Got back to Toronto yesterday after 16 days in London, for the first time since my 2012 visit.
5.5.17
Left for Pearson Airport after supper. I checked in at a kiosk in the section for North American flights (D'oh!). But I got things straightened out, and had a few hours to kill, in which I read the Gulliver's Travels chapters about the Glubdubrib necromancers and the Luggnagg immortals. The plane took off about midnight and arrived about noon.
5.6.17
Arrived at Heathrow and took the Underground Piccadilly Line to Russell Square station, then went to Goodenough College in Mecklenburgh Square. In previous trips I'd stayed at the Goodenough Club, but this time I stayed in the Jubilee Wing of William Goodenough House (my eight-month residence 22 years ago). This time I didn't have TV or internet access, but I'm rugged!
I was looking at the newspapers they provide there: The Times, The International New York Times--in the old days it was The International Herald-Tribune--The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and The Financial Times which I never read much. (They used to have The Independent too, but now it's solely online.) Read that Prince Philip, at the ripe old age of 95, is finally retiring from official functions. When I think of him, I think of the '80s puppet show Spitting Image! ("Way down among the common people...")
What with jet lag, I slept around the clock.
5.7.17
After walking a bit in the morning, I went back to bed for another five hours. In the afternoon, I went out to the Waterstone's bookstore on Gower Street. (In my time it was still part of the Dillon's chain.) I bought some Portuguese-language children's books and How to Speak Emoji.
5.8.17.
As usual, I went to the National Gallery first. (I thought of doing things differently this time and going to the Museum of London first, but tradition will out.) I noticed that I particularly like Velazquez' "Immaculate Conception."
Then I went to the National Portrait Gallery, but only looked at the pre-Victorian stuff on the top floor; that place takes two visits!
Ate dinner at the Leicester Square McDonald's, where you can order at a self-serve kiosk! A British Big Mac has relish instead of pickles.
In the evening, at the Coliseum, I saw a superb if stripped-down English National Opera production of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Carousel. (I saw another good production at the Barbican last time.) They started by showing the graduation scene, then had everyone walk backward to start the process of time being reversed to Billy's childhood. Standing ovation at the end!
5.9.17
In the morning I went to the British Museum, which is within walking distance of Mecklenburgh Square. In the afternoon I visited the John Soane House at Lincoln's Inn Fields.
I'd started taking pictures with my new Iphone, but didn't know how to recharge it until I realized that I could use an outlet for razors with North American voltage. But I couldn't figure out how to phone home.
Went to the Waitrose supermarket at the nearby Brunswick mini-mall and got breakfast food. (For breakfast I'd eat an orange, a banana, a pear, an apple and a carrot.)
5.10.17
Saw the rest of the National Portrait Gallery. I also shopped at Foyle's, finding some more interesting Portuguese books.
At the Leicester Square place for buying tickets at reduced prices, I got one for H.G. Wells' Edwardian rags-to-riches musical Half a Sixpence. (John Snow wouldn't forgive me if I'd missed it!)
Saw a matinee performance of Half a Sixpence at the Noel Coward. It's a cute and lively show: I liked the part at the end where the whole cast came out playing banjos. Another standing ovation--actually, all the musicals I saw seemed to get standing ovations!
5.11.17
Laundry in the morning at the Willy G. facilities (That's the residents' nickname for William Goodenough House.) I spilled liquid detergent all over creation, but managed to clean it as far as I could see. The coin-op washer and dryer won't accept the new make of pound coins, so I had to get change at the front desk.
While waiting for the laundry to get done, I read some more of Gulliver's Travels, now in the part with the houyhnhnms and yahoos (the idealized horses and bestial humans).
In the afternoon I visited the Museum of London. The weather was finally getting warm. (In the first days here I needed my sweater!)
5.12.17
Visited the Victoria & Albert Museum in South Kensington. Their collection is so huge that it never seems familiar. Too bad that their cafe is pricy! (They have a sign reminding visitors that the cafe supports the museum...) On the nearby street I saw a busker playing a tuba whose bell emitted flames!
My feet got pretty sore, so afterward I went to the Princess Diana Fountain in Kensington Gardens and bathed them there. (They must have conceived the place with tourists like me in mind!)
In the evening I saw a new production of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at the Harold Pinter. (There was also a production of Albee's The Goat with Damian Lewis, but even the reduced tickets were over fifty pounds!) This time I bought the ticket right at the theatre itself.
It's a bitterly funny play, and this version starred Imelda Staunton, whom I saw in Sweeney Todd last time. I was just six seats from the front row!
5.13.17
Visited Hampstead Heath. It's fun to go up there in a double-decker bus instead of the Underground. I'd visited Kenwood last time, but this time skipped it because I didn't want to punish my feet too much.
They had a big art sale there that afternoon. Near the John Keats cottage there's a hair salon called Keats Hair! (Would I lie to you?)
Afterward I waited for the bus on the right side of the street instead of the left. (D'oh!) Then I took the bus the wrong way and ended up out at Swiss Cottage (Double D'oh!)
Movie prices are exorbitant in London, but I indulged myself and saw the Korean movie The Handmaiden at the Curzon Soho that evening. Directed by Park Chan-wook (Old Boy, Lady Vengeance), it's very kinky but very clever. Hard to describe as it is without spoiling the plot, I'll mention that it's about a Japanese heiress, her Korean handmaiden, and con games!
5.14.17
Visited Primrose Hill and the nearby London Zoo. It was Sunday, so there were a lot of noisy kids.
Afterward I went to Swiss Cottage and took yesterday's bus route the right way, through Hampstead and Camden Town to Gray's Inn Road near Mecklenburgh Square. (The part near King's Cross station was slow.)
I must say that when you have a London Transport day pass and learn the routes well enough, travelling by bus is a good way to see the city. On this route I discovered a statue of Sigmund Freud!
5.15.17
Visited Tate Britain in the morning. (There was a big David Hockney exhibit, but I skipped it.) In the afternoon I visited the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden. I'll bet my brother John would like that!
In the evening I saw a stage production of the Gershwin musical An American in Paris at the Dominion. It's a lavish re-imagination, in some ways even better than the movie.
Someone was passing out free copies of The Evening Standard. I read one, and you get what you pay for.
5.16.17
"Flora inherited, however, from her father a strong will and from her mother a slender ankle"--Cold Comfort Farm
Another laundry day. I finished Gulliver's Travels and started reading Stella Gibbons' Cold Comfort Farm for John Snow's book club. It's a scream right from the first page!
In the afternoon, I just visited some nearby sites. First was the Charles Dickens house, where they had an exhibit involving his crusading journalism. Then the Hunterian surgical museum, which I should have known would be creepy, but it's important to try new things. Then the Foundling Museum: some great works of art there, including Hogarth's painting of the 1745 Jacobite uprising showing the soldier torn between the Protestant nice girl and the Catholic bad girl.
Last was the British Library near St. Pancras, where I saw an exhibit about the Russian Revolution. I did a Wrong Way Corrigan, seeing the last part first and the first part last.
In the evening Goodenough College had a port talk, where people drink port and listen to a lecture by a guest speaker. I don't drink port, but I did listen to the lecture by long-serving Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger talking about investigative journalism from the Peterloo Massacre to Glenn Greenwald.
Father and Moira tried unsuccessfully to phone me in London, but I figured out that I could call them just by returning their call!
5.17.17
"Mrs. Smiling's character was firm and her tastes civilized. Her method of dealing with wayward human nature when it insisted on obtruding its grossness upon her scheme of life was short and effective; she pretended things were not so: and usually, after a time, they were not. Christian Science is perhaps a larger organization, but seldom so successful"--Cold Comfort Farm
Visited the Royal Academy of Arts where they had a show about American art in the 1930s, stuff like Grant Wood's "American Gothic."
In the afternoon I saw a matinee of the Roald Dahl musical Matilda at the Cambridge. I killed time beforehand by buying some more books at Foyle's and the Piccadilly branch of Waterstone's.
I had dinner at Goodenough College, where I made conversation with one of the wardens there. In the evening I went to another Port Talk, this time by portraitist June Mendoza.
They released Labour's election platform, which includes a promise to renationalize the water utilities. A pundit in the neo-liberal newspaper The Guardian called this proposal "a damp squib"--don't know what that is, but it doesn't sound good--and insisted that re-nationalization wasn't needed. That's the same thing New Labour said twenty years ago. Wrong then and wrong now: that's exactly what's needed!
5.18.17
Flora: "And there are also some distant cousins, connections of Mother's, I believe, who live in Sussex..."
Mrs. Smiling: "Sussex... I don't much like the sound of that. Do they live on a decaying farm?"--Cold Comfort Farm
Went out to Greenwich, where I crossed under the Thames in a pedestrian tunnel, then visited the National Maritime Museum and the Greenwich Observatory.
The observatory has an impressive collection of clocks: It reminded me that I ought to read Longitude someday! (That's a historical book about the guy who solved the problem of determining longitude by developing an unusually accurate timepiece, but claiming the immense monetary prize took a long fight that eventually involved Edmund Burke.)
I returned by bus through Southwark, where I saw several signs promoting the Liberal Democrat candidate.
In the evening, I couldn't resist returning to the Gower Street Waterstone's and buying a few more books at remainder prices.
5.19.17
"It was true that in novels dealing with agricultural life no one ever did anything so courteous as to meet a train, unless it was with the object of cutting-in under the noses of the other members of the family with some sordid or passionate end in view; but that was no reason why the Starkadders, at least, should not begin to form civilized habits"--Cold Comfort Farm
Returned to South Kensington to visit the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum. (Once again, I availed myself of the Princess Diana Fountain afterward.) Both places were full of noisy kids, but at least I wasn't there on the weekend!
In the evening I saw Beautiful at the Aldwych. It's a musical about Carole King, one of the greatest songwriters of the Brill Building generation in the '60s, who eventually released the solo album Tapestry. I found myself quietly clapping my hands to her songs!
Before the show I had time to kill, so I wandered around the South Bank and the Embankment.
The Conservatives released their own election platform. Seeing Theresa May trying to win over Labour voters, I can't help thinking of Hillary Clinton trying to win over Republican voters...
5.20.17
Mrs. Smiling: "I expect Seth will meet you in a jaunting-car."
Flora: "One does not have jaunting-cars in England, Mary. Do you never read anything but 'Haussman-Haffnitz on Brassieres'? Jaunting-cars are indigenous to Ireland. If Seth meets me at all, it will be in a wagon or a buggy"--Cold Comfort Farm
Visited the War Museum in Lambeth, then the Courtauld Gallery in Aldwych. (The latter had a big exhibit of London photography, but I skipped it.)
I also stopped at the Young Vic in Lambeth, but their production of Brecht's Galileo was sold out. (I'd probably seen enough plays anyway.)
I was now finished with everything I'd planned to do in London, with a day to spare! All that was left was to think about how much money I'd spent and how I'd live like a church mouse after I got home.
The secret to enjoying a great city like London is not visiting too often, and not staying too long. I've got it down to an art!
5.21.17
Flora: "Curious how Love destroys every vestige of that politeness which the human race, in its years of evolution, has so painfully acquired"--Cold Comfort Farm
Not much to do on my last full day in London. I went to the Bertha Dochouse screen at the Renoir cinema at the nearby Brunswick mini-mall and saw documentaries about two unusually smart women.
The first, in the afternoon, was Citizen Jane, about Jane Jacobs' vision of urbanism and her fight with New York City planner Robert Moses. (Sure, I could have waited a few days and seen it in Toronto, but I had time to kill!)
The second, in the evening, was Letters From Baghdad, about Gertrude Bell, an Englishwoman who travelled through the Middle East and ended up advising the British government, even drawing up Iraq's national boundaries! It was built around her letters home, which show a prophetic understanding of the region.
5.22.17
"Dawn crept over the Downs like a sinister white animal, followed by the snarling cries of a wind eating its way between the black boughs of the thorns. The wind was the furious voice of this sluggish animal light that was baring the dormers and mullions and scullions of Cold Comfort Farm."
Woke up really early to get to Heathrow with time to spare. (At 5:00 you can hear Big Ben at Mecklenburgh Square!) I took the subway back to the airport and again had hours to kill, in which I read more of Cold Comfort Farm. I'm now a third of the way through.
The plane was almost an hour late taking off, so I didn't arrive home till 5:00 or so.
In case you're wondering, I didn't keep notes during my stay. This whole account is from memory! (Except for the Cold Comfort Farm quotes, and I also checked online to remind myself the name of the theatre where I saw Matilda and the name of the Guardian editor.)
