Post #4 Arrival in London

There has been too great a gap since the last time I wrote. It is hard to live to the fullest in 2010, and try to delve into 1966! Eric and I traveled from Southampton to London and spent a day or two at a Methodist guest house--the name and exact location escape me. It was not far from South Kensington. But one contact led to another and we ended up with a room in a rather rundown Victorian hotel a short walk from Gloucester Road underground station. I have the exact address on Harrington Gardens and will give it in a later post.
Eric was already working at the engineering firm near Westminster Abbey, so I made the contacts. This student hostel was being run by a retired major from the colonial service (Kenya most of the time, I believe). He had a walrus mustache and a monocle, and wore a fresh red rose in his lapel each day. Who could ask for more for our London summer? The major had a wife quite a bit younger than himself and three small children. They had a fairly large apartment in the building. Others, all foreign students, each had a room. I asked if we could live there, and was told no--"Americans are too picky and complaining." I promised we would not complain about anything and after much discussion, for some reason the Major decided to take a chance on us. We moved into our one room apartment and shared bathroom down the hall.
Our room was comfortably large with a closet, an armoire, a gas fireplace, a two burner gas ring "stove"--no oven--a sink, a small, square table and two chairs, and two twin beds. Oh yes, in front of the fireplace there were two old, greasy looking arm chairs. It took some time to get up the nerve to sit in those chairs!
We loved our experiences, because this place was still a part of a London of the past that has mostly disappeared in the onslaught of modernization. We quickly learned that when the gas ran out in the gas burners, that meant we had to put some shillings in the meter on the floor near the fireplace. I knew to do this because I remembered Eric's mother's tales of England when they had to add coins to the gas line.
We had no refrigeration, but neither did Auntie Dorothy down in Southampton! You shopped daily and depended on the cooler weather! So we bought glass containers of milk that were probably about a pint in size. We bought our groceries every couple of days.
We set the small table by the one window we had. It looked out of the roofs and chimney pots of London, and our constant visitors were the pigeons. We actually had a pet pigeon or two who came to our windowsill regularly for the bread crumbs we would give them. Of course, like most of Europe, the window had no screen. We pushed up the sash and enjoyed our sense of the outdoors while eating there.
Each morning I would walk with Eric to the underground station. Halfway there we would stop at a little grocery store (really little) and pick up two Bismarks (round doughnuts filled with jam and rolled in sugar) for a threepence and a pint of milk. We would eat this as we walked the rest of the way to the station. Eric would give me a hug goodby and join the London business men in their striped suits and bowler hats with umbrellas over their arm. He paid a 6 pence to ride from there to Victoria Station and then walk a short way toward Westminster Abbey to his office. More about the office later!