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HACKNEY and GREENWICH - June 29-July 1, 2006

Safely in London, and although we’d planned to leave earlier, we werer having such a good time we hung around for a couple of extra days - lucky Susan was such an accommodating hostess…..the Hackney Council and their parking policy wasn’t even enough to make us feel unwelcome.  Soon, we’ll be headed north and east…...

June 29, 2006

Thursday morning we slept in a bit, having been up ‘til midnight or after talking and catching up on e-mail.  We decided to take a walk to a nearby park where the canal runs, and walk the tow path a ways, then come back to Susan’s via another park.  Ate a nice breakfast with Susan and saw her off to her job, then got busy doing things like trimming hair and beard and so on.  Gail got a call through to Yvonne and Mary – had been using the wrong area code, as they have been changed in the last several years.  These are the other two ladies in the “over-50” Outward Bound that Gail was on in 1997 – and they’ve all stayed in touch since, including the last get-together when Gail was en route to Greece or back home in ‘99.  M&Y had reserved Thursday and Friday for visiting with us, and have other things going on the rest of our time in England.  So, they’re coming up tonight!  We decided to postpone the walk, and got to work.  I put together the table Susan had in a box in her living room, while Gail began working on food.  She talked to Susan, broke the news, and found out what was planned for supper.  We shopped at the nearby Tesco (supermarket) and Mary and Yvonne brought some French strawberries and some meringues to put them over when they arrived about 4:30.  The whole thing came together nicely, and we sat out in the back yard for supper….visiting and having a good time until about 9:00 p.m.

During our dinner, everyone insisted that it would be best to take the train to Greenwich rather than drive (expensive gas, bad traffic, and expensive and hard-to-find parking), so we decided to stay and do it on Friday.  That’s today – the 30th of June.  Parking is taken care of with special tickets that only residents can purchase – they cost about US$0.25 per hour for visitors at homes along the street.  Six hours each ticket, and you’re supposed to have them on the car from 8:30 a.m. until 11:00 p.m. – if you add that up, you’ll see that 14 ½ hours…..meaning that it takes 3 tickets per day if you want to be sure not to get tagged with an over-parking fine, thereby wasting 3 ½ hours of parking.  I’m now an hour and a half into over-parking and an hour to go until 11:00 – am feeling nervous.  You’ll see why when I tell you that the over-parking fine is 100 pounds!  That’s $200.00, all to save 75 cents!  Think I’ll go down and put one out there. 

Talked to Susan – she said I should go down and park in the private school’s tiny parking area at the end of the block—no fine for parking there….this time of night.  But, others on the block know about it and there are four cars taking up all the space.  So, here I am on the front porch watching for the parking warden to show his face, whereupon I’ll jump up and open the door of the car and hope that there will be no ticket for me!  How stupid is it to sell 6 hour parking passes for a street where you’ve set the restriction at 14 ½ hours each day?  Blech.

Well, so…..we checked around for Youth Hotels and found one up in Anglia, but not until Sunday night – made the reservation, and found that it’s about four miles from Duxford, where the big B-17 airbase was, and where the new American Bomber museum is located.  There are National Trust sites nearby, as well, and Cambridge is close.  We’ll end up staying most of the week, I imagine.  Prices have just about doubled (in dollars) since 1997, partly because the pound is now worth $2.00, rather than about $1.50 back then.  The cheapest youth hostels will be costing us $24.00 each for a night’s stay. 
Ah well……but I don’t think that last time, we ever stayed in one where we paid more than that for BOTH of us, so it’s a bit of a shock to the system….and the pocketbook.

Finally, we left the house around 10:30, taking a sack lunch with us and heading for the train.  An all-day pass was 4.30 pounds and off we went, changing at Stratford, and taking the Docklands Rail Line to Greenwich.  The “Docklands” is where the Royal Navy had a lot of stuff and so did the commercial fleet – it was a big industrial and naval area on the Isle of Dogs across from Greenwich, and in the last decade or so it’s been devoted to commercial and residential property development.  Some of the residential stuff we saw was pretty nice – brick facades, architecture at least reminiscent of the older styles….but the large buildings are pretty bad.  Lots of big glass and steel columns, which I’m sure maximize the space/dollar, but it seems that in statist England you could get some architecture controls so that the buildings would at least look remotely like they fit into historic London…..nope.  Bummer.
We got out at the station that’s a block from the Thames and the Cutty Sark (in drydock), deep under the town of Greenwich.  We walked down to the wharf, looked at the pedestrian tunnel under the river (built in 1902), walked over to the tourist information site, and decided against a walking tour of the town.  Then we made our way around to the river and along it to the front of the Royal Naval Hospital (something like that) which was a late 18th century and early 19th century old folks’ home for disabled and impoverished veterans of the Navy.  It lasted until 1869 when it was closed because as soon as they began offering the vets a pension in cash if they found their own place to live, the guys began leaving the free room, ½ gallon of free beer each day, free meals, and everyone living in (practically) a dormitory, and took off to live with family and/or friends all over the country.  The fixed costs to run the “hospital” were the same, of course, so the cost per vet just zoomed – and they closed it. 

First things first…the place was built by Wren, who began the project by installing the foundations for every building that had been authorized, and only THEN took up the construction of the usable parts….he had vast experience with government beginning a project and then failing to provide the funds to complete it, and with foundations in place, quitting without considerable embarrassment would be impossible.  Smart man.  At the height of the business, I think there were something over 2,000 vets living there, but there was little to do (they did have a cricket match between the one-legged guys and the one-armed guys, though) and social contacts were minimal….if you didn’t count the whores in town, the visiting of whom was vigorously discouraged by the proprietors of the “hospital”.  We got to see two interiors, since these buildings are now being rented out.  One to the U of Greenwich Music Department – we could hear practicing going on – and others to other departments of the U.  In 1869, when it was closed, it became the Royal Naval College, and when THAT closed, a foundation of sorts took it over – and they bought the island across the way to protect the views….that’s where all these ugly buildings are going in today, so the old guys had the right idea, I think. 

The first of the two interiors were the “Painted Room”, which is a formal banqueting hall that is richly ornamented, and painted on every wall and the ceiling.  Magnificent – the paintings are all heroic tributes to the Navy.  The actual vets ate their meals in a room now broken up into smaller spaces, but there are paintings—it looked kind of like a crypt if it’s represented accurately….all the supporting vaults and pillars showing.  When the place was full there were two complete sittings for each meal.  The other was the chapel for the “hospital”, which is the last major space decorated with plaster-work completely done by hand in place.  This was just about the time that the technology of pre-casting the decorations in molds and then attaching completed pieces to the ceilings and walls and pillar-tops, etc. was perfected.  So the “free-hand” making of plaster decorations ceased.  It’s a beautiful room, and there was a recital going on – piano, bassoon, and oboe – which was very nice. 

From the hospital, we walked up toward the “Queen’s house” which was made for Queen Anne (I think) by Inigo Jones, but wasn’t finished when she died…..  When the land was donated for the hospital, it was stipulated that the way (and the view) to the river be preserved.  Wren had drawn preliminary plans already, and it was a three-sided set of structures that completely blocked the Queen’s house, but he modified them to put buildings on both sides of the queen’s access to the Thames, and it’s even better looking than the initial plans.  The Queen’s place was intended as a retreat from the royal palace that was right on the river….where the Tudors spent part of every year.  All that was known of that place was from paintings until a big excavation was done in the courtyards of the hospital and they found the foundations and established the actual layout and extent of that old palace complex.  Anyhow, the Queen died and the place was boarded up for decades until the French wife of Charles I (Gail is going to go crazy with my historical mistakes on this stuff.) had it finished…..but we all know what happened next! Cromwell came in….and those guys stripped the house of paintings and other stuff.  It ended up as a school for the children of naval officers, training them for service in the Navy.  First it had 700 boys and 300 girls, but after a few years the girls were sent off as a bad influence, and it was a military school for boys until in the 20th century they moved the school elsewhere, and the Queen’s house and the two wings connected by colonnaded porches were made into an art gallery, the National Maritime Museum and something else respectively.  After touring the Queen’s house, we ate our lunch on the colonnaded porch and took in the scene.  Lovely. 

Having gathered our strength, we headed up the hill to the Royal Observatory.  Wren was given 500 pounds by the stingy Charles II, who had better things to do with his income than scientific stuff (like his many mistresses).  Wren employed the cheapest building methods, recycled brick and other parts, and built on a pre-existing foundation – he only ran over about 20 pounds or so…..but the foundation he used wasn’t lined up north-south, so the actual work the place was intended for couldn’t be done in the new observatory!  The Royal Astronomer (paid 100 pounds per annum, from which he was supposed to hire his own assistants AND purchase his own equipment!) had to go down the garden and build a brick shed to install his equipment for precision observations.  The guy complained bitterly because in order to make ends meet and get telescopes and so on, he had to take students, which distracted him from the astronomical work he was supposed to be doing.  He worked 42 years without publishing a thing!!  Newton and Halley were going nuts because they wanted to data to do some practical work on navigation, but Flamstead (or whatever his name was) was a perfectionist, and besides he wanted to publish and get his money back for all the instruments he’d had to buy. 

Halley and Newton actually got some of his data and published a “pirate” edition of 400 copies.  The royal astronomer was furious, and bought up the 300 unsold copies and burned them in the courtyard.  After he died, Halley was named the royal astronomer and the widow of #1 was told to go.  She stripped the buildings of everything not screwed to the floor or cemented into the walls – including all the scientific equipment….clocks, telescopes, etc.  She was sued, but successfully showed that all of it had been the personal property of her husband and was allowed to sell it off to pay for the publication of his data and to keep her for the rest of her life. A good deal of restoration has been done so we can see what the rooms of the original building were like – but of course none of the furniture is original, just similar pieces of the era.  One of the two clocks with 13-foot pendulums is back….at least the works are there (the other is in the British Museum), but they had been altered for a case clock with a 3-foot or so pendulum swinging once/second rather than every two. 
On the first floor is the “Longitude” exhibit, and this was the highlight for me.  We got to see the H1, H2, H3, and the H4 – all of which we had read about in “Longitude”, and seen in the video of the same name.  Wonderful instruments made by a genius inventor, and (unfortunately) perfectionist to win the 20,000 pound prize for anyone who could solve the problem of navigation so important to the Royal Navy.  The first three are large instruments, but the fourth is a big pocket watch – conceived when Harrison perceived that accuracy could be vastly improved by breaking each second up into tiny parts so the any variation would be averaged over a large number of pieces.  These old clocks are still running!  It was great.  In the basement was an exhibit on “distributing time”, showing the history of timekeeping and how when it became important for everyone to be on the same time the means for getting everyone together gradually improved….more fascinating stuff.  Our guide was excellent.

We also toured the other building, and saw lots more instruments, but by this time we were getting tired.  We sat under the “Wolfe” memorial and then walked down into town.  Saw the Greenwich Market (since 1700) and the St. Alfege church, where the Archbishop of Canterbury was killed by marauding Danes in 1012.  Then we got on the train and came back to Hackney.  We shopped at Tesco, made supper (doctored Campbell’s Vegetable Soup with crackers, toast, cheese and pickles, etc.) for Susan, and now to bed.

July 1, 2006
Today we got up late, at a leisurely breakfast, and set out on a walk around Hackney about 11:00 a.m.  We went south toward central London and the Thames, through Victoria park and to one of the many branches of the canal system that criss-crosses London and all of England.  We met people who’d been boating for three weeks, and had another three weeks to go before they got home.  One man told us that a “purpose-built” boat to your specifications costs around a thousand pounds/foot – so that his 42-foot boat cost him US$84,000.00.  But they come all sizes, and smaller ones are lovely as well.  If we lived in England, this is what I’d get in place of the fifth-wheel and pickup.  A used one would probably be less, and you can go virtually ANYwhere – although probably not very directly.  One lady told us that the canal where they moor their boat – about 20 miles from their home – was being dug in 1776, and she thinks of the U.S. every time she goes onto the water there…..the fight for America was beginning, and England was in the midst of one of the great engineering efforts she’s engaged in.  I’ve read a bit about this time, and the foundation of a lot of England’s prosperity was based on the ability to transport materials and goods all over the country.  Roads were terrible, and the canals provided the highways before steam came in and railroads were built.

Anyhow, we walked for miles along a couple of different canals, watched boats drop down two different locks, and ended up about a half mile from Susan’s house.  We saw blighted industrial areas, lovely old homes with gardens running back to the canal, a couple of places with their own canal boats moored canal-side, and plenty more with kayaks, canoes, or rowboats on the shore.  Lots of people have built patios by the canal with tables and chairs for alfresco meals, or with recliners and so on for relaxing.  It was lovely.  A couple of parks also border on one or another of the canals, and living across from these would be the best of all – protected from casual trespassers, druggies, etc. by the water, and with a vista of greenery and peace to look at from the back of the house and the garden.  The warehouses that have been abandoned ought to be prime candidates for “gentrification” by installing loft apartments, and most of them have open areas at least part of the way along the canal, where common areas could be put.  Susan worries they’ll be pulled down for high-rises, and given some of the monstrous development the town council has allowed, she’s right to be worried.  Awful in places. 

I took some photos, but didn’t think of the camera until over half the walk was past, so the nice gardens didn’t get shot…..and I can’t send them because I only know how to re-size them for e-mail IN the camera, and I down-loaded to the computer and deleted from the camera before remembering…..tried putting them back in the camera, but it didn’t work.  I’m betting Laura knows how to use Adobe to do it, but I always feel like A-dopey when I fire up that program…..maybe in August I can get a few lessons when we’re in Lincoln.  For sure I have fallen in love with the little camera!  It’s a dream to use, although I’m still making beginner’s mistakes.  But it takes very nice photos, and the simple things are pretty easy to catch onto.  I can tell from the instructions that it will do a LOT more than I’m capable of to this point.

We got home and had tea, and now Susan is out to a bell-ringing down at St. Paul’s.  She isn’t ringing, but gets to watch the more experienced up in the bell-tower.  She showed us the little book describing the process, and it’s a good deal more than one would think!  She’ll be back around 8:00, so we’re going to bathe and nap, and then make supper.  A lot of Brits eat later than we are used to, because of that “tea” in the late p.m.  Ah well.

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