Carolyn

When I arrived on Sunday evening, Carolyn was playing viola in her living room with a swing quintet, whose members have played together for 20 years--just for the love of music. They were doing a rarely performed Mozart piece for strings that Carolyn loves. Mozart played viola so apparently he gave it the best bits in his compositions. After they tackled a piece by Mendelssohn, they had tea and cake and discussed a fugue with a repeat that goes on for an hour and 53 minutes and the time Andras Schiff stopped playing to scold someone who had opened several cough drops. There was something about the Goldberg variations. I sat there thinking this is a different world from anything I’ve ever known.

Monday night Carolyn sang in her Renaissance choir--Rossini. Tuesday night she threw a dinner party for five and made three courses of wonderful food. She is an amazing cook. Creamy polenta made from ground polenta flour--not the coarse stuff. Steamed spinach and some strange pasta served with a mixture of mushrooms and pecorino cheese. Dessert was pears stewed in a very rich, spicy sauce. Wednesday morning I was doing dishes--I try to contribute my own special talents when I visit her. She walked in and said: "It looks like the Aegean stables in here.” Later that day I told her I was going to swim with a friend at the Ladies Bathing Pond in Hampstead Heath, something Carolyn’s been trying to get me to do for months. I was asking whether my wallet, phone, keys would be safe if left by the pond. She said if any man came near the pond, the Bacchae women would get him. I had no idea what she was talking about. The Bacchae women were in a play by Euripides, apparently. I think they tore someone to death--I've already forgotten the plot.

Bottom line, Carolyn is a very interesting woman. She lives in a very simple flat. It is the bottom floor of a three-level townhouse--she sold the top two floors. The basement apartment where she lives now was once the nursery for her children, where the nanny held classes. Carolyn doesn’t have a car. She travels everywhere on her bike. Everything in her kitchen--bowls, casserole dishes, silverware--looks about 25 years old. Nothing in her apartment is new or stylish or anything other than serviceable.

I went to a breakfast this morning on sustainable finance. I met one of my heroes, Ben Caldecott, from Oxford. He’s done amazing work on stranded assets. Yesterday and today I met with the new CEO of Preventable Surprises. I was hoping for some direction from him--something that has always been in short supply at my organisation. He’s a bit breathless from his sprint up the learning curve so he isn’t ready to focus on communications issues. So this trip wasn’t productive from that perspective. But I always enjoy spending time with Carolyn--it’s like a window into another world.

When I got off my train this morning, this was the view:

I was on Blackfriars Bridge. I shouldn’t admit this, but when I got off, everyone turned right so I followed. My directions were to go a block away from the river to Queen Victoria Street, turn right, keeping the river on my right, and go about six blocks. I decided to walk beside the river, parallel to Queen Victoria Street. When I turned left, I went a few blocks and couldn’t find QVS. I came upon a map board and figured out I was on the wrong side of the river. This is the second time I’ve done this. I have no sense of direction. I study maps online before I head out for the day but it’s no use. Some day Google maps on my phone will be my friend, but so far I have resisted depending on my phone. And I’m not great at interpreting maps.

Good news is, I allowed an extra half hour, so I arrived at the breakfast on time--20 minutes wasted, 10 minutes to get to the meeting.
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