Day 5 Thursday 19th

I had a lovely day at Oxford yesterday. The sun was shining, we pottered around – to the bookshop I wanted to go and to another one and to a music shop – and I was shown different buildings. We went to the bit of the river that flows into the Thames near the field that only the boys from the Cathedral school can use, we had lunch at what is apparently an Oxford institution – Browns and went for more of a wander around another common. The daffodils and some tulips were beginning to come out – everything is later than usual because of the colder, longer winter.

I had a lovely evening last night. The young couple I visited have a nice new 2 bedroom apartment in Streatham – a suburb about 15min in the train south of London. It is fairly multicultural, but there are lots of little restaurants and it felt quite safe. It was nice to catch up and hear of some of the difficulties adjusting to the English way of doing things. It was quite late by the time I got home ( by my standards) and I find the traffic noise wakes me in the mornings.

I went first this morning to Westminster Cathedral, the Roman Catholic Church. It is not high up on the ‘must-sees’ but it appeared from the literature to be only open Thursday to Saturday, but I think that was wrong. It was opened in 1903 and is not yet finished. There are some attractive side chapels. One had a domed ceiling covered in a mosaic with Jesus on a cross, except the cross was also a tree with branches, fruit and animals off it. The church was designed in the Early Christian Byzantine style.

After that I caught a bus for the first time. Some buses donot accept oyster cards – you have to have a different ticket and I havenot figured out which yet but today’s buses both did. I wandered around Tate Britain for a while. The main part – Galleries 1 to 15 - is arranged chronologically (gallery 1 was the oldest) However the entrance leads you into Gallery 15. Inside each gallery is a blurb about the paintings in that room and it is positioned as if you are going through the galleries in decreasing order. This annoyed me, because I would prefer to look at them in increasing age order, which I did , – and that was the point of a lot of the blurb – looking at the developing styles. There were a few rooms just of Turner paintings, some of which I liked. They were setting up an exhibiton of Rothko and Turner paintings side by side. Some of the paintings were on the floor . There was one of Rothkos 3 horizontal colours top light blue, middle bit of dark red and bottom bit of darker blue. Next to it was a landscape of Turners with some reddish land with sea in the foreground and sky in the top and the colours were very similar.

I then caught a train to Oxford Circus to have a look at the Liberty shop. It took a while to find because its entrance was not on the street it was advertised as being on. I had lunch there. There were several couples, but most of the customers were single ladies dressed in their suits – out for a spot of shopping. I looked at all the lovely wools, some lovely patterns, some lovely material – but just looked.

I was tired of the noise and bustle so came back to Sloane Square and pottered in a few shops. To send a post card from England to Austalia costs , in AUS $ a bit over half what it did from Italy, going on the exchange rate I got about 6 weeks ago.

Some random thoughts/observations:
When leaving an underground by an escalator, you stand on the right – everyone does.
When leaving an underground by stairs, the signs say ‘Keep left’ – some people do, some donot
When walking on a footpath you go where you like

There are no rubbish bins in train stations or around important buildings so you cannot put a bomb in one. It took me a few days of annoyance looking for a bin on a few occasions before I saw a sign that told me why.

They often donot seem to have items in shops individually priced – dress shops are but things like in a chemist or supermarket are not.

Part of the deal with this apatment is you have to pay for 'maid service' mon to fri . I'd rather not pay and not have it but - in the blurb it says that they will wash up only 12 breakfast items. So far they have washed up all my dinner and breakfast items ( there are always less than 12) I wonder if they think I drink wine at breakfast?