London in Winter

Sunset was at 3:58 p.m.

2 January 2020

When I'm in London I tend not to take a lot of pictures. I lost track years ago of how many times I've been here. That sounds snobby, I know; but keep in mind that, for many years, Jack had to do rare book research here for weeks at a time. It made sense for me to join him during the end of his trips and turn it into a vacation. Back before the current regime, half of his expenses could be written off.

We're here this time for vacation, except for a few hours Jack needs at the British Library's rare book room. 

I used to go searching for beads. Now that I have more beads at home than some small stores do, and now that most bead stores have disappeared, I go searching for coffee instead. Independent cafes and small chains have sprung up in the past few years. The bigger chains -- Costa and Nero -- aren't bad either. Starbucks is here (there are two within a few blocks of our hotel), but they face established competition.

Our first stop was The Attendant, the tiny shop that settled into an old public men's restroom. The place was so crowded this time that I didn't take any pictures. I got a coffee to go and got out. Here are photos from March 2017 (scroll down),

We walked past Pollock's Toy Museum, the creepiest museum this side of the pond. It was closed for the holidays.

The Christmas toys on display in the windows were all rather pissed off.

Even Santa looked as if he could use a stiff drink.

While Jack poked around with the map on his phone, I noticed that, in a rare event for England, the sky was clear.

Across the street, in a building now given over to residences, an old sign remained. Have you ever stopped to ponder who made your lampshade frames?  (Probably Chinese slave laborers.)

In front of the museum was an old Raleigh. I had to take pictures and send them along to the Princeton Free Wheelers' Facebook presence. Almost right away people jumped in, and within an hour I found out that this was a standard bike in the late 1960s through the early 1970s, and that the brakes, whose pads ran under the rims, sucked.

Safe bet this shifter lever used to have a sticker on it that read "Sturmey-Archer England." My first Raleigh, a 3-speed, had one.

The antiques and arts center was also closed. I had to peer through the window and say "Daaaaaammmn" from afar as I went slack-jawed over the colors and control in a collection of hand-blown glass vases.

Then there was a bucket of floating roses on a sidewalk in front of a store that sold, well, I don't know what.

We were headed to Hedonism Wines, where Jack would sample Sauternes gone brown with age and I would sit and wait, reading a novel.

Next to the Enomatic machines, from where Jack got his samples, was a decanter made especially for the Elton John AIDS foundation and used exclusively for Hedonism tasting events.

Hey, I almost made this shape. By accident.

In a far corner was a display of Sauternes, going from young yellow to old brown.

Then we were off to Tate Britain to see a William Blake exhibit. Jack was a big Blake fan before he turned into Johnson scholar. We'd seen a lot of Blake's artwork already, but this was the biggest collection we'd encountered.

People were taking pictures of the pictures with their cell phones. I didn't bother until I came across this creature, floating in the sky above a scene that didn't interest me much.

What is it? A grumpy, flying, mustachioed, puffer fish?

Here's the full painting.

Outside, the sun had set at 3:58, 40 minutes ago.

It was full-on dark by the time we arrived at Covent Garden.

We were invited to stay at a friend's house in Stratford-Upon-Avon for New Year's Eve. We took a train to get there. Walking from our hotel to the tube stop, we passed two bike share stations. There are three main organizations providing bikes: Lime, which run electric; Jump, which might be electric;

and Santander, which appear to be pedal-powered only. And yes, that appears to be a cherry tree, blooming in December, because global warming is real.