Random Walk
After seeing Dana et al last Saturday in Primrose Hill, we stop by our old stomping grounds for a drink at the Warrington Hotel, which is a hotel in name only. Built in 1859 and refurbished in 1999, it was once a hotel in the late 1800's and rumoured to be a brothel, which must have worried the Church of England, who were its owners at the time. Pardieu. Gordon Ramsey bought the place several years ago and now has a restaurant on the second floor above the bar area (it used to be a Thai restaurant). The downstairs way cool and adorned with original features like marble pillars, ornately carved and turned in dark wood. Art Nouveau friezes - naked women! - embellish the horseshoe shaped bar, with its stained glass, tulip-shaped lamps and an illuminated alcove. The large marble fireplace remains untouched from another era. A thick oak divider, once separating the main room from side areas when the sexes parted for their tipple, remains in place, if ignored. Superb.
A half block from the Warrington our flat on Lauderdale Mansions (pictured), a tree lined block that makes me think of London from the '40s. Red brownstones, working women with fake hose and German planes flying overhead and the V2 rocket but everybody getting on with it - stiff upper lip, and all that. It's my little fantasy so why not? This Eitan and Madeleine's first home, and it seems like yesterday I was bringing each home thinking: "what next?" The building overlooks the second largest private garden in London and our bedroom faced a grassy field and treeline, blocking out other buildings - and yet ten minutes to Oxford Street on the No. 9 "route-master," an iconic double-decker red bus replaced some five years in Livington's attempt to modernise this great city. Sir Alec Guinness lived in the mansion and Alan Turing around the corner. Two NHS doctors upstairs partied like it was 1999 and neighbor Martin, a taxi driver tough in black leather jacket, bangs on the door to see if I am interested in "putting out the racket." I quietly passed. Those were mixed times from tech boom to bust then recreation but happily life moves forward and from that epoque I have Sonnet and family, some true friends and two healthy Shakespeares. What more could one ask for ever in life?
