Family Breakfast at The Wolseley Piccadilly

Oldest  son Ed having come to England for a 40th birthday treat for his wife Gillian, most of us decided to meet them both for breakfast at The Wolseley Restaurant in Piccadilly London. Maytrees ma and family where unfortunately not present, as the breakfast clashed with a long standing prior  family appointment.

Wimbledon mainline station  being closed for new track laying, mrs maytrees, maytrees min and myself decided to travel to Town by Uber and meet maytrees mi, Ed and Gillian there. 

The travel went perfectly as did the meal where we were provided with an upstairs table for six in a small alcove. Reminiscing about pre-nationalisation British Railways breakfasts, I chose a grilled kipper with mustard butter followed by croissant with oodles of coffee,

Given the gloriously sunny weather, after bidding farewell to Ed and Gillian who were flying back to Jersey from Heathrow Airport, the rest of us decided to walk back to Victoria Station for the District Line home.

Green Park was very crowded so much so that we realised that people were waiting to see the King meet  with President Zelinski. following the dreadful time the latter must have had when meeting President Trump with Vice President JD Vance during the previous day.

None the less we had a very pleasant spring walk through the crowds to Victoria  Station where we caught a Wimbledon bound Underground train promptly.

 

 

                                    A most enjoyable but all too brief, family reunion.

Pope Francis - Hope Part II

 Pope Francis is currently a patient within the Gemilli Hospital in Rome

Each passing hour brings the future of Pope Francis into perspective. Many in Rome have gathered outside his hospital for prayer.  His autobiography is entitled Hope which in the current climate of war and strife in the world and the behaviour of the current President of the USA towards his supposed friends, is apt.

There is an intriguing article in today's Sunday Times signifying the likelihood of  Cardinals  already meeting in groups to discuss what might occur next and quietly who to consider as his successor. Like many political groupings in the free world, they are apparently splitting to left and right wing members.

There I gather  is a risk of excommunication should such group discussions go too far but the film Conclave which  mrs maytrees and I saw recently, probably gives an almost non-fictional account of the likely events and factions in practice. Certainly the book on the same topic,by Robert Harris, is very readable - Conclave

We can but await developments with prayer, interest and hope.

 

Brompton Cemetery

Having recently learned that Brompton Cemetery is a Royal Park as are Hyde Park  and Bushey Park in London and Surrey, mrs maytrees and I decided to visit the cemetery yesterday, having a year or two back enjoyed a visit with younger brother John and his wife Jan, to Highgate Cemetry Highgate Cmetery. Neither of us had visited Brompton Cemetery previously having only just learned of its existence,

Unlike  Brompton Cemetery, Highgate Cemetery is not a Royal Park though neither of  course is Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris, which I have visited several times enroute to the TGV to Lourdes from the nearby train terminus..

Montparnasse Cemetery is a sprawl of interesting and beautiful graves  and Highgate has many tombs and graves which include that of Lenin and Alexander Litvinenko who  the Russians seem to have  assassinated,   as he died from Polonium-210.

Mrs maytrees and I traveled to West Brompton on the District Line from Wimbledon and found the cemetery next door to the station. Intitially however, we turned left rather than right from the station, and were soon lost but came across the huge Earls Court  housing redevelopment which like many housing issues in England, has been delayed by objections about for example concerning affordable housing and architectural  appearance. My own thought was that both West Brompton Overground and District Line stations would be overwhelmed by the thousands of people eventually expected  to reside within the old Earls Court site. However that will not be for years hence.

Having been guided back to the correct route by a helpful stranger, who said how much he enjoyed the flowers on many graves there, we soon entered the cemetery.

The grave of Emmeline Pankhurst the famous suffragette is at Brompton and is pictured above.

The cemetery chapel has only just been restored and opened and may be visited at weekends.

Near to the grave of Emily Pankhurst is that of Doctor John Snow who did much groundbreaking research into  the scourge of Cholera.

There is also a decent cafe nearby which suited us for home made cake and tea.

Opposite  the cafe was a very attractive small but modern, information office from which we received maps and directions to graves which we wished to see.

The grave of Sir Henry Cole without whom the V&A might not have been built is within the cemetery as is that of Metropolitan Anthony, who was head of the Russian Orthodox and Patriarchal Church in Great Britain and Ireland. His grave is one of the most visited apparently.

Some of the graves are very large and ornate but we gathered that such would not be permitted today although a burial site at some £1,000s seems expensive enough anyway. For example the tomb below

Three times a year one can visit the tombs or catacombs underground. We visited the underground catacombs at Palermo in Sicily which were very bizarre and interesting though I am not sure I would would wish to see them there again.

Overall a very interesting visit,  especially as the rain held off until the Underground District Line  arrived back in Wimbledon.

The Ivy Cafe Wimbledon Village

A late Christmas present to generous youngest sister, was for mrs maytrees and I to take her out to high tea in Wimbledon Village, which we duly did earlier this week.

Youngest sister and mrs maytrees pictured on the left enjoyed their hamburger and chips as depicted on the left. For myself 'The Ivy Classic Shepherd's Pie' looked excellent despite a good friend of mrs maytrees, apparently having said that upon her visit to the same cafe, the portion provided was too small. In fact the shepherd's pie and accompanying vegetables which I ordered were delicious and of ideal quantity. 

Possibly my being of small build was an advantage but an excellent main course for myself at least..

Youngest sister had a glass of  Sussex Nytimber bubbly whereas I enjoyed a non alcoholic blood orange splitz.

For pudding, we all opted for baked apple  tart, flamed with Calvados  despite the warning on the menu that this could take 14 minutes to prepare.

The flamed apple tart was enjoyed by the three of us and after teas and coffee the meal concluded with us all having enjoyed the company and sumptuous repasts.  

The meals were excellently served by two waiters, the youngest   of whom lived locally.

A great late Christmas present.

 

Lest we forget

 

                                                                   

                                                     Auschwitz 80 years ago

2025 Politics

                                                 

Much of the democratic world has moved or is moving to the political  right, including not only the USA but also much of the EU. 

The UK with its huge Labour Party majority in parliament's House of Commons, is a clear exception. Thus we have Sir Keir Starmer as Prime Minister

Originally I had felt that President Trump as president once more would be  OK for the Western world, given that Biden had very late in the day stood down for Karmila Harris to stand as the left winger in the Presidential  election.

Although the Americans do not  overtly label their "Democratic" party  as left wing, in realty surely that is what they are. Had I been a voter in the USA I would have not been attracted to vote for Trump or Harris both of whose parties seem more extreme than their UK counterpart political parties whether Tory of Labour. Possibly a vote for an independent candidate would have been my answer.

However in the UK, right wing politicians are also making their influence felt in the form of the Reform Party of Nigel Farage. Indeed a recent opinion poll places Reform ahead of  all other political parties here. Not least because the Labour government with its huge majority has only recently been elected I doubt that the opinion poll at this stage means very much at all.

Furthermore Reform has few policies and little track record as a party, though Nigel Farage its leader was under the former UKIP politicians, instrumental in securing the UK Brexit vote under which the country departed from the  now increasingly right wing, EU.

Reverting to. President Trump;  early days yet  but from what I have read  so far, of the autobiography of Pope Francis,  entitled  Hope, from his chapter   on mankind's commonality,    and from Trump's actions already taken, of forcing undocumented immigrants, some of long residence in the USA,   to Mexico or their 'homelands', the prospects seem bleak to me.'. 

Add to the above, President  Trump's spoken  threats on world trade, Greenland and The Panama Canal,  the world's prospects for the next few years seem grey at best..

 

Hope - Pope Francis

Having purchased but not yet read  the autobiography of Pope Francis, I can do little better than copy below the introduction from his book from Waterstones from whom it was purchased:.

The wish of Pope Francis was for HOPE, on which he has been working for six years, to be published posthumously. However, with the Jubilee Year of Hope coming in 2025 and the pressing needs of our times have urged Pope Francis to share this personal legacy now.

HOPE is the revelatory first-ever autobiography to be published by a sitting Pope. Beginning in the early years of the twentieth century, Pope Francis tells the story of his life from his childhood in Buenos Aires to his calling and the whole of his papacy to the present day, while reflecting on controversial questions from global conflicts to the future of the Church, and discussing his personal passions from football to tango.

HOPE is both powerful and intimate, inspiring and full of stories never told before. It is the story of a life and, at the same time, a touching moral and spiritual testament that will fascinate readers throughout the world and will represent his legacy of hope for future generations.
Author Biography

Born in Buenos Aires on December 17, 1936, the son of Italian migrants, the first of five children born in the working-class barrio of Flores, Jorge Mario Bergoglio qualified as a chemical technician, graduated in philosophy in 1963, and became a priest in 1969. He was appointed provincial of the Jesuits of Argentina in 1973, and was named auxiliary bishop in 1992, archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1998, and created cardinal in 2001. In 2013, he became the Bishop of Rome and the 266th Pope of the Catholic Church