London wanderings (shortish)

Curtailed by time constraints and clothes-soaking-in-seconds rain.

First wanderings: quick stopover in my base - the St Athan's hotel, Bloomsbury; sadly no evening meanderings as I'd arrived at two in the morning, not seven in the previous evening (see last post), so just a mornings walk. Anyway, as ever, London even within a square mile or so, was visually and audibly fascinating, and perhaps it's not always a bad thing to have time and distance perimeters.
Left the hotel and walked around the Bloomsbury squares partly thinking about a wonderful little 1960s documentary narrated by Kenneth Williams of his childhood in the area (will see if I can post it), re-found Woburn Place with its charming little parade of non-knackered shop fronts, then got on a random bus and ended up in the madness of Trafalgar Square; up Charing Cross road (stopping in all second hand bookshops) turned left and into Soho, where, opposite Ronnie Scotts, I found the ancient Italian café of my most earnest desires (oo, ek).
Thought all these had well and truly been sat on by Starbucks, Costa's, Nero's et al but there it was in all its Formica and neon splendour. I asked if I should order at the counter and the slick-haired man smiled: "You like men or women?"
"Err, Men?"
"Okay, I take your order then."
I drank excellent hot chocolate (sadly no can do coffee, but did appreciate the scent of it), ate a weird little maggot-like cake that tasted of brandy butter, and listened in to the conversation all around - which was impossible as it was mostly flamboyant-sounding Italian.

                         

                 

Back out into Soho square and beguiled by a shop-display pile of old TVs all broadcasting the same flickering 70s? film, went in to see what the shop actually sold - hand-made designer and vintage glasses. The two elaborately dressed assistants or owners were helping two traffic wardens with a possible choice of frames, a conversation I think had been going on for some time. After the dark-suited two had left purchase-less the woman turned to me with a unruffled expression.
"I think they just come in to keep out of the cold."

                        

I continued on, crossing over the river of consumerism (Oxford Street) and wandering around the streets leading back to Tottenham Court Road - Goodge Street hardly recognisable from when I lived there back in the late 80s. Took my crap old iPhone 5 into one of the small electrical shops as its charge was disappearing after an hour.
"Hello, do you deal with antique phones?"
Looks at it with mild distaste. "Maybe - what's the problem?"
Explained, after which he suggested a new battery for 35 quid, to which I said, "Oo, not sure," to which he said, "OK, 20 for cash." Ten minutes later after some technical stuff involving a hairdryer, my crap phone was once again working. Useful info BTW: never let your phone charge for more than 100% and certainly not overnight - "kills the battery dead quick," he said wagging a finger at me.
And so, it started to rain. Back to the hotel, grabbed case and off to the tube/Waterloo.




Thought my spelling was bad . . .

           

                         Grey day in Trafalgar Square.


Shop windows around Bloomsbury and Soho



The Pitted Olive - good café near Tavistock Place

            

                 Waterstone's shop window display - 'Why we Sleep' . . .

                        

One of the beautiful shop fronts of Woburn place (Champagne dress-trying event underway in the shop)

                

Two beautiful people in their vintage clothing shop

Second even shorter London trip from Dorset to see a literary agent.

Set off after meeting to do a planned walk to Archway but the steady drizzle morphed into a monsoon; cafés and buses and tube visits/voyages instead . . . which had their own pluses.

                                                

                                                               Wet weather solace




Aliens on the Central Line



Pushchair Spiderman



Take five



Bus condensation art

Garages

Jobs I could not do:
Security guard in a shopping complex: well, I wouldn't meet the burlesque stature required anyway, but just the thought of standing for hours in an artificially-lit place . . .
Incredibly famous actor/musician: oh, the crowds, the never-ending attention, the accountants, managers, the money . . . I suppose I could cope if I had to.
Garage worker: the cold, handling metal in a freezing cavern-like space; and of course the ability to be practical in real terms - I'm very practical in my head . . .

Anyway. Yes, garages.

I had to find one yesterday as the car had been warning us for sometime of the need to carry out an oil change. Mark makes great cake, but fiddling around under the bonnet of the car, nope . . . more likely to be me, but this was urgent as a special spanner-shaped light had come on with the word IMMEDIATE.
Saturday on Easter weekend: very unlikely that any garage would be open or if it was they would say:
Madame you are a fool to have not supplied your car with oil, and I am going now to eat copious quantities of lamb with my family and friends - au revoir.
Most of them were shut, and the others said go away, except one that I had once been to when I backed the old car into a gate and the door had fallen off.
Oui madame, he said, this is not a problem. Come down at 11.00 and we will do it for you. 

I appeared at the appointed time, and, as the owner was engaged with talking to some other people about lamb, I ignored the 'do not entre as it could be dangerous' sign and wandered happily looking at the massive piles of amputated car bits and the forgotten hulks of vehicles slumbering towards the back of the building.

On the back wall I was surprised to see ancient signage: 'Lait, oeufs et Fromage, printed in faded orange 70s lettering.
I asked a mechanic if they still sold eggs and cheese.
Don't be une pillock Madame, we are a garage, not une epicerie. 
Actually, he said that the garage is housed in the old Leclerc supermarket, and it just shows how much our town has grown - you could fit about six of the old one into the new 'Hypermarché'.

It was 11.30; the mechanic put plastic bags on the car seat, said he would also change the two bald front tyres (which they indeed were) and told us to come back at midi. I questioned his idea of changing two tyres and doing an oil change in half an hour, but he assured me it would be done. And it was.
I was asked to make a RDV to come back, as the baldness was due to the car driving in a sort of knock-kneed fashion. For this I had to enter the nerve centre of the whole garage operation: a small dark space filled with teetering, ancient computers, bits of old pipe and two vast hounds.
I duly made the RDV, thanked them profusely and left to go home in our happy car (now reading 19,000 KM to the next oil change) and eat beans on toast in respect of the Easter celebrations.