A long-planned visit from Rhonda Campbell occurred yesterday. Rhonda and I have been Facebook friends via our mutual Oceanside (NY) High School (OHS) friend Debra Pasvol Donahue. They both live in California now but all three of us attended OHS at the same time and then, Rhonda and I were at SUNY Oneonta at the same time. We met in front of Kings Cross Saint Pancras and made out way to Camden Market via the Northern Line. There are several markets in the area, and we visited almost all of them. The markets were a chaotic, crowded, and colorful world selling all kinds of souvenirs, food, supplies and clothing.

Rhonda and I found a nice cafe with some outside seating overlooking one of the canal locks with houseboats on either side of it. We stopped at their indoor pavilion to request the one open table. The host directed us to the table, but another woman tried to steal it from us. Rhonda, showing her true New York roots was not letting that happen! Before the host could get to us to shoo the interloper away, Rhonda had us comfortably seated! During our beverage we were able to get to know each other better. We both had a connection with the nuclear power industry over the course of our careers! During the afternoon, we found that we did have mutual friends and acquaintances in addition to Debra. We both had been friends with a fellow named Danny Cohen who was another alumnus of both OHS and SUNY Oneonta. We were both disappointed that he seems to have dropped off the radar. I was able to Rhonda about my OHS classes recent reunion and she recognized some of my classmates that attended.

After we completed our exploration of the markets, we made our way back to Camden Town Tube Station and headed back to Kings Cross where I took Rhona on a tour of “my” neighborhood, pointing out some of my favorite haunts. Like everyone visiting the area, she was quite impressed with the Saint Pancras Hotel.

From there we walked down Judd Street, past the Half Cup, a delightful local cafe, Clare Court, where my flat is located, and through the neighborhood where I could show her the array of shops and restaurants, including The Observatory, the combined cafe and art photography gallery, and to Rhonda’s delight, an international bazaar shop that she disappeared into while I took the chance to rehydrate. Next, Rhonda had the chance to experience a London post office, located within a “general store.”

We continued into The Brunswick Centre, the local shopping centre, for Rhonda to buy a few items for her plane trip home from the neighborhood Waitrose. No trip to my corner of Kings Cross and Bloomsbury would be complete without a visit to Russell Square itself and, of course, Caffe Tropea. We were just in time for a late afternoon coffee (for me) and herbal tea (for Rhonda).

All that was left for us as the afternoon moved toward early evening was dinner back at Brunswick Centre at the new and interesting restaurant, Riding House Bloomsbury. One reviewer described the menu, in part, as: “dishes like Earl Grey cured trout with citrus kosho & sour cream; flat iron steak & comte yakitori; caraway harissa chicken & cassava chips with fennel & cardamom gravy; teriyaki rabbit legs with shiitake mushroom & sweet potato champ; miso grilled sea bass with nuoc cham & pickled cucumber; and hot doughnuts with milk jam.” The menu and the food did not disappoint. The service was good. We chose to dine outside under a canopy. It was a very comfortable and enjoyable dinner.

After dinner, it was a brief walk over to the Russell Square Tube Station for Rhonda’s ride back to get some rest before her flight back to San Jose. Life is grand when you make new friends. Rhonda is a delightful lady who is a great listener (anybody who knows me, knows you have to be when I get wound up and start yacking). We had a great day together.

This may be a bit rough. I am trying a blog entry for the first time in a few years! There had been problems with folks accessing the entries from FB last time around. Here goes, though. Yesterday’s adventure, compliments of a recommendation from Nigel Grant, was a visit to the Klimt Immersion Experience at ‘The Brick House,’ located just off Brick Lane, a pleasant walk from the Aldgate Tube Station. I was familiar with Klimt from seeing some of his works in Vienna at the Belvedere Museum. The exhibition was done in an interesting way, starting with a multimedia presentation on the Secessionist Movement (the Viennese Art Nouveau movement).

This brought “The Kiss” to life in a different form.

In the next part of the experience, we moved into a dark room where Klimt’s works were deconstructed and then slowly reconstructed on the walls of the room as each work moved around the four exterior walls and the walls of an interior cube in the center. Plenty of seating was around the exterior. Classical music played in the background. Beethoven’s 5th stays memorably with me, as a child of Huntley and Brinkley’s newscasts in the US.

This part of the exhibition was something that allowed me to simply sit back and be amazed at the brilliance of the art, and to enjoy the interplay of form and color on the walls as the they morphed into new shaped and stylized symbols. For me, always hanging over it, was the sadness of knowing that Klimt died young and the terrible connection his works later had with the Nazi terror of World War II, but, at least, ultimately, some small justice was restored to, at least one family.

After leaving this part of the experience, I thought the whole thing was over, but a surprise awaited me. There was an offer of a Virtual Reality viewing of Klimt’s works (for a small additional fee). I jumped at the chance. Let me admit that I have not been really high in many decades. This was the closest my memory comes to what that was like. The way the works were shown (there were snakes and fish and beautiful women and flowers and landscapes and colors and music). All of these were coming at me and moving away. I had such a blast sitting there simply experiencing this. It was definitely worth the extra “five quid.”

A final note about Brick Lane. It is one of those wonderful ethnically alive streets one sees in London. I saw so many great looking Indian restaurants that made my mouth water along with all kinds of shops and tourists and Londoners of every description walking along. It is definitely a place I will be returning to. I really hope that the next UK PM and her government (in all likelihood it appears to be a “her’), will find a way to avoid economic disaster this winter for the people and small businesses all over the country, but especially for the thriving small businesses, just coming back from the pandemic and the families who are afraid of freezing this winter.

I can never resist the British National Portrait Gallery.  For those following my obsession, there is still no sign of a portrait of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall and future Queen Consort.  The late Diana, Princess of Wales, and the retired Philip, Duke of Edinburgh remain prominent in the gallery of most recent British persons of importance, along with such cultural icons as

Amy Winehouse (a portrait I really find touching).  The gallery had brought out a different selection of 20th Century portraits.  These included two by Patrick Herring, this self portrait

and this portrait of T.S. Elliot.

Patrick Heron is one of my favorite artists and it was a real treat to spend some time with these two works.

Also on display was this portrait of a lady I like to think of as one of my neighbors in Bloomsbury, Emmeline Pankhurst, one of England Suffragists who lived for a time in a house that sat just across from Russell Square. I love the way the portrait shows her strength and dignity.

The second of the Cultural Interludes was a visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum (the V&A) with my “Greatest British Friends” Nigel and Gwynne.  We started in one of my “happy places,” the Cast Courts, described on the V&A website this way “Opened in 1873, the Cast Courts display copies of some of the world’s most significant works of art reproduced in plaster, electrotype, photography, and digital media. The cast collection is famous for including reproductions of Michelangelo’s David, Trajan’s Column, and Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise, amongst many others.”  I don’t know exactly why the Cast Courts are so important to me.  Perhaps its the fact that many of the pieces are cast from churches and cathedrals, but being placed in the bright and well planned courts allows me to appreciate their form separately from their function in a way that is sometimes difficult with some architectural features.

We had a nice break in the V&A Cafeteria.  We were supposed to have had breakfast together, but a communication breakdown had us eating in cafes about 50 yards apart on Judd Street.

We also enjoyed a visit to the furniture collection.  Including these beauties that Nigel briefly helped fabricate in the pre-computer days.  The day ended much to quickly and I had to see the Grants off at Saint Pancras Train Station for their return to Kent.