Queen Square

This is where I gave J her breakfast and drank coffee from my flask, while P started on his bread and hummus lunch. We arrived about nine and found a parking space, after our 6:30 start - the Monday morning traffic had been much less heavy than we anticipated. Perhaps enough people are still working from home to make a difference, and it's probably half term for most schools this week. It's quite a peaceful square in which we have picnicked before, typical of this part of London, with plenty of green shade, benches, flowers and marauding pigeons, peopled by staff and patients from and visitors to the surrounding hospitals. The Queen portrayed in the statue is (according to Wikipedia) believed to be Charlotte, wife of George III, who was treated for mental illness in a building in this square.

The landscape of adult cerebral palsy care in the UK, or at least in England, is largely desert, so it was good to find ourselves in a rare oasis, with knowledgeable people working as a team, looking at issues holistically and making positive suggestions with the promise of some reasonably sustained follow-up. These things should be the norm, but have not been our experience since the end of J's education and her transition into adult care.

We stopped in Greenwich Great Park for a late picnic lunch. It was chilly, windy and intermittently rainy, but a large sweet chestnut provided some shelter. J enjoyed watching the procession of dogs of all shapes and sizes bouncing and chasing balls, and I enjoyed the vivid, noisy green parrots flitting from tree to tree. I know they are now widespread in London parks and gardens and can be a problem, but they are new to me, and the colours are wonderful. We didn't explore more of the park: after getting up at 4:30, we were keen to get home, so this was not the day to view the Observatory and Meridian or seek out the rose garden. We stayed on the hilltop, near Blackheath Common, on a big expanse of rough grass dotted with mature trees. I hope we will return before too long.

This is my third back blip this evening; now I only have today's Tiny Tuesday photos to download, select and share.