London is quiet. London is never quiet. It's that brief spell of calm before Christmas attracts a frenzied mass of shoppers, party goers and tourists into town. Even the super trendy steak restaurant that usually has a queue of sixty or seventy expectant diners only has a dozen or so lined up outside. We always used to stay at a large hotel on Portman Square but now we're trying an Irish owned and managed hotel on Welbeck Street. This is slap bang in the middle of where we want to be. It also has a great bar as you might expect in an Irish establishment. 'The Font' observes that a high proportion of the extremely cheerful front desk staff are extravagantly ginger.
The urban fox is clearly a thing in Marylebone. Who would have thought that fox repellent was something that the local hardware store would sell ?
London has a huge American expatriate population. This is perhaps why Halloween pumpkins are such a thing. I wonder if the number of Brits in New York is anything like the number of Americans in London ?
We continue to find the weather balmy - which it is by Scottish or Swedish standards. We have a post concert dinner at an outside table followed by coffee at the cafe on the other side of the road. Our choice of wine with dinner was much better. A Ferret Pouilly-Fuisse at a price that was more than reasonable. Once again we are the only people sitting outside apart from a solitary gentleman vaping ( surreptitiously ) at the cafe.
In the window of an upmarket florist an entire limb of a tree covered in blossom. It's very beautiful but neither of us is sure that such aggressive 'lopping' is a good thing. It must surely kill or at least damage the tree. I vaguely remember a story about the late Duke of Windsor ordering all the blossom heavy peach trees in the Buckingham Palace greenhouses be cut down and the branches sent to Mrs.Simpsons bedroom. The gardener pointed out this would kill the century old trees and cried when he was ordered to do so. The television we brought back from France is playing up. We visit John Lewis to order a new one. John Lewis is never empty but on a Thursday afternoon in late October it is. The store gives us £100 off the purchase price, the manufacturer matches this and by joining the stores membership scheme we get yet another £100 reduction. The salesman reminds us that the new government unveils its first budget next week. 'Inducements' are needed to get the shoppers out. To clinch the deal a sound bar is thrown in. We've never had a sound bar but why look a gift horse in the mouth ? Delivery and installation are scheduled for the day after we get back. Angus wonders if we really need to have the set installed ( how difficult can it be ?) but the salesman assures us that having a professional do it will save a lot of time and hassle.
More food, less land :https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1061753
This had passed us by :https://arstechnica.com/health/2024/10/mcdonalds-e-coli-outbreak-one-dead-49-sickened-across-10-states-so-far/
Early riser or night owl :https://www.insidehook.com/wellness/men-waking-super-early
7 comments:
Several years in, middle class ladies (in the British not the American sense of 'middle class') in Aberdeen are still upset at the closure of our John Lewis store and you have just reminded me why.
Regarding early risers, I once read a New Scientist article about research that found, contrary to the common perception, owls fare marginally better than larks in many measures of 'success' in life. One explanation was that they had better social networks and generally more fun, not leaving parties early to go to bed etc.
Cheers, Gail (forever, by nature not choice, a lark).
An assistant in John Lewis in Edinburgh recently told me that the Aberdeen shop had never made money. JL even gave it a 15 year reprieve when faced with the initial outcry about its closure, but despite their outcry Aberdonians still didn't shop there enough to make it profitable.
Linda - I guess Aberdeen's John Lewis suffered from the local residents' famously frugal shopping habits and the fact that the store was very poorly located.
It was a shockingly bad and weird location. That building also ruined George Street (I was a student in Aberdeen for 7 years, so it is dear to my heart).
It turns out that these days there's far more to installing a tv than just plugging it into the wall. Trust me on this and take the delivery and installation as a gift from on high...or in this case, John Lewis. (Suggests Camille who recently spent an afternoon wishing she'd never have bothered purchasing a new tv)
I will try to remember that late October is a good time to visit London, I bet it won't be like that early next May.
There's some good research about higher intellect, problem solving and creativity of owls too. I used to work late, everyone was asleep and it gave me an opportunity to do a lot of work. I experienced my best productivity after 9pm. I suspect that owls fare worse in terms of longevity when they don't get enough sleep or when they struggle to rise early. It seems to me that when they match their work times, eating habits and amount of sleep the life expectancy should be very similar if not the same.
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