The Last Day.

Nic has gone to work so it just remains for me to eat breakfast, to pack , to grab a last cup of coffee and a macaroon at Ken's, and then to wend my way out to the airport for the trip to San Fransisco and on to Auckland and home. What a great trip it has been. Seeing Sarah and Nic making their way and enjoying it. Seeing all my family, Kathleen, Pat, Ken, Colin, Anne, Doug, Dianne, Glenn, Charlotte, Michael, Stewart. Meeting Marion and Jim, Karen's mum and dad. Meeting Norman and June again and seeing Bob and Agnes and Phil Jackson. The hospitality poured on me by all these people made me feel very welcome wherever I was. All of that would have been enough but as you can tell from this blog I've seen much and done a lot. Now I shall be glad to get home. Let's hope the good weather continues. Back to work on Thursday. Then we'll have to save up for and plan the next trip!!!!!

Day Thirtyseven.

This was my last full day in Portland. Out, with Nic for breakfast, a different diner this time, and even at 10 am we had to queue to get a table. For a change I had breakfast burritos, peppers, eggs, chorizo sausage all wrapped up in tortillas. We then headed into the hills above Portland. The first part of our walk was through Washington Park, a wooded area close to the city. Inside its boundaries are two reservoirs supplying the city with drinking water. There is also a large rose garden which would be a magnificent sight in summer. There were great views of the city from all parts of the park. We then continued up the hill for a bit of urban tramping as Nic calls it. A very posh area with many large houses surrounded by trees. Snow was still hanging around. We'd seen it from the city the day before and commented how elevation made a difference, thick snow on the hill, no snow down in the city.
We went back to the flat until a phone call got us out to a pub for a few games of pool. The superbowl was being shown on TVs in the bar so we had no trouble getting a table. A couple of pints, a couple of Nic's mates and a few games of pool made for a great way to finish off my visit to the USA. And the underdogs won the football.
Dinner was Japanese and very tasty.

Day Thirtysix

Saturday!! No work for Nic and as promised he took me out for breakfast to an American diner. Sausage, fried potatoes, eggs over easy all washed down with a grapefruit juice, a feast fit for a king. We set out then to walk to the Portland historical Museum but the rain forced us back home. We lounged around as it snowed outside, reading, listening to the radio and chatting. In order to get out of the house we decided to go to the movies. In a theatre as comfortable as the Lighthouse back home we saw "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawk and Albert Finney. As bleak and dark a movie as you are ever likely to see.
On the way home we called in at Jake's Bar and had a pint and some fresh oysters. OK they were not as big as bluff oysters but they were very fresh and very tasty. We finished off the day with a Thai meal

Day Thirtyfive.

After my usual breakfast and coffee and a macaroon, a chocolate spiced macaroon no less, a very interesting mixture of chocolate and what was probably paprika, I headed off to Nic's workplace. I caught a train, part of the light rail system, which took me west of the city, about a 30 min journey. From there it was 30 minute walk to the studio. The movie being made is called "Coraline" and is a stop motion movie requiring the use of hundreds and hundreds of models. It was fascinating to see hundreds of different faces that could be placed on a character's model. Nic showed me some of the computer stuff he is involved in and I saw a number of the different sets being used. It is expected that the movie will show in New Zealand so watch out for it.
Back home the way I came. Later that evening we went out for a very nice Italian meal.

Day Thirtyfour.

It was damp and cold again so I headed into town to the Science museum. On the way I went into a very good kitchenware shop which also sold sauces, jams, chutneys and wines. There wasn't a New Zealand wine to be seen so I let them know that their shop was almost perfect and should they get some NZ wine on their shelves perfection would be ensured. I continued on my way and came across a theatre advertising a showing of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. (http://www.pcs.org/blog/critics_heart_b12/#comment-3426) It was clear that a performance was about to start and I was lucky enough to grab a seat. What a joy. From the opening scene as the company formed the bow of a sailing ship right through to the improbable ending when all is resolved I enjoyed a most entertaining….well I can’t remember how long it all took as time disappeared as I was transported to Illyria. There was not a weak part in the whole production. The comedic business, including the most prodigious stage fart I have ever heard……in fact the only stage fart I have ever heard, was brilliantly done. It was the character Sir Toby Belch who farted.....wrong end it seems to me!!! The scene in the garden when Malvolio was gulled was particularly good. I loved the trio singing for the duke. The more serious business of wooing and falling in love was brought off convincingly, especially the Duke’s consternation that he seemed attracted to a boy! What good fortune befell me that I should stumble on this delight. Portland is indeed fortunate to have such a theatre in its midst. My only regret is that I will not be able to see the companion show "The Beard of Avon" to be performed on the same stunning set.
All thoughts of the Science Museum were now abandoned and I went home cooked dinner for Nic.

Day Thirtythree.

Nic went off to work at 7.00am and I made breakfast and pottered about the flat for a while. Outside the weather was cold and damp with intermittent showers. I set out to explore the area around Nic's flat. There some very big houses, often with big verandas, and lots of apartment buildings. It very quickly became apparent that, at least in Portland, the pedestrian is king. Many intersections are controlled of course and pedestrians cross on a signal but at uncontrolled intersections if you step out into the road a car will stop and let you cross. Coming from NZ it was sometimes a little disconcerting and certainly surprising to have cars pull up and invite you to cross the road. I found a coffee bar recommended by Nic which sold the most scrumptious macaroons. Clearly the area round Nic's place was the posh end of town if the shops were any guide.
I walked down into the city and quickly reached the river. Cities with rivers running through them have a great advantage in that the river bank is an obvious place to put a walkway and Portland had certainly done that. Even on a cold winter's day there were walkers, some with dogs, runners and cyclists wandering down the river bank. I came upon a section dedicated to and by way of apology to those of Japanese descent who were interned during the second world war. It was a small garden with large standing rocks on some of which were carved Japanese characters and on others were examples of Haiku.
It was getting colder and was still wet so I headed home calling in on a magnificent bookshop and then an equally good music shop. I called in to the supermarket for dinner stuff. At the checkout they asked what sort of bag I wanted, paper or plastic. Perhaps something we should consider.
Nic arrived home about eight and we spent a pleasant evening over dinner and then simply chatting about this and that.

Day Thirtytwo

June and Norman dropped me off at Heathrow and I fairly quickly got checked in. Once through passport control I was amazed to see Michelle Bradshaw, an ex Hutt Valley High school teacher. She was looking for breakfast and I for a coffee so we passed the next 90 minutes or so in animated conversation which was a great way to pass what would otherwise would have been a tedious wait for our boarding calls. Like me, Michelle had been away for five or six weeks and she was heading off back to NZ.
The flight to Chicago, all in daylight, was uneventful. The views of sea ice and snow covered mountains over Greenland and I think Labrador were spectacular. On arrival in Chicago I found that my flight to Portland was delayed. Departure time was pushed back frequently during the evening and about 30 minutes before our final boarding time it started to snow heavily. We boarded and sat on the plane for over an hour waiting for a pilot. He arrived and told us that the plane had to be de-iced but the guys working the deicer had given up for the moment because of the weather!! Eventually we were de-iced and we took off. Four hours of that dreadful limbo between sleeping and waking and we arrived in Portland at 2.00am. Nic was waiting and had kept a taxi waiting for us. It was good to see him and equally good to collapse into bed at about 3.00am nearly 24 hours after leaving London.

Day Thirtyone.

For my last day in England we headed off over to Cookham and enjoyed a walk along the Thames along with at least two dog walkers with six or seven dogs apiece in tow. We then drove to Marlow and enjoyed a picnic lunch by the side of the Thames. Of course we were thirsty by then so we drove to a very old pub called "The Royal Standard of England" at a place called Forty Green. This is reputed to be, at 900 years, the oldest pub in England. It is a quaint old place, well worth a visit but drive carefully down the very narrow roads that approach it.
We had an early dinner of haggis, black pudding and neaps and tatties. Early as we headed off into London to the Royal Festival Hall and a concert of Beethoven Piano Sonatas by the great Daniel Barenboim. The whole evening was magical, the music, the view of London at night from the balcony, and the walk over the Thames to catch the train at the end of the evening. The concert hall was packed.
Back in Uxbridge it was packing time again ready for a 9.20am date at the airport next morning.

Thirtieth Day

Norman and June arrived about 11.15 to take Sarah and I out to Linslade, near Leighton Buzzard, to visit another university mate Bob Blackshire who had studied Chemistry with Norman and I. It was good to see him again after so many years and for the three of us to be together again. We shared a lot of do you remembers and I like to think we weren't too boring for the rest of the company. The rest of the company included Bob's charming wife Agnes and his daughter (name later) Agnes served up a magnificent meal of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and all the trimmings. Rhubarb crumble rounded off a great lunch. And yes of course we had a couple of beers. After lunch we had a walk and then headed off back to London.
We dropped Sarah back at her flat and we made our goodbyes and headed over to Uxbridge. It has been great to see Sarah and to see that she is happy.

Day Twenty Nine.

Another Saturday, so assuming the flat would sleep in, I headed off before eight over to Borough Market, held three days a week, in the shadow of Southwark Cathedral. I enjoyed a full English breakfast in a nearby cafe and then wandered round the market. I love food markets and in this case especially the large range of fungi on sale, the cheeses, the fresh meat, fish and vegetables. There was a stall selling ostrich meat, all the way from Gamston, a small village just outside Retford. I wished I could have been buying some of the produce.
I then hopped over to South Kensington for a quick look in the museums, Science, Natural History and Victoria and Albert. In the Natural History museum I made the mistake of going into the dinosaur section. It was wall to wall kids all having a whale of a time but far too crowded to want to spend too much time in there.
I met up with Sarah in Chinatown, a very small area compared with other Chinatowns in the world, for a very nice Yum Cha lunch.
In the evening I went back into London for another taste of theatre. Same theatre as before for a play "The Sea" by Edward Bond. This was a strange play, set in a seaside village in Edwardian times. The local draper thinks aliens are coming to take over the brains of the villagers! The village is dominated by a haughty woman who lords it over all the population and is partly responsible for the draper having a breakdown. No I didn't completely understand it but I enjoyed the acting of David Haigh (again) and Eileen Atkins and Marcia Warren. (http://arts.guardian.co.uk/theatre/drama/reviews/story/0,,2247491,00.html)

Day Twenty Eight.

This was a good day and a bad day. Lets get the bad, which is not too bad, out of the way first. I set out to visit the Hogarth museum, dedicated as you would expect to the works of William Hogarth. It's a long way out from the centre of London. I found the appropriate tube station, traveled all the way out there, and had some difficulty finding the museum. I retreated to a cafe and over a cup of coffee, consulted the guide book and on closer reading found that the house is closed! (read the guidebook more carefully Dave.)
(http://www.hiddenlondon.com/hoghouse.htm).
Back into town for the Handel Museum in Brook street, I arrived at the street corner. Which way to go, toss of coin so turned right. Clearly not the right choice, and consulting the book told me it was No. 25 (Read the guidebook more carefully Dave!). The museum takes up number 25 and a couple of floors of number 23 (Jimi Hendrix used to live there.). Again it was suggested I watched a video. This was purpose made for the museum and was as good as the Dickens one had been bad. The Museum celebrates Handel's life and works, displaying portraits of Handel and his contemporaries in finely restored Georgian interiors.
By now it was late lunch time and I must have found the worst pub in central London so there will be no lunch bulletin today. I headed over to St Pancras to visit the British Library. A number of important works are on display to the general public in a gallery called the
Sir John Ritblat Gallery which is open to the public seven days a week at no charge. Some of the treasures visitors can see in the Gallery include the Magna Carta, Captain Cook's journal, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Geoffrey Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales', 'Beowulf', Virginia Woolf's 'Mrs Dalloway', Lewis Carroll's 'Alice's Adventures Under Ground', Jane Austen's 'History of England', Rudyard Kipling's 'Just So Stories, Thomas Malory's 'Le Morte Darthur' (King Arthur), Charles Dickens' 'Nicholas Nickleby'. There are also scores by famous musicians and a collection of Beatles memorabilia. A day which started off poorly finished brilliantly.

Day Twenty Seven

Sarah went off for a study day and I headed off into London to meet Norman again. Same time same place as before so same dabble with National Portrait Gallery. We headed off down the strand to the Courtauld Gallery, in Somerset House. This is a wonderful collection of paintings including an exquisite collection of medieval paintings, all with a religious subject. In another room there was a magnificent collection of impressionist and post impressionist paintings including Van Gogh's Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear, Manet's The Bar at the Folies Bergere and works by Degas, Suerat, Monet, Gauguin and others.
Sated once again with fine paintings we headed off for a pint. (There are some readers of this blog, so I understand, who have suggested that it is mostly about beer and food. That might be true, I couldn't possibly comment!) We walked further down the stand to a pub, The Old Bank of England which in earlier days had been a bank. (http://www.pubs.com/pub_details.cfm?ID=214) And what a bank with tall pillars, and even a painted ceiling. This pint served as an aperitif and we went round the corner to another pub for another pint and lunch, this time of liver and bacon with mashed spuds and rich brown gravy.
For the afternoon's tourist fare we went to the Charles Dickens Museum set up, in 1925, in the only remaining house in London where Dickens lived. On four floors, we saw paintings, rare editions, manuscripts, original furniture and many items relating to the life of one of the most popular personalities of the Victorian age. We were advised to watch a video before exploring the rest of the house. This was a mistake. It has to be the most boring video the museum could find about Dickens, a pity as the rest of the museum is excellent. We passed the Old Curiosity Shop, now home to a shoe shop, stopped for a coffee and a bit of postcard writing, and then walked on to the Coach and Horses. I had a half, Norman went off home and Phil Jackson turned up. More reminiscing was helped by some photos Phil had brought taken at the church youth club we both attended forty years or more ago. Over a delicious Indian meal we talked the evening away. Lets hope we don't lose contact this time.