It’s the day before Pesach, a day when you’ve got to get all the bread out of your house, and you’ve got to cook for the sedar that night, and a day, apperantly, when you have to get up and see sunrise.
So. I got up this morning and put on my running duds to go running, not to see sunrise, but just because that’s what I do. I got up a bit early because these days it’s important to get to the library for 9:30. I was running at about 7:15 and crossed Spaniards Road (at the top of the hill in Hampsted), to go into the heath, and passed a small group of heredi boys (real Jews, wearing black hats and curls and suits and gosh knows) and thought that was odd, this early near Hampstead Heath. Hampstead is next to Golder’s Green, which is one of about three Jewish ghettos in London, but still, what are they doing up here?
I then rounded the corner, wearing my short-ish running shorts and t-shirt with a giant star of David and the words “Shalom from New York” printed in white, into a group of about 500 black-hat, curl having men and a few women with a thousand children each, singing to the sun. They took up the whole enterance to the heath (there were really about 500, it was probably sort of all the heredi minions from Golder’s Green together), and it was ackward to run through them. Everyone else I passed this morning in the heath looked dazed and bemused.
They also seem to have set up two seperate fairs in the heath, one at the top (near the Jews) and one at the bottom, nera Belsize Park and Hampstead Heath overground line. What’s with the fairs?
Anyway, so the day started with Jews and farris wheels, and will be the library until I must go to work, and will be work until I must go help Mrs. Hirsch make Passover food. These are the adventures to be had in London.
