Campervan Therapy

Off we trot from the Elizabeth Line’s Bond Street station through Mayfair to the Halcyon Gallery on New Bond Street. I must admit that the easy-going attitude of the Whitechapel Gallery is more my style.

Halcyon’s walkie-talkie clad, black suited doormen are perfectly well-mannered, but the formality makes me feel like an intruder. It’s worth it though for the free exhibitions and this one features David Hockney’s work.

The artist’s bright use of colour, printing and experimental enthusiasm is catching – his optimism pouring from the canvases produced in his Californian home. His enthusiasm for Van Gogh’s chair is also evocative. I especially like the autobiographical detail that whenever he came to London from his Yorkshire home with his dad, his dad always headed straight for Van Gogh’s chair as it meant so much to him.

Afterwards we wander through Hanover Square, with imposing William Pitt the Younger, first prime minister of the United Kingdom, staring down at us.

The quirky, corner-shaped Coach and Horses pub on Brook Street is surrounded by glass and steel buildings.

We ramble along the road and pass yet another Coach and Horses pub, claiming to be Mayfair’s oldest surviving drinking hole. Standing side by side, two Georgian buildings sport blue plaques telling us Jimi Hendrix and Handel stayed in each. The museum in Handel’s house traces how these iconic musicians changed the music scene.

Expensive Range Rovers with blacked out windows add a vaguely sinister feel to this well-heeled area. The elegant Edwardian mansion blocks and town houses shout money at us. For all the film set embassies and grand houses I miss the lively bustle of East London.

As the sun paints the sky orange we wander through Hyde Park, on past Bayswater’s romantic cobbled mews, to Paddington where I have a little lump in my throat as its wonderful Victorian glass dome was a feature of our childhood exodus to Ireland.  It was as if the whole of Holloway Road emptied out into the station each summer for the Fishguard-Rosslare boat-train.

We wander out to Little Venice in the dusk, to the floating Cheese and Wine barge, to the abstract mural on the Australian cocktail barge, to a little blue-suede Paddington bear, to the cosy barge homes surrounding the island where the Camden Canal and Great Union meet.

It’s dusk and rather empty as we read down the list of illustrious residents of this mysterious watery world. The poet Robert Browning returned to live here after the death of his wife, poet Elizabeth Barret Browning. I’ve always been moved by their love story – him a renowned poet, her an invalid, whose frail frame hid a prodigious poetic talent. Her autocratic father forbade the match, so they eloped to Italy.  Little Venice was also the home of short story writer Katherine Mansfield while she studied music and briefly of Sigmund Freud. Seán points out that the scientists have their place here too as code-breaker Alan Turing was born in a maternity home here.

We can no longer see our footing on the towpath and are in danger of tripping on the mooring rings and toppling into the canal. Ducks flap their wings and gulls squawk. It’s time to head for the Southbank’s bright lights.