Saturday / Eating / Spending money / Heaven? / At the airport

The architect can become so interested in forming all structural pars of a building that he loses sight of the fact that construction is, after all, means and no an end in itself. Steen Eiler Rasmussen

Saturday

Breakfast (see below), British museum (Rosetta Stone, Eastern Island statue, African modern art and costumes, shop, Greek vases, etc), bookstores, walking the Oxford Street, LRB bookstore, hotel, trying to get to the Michelin Chinese, Tuk Tuk, tube to Hammersmith (semi-naked teenagers, etc), beer in the lobby bar of Tavistok. Such.

Eating

Restaurants so far (Sunday, the 12th, 10am). On Friday evening, we had rather good South-Indian dinner at The vegetarian Paradise (59 Marchmont Street). The food was authentic, varied and surprisingly well prepared it being already 11pm. On Saturday, for breakfast and lunch, we called the Cafe in the Russell Square for authentic English food. My baked potato with tuna fish (cold, from the can) and baked beans was, well, filling and basic. S had fried bacon, eggs, and chips, which was not meant for weight watchers, or those with hearth problems. On Saturday evening, Thai food at Tuk Tuk, in Chinatown: fried rice, fried sea weed, squid, tom kha kai soup. Cheap, delicious, hot. Recommended, no frills though.

Spending money

The most decent (and civil) ways of spending one's money are. Travelling by train and staying in old hotels, eating in local non-pretentious restaurants, and buying books. Buying cars, electronic gadgets, and otherwise using money as means of boasting, self-gratification etc, are not right ways of spending money. Too few people read books today.

Heaven?

"If heaven is a bookshop, it is the London review of Books Bookshop" goes the local saying in London. I have to agree. The shop stock more than 20000 carefully selected books and almost nothing else, just few items memorabilia. I could spend days and all my money in the shop. Fortunately we got physically hungry and had to leave the shop with only one new book (Babies by M. Bywater).

In Waterstones, S bought Nick Hornby's Long way down. Reading Hornby is always a joy.

At the airport

When I was younger and greener, I found airports fascinating. I enjoyed spending time there, observing workers, travellers, machines. Not so anymore. After the budget airlines and terrorists took over, flying and airports are no fun anymore. Flying is just tedious, stressing, boring. I think I will avoid flying in the future. It must be possible to take a train or a boat to anywhere I want to go. If it is not, I may well not go.

Alun perin julkaistu kuukausikoosteessa "Blogs October to November 2006".