We’re off to Hammersmith for a good part of the day, starting with breakfast, and including shops and the Library where Christian found solace and comfort (and WIFI !) during his first weeks here.

Love you all! xo

Mid day in Hammersmith:

My first breakfast in London was French! We had crêpes at La Petite Bretagne (Christian had apple cinnamon, I had Belle Hélène), followed by a walk along the Thames Path with its riverfront pubs and houseboat islands.

It was my first glimpse of the Thames. Not the touristy Thames, but the one that wraps itself around everyday life, and upon which people live, work, and depend.

Exiting Hammersmith, I was guided by The Ark: not Noah’s, but instead one belonging to General Electric (Real Estate).

This strange and beautiful building had an astonishing effect upon me: it whooshed me back home with thoughts of my former students at G.E. Lighting, in Lachine, Québec. I wondered if maybe some of them knew of The Ark, and if so, what they thought of this unconventional and iconic building that sits within sight of LAMDA, which is, incongruously, a global beacon of the dramatic arts.

Such strange bedfellows along Talgarth Road (which is just the A4 in disguise).

An afternoon walk in West Brompton Cemetery:

With jet lag still tugging at my energy, and Christian hoping to conserve his for the demands of the week’s worth of performances of Shakespeare that lay just ahead, we ended our day in the deep green quiet of West Brompton Cemetery where I watched the magpies and felt the weight of generations.

Until now, all I knew of this place was that during his year in London, Christian found quietude here (I found it too), and that it appeared in a long scene in Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation.

Stained and lopsided, the monuments we sat among spoke of love and loss, but also of their growing irrelevance in a culture rushing into the future.