City green spaces

You don’t think of the City as having green spaces, but it does - and plenty more than you think. We headed into town over Easter to visit some old haunts to see how they’ve changed, and if I’m honest for some different views. Before this visit, our last trip into town was a wet Monday evening for dinner at Blixen, in gold trainers no less, back in March 2020. We were long overdue a visit.

Arriving into Cannon Street we first headed up towards St Pauls, through Paternoster Square over the road and past the small green space above before heading over to Postman’s Park, which I first visited back in 2014, having failed to find it in all the time I worked in the City.

The camellias were in flower and I could’t help but stop and admire them and read some of the heroic memorials.

I was quite taken with how the moss is creeping along the girders, softening them. From here we headed towards the Guild Hall, which as a sign of the times is now a Covid test centre, so no photos from there. We headed around towards Wood Street and found another pocket garden, this one with a fabulous magnolia tree in full flower.

And some hedges which reflect the state of the nation’s hair.

We crossed London Wall rising up onto the walkways of the Barbican, which even on its outskirts has some fabulous architecture and is more than just concrete.

Even on the walkway there were pockets of green, and more. As you can see below the space is much more interesting with what looks like a historic ruin, places to sit and sculptures too.

And many of the walkways were edged with living walls similar to this. There’s way more green spaces in the City than you’d expect - if you get to visit, look out for it, I’m pretty sure you’ll be surprised.

Post Comment Love 16-18 April

Welcome to this week’s #PoCoLo - a friendly linky which I co-host with Suzanne, where you can link any post published in the last week. We know you’ll find some great posts to read, and maybe some new-to-you blogs too, so do pop over and visit some of the posts linked and share some of that love. If you were here last week it was great to have you along, if you’re new here this week we’re pleased you’re here.

I don’t know about you, but following the changes as part of the next step of the Roadmap here in the UK, nothing much in my daily life has changed. We haven’t been to a pub, or even met up with people outside. I am going to the hairdresser’s tomorrow, for a cut that’s well overdue. And I’m looking forward to that - my last hair cut was due in mid January, so it’s been a while.

What we have done since Easter is venture slightly further afield for a walk, and it’s been nice to see some different views. At Easter we headed into the City and wandered around - and that’s where this week’s photo is from. Part of our route took us to Spitalfields where the food trucks were open. We arrived at lunchtime-ish so we ate there, and admired Dogman and Rabbitgirl.

My post this week is from a walk last weekend along the Thames Path, so more different views. I love Greenwich Park and where we live, but it’s been good to see a little bit more, maybe soon we’ll broach seeing actual people and going to some of the places that have opened.

DOGMAN AND RABBITGIRL

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A bathroom refresh update

Back in January I shared our plans to refresh our bathroom which was booked to take place in February. On the day our plumber arrived, but only to ask if we would allow this to be rearranged. It was one of the snowy days in February, and many of his other clients were suffering broken boilers. It was a cold day and not the day to be without heating or hot water, and so we rearranged, knowing that we would want other people to do the same for us.

So last month the plumbers returned and the work could start in earnest. But first a couple of before photos:

The sink, the toilet and the shower were all being replaced. The tiles on the floor and walls, the cabinets and the shower enclosure were all staying. This may have made it trickier but we’re not ones for replacing things that continue to work perfectly well.

Like many refurbishment projects, quite often it gets worse before it gets better. And ours was no different. This was taken at the end of day 1:

The day hadn’t gone well. The sink refused to come off the wall. It had been glued and bolted to the wall, this could have been a contributory factor to the stress veins in the photo above. In the end a rather large hammer was taken to it - at one point the second plumber asked his boss, if he needed a bigger hammer. Yes, it was that kind of day.

The replacement shower had different fixings, even though it looked as if they were the same, and that wasn’t easy to remove either. They were loathed to smash the tile until they were sure we had a replacement tile. We did, and I knew exactly where they were - in our gabion baskets of course. Thankfully not under the pizza oven, but in the seating alongside it. Not in the shed like normal people! Though that’s unfair, they had been in the shed until we put these together and in an attempt to clear the shed some more, we used these until the slabs in the smaller baskets. That did mean one was easy to rescue, and I think the plumbers were slightly bemused by the fact too.

But it did mean they could do this.

They left for the evening, and after an afternoon of hopping about waiting to use our second loo (which they thankfully did sort for me) you’d think things couldn’t have gotten any worse.

And then they did.

The second loo, our spare loo, failed. It wouldn’t stop filling up and so they came back. But the mechanism failed and so overnight we didn’t have a flushing loo, one of the most stressful nights we’ve had in a while, I can tell you. By now I was making contingency loo plans, trying to work out where my nearest loo would be, apart from our neighbours, and in a pandemic.

But thankfully it wasn’t needed, as at the end of day 2 it looked more like this. It needed a clean, but it all worked, and so did our second loo. Phew.

The shower and the replacement tile were also in place and working. There had been much discussion amongst the plumbers on which colour grout to use, which was entertaining and welcome, as it showed the pride they had in their work and in doing a great job for us.

We’ve a few more things to do, including painting the shelves and built in useful cupboard, but it’s good to see the changes so far, which have brought it up-to-date, provided extra storage and reintroduced hot showers!

More to follow, but first I need to find paint to complement the very dark navy of the unit above, to transform our dark brown/almost black handy storage cupboard, and then to buy it and finish the job. Small steps, and all that.