One long weekend...
We have been in the midst of a sudden heat wave in the UK, which means things fall apart. So many things fall apart when heat waves occur in the UK, but particularly the train system which suffers when the heat causes various signalling systems to fail. And of course, as many of you know, our elderly housing stock is meant to keep heat in, not out. Air conditioning is not included in most older buildings. Houses (and their inhabitants) have a hard time cooling off in any heat whatsoever. 🥵
Saturday morning we continued a two-day sprint of planting various vegetables and flowers which arrived via mail-order suddenly this week. My lettuce and edible flower ‘starts’ had been scheduled a month before and of course this was the week they got shipped. At the beginning of our heat wave I quickly worked to get the soil ready for baby plants to arrive. This also meant trying to get rid of as many snails and slugs in the beds ahead of their possible lettuce smorgasbord arriving.
I had two days to trap slugs before planting the lettuces. The first two nights I only trapped one very small slug that looked like it was actually trying to get out of the cup rather than into it. Was the heat keeping them away? I will only find out once we get back to the island after a long-planned weekend in London…
Sunday morning we finished up planting and other garden tasks and headed off by train-ferry-train to London in the early afternoon. Every so often we try not to drive if there is no particular rush, and this holiday weekend was a good chance to ditch the car. As the weather was quite warm we enjoyed the outside top deck of the passenger ferry over to the big island. And then the fun began!
As soon as we arrived into the train station and looked up at the destination boards they started cancelling trains due to signal failures at various locations. The Station agents who are usually milling around vanished. Conflicting announcements came over the loudspeakers. Very long story short: our three hour door to door trip ended up taking a little over five hours. Most of that time we sat on our train stuck between stations, punctuated at the end by a short journey on a replacement bus we had to sprint to catch in time. Thank goodness all trains and buses had air conditioning.
Eventually we ended the evening sitting outside at a lovely pub in the village where Pete’s sister lives. It was finally cool enough to be happily enjoying a chilled beverage and some delicious food sitting amongst greenery and watching the locals go by. We won’t say anything about the temperature inside the house when we tried to sleep that night.
Monday was jam packed with various activities, all whilst moving around in the afternoon temperatures in London that reached 33 C/92 F. We visited a major Wes Anderson1 exhibit in West London at the Design Museum, followed by a wander through Holland Park. These were two new places for us, and we always try to go or see someplace new on our trips to London. The Wes Anderson exhibit was pure delight: a movie-by-movie collection of artefacts used in scenes or as part of the development of the characters. A few samples from the exhibit are here:
Next up was a pilgrimage to Arsenal Stadium in North London. Arsenal is a Premier League Football (soccer) team and is the team Pete has followed since his childhood, following in his father’s footsteps. You can read more about my take on Football traditions here.
Understanding Football*
*Before we start I need to be clear to my US readers that by football I mean soccer. Soccer is called football everywhere else in the world, so as part of my assimilation, I use football to mean ‘soccer’ and not, as the sport is called elsewhere, ‘American football
Last week Arsenal won the League Championship for the first time in 22 years, so OBVIOUSLY we had to go pay homage at the home grounds. We did a full circumnavigation around the perimeter of the stadium. And of course we were not the only ones doing the same thing. I loved seeing so many families, everyone wearing their Arsenal t-shirts, carrying banners and flags, their bags filled with Arsenal merchandise.
Following a quick snack, we headed back down to central London where we were meeting some longtime US friends for an early dinner. Yet another mishap: We were due to meet them at a traditional English fancy restaurant, and I completely forgot about dress codes at these kinds of places. If the weather hadn’t been so hot—which of course when this was planned weeks ago it certainly was NOT HOT—we would have been fine. However, Pete was wearing shorts—nice longish shorts, mind, not sporty ones—but they would not let him in. So, after a bit of a grumble, our friends (four of them) stayed on to eat their traditional English meal, which was a treat for them, and we ate Mexican street food nearby, which was a treat for us. We met up for cooling drinks and a long chat afterwards which was a treat for ALL of us.
We headed off to catch a train back where we were staying, enjoying the lovely late evening temperatures whilst walking across the Thames. When we arrived at Waterloo Train Station, we checked the boards to see when the next train would leave and—once again!—we watched all the signs change to “delayed” and then the big pink disruption sign popped up. “Disruption across the whole South Western Railway network.” Oh jeeze. Fortunately after only about ten or fifteen minutes, a train going to our destination did show up and left on time.
Today we head back to the Island. We are already scheduled to be on replacement buses instead of trains for the last leg of our journey before the ferry, the one where we were stuck for 1.5 hours on Sunday, so I suppose that is possibly good news. Now we know to bring plenty of snacks, water and things to read, chargers for the phones that carry our tickets, and not to focus on any particular end time in mind. Certainly we won’t count on anything going to schedule!
PS: The trains were delayed again starting first thing, so we left an hour early to try to make our regularly scheduled ferry home. The trains were running slow, and our bus connection to the ferry was completely messed up; we arrived only just in time. We got on our ferry and then had to wait for a navy ship and a trans-channel ferry arriving which have priority. Because we had a tight connection to our once-hourly train to get home from the ferry, we RAN off the ferry to make the train. (I’ve actually been running to the train to have it leave anyway just as we were all arriving from a two-minute late ferry). We did make it home.
PPS: My lettuces are all still there! No nibbles taken; no sign of slugs or snails!
Thank you for reading my tale of trains, ferries and heat! Hope you are enjoying a more temperate world where you are, or at least keeping your cool whatever the weather. Let me know your strategies for surviving heat: it is so infrequent here, I’ve forgotten how to manage…See you in a couple of weeks!
xoxo Sabrina
Clicking the little ❤️ button helps other people find this, and triggers a little happy dance! 💃
If you know anyone who might like to read these posts, feel free to send this one their way. Just click this button here:
And if you aren’t subscribing already, here’s the button for doing that (it’s free!):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wes_Anderson_filmography
Cor - the UK doesn't do heat well, does it.
The strawberry is gorgeous, Sabrina!
What a wonderful travel adventure you and your husband had; beating the heat can be difficult for sure. I love the spontaneous flexibility in the shorts-not-allowed dinner situation, and how fun that you met up after dinner to spend time together. I could imagine the racing to catch things that were leaving to complete your trip home, and also related to the slug gathering before you left for your trip. I loved reading this start to finish (and just realized I commented from finish to start). Enjoy settling back in!