Walkies and Talkies
Feb. 5th, 2001 11:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lillibetWe've had a fun week, getting back into seeing London. On Monday evening we
went on London Walks' tour of Old Westmintster. We wandered all around the
Houses of Parliament and the precincts of the Abbey, stopping for a pint at
one of the local pubs wired with bells to call the members back for the
vote. It was especially interesting to see the 18th century houses in their
gaslit streets and to walk across the river to Lambeth Palace (London home
of the Archbishop of Canterbury) for the view of the Houses of Parliament by
night. We passed up the chance to see the Houses sitting, figuring to save
that for a time when we have guests.
Jason went up to Cambridge on Tuesday and Wednesday and I did a fair amount
of cooking, making lemon chicken with pasta on Tuesday and paella on
Wednesday, to celebrate our Egyptian saffron.
On Thursday afternoon we met Claudia--a woman I met through Rachel Zerner in
San Francisco--and her husband, Jim, at the Tate Modern to see their new
exhibit, Century City. It's an exploration of art in the twentieth century
by focusing on various cities (Moscow, Lagos, New York, Vienna, Tokyo,
Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Bombay/Mumbai, and London) during periods when their
artistic communities were especially vibrant, productive and influential.
There were some interesting pieces, but it failed to really hang together or
to make any statement through the art about the city's influence on its
artists.
After a few hours in the museum, we headed over to The Anchor, an eight
hundred year old pub that we were introduced to on one of our pub walks and
that has been a favorite of Claudia & Jim's for years. After a pint there,
we took the tube up to Leicester Square and they introduced us to the Pollo,
a "dive" with good, cheap Italian food. Jason had their chicken "diavolo"
and I had the gnocchi with tomato and cream sauce that was quite tasty. We
split a "funky pie" for dessert, which consisted of vanilla ice cream in a
pie crust, topped with toffee and nuts.
It was great to hang out with Claudia & Jim and we're looking forward to
seeing them again often while we're here. They are both drama
therapists--met in grad school--and Jim also has an experimental music
project that has put out several CDs and done some very interesting
composing and performing projects.
On Friday evening we saw Caryl Churchill's new play, _Far Away_, in the West
End. We very much enjoyed it and found the acting extremely good, though
the script was very strange, even for Churchill. It's only fifty minutes
long and divided into three scenes. In the first, Joan (an eight year-old
child) has been sent to stay with her aunt, Harper, in the country. It is
2am and she comes downstairs to tell her aunt that she snuck out her window
and down a tree and saw her uncle in the shed beating some people with an
iron rod. Harper tells her various lies of increasing complexity until
finally Joan is satisfied and willing to go back to bed. The second scene
takes place several years later, during Joan's first week out of college,
working at a hat factory where she meets Todd, who has been there several
years and suspects that there's something corrupt about the system. We see
the "parade" for which these hats are intended, worn by a procession of
dirty, emaciated prisoners. Joan's hat wins and she bemoans that more of
the hats can't be saved, that they have to all be burned with the bodies.
She and Todd end the scene in a passionate kiss. The third scene is back at
Harper's house, several years later. Todd is there "on leave" and Joan has
deserted in order to spend one day with her husband. The war they are
fighting has enveloped not only nationalities, but professional categories,
animal species and forces of nature. Joan tells of her harrowing trip to
reach them and the play ends. Hard to know what to make of it, but the
acting was superb. Todd was played by Kevin Kidd, the very blonde guy who died of AIDS
in _Trainspotting_ and was the homophobic corset-wearing Nankipu in _Topsy
Turvy_.
After the show we had dinner at the Prospect Grill. It was very chic-ly
decorated, with chocolate leather banquettes and tomato-colored walls. Our
service started out badly and we didn't get menus for a good ten minutes,
but it picked up after we complained. I started with the special appetizer
of king prawns grilled with lemon and garlic, complete with heads. Jason
had the excellent leek and tarragon tart, followed by a wonderful tuna
burger served on an unfortunately dry bun, but with tasty chips. My entrée
was the grilled sirloin with bearnaise and chips, which was quite
satisfactory, though the steak itself wasn't especially good. The host came
by to apologize again for not getting our menus to us and we assured him we
were unoffended, but there were enough flaws overall that I think we will
try other places before heading back there.
On Saturday we dragged ourselves out of bed at 7am, made it out of the house
just after 8am and got to Victoria Station quickly enough that we wandered
around for a bit before meeting our London Walks guide at 9am. Gillian was
the guide for the Canterbury Explorer Day. She got the twenty-five of us on
the train and we rode the 1.5 hours south and east to Canterbury. Upon
arrival we spent a couple of hours seeing the town, including the 15th
century walls built on the lines the Romans laid out when they fortified the
town in the 3rd century. We saw the 1st century burial mound now topped by
a monument to the gentleman who paid for the public gardens in the 19th
century and the castle, founded during the Norman era and used variously as
a jail and coalstore through the ages. Apparently the Victorians took down
the third storey, but that was such a difficult task-due to the strength of
the mortar and the eleven-foot thickness of the walls, that they gave up the
rest of its demolition as a bad job. We saw several churches, dating back
to the 8th century, and learned about the variety of construction materials
used. The most distinctive of these is the "napped" or cut-in-half
flintstones. We walked through lovely gardens and along the River Stour to
the Western Gate, the only survivor of the eight medieval gates to the
city. It's kind of funny to see cars driving through it. We strolled down
the high street, stopping to look at various buildings including the hostel
erected for pilgrims in the 15th century and half-timbered homes from the
14th, still in use. Gillian left us for an hour in the Butter Market
square, instructing us on our options for lunch. We joined another couple,
Min & Mark, at the Old Monks and had reasonable sandwiches and chips. They
are both bankers (mergers & acquisitions and equity derivatives) from the
States, now living in London for the foreseeable future. I was amused that
Min (who couldn't be more than about 35) made several comments which
suggested she thought me much younger than she is and I didn't want to
disillusion her :)
After lunch we met back up with Gillian, who took us into the Cathedral
grounds. She showed us the various sections of the cathedral from the
outside and gave us their histories. Then we walked all around the grounds
of the old monastery--at one time the largest in England with 150 monks, but
dissolved in 1540 along with the rest--and King's School. There was a rock
band rehearsing in one of the wings, just up a very well-preserved 12th
century stairway, that made a nice image. At another point on our walk, we
could hear the Canterbury Boys Choir rehearsing in the cathedral--it sounded like
angels serenading us. We had hoped to have time to stay for evensong, but
realized that would make it very tight for us to catch our train back. We
also considered The Canterbury Tales Experience, but that, too, would have
made us late. The rest of the group were to take the 5:24pm train back to
London, but we needed to go an hour earlier.
That gave us just enough time to make it from Victoria Station to the
Barbican Centre and have a quick dinner in their cafeteria before the 7:15pm
curtain of Shakespeare's _The Comedy of Errors_. It was another wonderful
performance. Many of the actors we had seen in _The Rivals_ were also in
this production. It was staged in a Dolce Vita style, which worked very
well.
On Sunday we had intended to have Claudia & Jim over for dinner, but there
was a tube strike on from 5:30pm Sunday for twenty-four hours, so I called
and suggested that we re-schedule. Busses are still running, but getting
from Clapham to here would probably require at least two, if not more,
transfers. So we'll do it next week. Our day was therefore fairly quiet.
We took a walk in the afternoon, going further up Green Lanes than we had
made it before and finding a substantial high street with department stores
and even two shops of large women's clothing. Past that was a mall,
complete with a movie theater, which we are very happy to have found. We
caught the bus home in order to make it to Sainsbury's before they closed at
five. We spent the evening watching the first two parts of the A&E Pride &
Prejudice with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. Jason had never seen it and
read P&P back in high school, so we both enjoyed it. I ate too many cheese
& crackers during the show, so wasn't hungry enough to make dinner and Jason
got to have Indian food from the freezer. I fell asleep on the couch around
ten and Jason got playing computer games, so didn't come find me and make me
go to sleep until around three. As a result we had a fairly late morning.
This morning we were pleasantly surprised to have the cable guys arrive to
install our cable modem. We had expected them tomorrow, but today was much
more convenient for us and will mean Jason can go up to the office tomorrow
for the weekly Thai food outing. So now we will not have to tie up our
phone line in order to be online and should have a much faster connection.
I made Hungarian mushroom soup and a mini-pizza for lunch today (in order to
use up the mushrooms and chorizo left over from other projects) and both
were tasty.
went on London Walks' tour of Old Westmintster. We wandered all around the
Houses of Parliament and the precincts of the Abbey, stopping for a pint at
one of the local pubs wired with bells to call the members back for the
vote. It was especially interesting to see the 18th century houses in their
gaslit streets and to walk across the river to Lambeth Palace (London home
of the Archbishop of Canterbury) for the view of the Houses of Parliament by
night. We passed up the chance to see the Houses sitting, figuring to save
that for a time when we have guests.
Jason went up to Cambridge on Tuesday and Wednesday and I did a fair amount
of cooking, making lemon chicken with pasta on Tuesday and paella on
Wednesday, to celebrate our Egyptian saffron.
On Thursday afternoon we met Claudia--a woman I met through Rachel Zerner in
San Francisco--and her husband, Jim, at the Tate Modern to see their new
exhibit, Century City. It's an exploration of art in the twentieth century
by focusing on various cities (Moscow, Lagos, New York, Vienna, Tokyo,
Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Bombay/Mumbai, and London) during periods when their
artistic communities were especially vibrant, productive and influential.
There were some interesting pieces, but it failed to really hang together or
to make any statement through the art about the city's influence on its
artists.
After a few hours in the museum, we headed over to The Anchor, an eight
hundred year old pub that we were introduced to on one of our pub walks and
that has been a favorite of Claudia & Jim's for years. After a pint there,
we took the tube up to Leicester Square and they introduced us to the Pollo,
a "dive" with good, cheap Italian food. Jason had their chicken "diavolo"
and I had the gnocchi with tomato and cream sauce that was quite tasty. We
split a "funky pie" for dessert, which consisted of vanilla ice cream in a
pie crust, topped with toffee and nuts.
It was great to hang out with Claudia & Jim and we're looking forward to
seeing them again often while we're here. They are both drama
therapists--met in grad school--and Jim also has an experimental music
project that has put out several CDs and done some very interesting
composing and performing projects.
On Friday evening we saw Caryl Churchill's new play, _Far Away_, in the West
End. We very much enjoyed it and found the acting extremely good, though
the script was very strange, even for Churchill. It's only fifty minutes
long and divided into three scenes. In the first, Joan (an eight year-old
child) has been sent to stay with her aunt, Harper, in the country. It is
2am and she comes downstairs to tell her aunt that she snuck out her window
and down a tree and saw her uncle in the shed beating some people with an
iron rod. Harper tells her various lies of increasing complexity until
finally Joan is satisfied and willing to go back to bed. The second scene
takes place several years later, during Joan's first week out of college,
working at a hat factory where she meets Todd, who has been there several
years and suspects that there's something corrupt about the system. We see
the "parade" for which these hats are intended, worn by a procession of
dirty, emaciated prisoners. Joan's hat wins and she bemoans that more of
the hats can't be saved, that they have to all be burned with the bodies.
She and Todd end the scene in a passionate kiss. The third scene is back at
Harper's house, several years later. Todd is there "on leave" and Joan has
deserted in order to spend one day with her husband. The war they are
fighting has enveloped not only nationalities, but professional categories,
animal species and forces of nature. Joan tells of her harrowing trip to
reach them and the play ends. Hard to know what to make of it, but the
acting was superb. Todd was played by Kevin Kidd, the very blonde guy who died of AIDS
in _Trainspotting_ and was the homophobic corset-wearing Nankipu in _Topsy
Turvy_.
After the show we had dinner at the Prospect Grill. It was very chic-ly
decorated, with chocolate leather banquettes and tomato-colored walls. Our
service started out badly and we didn't get menus for a good ten minutes,
but it picked up after we complained. I started with the special appetizer
of king prawns grilled with lemon and garlic, complete with heads. Jason
had the excellent leek and tarragon tart, followed by a wonderful tuna
burger served on an unfortunately dry bun, but with tasty chips. My entrée
was the grilled sirloin with bearnaise and chips, which was quite
satisfactory, though the steak itself wasn't especially good. The host came
by to apologize again for not getting our menus to us and we assured him we
were unoffended, but there were enough flaws overall that I think we will
try other places before heading back there.
On Saturday we dragged ourselves out of bed at 7am, made it out of the house
just after 8am and got to Victoria Station quickly enough that we wandered
around for a bit before meeting our London Walks guide at 9am. Gillian was
the guide for the Canterbury Explorer Day. She got the twenty-five of us on
the train and we rode the 1.5 hours south and east to Canterbury. Upon
arrival we spent a couple of hours seeing the town, including the 15th
century walls built on the lines the Romans laid out when they fortified the
town in the 3rd century. We saw the 1st century burial mound now topped by
a monument to the gentleman who paid for the public gardens in the 19th
century and the castle, founded during the Norman era and used variously as
a jail and coalstore through the ages. Apparently the Victorians took down
the third storey, but that was such a difficult task-due to the strength of
the mortar and the eleven-foot thickness of the walls, that they gave up the
rest of its demolition as a bad job. We saw several churches, dating back
to the 8th century, and learned about the variety of construction materials
used. The most distinctive of these is the "napped" or cut-in-half
flintstones. We walked through lovely gardens and along the River Stour to
the Western Gate, the only survivor of the eight medieval gates to the
city. It's kind of funny to see cars driving through it. We strolled down
the high street, stopping to look at various buildings including the hostel
erected for pilgrims in the 15th century and half-timbered homes from the
14th, still in use. Gillian left us for an hour in the Butter Market
square, instructing us on our options for lunch. We joined another couple,
Min & Mark, at the Old Monks and had reasonable sandwiches and chips. They
are both bankers (mergers & acquisitions and equity derivatives) from the
States, now living in London for the foreseeable future. I was amused that
Min (who couldn't be more than about 35) made several comments which
suggested she thought me much younger than she is and I didn't want to
disillusion her :)
After lunch we met back up with Gillian, who took us into the Cathedral
grounds. She showed us the various sections of the cathedral from the
outside and gave us their histories. Then we walked all around the grounds
of the old monastery--at one time the largest in England with 150 monks, but
dissolved in 1540 along with the rest--and King's School. There was a rock
band rehearsing in one of the wings, just up a very well-preserved 12th
century stairway, that made a nice image. At another point on our walk, we
could hear the Canterbury Boys Choir rehearsing in the cathedral--it sounded like
angels serenading us. We had hoped to have time to stay for evensong, but
realized that would make it very tight for us to catch our train back. We
also considered The Canterbury Tales Experience, but that, too, would have
made us late. The rest of the group were to take the 5:24pm train back to
London, but we needed to go an hour earlier.
That gave us just enough time to make it from Victoria Station to the
Barbican Centre and have a quick dinner in their cafeteria before the 7:15pm
curtain of Shakespeare's _The Comedy of Errors_. It was another wonderful
performance. Many of the actors we had seen in _The Rivals_ were also in
this production. It was staged in a Dolce Vita style, which worked very
well.
On Sunday we had intended to have Claudia & Jim over for dinner, but there
was a tube strike on from 5:30pm Sunday for twenty-four hours, so I called
and suggested that we re-schedule. Busses are still running, but getting
from Clapham to here would probably require at least two, if not more,
transfers. So we'll do it next week. Our day was therefore fairly quiet.
We took a walk in the afternoon, going further up Green Lanes than we had
made it before and finding a substantial high street with department stores
and even two shops of large women's clothing. Past that was a mall,
complete with a movie theater, which we are very happy to have found. We
caught the bus home in order to make it to Sainsbury's before they closed at
five. We spent the evening watching the first two parts of the A&E Pride &
Prejudice with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. Jason had never seen it and
read P&P back in high school, so we both enjoyed it. I ate too many cheese
& crackers during the show, so wasn't hungry enough to make dinner and Jason
got to have Indian food from the freezer. I fell asleep on the couch around
ten and Jason got playing computer games, so didn't come find me and make me
go to sleep until around three. As a result we had a fairly late morning.
This morning we were pleasantly surprised to have the cable guys arrive to
install our cable modem. We had expected them tomorrow, but today was much
more convenient for us and will mean Jason can go up to the office tomorrow
for the weekly Thai food outing. So now we will not have to tie up our
phone line in order to be online and should have a much faster connection.
I made Hungarian mushroom soup and a mini-pizza for lunch today (in order to
use up the mushrooms and chorizo left over from other projects) and both
were tasty.
