Air travel has many discomforts compared to train. The large air-conditioned terminal at Frankfurt is bustling with travelers. There are baggage restrictions, security checks, passport controls. And on the plane, the seating is confined, the engine roars, the air is stuffy, there is pressure in the ears, mucus in the sinuses, tears well, feet swell.
I take the Heathrow Express to Paddington, and stay in one place until I see Barbara and Marie who have come to meet me. We go to Barbara’s flat in Holland Park to unload and then out to dinner near Lincoln’s Inn with other participants in tomorrow’s workshop at King’s College held in my honour. After the workshop Barbara and I walk around Notting Hill until we find Indian food, which I fancied. The following day I meet a colleague outside the Royal Festival Hall, and in the evening take the tube and a train to meet Annie and Jack at Goldsmith’s south of the Thames for an opera, Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes, in which his daughter gives a shining performance as Niece 1. I stay the night to hear Annie’s tales of Ladakh, we wake to glorious sunshine and spend the afternoon working in the garden, pruning the overgrowth to make room for a vegetable patch. In the evening I return to Holland Park for dinner with Barbara and Henk, who has arrived from Amsterdam.
Next day another meeting with a colleague at the Miles End campus of Queen Mary’s, and then I go on a book buying binge starting at the LSE book shop and from there walking past Covent Garden to another academic branch of Waterstone’s at Gower Street. After an hour or two of browsing I emerge with a hundred pounds worth of books and walk back to Oxford Street and onward to Oxford Circus intending to catch a bus, but when I board the driver says my Oyster card is empty, so I have to go back to the tube to top it up. By this time I am exhausted from the throngs of tourists and shoppers, the noise and fumes of the double-deckers speeding by, the flimsy flat soles of the shoes I was wearing, comfortable enough but lacking any support, and probably also mild dehydration, it had been a hot day. But when I get back and Barbara arrives, we sit talking shop until almost midnight.
