A long weekend in London

Hello again

If you were wondering what's up, I spent a long weekend -- Thursday afternoon to late Monday evening -- travelling to and from London for a two-day translators' conference on Sat/Sun (The translator as a strategic partner [to their clients]).

After the three-hour journey by train from Oban to Glasgow followed a bit of a wait and then a long, tedious, noisy, bumpy journey by FirstScotrail's Caledonian sleeper to London Euston (my gripe: clean and reasonably well-serviced train with friendly staff, but antiquated, claustrophobia-inducing compartments hammered by noise from what I assume to be an auxiliary engine in the underbelly of the carriage). It's an exercise I'm not very likely to repeat: 8+ mostly noisy hours instead of 4.5 daytime hours by the much quieter (if not much less bumpy) superfast Virgin train. Don't know when I'll go "down the road" again; I'll scout around for possibilities then.

Stayed with M1, my sister-in-law's sister, who is also a great friend, and we had a good time when I was not in conference. She lives in a beautifully spacious and airy (1970s?) place with huge windows, but no double glazing, which makes for a rather draughty flat.

London N22 sunrise -- ca 08:17AM -- if you look carefully, you just might see the thin sliver of moon above the bare tree --
this was the view that greeted me on my first London morning in many, many years
And this was the view out of the kitchen window, in the other direction -- what a gorgeous tree!

I felt restless during my first night in the big city and I went to the kitchen at one point for a glass of hot water. Looking out the window from the unlit kitchen -- there's so much light all round, you don't need to switch on the light -- I saw what I first thought was a cat with a spectacularly bushy tail. But it moved oddly for a cat and was rather on the big side. Eventually, I made out that it was a fox slinking along the edge of the pavement, almost blotting itself into the wall. It zoomed across the open space and vanished inside the bin enclosure that you can see bottom left in the photo above. I was mesmerised. Wildlife in London, fantastic! So, of course I waited for a few minutes to see where the creature would go next. And I was rewarded: the fox came out of the enclosure and slunk off towards a clump of trees to the left. Whether that is where it stayed, I have no way of telling -- it could have gone anywhere from there.
The next day I commented on this to M1 and she said coolly, 'Oh yes, we have quite a family of foxes here. What you saw last night was probably one of the male youngsters venturing out on his own.'
Could that be? I don't know enough about foxes.
It was COLD in London, with snow on the ground on Sunday morning.

The view from 'my' bedroom window in London at about 8AM on Sunday.

No, that car is not grey, that's snow. An hour later the snow had covered the ground and it was treacherously slippery out there. Later on the sun came out, it got warmer and there was a massive downpour of rain before it got a bit colder again.
In the evening M1 and I wrapped up warm and went for a tasty Indian meal before hitting a cinema to see Burn After Reading. Fascinating film by the Coen brothers. We came away shaking our heads at the senselessness of it all but ended up discussing its implications for quite some time. I think it is about the old Chinese warning to beware of having one's wishes come true: the female protagonist gets her wish for a plastic surgery makeover but has lost everyone and everything else in her life.

To go back to Friday, I also caught up with M2, a woman I have been friends with since we were shorthand typists in the same typing pool in 1973!

The conference itself was in a beautiful assembly hall, the Camden Centre. Built in 1937, with a fabulous painted ceiling in the shape of a vast, stylized flower. Lots of pale yellow and pale blue, with a bit of gilding. A gorgeous chandelier. Lots of oak panelling along the walls, beautiful hard-wood floor. Very tasteful.
Immediately next door is a school, the Argyle Primary School, in fact. I wonder where the name of that school comes from...
Taste is the rule in the area, it seems, which has benefited greatly from the presence of the New British Library and the Eurostar station:
Just opposite the Camden Centre is the newly restored and expanded St. Pancras train station for the superfast Eurostar trains. Very clean and airy and light, a "shed" that rises high into the sky and has an unbelievable span. It's all written up here, so I'm not going into details about the history or Barlow, the architect. The first time I saw it on Friday night, en route to our first networking event at a restaurant in the building, my jaw dropped. I think we all just stood there and looked and were amazed.

On ground level, of course, the usual commercial stuff, albeit tastily done and in neat glass cases rather than the unwieldy, ugly metal containers that clutter up so many other train stations: expensive clothing, expensive accessories, overpriced candy, overpriced and/or tacky souvenirs, and so many food shops I lost count. Also, for what it's worth, a very good Boot's and Marks & Spencer's. The place is redeemed, however, by that gorgeous arched vault, seemingly weightless and immaterial -- pure magic!

The conference was excellent. I'm in a weird half-way position between literary and technical/commercial translations. A lot of what applies to my more "run-of-the-mill" colleagues is therefore of not much use to me. I have come away feeling reassured that it's ok to steer clients in the direction of actually useful copy that will do the job, rather than the "faithful" translations many of them still demand. A very slow education task... Also, it was interesting to see what dire conditions most of my ilk have to put up with (very little time, very low pay), and how much progress has been made in the field of computer-aided translation.
There were 260 signed-up participants. People had travelled in from all over and it was really good to meet some new colleagues, as well as actually see some people face to face that I've only ever been in touch with on the phone or via the internet. We shall see whether any new business will blossom from this.

The evening events were great opportunities for socialising and networking, too. I travelled back to N22 quite late on Saturday and captured this impression of Xmas on the Tube:

The Spirit of Xmas Presence...

I should have given myself another day or two, really, to visit a few museums and galleries. Although I arrived in London nice and early, Friday was too short. M1 and I met M2 at the new Kings Place, which has a good contemporary art gallery. It sits in a cul-de-sac of the Camden Canals, and is another huge space, but very angular and chunky, not a patch on St. Pancras (old-style elegant and airy) or Bern's Zentrum Paul Klee (new-style elegant and airy). No matter. Nice to find that one of the main entrances to Kings Place is on Crinan Road. :) Made me feel right at home, just like the Argyle Primary School did at the conference venue.

As the weather was good, we walked a lot, past King's Cross and St. Pancras stations and on to Russell Square. I achieved one life-time ambition, which was to visit the London Review of Books bookshop -- I would have loved to just be locked up in there -- what a fantastic shop! M1 had to go to work and I accompanied M2 to some shops on Oxford Street where we ended up chasing after a new belt for me and shoes for M2 (both unsuccessfully). After that we needed to restore ourselves, which we did at Shakespears Head, a huge, traditional pub in the heart of the City, before I headed back out to London N22 (M1's) for a bit of a rest, and M2 returned to her home.

The journey north on Monday was fine and I arrived actually feeling not too tired at all, considering the no-sleep-at-all I caught on Thursday night, and the nights broken by the cold while I was in London. But my apartment was freezing and is still less than cosy as I type these lines. My fault, for not putting on the heat and for leaving doors open...

More later, all the best! It's good to be home!