Tag: London

February in London

Belatedly sharing a bit more about our February visit to see our daughter E, son-in-law L, and granddaughters ABC and JG.

Most of the visit was spending time with the family at our rental home in their East London neighborhood. There were games and make-believe, reading, puzzles, drawing, watching BBC children’s programs, especially Swashbuckle, eating, napping, and even a couple of sleepovers for ABC and JG.

Our nod to the girls’ being on half-term break from school was a visit to the Tower of London. Given that we had a 3- and 6-year-old in tow, it wasn’t the most comprehensive visit, but we did see the Crown Jewels, the White Tower, and more cannons and armor than I’ve seen in the rest of my life combined.

ABC and JG were not enamored of the ravens.


London winters are much milder than here in the Northeast US, so daffodils were blooming at our rental house, even though it was only mid-February.

There was the excitement of ABC losing her fifth baby tooth. Of course, the Tooth Fairy arrived on schedule!

Mostly, though, the trip was a time for me, B, and T to be Nana, Grandpa, and Auntie. Because of the distance and infrequency of visits, we aren’t sure when we will be able to see them again, so it’s nice to have a remembrance of some snuggling time.


(In the photo at the top of the post, ABC’s bear is wearing a Binghamton Rumble Ponies hat. The Rumble Ponies are the AA baseball club of the New York Mets. Bear is trying on ABC’s cap.)

(grand)childcare

(Photo: ABC’s bear wearing a Binghamton Rumble Ponies cap)

Spouse B, daughter T, and I are in London this week visiting daughter E, son-in-law L, and granddaughters ABC and JG for half-term break. This first half of the week, both E and L are working, so our main goal is taking care of ABC and JG so they can do that.

The last time we were together in person was April when they came to our home in the US. Although we do video calls, they can’t really capture the changes that happen. JG, now 3 and attending full-day nursery school is chatting up a storm! She loves making puzzles, zooming around our rental house near their home, and following the lead of 6-year-old ABC, who likes or tolerates it most of the time. ABC, now in year 2 at school, is reading well and a master of make-believe. She can make up songs and lyrics on the spot, taking after her musically-and-literary-accomplished parents. ABC also enjoys dance and art.

I love watching B being Grandpa, playing games, reading stories, preparing meals and snacks, and dozing off during naptime. T is an involved auntie, playing endless games of hide-and-seek and whatever make-believe ABC has invented and giving gentle hugs, in deference to her still-healing shoulder.

My favorite thing is just being here as family. With the ocean between us, it’s a rare gift to snuggle on the couch, especially with JG who was born during the early part of the pandemic and whom we didn’t get to meet in person until she was a year old. Such a different grandparenting experience than with ABC who lived with us in the US until she was two.

For JG, I’m just Nana. ABC, though, remembers her Great-Nana, who passed away in 2019.

I miss my parents and wish I could be as good a grandparent as they were with E and T.

Current COVID stats

Update to my COVID post from earlier in the week: Those Nerdy Girls newest post tells us that, using wastewater surveillance, current estimates are that 5% of people in the United States are currently infected with COVID, the largest proportion since the initial Omicron wave two years ago. In the United Kingdom, JN.1 caused a similar wave just before Christmas, with London having an even higher infected rate of almost 6%.

Those Nerdy Girls remind us that about 1,500 people in the United States are dying from COVID every week, making COVID much deadlier than the flu. They also remind us that the COVID vaccine that became available in September ’23 is effective against JN.1 and urge people to receive it if they haven’t already. They also remind people that masking, ventilation, testing, and staying home when you are sick help in avoiding spread not only of COVID but also flu and other viruses.

Please do what you can to keep yourself and others safe and healthy!
*****
Join us for Linda’s Just Jot It January! Find our more here: https://lindaghill.com/2024/01/18/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-18th-2024/

Greenwich

We went on a classic week-off-from-school outing with our granddaughters as part of our visit to their home in London. We navigated a series of bus and Tube routes to tour the Cutty Sark, a clipper ship built in 1869 to carry tea from China to London as quickly as possible.


While it was built to carry tea, it also carried lots of other cargo, exports from Britain and imports, including wool from Australia. (A reminder that jumpers are called sweaters in the US.)


The Cutty Sark is not afloat these days, but still takes lots of maintenance. It’s hard to see, but there is a person near the top of this mast.


This lifeboat was getting a fresh coat of paint.


February is LGBT+ History Month in the UK and the Cutty Sark was participating by flying the Pride flag.


After lunch in a nearby pub, we went to the National Maritime Museum. I was interested to see how some of the exhibits were bringing in indigenous perspectives, such as this map showing language groups from the colonial period in the current US and Canada.


We finished our Greenwich tour by walking up to the Royal Observatory, through which the Prime Meridian runs. It’s the reason we have Greenwich Mean Time.


Before we started our trek back downhill and onto the bus, we enjoyed the view of London from the heights!

Battersea Power Station

Spouse B, Daughter T, and I are in London, UK, visiting Daughter E, Son-in-law L, and Granddaughters ABC and JG. Yesterday, we made a trip to the Battersea Power Station.

Battersea Power Station as seen from the Tube station

Having grown up around power stations, I am geeky about them and would like to tour them, but the Battersea Power Station after decades of use as a coal-fired power station, designation as a historic landmark, and decades of disuse and deterioration, has been transformed into a shopping mall, apartments, offices, restaurant, and entertainment complex. The mall only opened a few months ago and more shops will be opening later this year.

On our way to the main entrance, we passed this sign. Of course, I had to take a photo of it as a shoutout to my friends of the Boiler House Poets Collective!


The main part of the old Art Deco-style power station that has been transformed into shops and restaurants is massive. Here is a view as you look down one of the main galleries that once housed multiple turbines:


The amount of detail that went into the restoration is staggering. Here you can see some of the Art Deco elements and part of one of the old control room through the windows.


There are lots of fun elements that play off the power station theme, such as the Control Room B cocktail bar, which features lots of dials and gauges as part of the decor.


I loved seeing the remnant of this safety helmet sign. When we used to go to the hydro stations with Paco, this would have been termed a “hard hat area.” (Yes, I am just that geeky about these things, as anyone who has heard me going on about the industrial roots of the MASS MoCA complex will know.)


There are, of course, many distinctly modern features. For example, one of the old smokestacks now houses an elevator to take people up to the top to look out over London and the Thames. Not being particular fans of heights, although it is glass encased at the top, we did not go up in Lift 109, so called because the top of the stack is 109 meters from the ground, but it’s there for those with the inclination and pounds to do so.

At the moment, there are a number of light installations scattered around the complex. JG was especially taken with these hearts and kept hopping from one to another, while saying “another heart” over and over in an enthusiastic, two-year-old voice. I suppose it’s possible that this was more of a valentine feature than part of the light installations, but it was fun, none the less.


So, Happy Valentine’s Day from London for those celebrating!

celebrating the new year

When E and T were children, we started celebrating the New Year with them at midnight Greenwich Mean Time, which is 7:00 PM in our time zone. We would have a toast with sparkling cider or grape juice.

Not being night owls, we still follow that tradition at our house. B found an online feed from the BBC of the celebration in London, with the chiming of Big Ben and fireworks along the Thames, this year not only celebrating the New Year but also recognizing the 50th anniversary of Gay Pride, the death of Queen Elizabeth and beginning of the reign of King Charles, and support for Ukraine and for all those suffering around the world.

It’s especially meaningful to celebrate with London with daughter E and her family living there. While we were watching the broadcast, E sent us a video of fireworks being set off in her neighborhood.

For a moment, it made the distance between us feel smaller.

Happy New Year to you, wherever you are on the globe. May peace, love, and care for each other increase.

One-Liner Wednesday: London snow

My granddaughters after a rare snowfall in London, UK – excited 5-year-old ABC who remembers snow from living with us in upstate NY when she was little and 2-year-old JG who had never experienced snow.

Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2022/12/14/one-liner-wednesday-the-lost-days/

birthdays and Jubilee

As I mentioned in this post, spouse B, daughter T, and I were recently in London, UK, visiting daughter E, her spouse L, and granddaughters ABC and JG, who live in East London with L’s parents.

The main reason for the timing of the visit was that it was half-term break for ABC and her fifth birthday. We were so happy to be there to celebrate with her. Due to a number of health issues – thankfully, not COVID – and other complicating logistical factors, we spent most of our time visiting between their house and our apartment hotel. ABC was thrilled to even have an overnight in our unit.

Because ABC lived with us in the US for her first couple of years, she is very comfortable with us. For JG, who was born in August 2020, we are virtual strangers or, at best, figures from a computer screen who inexplicably appear in person. Still, she was able to relate to us better this time than when we visited last December/January. Both ABC and JG relate more to Auntie T than to Nana and Grandpa. Aunties are obviously much better playmates!

It’s also nice that JG is finally able to be out and about more in public. As a pandemic baby, she wasn’t able to go visiting or go to stores, libraries, churches, etc. for a big chunk of her life, so people beyond her household can still be daunting, exacerbating the developmental stranger anxiety that waxes and wanes throughout infancy and toddlerhood. As she gets older, we expect that she will warm up to us more quickly when we visit.

The timing of our visit also meant that we were there for Queen Elizabeth’s seventieth Jubilee. As we are crowd averse even in non-pandemic times, we didn’t go to any celebrations in person but watched them on BBC One. I saw the trooping the colour, the lighting of beacons, the service of thanksgiving, the Derby, and the Jubilee concert. There were also various block parties. There was so much celebrating that there was a shortage of decorative bunting!

It was ironic that as soon as the Jubilee celebration concluded, there was a no-confidence vote among the Conservatives in Parliament on the leadership of Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Johnson survived the vote, but the narrow margin suggests that he may have to step aside as PM in the coming months. We’ll see.

It was nice to see people being so supportive of their aging monarch, even as she, understandably, needed to pass on some of the hosting duties to her heirs. It was also touching to see the Tree of Trees sculpture that celebrated the Queen’s request to plant a million trees in honor of her platinum Jubilee.

We had a bit more celebrating to do, as T’s birthday was the day we returned home. While we could not have a “tree of trees” to celebrate her, part of her birthday gift was a donation in her honor to a project that is working to preserve the ‘ōhi‘a trees of Hawai’i. The trees are being killed by a fungal disease for which there is no known remedy so there is an ongoing seed banking project in order to restore the population after the fungal disease has run its course.

I appreciate that these commemorations celebrate the past by looking to the future. There is so much to do to secure a future for the younger generations and the planet. Our history gives us both positive and negative examples of how to react to and make change. Instead of rosy nostalgia, we need to be clear-eyed about our past and present and use that knowledge to improve the situation. especially for those who are now children, teens, and young adults.

One-Liner Wednesday: crossing

I appreciate that the pavement at a lot of the pedestrian crossings in London is marked “LOOK RIGHT” or “LOOK LEFT” to keep those of us used to traffic flowing in the opposite direction from getting hit by vehicles.
*****
This helpful one-liner is part of Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays series. Join us! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2022/06/01/one-liner-wednesday-electronics-screwing-up/

a trip to IKEA

I know it may seem as if I have fallen off the face of the earth lately because I’ve posted less often than usual but I am still here.

Well, not my usual “here” as I am in London visiting daughter E and her family. Yesterday, E and granddaughter JG took us to IKEA for the first time. While there are IKEAs in the US, none of them are near our home. E was explaining that in some places, like Germany, rentals tend to have just the four walls so stores like IKEA offer furnishings for whole rooms as a package.

We ate lunch there. Of course, I had to try the Swedish meatballs. They reminded me a bit of the Swedish meatballs my mom used to make using a recipe from her Swedish neighbor. None of this putting sour cream in the gravy nonsense!

I’m still struggling a bit with jet lag but slept almost normal hours last night. Today is the first day of the half-term break for granddaughter ABC and for son-in-law L. We are hoping to do a bit of sight-seeing next week, although we may try to do gardens and outdoor venues as much as possible. We need to stay COVID-free if at all possible!

I’ll try to get some posts out in the coming days. I had intended to write a post about the mass shooting in Buffalo but then the Texas school shooting happened so I need to expand somewhat.

Stay tuned…