festive london

Sarah left to walk to work at 7 this morning and I am meeting her at the hospital end of her shift at 8pm, so I had a whole day to myself. Unusually, I had no plans, just a vague idea of getting the Northern Line into the middle of London and enjoying some festiveness.

On my walk to the Tube Station I saw a thin brown fox saunter over Garratt Lane and into Streatham Cemetery. He disappeared so quickly, I though I might have dreamed him.

Hello I arrived above ground at Leicester Square so decided to visit the National Portrait gallery, one of my favourite haunts. I could happily spend the whole day in there. At lunchtime I sat down for the "Portrait of the Day" talk, which was all about the contralto Kathleen Ferrier. The lady next to me said that when she was very little, her father had taken her to hear KF sing, and that excited the man giving the talk because there are no (video) recordings of her performances. He also told us very excitedly that last year at a car boot sale, he had bought two books about KF and one of them had a letter from KF in it, thanking a fan fro sending her flowers in February 1953. At that time, KF had cancer and had broken her leg on stage during a performance of "Orfeo". She died later that year, aged only 41.

I spent a lot of time in two of my favourite shops - Foyles and Stamford's. (The photo is of a pop-up book about London in the window). The Map Room at Stamfords is especially exciting because it's usually full of people planning journeys all over the globe and fills me with wanderlust.

HarlingDarling had reminded me that today is Lucia Day in Sweden. There are Lucia concerts in London tonight but as I shan't get to any of them, I went to the Gudrun Sjoden shop instead for a taste of Sweden :-).

I managed to go a whole day in London without buying anything except lunch!