This year I didn’t have a beach holiday that I so love. I had been away in Spring and therefore it would have been expensive to go away in July or August. I know there are some cheap deals out there but I had work, volunteering and family commitments. June was apparently one of the hottest months on record and this makes it much more appealing to do things closer to home. However, July was one of the wettest and it was hard to predict what to do. It was very peculiar, and it seems we have some warm weather as we now go into September. It has been sad seeing the severe heatwave in Europe earlier this summer, and the disaster from wildfire from Maui to Rhodes in Greece. It seems climate change is becoming more evidential in our everyday lives.
However despite the weather, I had to get on with plans in the last few weeks. I didn’t go to British beaches and special gardens but I still had some time to do some fun things.
The first was going to Norfolk for the weekend. I haven’t been for a couple of years and it was typically very wet weather. It was good to stay very… very… near the Norwich Football City fondly known as Carrow Road, and the team is known as the Canaries. You might guess from the colours of the kit. It was quite special to see the game from a hotel room and it was a bit of sunshine on a sunny day! I remember looking at the tall building near the Lords Cricket Ground and thinking that is a great place to live if you like cricket. I suppose it just a fun way to have important sporting venues close to you.
The next day, we went for a drive along the Norfolk and Suffolk coast through Great Yarmouth to Southwold. I haven’t been going to Southwold until recently, but it is known as ‘Hampstead by the Sea’ as a pleasant seaside town. It is nice to visit as there is hardly any stress trying to find parking, and it is very residential as a holiday seaside town. I do recommend that you book a place to eat as it was hard finding a restaurant to eat at lunchtime on one of the few sunny days in the month. However, the pier was less busy, and we were able to get some fish and chips for lunch. It was nice to see some of the quaint seaside cottages and gardens.
Back in London, we were able to get a few sunny days and one of them was when I took a first visit to the Docklands Museum. I wanted to visit after seeing an advert for the Indo-Caribbean exhibition advertised. Visiting Canary Wharf on such a sunny day was amazing for the photos of the newest buildings, and in the newer financial district in London. But don’t be deceived… it has a long history of commerce and trade from ancient times. The Museum is well curated throughout the ages, and to get to the Indo-Caribeean exhibition – ironically, I had to whiz through the various floors and parts that had relevance to how we got to Indo-Caribbeans in the Caribbean.
Although I knew the history of the Caribbean, seeing the visual and curated content were still engaging and educational. I found out things that even I missed in my Caribbean schooling – such as the slave traders in London, the wealth created by the sugar industry and how the greed for this wealth fuelled the Transatlantic Slave Trade. There was so much to unpick that I cannot cover it all in this blog post.
The Indo-Caribbean exhibition was educational and balanced on some of the issues that my ancestors may have experienced on their journey from India to the Caribbean. It was sad, annoying and true that they were sometimes treated as cargo and the record keeping was not consistent. If I have to trace my lineage to India – I will need a lot of patience and time to research it. It is shocking and realistic to know of the journeys Indians made to the Caribbean, and it makes for an appreciation of their struggles, perseverance and resilience.
This month, I also spent time working but it was interesting to visit some of the regional libraries that we are working with on our ‘Kick Start your Business’ project. It was a nice pleasure to get a bus to the Library in Leytonstone with definitely felt like an Alfred Hitchcock appreciation day! Well, he is a local hero who had a great impact and career on cinema and film. The local underground station has lots of mosaics as a dedication to Hitchcock. It was also nice to see that the workshop room also doubles as a theatre and a cinema. This library is not that close to me, but if it was closer – I certainly would be visiting it more.
It was also good to make a trip back to south of the river and to see another local library for our project. It was very wet and it would have been good if I had more time to explore other areas closer to the venue, but when it was so wet… all I wanted to do was to get back home. Apart from this ventures, I spent some time in the garden and local areas. I can’t totally switch off in a city and therefore I like getting out in the countryside or visiting areas that I haven’t been before. This obviously requires good budgeting and planning.
Next year, I hope I go on holiday on a warm beautiful beach town.
Connecting the Dots 