I have been gadding up to London all the Bank Holiday weekend though perhaps gadding is not the right word for Britain Yearly Meeting, the annual get together of the Quakers at Friends House in the Euston Road.
I stayed at an hotel in Tavistock Square that was overrun with Quakers which must have been odd for the other people staying there,-all those bearded sandalled men and sensibly shod women. My room on the eighth floor overlooked the green leafy square and walking to Friends House several times a day was a delight. In the middle is a statue of Mahatma Gandhi who studied law at UCL (where grandaughter M has just graduated) and there are memorials to Mothers for Peace, a cherry tree in memory of Hiroshima victims, a memorial to Conscientious Objectors. There are benches commemorating musicians and artists, a bust of Virginia Woolf, and a plaque to Charles Dickens. Every walk across that square was a voyage of discovery.
It is quite an Experience to be in the midst of up to a thousand Quakers sitting in silence in the large Meeting Room at Friends House Though of course it was not all silence and there was lots of talk and discussion too as well as meeting up with many old friends. Every year we have the Swarthmore lecture on Saturday night which I was looking forward to but I was hampered by not having my hearing aids. They mysteriously disappeared just before I left. I suspect B.Wiggins who may have either chewed then up and swallowed them or he has hidden them which he has done before with my spectacles.
He is on an expedition along the South Downs Way with daughter J and grand daughters M and T plus other dogs, horses and friends They are doing the bit from Brighton to Eastbourne. He must be walking his little legs off and it is pouring with rain today too. But I am driving to Battle later to bring him home. It seems very quiet here in Ditchling without him.