Hampstead Heath and Highgate Cemetery

First things first: we have a meeting today at Bishopsford Arts School, so will hopefully have some good news soon about Greta's placement. Last week while she and Steven were having fun following the Tyburn River, I was begging and pleading with school officials and borough bureaucrats to offer her a place at one of our top choice schools. Of course, I have been making myself crazy researching the London school assignment system, and there are definitely some issues here, so we are not the only parents scrambling this autumn to find a suitable school for their child (check out this article from The Guardian, if you're interested: link). I can't help but think that this could have been avoided if they would have let us apply last year, when I tried to do so from Seattle, but they are strict about not accepting any applications without proof of prior residency, so we were forced to wait.

Anyway, it looks like we might have some resolution soon. And in the meantime, Franny is still loving school and we are loving being able to walk there every day- what a wonderful luxury and one that I never realized would make such a difference. In fact, I'm still finding it quite nice to not have to drive anywhere, and I don't miss having a car yet at all. We walk to all the shops every few days, and can buy almost anything we need within a few blocks of our house: we go to the large Indian store for rice and olive oil, our local veg stands for all kinds of produce, the Polish market for good coffee (we were very relieved to find this, as our first few tries of "English coffee" were very disappointing- please take note, Kevin S. that we are missing good strong coffee), the bakery for fresh bread, and the English grocery stores for basics. We are getting spoiled by the selection of cheeses and chocolates, and find the cereal much better and cheaper than in the States.

Our latest adventure into the City took us to Hampstead Heath and Highgate Cemetery, and it was truly another experience of seeming to walk onto a movie set. As we came up from the Tube, we found ourselves in a gorgeous neighborhood of brick Victorian houses, trendy boutiques, and inviting coffee shops, and after walking through these for a while, we headed to the huge grassy expanse that is Hampstead Heath. We hiked the trails to the highest point, which offered stunning views of the city, and joined many other Londoners enjoying the sunny day at the park.

You could easily spend all day in Hampstead, but we really wanted to make it to Highgate Cemetery to explore, so we carried on (after a few huge cookies for sustenance) and entered the wrought iron gates of the most famous graveyard in London. I didn't realize, at first, that this was the cemetery of which I had read in "Her Fearful Symmetry," but then it all made sense and it was so cool to see. The tombstones were very different from each other, and we wandered around reading the inscriptions and announcing any famous names that we discovered. This is where Karl Marx is buried, which invoked a lively discussion about Capitalism, and we also found the grave of George Elliot and other well known writers and artists. We somehow started talking about the idea of life after death, and each of our wishes for cremation and/or burial. It was a serious conversation, and it was sweet to hear the girls promising to "always keep our graves pretty," but I assured them that I wouldn't put this expectation on either of them. This all took place on Sunday, which was 9/11 and so we had been talking about the fleeting precious nature of life, although I'm not sure how much of that a 10 or 14 year old child can truly comprehend. It is something that I have been thinking about, though, and it makes me all the more grateful that we have been able to take this trip.