London, Day 6 and 7
Finally I’m getting around to finishing up this journal. It’s Friday May 29th and I’ve been home for four days nursing a rather nasty sinus infection that’s turned into an ear infection in my right ear. Nasonex and Augmentin (that’s the anti-biotic) has been my diet. Good news is that the infection hasn’t broken through the ear drum like it did two years ago. At any rate, onto finishing up the journal.
Day six in England occurred on Sunday. Arune and I woke up early to have our breakfast and make our way over to the Bristol/Temple/Meads Train Station. We purchased an 11:10 ticket for London that would get us into town around 1:00 or so. I hung out in the pub for a while, typing stuff up on the lap top with a pint by my side (yes, at 10:30 in the morning I was drinking beer) while Arune tried to go back to the convention for a while to pick up some stuff.
I’ve always loved traveling by train. If you’ve never done it you should try it at least once. It’s very relaxing and easy to do. You hop on, find a seat, and watch the country side fly by. Taking the train from Bristol to London gave me an entirely new perspective of the United Kingdom. The countryside is absolutely gorgeous and incredibly green. At one point I took notice of just how many shades of green there were. Hell, even the weeds are green over there! In Los Angeles you have the option of green, tan (mostly dead grass) or brown (completely dead grass). Absolutely gorgeous country side. I spent some of the train ride writing up stuff on the lap top, the rest listening to the iPod watching the country side go by. At one point I handed the iPod over to Arune to let him listen to what might possibly be the greatest song of all time, Tenacious D’s “Fuck Her Gently.” He enjoyed it.
We arrived at Paddington Station, headed over to the Underground to jump on the Circle Line back to Gloucester Road to drop our backs off at our Hotel. Once we got situated, we made our way back to the Underground and headed over to Camden Town. Camden has a lot of shopping and is also home to the Camden Marketplace. The best way I can describe it is by referencing shopping areas in Los Angeles. Take the Venice Beach area shopping and add the shops along Melrose and multiply it by five and you’ve got Camden. Loads of clothing merchants, touristy crap, club clothes, drug paraphanelia sellers and much more. Really cool place and I probably would have bought tons of clothing if I had the time, money and if it weren’t so hot. Arune and I walked around there for two hours. All I ended up buying was a techno CD and some hemp pants (again with the hemp!). There was a very nice hemp clothing store there and considering how hard it is to find hemp clothing in the states (I know of only two stores in all of Los Angeles, only one of which has men’s clothing) I felt I needed to get something.
After we were done with Camden it was time to head over to the Globe. We took the Underground to the Mansion House exit, crossed over to the other side of the Thames via the Millenium Bridge and arrived at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. I spoke about the Globe Theatre in my Day 4 journal entry so I’ll skip over the description of the theatre. We arrived pretty early, so we ate at the adjoining café before the play. Once we were done we picked up cushions for our seats (the seating is wood benches and the cushions are a must for a £1 fee) and also bought some snacks. The Globe doesn’t offer you the typical candy as snack food, rather chocolate covered fruits, dried fruits or a selection of nuts. I picked up some dried fruit and a bottle of sparkling water, Arune got himself some nuts and regular water. We made our way to our seats for the all female performance of “Richard III.”
I mentioned earlier when I gave my review of “Dance of Death” how I don’t feel I’m good at reviewing things. It takes a certain flair and over use of adjectives to effectively communicate your feelings about your subject. It also helps if you’re some sort of an expert on what your reviewing. Now, I’m not theatre expert and my use of adjectives is generally limited to “that’s a bitchen’ thing.” But once again, I’ll do my best.
To start with I was skeptical of this performance. “Richard III” is a mostly male cast, so an all female production had me a bit worried. That being said, I had faith that this theatre company wouldn’t intentionally put on a bad performance. My faith was well founded. This was easily one of the finest theatre performances I’ve ever attended. Funny, emotional, dramatic and faithful to the original text. The woman who played the part of King Richard, played by Kathryn Hunter, was absolutely astounding. Simply amazing performance. So much so that by the end of the play I was brought close to tears. I’m not one who is prone to such dramatics, so this was quite a feat.
Now, the performance was enhanced dramatically by the use of the theatre. As I explained in my previous description of the theatre, the center portion of the theatre is standing room only. Upwards of 600 people can stand and watch the play for the small sum of £5 (about $8 US). They can walk around during the play, lean up against the stage, whatever. The only thing they can’t do is sit down. Throughout the play the company will use this area filled by the Groundlings. Towards the beginning of the play there’s a funeral processions that starts in the audience and makes its way to the stage. At another point, when Richard is being crowned King, the Bishop gives his lines from within the audience. It’s fascinating to watch the audience very respectfully move out of the way of the actors. It’s like Charleston Heston parting the Red Sea! Plus, the actors often will interact with members of the audience, as is called upon by Shakespeare. There is no curtain that the actors can’t cross, the entire theatre is there for them to use. Equally impressive was how easy it was to hear the actors without any electronic amplification.
For me the most amusing moment of the play was when it began to rain. Instantly the Groundlings came to life, reaching for their jackets, pulling their hoods over the heads or rushing outside to rent a plastic parka. While a bit of a distraction, it didn’t detract at all from the performance. It was an added little bonus.
Finally, as the performance came to an end and the audience was very rightfully going wild, something interesting happened. See, “Richard III” is very much a tragedy and Shakespeare hated his audiences going home depressed. So, in his day he would end his play and the troupe would exit the stage, but when they returned instead of first taking a bow, they would engage in a rather complex dance. Staying true to the presentation style of the 1600s Globe, they did the same thing on Sunday night. The entire troupe returned and engaged in what can only be described as a very jolly and fun Irish Jig/Stomp type performance. The musicians played a lively set and the actors danced along and the entire place clapped in time with the music! It sounds corny to say, but it really was quite magical.
I don’t feel I’ve really done the performance justice with the above, but if you should find yourself in London, take in a performance at Shakespeare’s Globe. It’s not expensive and most certainly worth your time.
Once the performance ended Arune and I walked back over the Millenium Bridge, got on the Underground and went back to the Hotel. I spent the rest of the evening at the Internet Café across the street and got back to the room sometime around midnight.
Monday my flight time was 3:00 in the afternoon, which meant I should arrive at Heathrow Airport around Noon, so there was no time for sight seeing. I simply had breakfast, spent an hour at the Internet Café, saw Arune off and made my own way to the Airport via the Underground. Heathrow security was much less hectic and more organized than at LAX. Once through the security check points they drop you off in this massive duty free area. There’s a small and very impressive mall inside Heathrow! I did some last minute shopping, enjoyed a small lunch and boarded my Virgin Atlantic flight back home.
Before I wrap this up I must sing the praises of Virgin Atlantic. I’ve been told by numerous people that the only way to fly coach to Europe is via Virgin Atlantic. While I have no other recent experiences flying to Europe to compare mine to, I thing I can say with confidence I’d agree with them. Virgin Atlantic is phenomenal. While on other airlines you’ll end up paying for your alcoholic beverages, not on Virgin! That’s good thing #1!!! In addition, they really take care of you by providing you with a care package that includes a tooth brush, tooth paste, comfy socks, a night mask, ear plugs, a pad of paper and a pen. The night mask and ear plugs come in real handy if you want to attempt sleep. Plus, every passenger is given their own pillow and blanket. Not like on other airlines where you have to fight to get one, on Virgin it’s sitting in your chair when you get on the flight.
Easily the coolest part of the flight has to be the personal view screens. Sure, this is a popular feature on most airlines now, but I’ve never seen a system quite as complex as this one. The one on my flight home featured a TiVo like system which allowed you to start and stop your movie as you pleased. You could pause, fast forward or rewind as you were watching. They gave you a choice of 75+ different movies, 50+ different television programs from both the US and Britain, various information channels about tourist destinations, a view screen that showed you precisely where your plane was in the world, its air speed and current altitude. In addition, you could place phone calls from your seat (which is way to expensive naturally) or you could text message a mobile phone in the U.S. or Europe. This came in real handy since I needed to send my pick-up at LAX a message about when to meet me, so I slip my credit card into my remote control and for $2 I messaged Emiliano from the plane. Sure, $2 is expensive for a text message, but it proved an invaluable feature for me.
On the flight home I watched the Spike Lee film “25th Hour.” Not his best movie, but I enjoyed it. Ed Norton’s always good. Then I watched a recent episode of “Friends.” THEN I discovered something that brought overwhelming joy to my life! You all know of my love for the BBC program “The Office.” So far only the first out of two series have been shown in America and the second series doesn’t appear to be coming to BBC America anytime soon. Offered as part of Virgin Atlantic’s inflight entertainment were two episodes of series two of “The Office!” HOG HEAVEN, BABY! I watched both episodes and watched one of the two twice it was so good. I thought the first series was insane, but in the second David Brendt is even more mad! I can’t wait for the second series to come out on DVD in Britain this October. Once it does I’ll be purchasing it and viewing it on my new multi-region DVD player.
With all those options at your fingertips it really helps your flight go by quickly. Couple that with discussions with the British couple next to me and the flight just whizzed by.
We landed in Los Angeles an hour early, at 5:30 PM local time. I thought crap, I’ll be waiting here forever for Emiliano who was supposed to pick me up at 6:30! I called him and he said he’d be right over, but it didn’t matter really as customs in Los Angeles was a long and laborious process. Nothing bad happened, but it took fourty-five minutes to get through and was, once again, not all that well organized. British customs was a well-oiled machine in comparison.
So that’s it. Finally I’ve finished with my journal. In the next day or two I’ll share some quick impressions gleaned from my trip to London. I’ll also finish putting up captions for all the images in the gallery I’m about half way done right now.
I hope someone out there found this enjoyable. I did this mainly so that I wouldn’t forget anything on my trip, so I hope it wasn’t too boring. I really do need to go back through it and correct all the various spelling and grammatical mistakes that I’m sure exist.
Thanks for reading.
