Julie's Awfully Big Adventure

Well I'm sorry about the cheesy title, but it does reflect how it felt.  Julie and I took the trip into London yesterday for the first time in about a year.  It is not just the train journey which worries her, but the inevitable crowds, the unfamiliar streets and the regular media reports of terrorist threat.  Tube travel is definitely out: from Julie's point of view, tubes are a horrible conjunction of crowds, loud noise, scary darkness, enclosed spaces, and news reports about the 7/7 bombings. Put like that, why would you want to travel on them?

Despite the worries, we decided to go because Julie has begun to enjoy looking at art, and having exhausted most of our local resources, I wanted to show her some really great art, face-to-face in the National Gallery.  I also thought it was about time she had a challenge; she has been fairly stable for a few weeks now, and I know from past experience that you have to move quite quickly to prevent the old habits of timidity and dependency becoming fixed.

Planning the trip took quite a lot of attention to detail, and I am so glad that modern technology meant I could answer almost every anxious question about London before we even left home.  Fortunately travel with Julie has forced me to try London buses, which are actually very good.  And once in London I used my smart phone all the time - to check when the next bus was due, look for somewhere to eat dinner, or work out where the nearest park was.

I think it was a success.  Julie remained nervous and rather fragile, but she genuinely enjoyed the gallery.  I showed her the website in advance so she already knew which rooms she wanted to concentrate on (Goya and then the Impressionists).  The National Gallery has a brilliant system of audio guides, which give you information about virtually every painting.  This helped her concentrate, and screen out the distraction of noise and crowds around us (after all, this was Saturday afternoon in a free national collection!)  Also, the staff at the audio guide desk were lovely, and a smile and a chat were a very good calming start to the visit.  I had to make sure we took breaks for coffee and cakes - there are lots of good cafes in the gallery - because I could see she was pushing herself a bit too hard at times.

What didn't work quite so well was the free time after we left the gallery.  Julie was tired and spontaneity is difficult for her.  Fortunately St James Park is not far from the National (and has pelicans) and it was warm enough to sit on the grass and eat an ice cream.  Then we tried a boat trip to round off the day, with mixed results.  Yes, it was a welcome rest, but it was very crowded, you couldn't get off easily, and the water was quite choppy.  Still, Julie managed to sit it out and said gallantly that she had enjoyed it.

Our stickiest point came on Westminster Bridge after getting off the boat.  I know poets have written odes, and painters have painted canvases on Westminster Bridge in the past, but they would be hard put to do this in the twenty first century.  These days there are hustlers every ten yards (all doing the same three cup trick), interspersed with hot dog sales and souvenir stalls.  All human life is there, crammed onto the pavement with the traffic roaring past.  At the other end was the lure of a noodle bar I had spotted on my smart phone.  I gave Julie alternatives, but after thinking it over, she decided she would brave the crowd on the bridge to get to the reward of noodles.  It was a tough hundred yards, but they did turn out to be excellent noodles at the end: warm, very tasty and comforting after a long day.