if I had have waited 10 minutes longer I could have walked home in sunshine.

Has it been mere luck that we evade the rain showers, or have we acclimated as Londoners and the rain doesn't phase us any more?