DAY 8: Beautiful London

A little while ago, I was discussing with Wolf and Denis M the practice of adding tunes to your iPod. I was saying that I was not used to listening to just a few songs form a particular artist, so that I still tended to put a whole album on my mp3 reader. Denis then said that he prefers listening to albums because the not-so-good songs balance out the good ones. He mentioned how he becomes sort of over-dosed with delight when there are too many songs he loves lined up one after the other for his hearing pleasure. At the time, I found his comment rather cute: it is such a Denis thing to say, to be over-dosed with delight. But here in London, where at every street corner I turn unto a new street as beautiful as the one I’ve just left, I at times feel overwhelmed with beauty and delight. The architecture is breathtaking. The streets, with their signs and cobble stones, are almost always pretty to the eye. And what isn’t pretty is it’s perfect opposite: scruffy, worn, street-chic. At times I feel like I’ve already seen it all, quite simply because London never cesses to offer up everything at once. When we’ve seen everything, do we really need to see more of it? To sicken ourselves on the beauty like children who eat too many sweets? And when it isn’t London proper, it is what it offers up. I went to see the Modern Japanese Crafts exhibit today at the British Museum: pottery, porcelain, lacquer of such beauty I could almost not contain myself. The exhibit is very small but very dense. My European friends don’t see London as I do. “Yes, but Claire, compare it too Montreal!” Indeed. Compared to Montreal, indeed.

I have been shopping. Nothing manic. I remained relatively contained. But it is quite difficult not to try everything on… just to try… And I’ve visited the Sherlock Holmes Museum and the Charles Dickens House Museum. I’ve eaten Fish & Chips, taken loads of pictures, went out in the East end (the “cool” spot for the new-grunge minded). I’ve visited Notting Hill, Soho, the South bank, the City, and Bloomsbury. Tomorrow, I plan to see “Love’s Labour’s Lost” at the Globe and would like to visit the National Portrait Gallery.

One last note for today: London is busy. It seems like there are people around, everywhere, all the time. To run into someone in the street is relatively common and, because it is a way of life here, people are still quite polite about it. It’s normal to run into people because they are all over the place!