Summer days with friends — An Elegant Sufficiency

Home from Berlin, we looked forward to spending a few days with friends from South Carolina. It’s quite a while since we met in person and though we’ve kept in close touch, there’s nothing like actually being together “for real”, is there?

The jet lag and the general exhaustion of an overnight flight is always a challenge and so a day close to home was called for to ease them into the European time zone. It’s actually fun to become a tourist in our own area and when the offer of a guided tour of the parish church in Cirencester greeted our arrival, we snapped it up. Though I walk past quite frequently I’m usually on an errand and seldom go inside, even though I know it to be spectacular.

Retired history teacher Gary proved to be a great guide, pointing out all kinds of features we’d not noticed previously, such as the egg-timer there beside the 14th century pulpit. It had been placed there as a result of some lengthy sermons and a reminder to those giving them that time was precious!

A rather more contemporary reminder in the form of a laminated printout was blu tacked to the nearby pillar. Times change, eh?

A further reminder of that was to be seen at Bletchley Park the following day, when we stood in the office of Alastair Denniston, head of the service, where the set up was much as I remember from my holiday office job in the early 1970s (with the possible exception of the typewriter, for mine was a somewhat more modern model!)

Rounding off our busy day at Bletchley, we were more than ready for a pub supper and looked forward to a local speciality at The Weighbridge Inn, their renowned 2-in-1-pie. But their team were not exactly firing on all cylinders sadly and a long wait and mistakes in our order made it a less than spectacular success. Never mind…these things happen.

Another day, another office. This time, Churchill’s War Rooms. We took the train up to London, entertained by those on their way to the Ascot races, dressed rather more smartly than we were! We had booked timed tickets and made our way from Paddington by bus to Westminster where we stepped to one side at the entrance and went straight in, leaving a huge queue outside. The exhibition was really well done though I’d have preferred to share it with fewer people! Nevertheless, it took us a couple of hours to work our way around it, appreciating the way in which the story was told and set up with such lifelike figures to enhance the scene.

It was a really hot Summers day which brought home the idea that people spent months down here without a breath of fresh air, under extreme pressure hearing bombs above their heads from time to time. Worst of all, they were using chemical loos! (I also wondered if deodorants were around in those days?)

Once above ground, our first port of call was the Red Lion on Whitehall for a welcome drink!

Once refreshed, we continued past the Cenotaph , Downing Street and the Monument to the Women of WWII along to the Horseguards.

Here, a crowd posed for photos and marvelled at their ability to stand still in spite of all that was going on around them.

Quite remarkable.

From there it was a short walk into Trafalgar Square, from where I’d planned to catch the bus back to Paddington. But we had time…time to look around the corner at Admiralty Arch…

Except, the Arch is a building site for a new Waldorf Astoria Hotel coming soon…. Hmm, I’d hoped to go into the Mall to get a view of Buckingham Palace. Thankfully, one of the site staff explained how we could get around the side, which we did.

So we were able to get the classic view of The Palace, even if it was somewhat at a distance. From there, it was a mere step up the Duke of York steps to Waterloo Place and our favourite Sofitel.

Where thankfully, it was “Trivia Time”* and a Spritz was most certainly in order!

*Our friends Jan and David are our Trivia partners when we are sailing together 😉

From the stop across the road, the #23 bus took us back to Paddington, through dreadful traffic which gave me anxiety about making it in time for our 5.32pm train. We arrived in time, but needn’t have worried…

We waited in the lounge for further news, which came around 6pm, when we made a dash to the furthest side of the station to jump on the first train to leave. Needless to say, it was packed, but thankfully, we not only had booked seats, but the people sitting in them were sweet enough to acknowledge our reservation too. Profuse thanks were in order!