Tuesday in London

On Monday morning we set off from Canning Town to Limehouse for a very important visit - to see Ally’s and Cat’s new flat in Limehouse. Ally was at work in the city, however Cat was working from home so that she could take delivery of some flooring, and she gave us the tour. The flat is absolutely amazing; I love it! It is very spacious with two large bedrooms, two bathrooms and a very large living room. Ally and Cat are going to knock the wall down between the living room and the kitchen to make it into an even bigger room. The living room and the master bedroom both have balconies which overlook the River Thames, and their outlook is very open across the water, with Canary Wharf in one direction and London City in the other direction. I had thought that I would miss the fabulous view from their 14th floor flat in Goodluck Hope, but the view they have now from their third floor flat is even better - being closer to the water means that they can see all the ripples and reflections of sunlight as it moves, and they can see all the boats that pass by, for example Thames ferries, tourist boats, police launches. If I lived there I think I would spend all of my time staring out of the window at the river! The flat needs work; it is like a blank canvas and Ally and Cat have lots of plans for refurbishing and decorating it, I can’t wait to see the results, which I think will be fabulous. 

From Limehouse we walked to the nearby Prospect of Whitby pub, a lovely old-fashioned riverside pub which used to be a haunt for pirates and other criminals, but now does a very nice pub lunch. In the afternoon we went to the Lucien Freud exhibition at the National Gallery. My opinion (which James actually agrees with) is that Freud was a very talented painter except for the faces of his subjects - rather unfortunate in a portrait painter! You could see from the backgrounds, clothes, hands and even dogs in his paintings that he was very accomplished, so I don’t understand why so many of his subjects’ faces are painted so grotesquely. Lumpy, florid, cartoonish - I presume he did this on purpose but I can’t see how it benefitted his paintings. I don’t mean that he should have painted them as if they were photographs but they are so crude. Anyway I’m no art expert but that’s what I thought, for what it’s worth. 

When we exited the exhibition we suddenly felt very tired. James suggested that we go back to the hotel for a nap; I had checked film times and fancied going to the cinema in nearby Leicester Square. We amicably parted ways and while James headed back to Canning Town, I went to the Odeon. The timing was perfect; a romcom starring Julia Roberts and George Clooney was just about to begin. It was a very easy and pleasant watch, and some of it had me laughing out loud. It ended ten minutes before we were due to meet Ally and Cat at Aquavit Restaurant which was exactly ten minutes walk away! Perfect! We had main courses which we all found to be delicious, however the service was very slow, which meant that we didn’t have time for dessert. My meal was chocolate gnocchi with puréed pear and puréed celeriac - I couldn’t resist trying it and can report that dark chocolate and gnocchi work beautifully together! We were only a few minutes walk from the Harold Pinter Theatre, where we saw Good, starring David Tennant. Wow, it was intense. It’s a play about whether a person can still be “good” in an evil regime when they don’t want to rock the boat for their own safety and that of their family. It really made me think about what I would have done in that situation. I’m glad that I saw it. Back at Canning Town station we said our farewells to Ally and Cat and dived into bed at the Premier Inn to get as much sleep as possible before our early start on Tuesday.