There’s a very famous antiques/flea market in London called the Portabello Road market. It only happens on Saturdays, so this is my chance. Thankfully, despite my love of antique furniture, I don’t have the means to buy or ship home anything on offer there, so it’s a safe place for me to spend the afternoon. I’m also interested to see if maybe I recognize the neighborhood from when I was there in 2005. It was only for a couple of days, and I was really sick, but maybe I will. So let’s see. Get off the Tube at Notting Hill Gate, and just around the corner is Portabello Road.
So my plan is to go to Portabello Road, hang out for a couple of hours, get some lunch, and then head to nearby Hyde Park with a book. I pack a towel, a paperback, and a bottle of water in my pack, and I’m ready to go. Notting Hill Gate, here I come.
Except that when we’re on the train, an announcement comes on saying Notting Hill Gate station is closed, and we’ll all have to get off at Queensway, the station before it. We do all get off at Queensway, where there’s no escalator and only one lift is working. This means a long wait in a low-ceilinged tunnel, packed into a crowded, 4-abreast kind of queue. It’s hot. It’s not fun. Finally it’s my turn in the lift (which holds about 20 people at once), and I’m upstairs in the station. But where am I? I don’t know Queensway. I ask a station attendant which bus to catch to Notting Hill Gate, but she says, as usual, that it’s only a 5-minute walk.
I, and about 50 other people, walk out of the station and mill around, wondering where we should go and what we should do. I turn the corner and see a large street with buses, and a sign pointing to Notting Hill gate. I cross the road to be on the correct side for the bus, and wait. And wait. And wait. Okay, this is getting ridiculous. It’s a Saturday, one of the most famous Tube stations is closed, and now there are no buses. By now I’m pretty hungry, too. The only restaurants on the major street are cafés near the corner. I think about stopping in at one, but then as I’m crossing the street to get to them, construction workers who’ve just shown up start to jackhammer the street. Dust and noise fill the area, and the poor people already sitting at outside tables are shocked. They stare, and it’s obvious they expect that their quiet outrage will have some kind of effect. It doesn’t. It does change my mind, however.
Forget Portabello Road. I’m hungry, I’m annoyed, and I want to get out of this cheesy neighborhood and just go into the park and get as far away from traffic and noise as I can. I’ll just get a take-out lunch somewhere. So I walk around the corner and find a tiny sandwich place. At least they have a bathroom. So, at last, I have a sandwich and a Coke in a bag, I’ve still got my book and towel to sit on, so I’m headed into the park.
Now I don’t think I’ve been to this part of Hyde Park, and it is a very large place, so I decide to look at the giant map and figure out how to get over to the water. The Serpentine, as it’s called, is sort of near the center of the park, as I recall, and there are parts of it that are rather far from the big roads. You can still hear traffic, but it sounds far away. And that’s what I want, especially with the jack hammering and construction work going on behind me.
The map is confusing, though. At first I can’t figure out why. I know, I’m the most directionally challenged person alive, but I’m staring at a huge map painted on a wooden sign, so I should be able to figure out at least where I am and where, in general, I want to head. There’s a man standing next to me. He’s of East Indian descent, bald, with a backpack on as well. He also seems confused. We begin to chat, and it dawns on me that the map is backwards. It’s right in front of the gate through which I entered the park, but instead of showing the gate behind us, it’s set up as if you’re facing the gate. Which is totally dumb. The same map is not painted on the other side of the sign (I checked). So this map is facing the wrong way. I’m glad I wasn’t the only one totally confused by this. The man and I chat for a bit, and then decide that we’ll walk together to the Serpentine, which we think we may know the way to, or at least the general direction in which to head.
As we walk and talk, I begin to sense that something is very different about this man. For one thing, he tells me he’s 45 years old, but I would’ve thought him much younger. He has an innocence, or something, about him that makes him seem young. Not innocence, exactly. It’s more like a lack of knowledge about very common things. As if he’s from a very foreign and backward place or something. But he says he lives in London. He speaks almost like a child. He’s not unintelligent, it’s not that. But he says things like “I said to myself ‘It’s such a nice day outside, I’ll go walk in the park’”. If it had come from an elderly lady it wouldn’t have seemed strange, but from him it seemed odd. We stop to ask some folks if they know where the Serpentine is, and one of the young women has an iPhone with a working GPS. (Mine, remember, is unusable to me as it will cost me a lot. Sigh.) After talking to them, the man says he’s heard about these phones, but doesn’t know much about them. I tell him how the GPS works, how the apps you can get for the phone use the location service to show you not only where you are, but where things are around you, etc. Again, it wasn’t his lack of knowing about iPhones so much as the way he said described his ignorance.
We decide to sit together and chat some more. He’s quite sweet, in a very young way. Gradually it comes out that he used to be a bus driver, and then a driving instructor in London. He’s no longer working as is a “COBber,” a word he’s quite proud of coining. This means Comfortable On Benefits. His flat is paid for, he gets a bit of a stipend, and basically, if he lives on the cheap, he doesn’t have to worry about working. I’m wondering if he has some mental handicap, given the way he talks and expresses himself. But that doesn’t quite seem right, either.
He tells me he has no TV, and no computer, just a small radio. He also tells me that he stays in almost all the time, even on nice days. Just can’t seem to motivate himself to do much of anything. Today is a big day for him, because he managed to get himself up and out the door, with the grand plan of walking through the park to a substance abuse recovery meeting. He seems to think that he’ll make it to the meeting on time (at 2:00pm) even though it’s going on 1:30pm. I share my sandwich with him (it was dreadful—white bread and they put both the mayo and mustard on both sides of the watery ham, with nothing on the other side).
Then we walk through the park, take some photos. Here’s one of a statue of a heron:
Heron Statue in Hyde Park
We pass by a fenced lawn, which I presume is for young children and their parents.
People Sunning and Relaxing in Hyde Park
My companion says, in his child-like way, that he’s not sure that theory is correct, given that there are people in there that definitely do not have children. He seems to think that if this was a playground area, then people without children would not be allowed in. This strikes me as very strange, but I concede that I don’t actually know. He considers it quite the mystery.
We pass a lovely garden area, and he very kindly agrees to take photos of me by the flowers. These iris pix are for my mother, as she loves irises and these are in top form:
Irises in Hyde Park
Me with Irises
There are also lovely clematis plants. I’ve tried to grow these flowers many times in the Bay Area, but I don’t think I’ve ever lived where there’s enough sunshine for them. In Hyde Park they were flourishing and beautiful.
Clematis in Hyde Park
There are also charming areas with fountains, climbing roses, and benches on which to sit and enjoy the beauty of Nature.
Fountains Near the Queen’s Garden in Hyde Park
We end up walking all the way through the park to a Tube stop. I’ve given up on my idea of sitting and reading in the park as the sky has darkened considerably and rain is threatening, and my new acquaintance needs to get to his meeting. We part ways, having enjoyed spending the time together.
On the way home I think about the people I’ve met while wandering around the city. There was Algis, the lonely Lithuanian young man. There was the man from Birmingham and his autistic son in line at the London Eye. And now there was this man, whose name I don’t remember. I guess because I’m out and about while most locals are working, the people I meet are the ones who are also tourists, or who are not working for one reason or another. It’s hard to get to know “normal” locals, especially with the convention about not making eye contact or starting conversations with strangers. This line of thought keeps me busy all the way home.
I have perfect timing, too, because just as I make it up the stairs and into the flat, it starts to rain. And it rains more heavily than the usual drizzle, too, so I’m doubly glad to be back home. My day turned out completely different than I’d planned, but it was fine, and interesting in its own right. I’m glad to be in a position to not care that much if plans go awry. I still have time to enjoy London, although I know I won’t make it to Portabello Road. But I don’t care so much. Gotta leave something for when I return. Which I hope will be soon. I’d really like to continue my studies here. Since I’m not sure now how that can come about, I decide not to worry about it. Instead, I make dinner and read my book. Ahhhhhh. How nice.
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