The Fog in London

Sun-up was at 7:56 this morning according to the BBC weather site, and we are having our first foggy morning of the season. The skyscraper tower of the Royal Free Hospital two blocks away — considered a blight by Hampsteaders — is not visible from the dining room window at the moment. These foggy days are a prelude to Christmas every year. A new weather front is dropping the temperature every day, and for the next few mornings we can expect freezing fog to linger. The sidewalks — I can never remember they are called pavements here — will be wet and slick; the damp air will penetrate the woolen defenses of scarves, hats, and gloves, making the temperature seem much colder than it really is.

As the atmospheric fog drops, the fog of my eternal head cold seems to be lifting. The week after my return from the States, I never left the house except to buy some  head cold medication. I just slept and worked on breathing. Fortunately, there were no dates to remember on my calendar. This week has been a gradual entrance back into the swing of living in London.

I hosted a quilt group pot-luck lunch on Monday and attended one on Thursday. The Monday group always holds the pot-luck lunch here because we have more Christmas decorations than anyone else.  Most of the group members are ex-pats living in rented and often furnished flats who will only be here for the months or years of their husband's overseas assignment, so naturally they haven't brought the family decorations from home. I usually welcome the party to unpack our beloved Christmas decorations, but I am afraid last weekend I made a rather half-hearted effort, so I have to finish the job this weekend. Alas, we have another year in which the storage box of Christmas themed fabrics has not been touched. The old "Christmas in July" craft magazine promotions need to be revived. Speaking of magazines, Borders bookstores in the UK are closing down, so my easy access to US magazines is now closed off. Borders US expanded to the UK shortly after we moved to London, but was sold off a few years ago to a UK private equity group and then to a management buyout, but Waterstones has the high streets sewn up having bought up all the other high street chains. Borders opened up some huge US-size bookstores around the country. Those empty spaces are going to make big holes in shopping districts.

I loved seeing Megan's Sanctimommy photos of decorating Hingham. Some are ones she grew up with and requested when she and Barnz chose to have Christmas on their own. It has been nine years since we spent Christmas with Megan. I would never ever want young children to spend Christmas away from home. I still have memories of a Saturday night in a tiny hotel room in Washington, D.C. with two little girls deeply worried the Easter Bunny would not be able to find them for basket delivery room service. (He did.) As of yesterday however, I have formed a new holiday plan. In a few years, I want Megan and the children to come for a visit the week after Christmas so, as dual citizens, they can experience an important cultural component of their English nationality: the theatre. The English live and breathe theatre, unlike Americans who have very little access to theatre productions unless they live in New York with money to spare. Outside of New York, there is the one professional repertory theatre in big cities, the non-professional drama club in small cities, and the ubiquitous high school musical. I wonder if high schools even put on plays any more. My high school had the annual musical plus a Junior Class Play and a Senior Class Play where we were introduced to classics like Blithe Spirit and The Man Who Came to Dinner. Hingham High School had a vaunted drama program, but after the annual autumn musical, all I remember being invited to see was the 15 minute entry into the all-important Massachusetts High School Drama Competition, which recognises technics and techniques, but offers no appreciation of drama as art.

Yesterday, when an English friend with a three year-old granddaughter listed the number of performances they had already attended with her and how many more were coming up, I realised the national love of drama begins with the pantomime season at Christmas. Time Out magazine lists 27 productions under the Children's Theatre heading in this week's issue. They include The Cat in the Hat at the National Theatre directed by Katie Mitchell (a very hot young director), The Enchanted Pig, an opera by Jonathan Dove at the Royal Opera House, and The Forest at the Young Vic. Then there are the annual productions based on beloved story books, Raymond Brigg's The Snowman told in dance (suitable for age 2+ to start them really young), Julia Donaldson's The Gruffalo, and a new production of her book Stick Man. The year-round children's theatres, the Polka, the Angel, the Unicorn, have seasonal productions too. So of course I want my grandchildren to come here to spend a week attending the theatre every day. When they outgrow the children's productions they will graduate to the adult panto productions. Fairy tales told with an edge of sexual innuendo and cross-dressing with B-list celebrities, popular stars of past decades, soap opera stars, and reality TV competition winners and losers in the special roles. We went to a few high-class pantos — Angela Carter's posthumous Cinderella — years ago, but looking through the listings, perhaps we need to book a real panto this year.

Every year in the weeks before Christmas we book so many Christmas concerts, there is no room for anything else. Looking at my calendar I see six concerts coming up over the next two weeks. Speaking of music, I am surrounded by stacks of CDs — our collection of Christmas music (minus the extensive, but outdated collections of LPs and tapes) that Bob has been using to write his review of favourite Christmas music available on Bazzfazz (11 parts) and on Scholars and Rogues, which has 14 parts. A Big Day in Hingham was the day the Atlantic Wire website picked up Part 4 from Scholars and Rogues. I can't find the actual link because my computer is not picking up links very quickly right now, but the Atlantic Wire bills itself as "tracking the most influential opinion makers," and on the night in question, everyone else on The Ticker was indeed someone notable from their 50 most important pundits list. I feel the title of Bob's post, which included the words "Medieval Babes" had something to do with its selection by an A-list political site with cultural pretensions. Megan and Barnz, who can do these things, captured a "screen shot" so we have a record of this event on Bob's laptop.

In addition to the two pot-luck lunches, I went to two book groups this week. My regular "Sevens" group read Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, a book I did not like in the 1980s when I first read it, and which I found I still don't like when I reread it earlier this week, although I keep reading that I should like it as it is some sort of classic. The group was split on opinion, but those who liked it kept citing the magnificent prose, which is usually the reason given to call it a classic. One thing I don't like is the writing style which I found made up of oddly patched and overblown phrasing. Our moderator found an interview in which Robinson said she began writing and saving metaphors when she was doing a graduate degree on Shakespeare, and later she realised she had the voice of Ruth in her random collection. In other words, she did patch together the prose.

The second book group was an extra meeting of the "Literary Ladies" to meet  Ruth Waterman, the author of When Swan Lake Comes to Sarajevo. Ruth is an English violinist who studied at Julliard and lived in New York for years before returning to England. In 2002 she was invited to guest conduct the Mostar Sinfonietta in Bosnia. She returned to Bosnia to lead concerts in 2004, 2005, and 2006, when funding for the orchestra ran out. As a BBC contract presenter, the BBC gave her recording tape and suggested a radio show if she found any interesting material. She collected personal experiences of the devastating war years from her young orchestra members that were used for a Radio 4 programme, and ultimately for this book. I bought the book from her, so haven't read it yet, but she played excerpts from the voices of the musicians and discussed the sadly deteriorating situation in Bosnia at the moment. The meeting was heightened by a visiting friend of a member who told of her escape to Rio de Janiero from Bosnia with her 9 year-old daughter after, as she said, "my mother's body was found in the river and my grandmother was killed." She is also a violinist, explaining she was in Bosnia when the war began because she had returned from living in Paris when asked to represent Bosnia in an international competition, and told us of her desperation when her only chance to stay in Rio was by securing a seat in the city's symphony orchestra. The room certainly went silent as she told her story, giving us an inkling of what Ruth went through when survivors poured out their experiences.

Finally, we went to a gallery opening of a print exhibition organised by the husband of a quilting friend. David is an artist and designer, and his design has been chosen by the Royal Mail for the Olympic Sports series of stamps issued earlier this year. David's stamp is for Badminton. To celebrate he invited other stamp designers to exhibit their work as prints made by Epson photocopiers. What a great show. The link to the ROA Gallery lets you see the wonderful work on display. We chose at least a dozen. Next week we will have to hone our choice down to Christmas gift level.

At last I feel like I am back into the routine of life.  Tomorrow we get our tree, and I begin to organise what needs doing between now and the New Year. We haven't even caught up on the Advent Calendars. Christmas is only two weeks away!!