Travel is meant to broaden the mind. I think it just confuses me. I just got back from England where I spent the first half of my life, but is now almost a foreign country. I'm overwhelmed by echoes from the past.
A shop in Spitalfields -- Jack the Ripper territory --where I never ventured as a child since the buildings were black as your hat. It's now rather chic.
I search for typically English things: here a roller towel -- something that doesn't exist in America.
Here a poster of where my brother worked for many un/happy years and charming lampshades by Cressida Bell.
I go on a bus through Picadilly Circus where large numbers of people are rushing about as people do in cities....
but some of them sit.
Normal life: invitations and CD's and socks.....
not to mention the Aga and the teacosy
and my friend Rosie's piece de resistance: Toad in the Hole. Bliss.
And another roller towel with more jolly color than usual.
The next day I go to the Imperial War Museum where one is bombarded with so much information the mind reels.
A bus from The Great War recalls Siegfried Sassoon's Memoirs of an Infantry Officer.
Here technicians work on a plane from the Second World War....
and children make notes....
Here a horribly bad photo of Edith Sitwell from the current Cecil Beaton show....so I think I'd better stop and go and look for more roller towels and maybe have a nice cup of tea.
On a completely different note: Urban Intersections opens at The Quidley Gallery today featuring one of Robert's paintings. Do go if you are in Boston.