Enjoying another uninterrupted night's sleep only to wake up to a BAD feeling is not to be relished. Proceed with caution was my watchword for the morning. We were due to meet a friend of some 50 years with whom we share grandchildren. Her daughter is married to our eldest. We planned to see the main exhibition at the Barbican Centre - Alice Neel - Hot Off The Griddle. And we did. Then it was time to sample the new menu in the recently refurbished Barbican Brasserie. My grumbling system had calmed down and I was able to enjoy a decent meal without worries. Those are precious moments. Earlier I had booked a room in an Athens hotel that we have used many times as a staging post between London and the former Ionian island of Kithira. Unusually the online booking services and the hotel's own website said they were full. Undetered I gave them a bell. Their reservations clerk could not have been more helpful. Even he was baffled by their inability to accommodate us. So he took our details. Credit card at the ready, I asked would you like the numbers? No he said. I trust you to stay with us! So another piece of that jigsaw was in place. Music for Strings in Greece has started to arrive. Now all I have to to do is see if I can actually hold my double bass for any length of time. That's a job for tomorrow. Fortunately, I don't have to take the instrument with me, the course director keeps a couple on the island. I just pack my bow in my wife's violin case en route. In the meantime, I'm reading The Leveller Revolution by John Rees - the gripping story of the radical movement at the heart of the English Revolution (as the blurb describes it). Current protests in the UK about climate change and the state of the Tory nation pale into insignificance compared with the 17th century in the run up to the trial and execution of King Charles I. The prospects of our latest monarch, King Charles III suffering the same fate seem impossible to imagine.
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