London/Norwich: catching up

Katriona lives in west Kensington, and I stayed with her for 2 nights before I went to Norwich. She met my mother and John in New Zealand, and I also stayed in her apartment in Rome a few years ago. She has a UK passport, but she grew up in Italy and went to grad school in Paris. In addition to her husband Oly (who is American and was in the states when I visited), she lives with 2 film makers, Alex (from Mexico) and Nick (from Italy). Katriona has written books (in Italian) on meditation, the psychological meaning of masks and performance, and what sounds like a kind of a Joseph Cambell type of thing about archtypes and psychology (what her degree is in).

We went to see My Architect (for her second time) the first night. (she is thinking about making a similar film about her Grandfather who was a famous Swedish doctor.) I didn't care much for the guy's architecture (except the building in medical research center in SoCal and the one in Bangladesh), but the son's effort to get to know his dead father was deeply moving. And it also made me uncomfortable. Maybe this is my own issue, but I didn't think this father, who was really not a very nice person (he had 3 families simultaniously, never publically acknowledged the filmmaker as his son or married the mother, and only very occasionally made time for any of them bc he was always working), deserved for his son to dedicate years of his life and make a film about him. I felt like the son gave more than his father deserved.

But upon further reflection, maybe the film (which has received critical acclaim, giving the son a name in the industry) is actually something that the dead father has given back to his son. Maybe we don't do things for each other. Maybe we do everything for ourselves, and in the end, we are the only ones who benefit or suffer for it.

I had one free day in London that time, and Alex created the itinerary. I walked along the south side of the Thames between Westminster and Tower Bridge, stopping off here and there, but mostly at the Tate Modern. Performance artists in crazy costumes stand still along the walkway until someone gives them money. This is common throughout the western world actually, but never have I seen them in such high concentrations and in such crazy costumes.

Katriona kindly offered to drive me, pick up my mother at Stanstead Airport, and take us both to Norwich. Crossing London was absolute gridlock -- it took hours -- this was not in the congestion pricing zone. There was also a lot of traffic around Cambridge. Once we arrived in Norwich, we toured the cathedral before it closed and then had some beer at the oldest pub in Norfolk, the Adam and Eve. Flowers poured out of the every available receptical. Maureen met us there.

I've already told you about NVC, which was how we spent that weekend. I only want to add that the class included lots of interesting characters.

My mother and I spent the rest of the week at Maureen's place outside Norwich (drinking all of her wine and trying to make a dent in the food in her freezer). She lives with her 18 year old son, Robert, and her 94-year-old maiden aunt, Bebe. There is a rail-to-trail pathway nearby which we took almost every day. My mother wakes up early, but strangly she seems to need to go back to bed around 9, which meant that we never got out of the house before noon. I noticed this when I visited them in La Vienne as well.

We biked to nearby towns to see churches and town squares, Blickling Hall (where Anne Bolynn was born), Norwich, etc. These trips usually involved a stop at a local pub for some excellent beer. We also took a day trip to Cambridge, where we did not make it through all the main sites, but we did have some excellent fish and chips.

I am sure I have a lot more to say about this, but I am all blogged out at the moment. Thanks for listening.