“CHILLY for June,” my mother always sighs when winds turn razor sharp and brass monkeys fear being skinned. It was February, but it was “chilly for June”.
And because it was half term and because we had a dream time last year, we went back to London to walk the river, explore dark Dickensian streets, live on fancy fast food and visit that cinema where you can bring in your glass of wine and set it up on a little table attached to the side of your comfy big armchair.
“It’s a long way from the old QFT and the hard seats and the little desks for student lectures,” I said.
A friend treated me to a visit to the modern fancy QFT at Christmas. She even drove so I could enjoy the glass of wine with the film. We parked and started to dander to the cinema.
“Whoa there,” I had to tell her as she took a right straight up the back alleyway.
“That was never today nor yesterday. You don’t have to queue up that back alley to get in any more,” I said and we both laughed for long ago yesterdays when we were young.
In London, the wind nipped at our heels harder than last year. All of the city was on half term. You’d have needed the Pied Piper to control the hordes of small children teeming through the underground alleys and harassed parents lugging push chairs and musicians trying to raise a tune above the ruckus.
There was far too much worthy education going on – it was hard on all of us. In the national portrait gallery, small boys whinged for the toilet and got close up and way too personal to Elizabeth I.
Little girls dragged their heels, squatted on benches and made impossible bargains with grannies involving lemonade and buns after the Tudors. So many, there were just too many people streaming over Charing Cross bridge.
“Chilly for June,” I said as we wrapped ourselves up like Eskimos headed out into the Arctic and braved the freezing cold to walk the streets. We spotted a single black swan in St James’s Park; we walked Piccadilly and Old Bond Street and on up to the Wallace Collection – a gallery which was slightly off piste for the half termers and much more comfortable.
It was like the chateau of my youth, when I was the au pair and worked for Madame La Comtesse. She made nettle soup and thought I was her servant.
The Wallace had the same inlaid black lacquered cabinets, the same marquetry wooden floors and the same antiques as my chateau.
I told one of the curators about my countess. She led me to a corner and pointed to a polished wooden writing desk.
“See the M in the monogram – that’s Marie-Antoinette’s desk,” she told me.
I was entranced.
We walked past The Laughing Cavalier without really noticing his jolly smile from beneath that curly moustache.
We sighed at A Dance to the Music of Time. We paused at The Swing by Fragonard. It’s a chocolate-box painting – a young girl in a flouncy silk dress being pushed in the swing by her old husband so hard that her shoe flies up in the air.
But look, who is that hiding in the shadows at the other side of the picture? It’s her young lover.
“Worth the wind and the rain and the Arctic walk for this painting alone,” said my other half.
Worth the visit to London to feel the warmth of strangers. Marilyn has Irish blood, she said. She had met Daniel O’Donnell once – she worked in the airport – and now he sends her tickets to his show when he’s in London. She’s a big fan.
She gave us the secret of Richard’s List – free things to do in London – and made us promise to contact her if we needed anything. Her husband shared his gentle humour, his love of Spurs.
The young man serving in the hotel was from Naples and had a beautiful smile. The girl in the cinema said she’d love to visit Belfast. How come people are so chatty, I wondered.
“Because you talk to everyone,” said my other half.
It’s true. Age does it to you. You lose your inhibitions but you hear plenty.
“How was it?” asked my mother on our return.
“Aw, Ma,” I told her. “It was chilly for June.”
