Christmas Eve

 I didn’t read the museum websites very well as I didn’t realize that the museums would be closed all Christmas Eve. I thought they might close early but, no, all of them were closed all day. Thankfully, London is wonderful on its own and this morning R and I walked up to High Street Kensington from our hotel. Unlike some of the other journeys where I have consistently underestimated the distance, this time I was right, it was .6 of a mile so R was happy. We saw a church spire peeking above some of the buildings and walked down the street to investigate:

The Church of St. Mary’s Abbot actually has the highest church spire in London, 278 feet. But we didn’t learn that until later. Our first impressions, as we walked through a small cloister and into the beautiful nave of the church, was of quiet reflection, space, and the traditional peace we always find in British, Irish and European churches. We walked slowly around, looking at the stained glass, at the plaques honoring those who had lived and died in Kensington so long ago, memorials to soldiers who died, too young, in foreign places. We spoke with a verger who encouraged us to come to services tomorrow, Christmas Day. We certainly will, especially as the choir will be singing.

We left the church and walked along a few more blocks to the gates of Kensington Park. The day was overcast but mild, loads of walkers and dogs but not mobbed. We walked across the park to the Italian Gardens where Richard sat down on a wooden bench (which turned out to be a mistake) for about a half hour and sketched while I walked down what is called the Long Water and photographed the fountains, birds, trees. I had fun checking the photos and deleting, retaking or giving up on a shot. I’m not a professional photographer and don’t have the discipline to take courses to learn how to do really fancy stuff. Like my mother, I just like taking pictures—point, shoot and, in this digital age, check the photo and then decide. Digital photography, and the camera on my cellphone, has made my kind of photography a true joy—being able to experiment with different shots, seeing what they look like as photos, trashing some, keeping others. And then looking at them on my laptop at home, either putting them into my blog, turning them into printed travel albums or storing them on memory sticks (which I am awful at labeling.) I have thousands of photos; every now and again I sit down to try to organize them but instead I lose myself in reminiscing over them. 

Anyway, I took my photos and noticed the air was getting chillier. And that I was getting hungry. We were only a few blocks away from Cote Bistro; a chain of restaurants that Sheila and I discovered first in York last year and then a couple of weeks later in Salisbury. Sweetheart that she is, Sheila sent us a Christmas voucher this year so Richard and I could go to one of the Cote’s here in London. I returned to where Richard was sitting and we decided to book a table online for 45 minutes later. As he stood up, R said he felt chilled. Uh-oh. Probably wasn’t a good idea for him to have sat there so long. By the time we reached the restaurant, he said that he didn’t think he felt well enough to go to Elizabeth’s Christmas party tonight. Even a wonderful sustaining lunch of croque monsieur—which he thoroughly enjoyed—didn’t re-energize him. (I had fish Parmentier—aka fish pie—which was sublime.) So I texted Elizabeth to say I would be coming on my own, we made a quick stop at Marks & Spencer for a few things (a t-shirt night gown as our hotel is way too hot to be wearing a flannel nightie!) and we headed back to the hotel where R had a hot bath and promptly went to sleep.

I put on my glad rags, gathered up the Christmas presents and went off to Elizabeth’s in Putney. I had a wonderful time among the cousins: the oldest, Hilda, was my grandmother’s niece, my mother’s cousin, and Elizabeth and Janet are Hilda’s sister’s daughters so are my first cousins 2x removed (or something like that.) We all wish SO much we had known about each other when I lived in England in the 1970s—Elizabeth and I are virtually the same age—but at least we know each other now. 

It was indeed a lovely, lovely party and at 9:30, Janet gave me a ride to the Tube, back to the hotel by 10. R was awake and feeling, well, groggy but human so we sat out in the lobby, listening to Christmas music and chatting about this and that. A very, very happy Christmas.