London Bates-Treleaven Travels

This is Marcia typing from Wyona's account (my mom). Gabe and I arrived in London 24 hours ago, and a lot has happened since then. I don't know whether to start with the good list or the bad list. Let's do good first, it is shorter.

We saw Life of Pi on the plane. Gabe had never seen it before, it was my second time. We both really enjoyed it. We arrived at the London airport, and we took an express train from Gatwick to London, quite an enjoyable ride.

Wyona had switched things up at the Best Western we are staying at; originally she had a single room on the top floor and we had a double room close by. It has been so hot in London, so she went and checked at the front desk about other rooms available. They had a family room with a double bed and 2 single beds available in the basement. We switched to that instead and it has been fun to be in the same room. When we arrived at 10am she was still sleeping. She had switched to that room the night before because it was 10 degrees cooler than the sweltering upstairs room. Gabe and I checked out the room and really liked it... except for... that will have to wait for the next list.

We had a 3 hour nap while Wyona went to get us show tickets. Then at 2:30pm she and Gabe saw Billy Elliot and I went to Once at 3pm. Oh, Once was so beautiful. What talented musicians/singers/actors. Is it ok to cry in a show when you are by yourself? I wondered if Gabe was crying at all the right parts in Billy Elliot. He loved it and spent the evening singing 'Solidarity'. He also bought a hoody with Billy Elliot London on it, he loves that jacket already.

We met at Trafalgar Square after our shows. There was some big screen Opera event being set up, the crowds were already converging, and we snagged 6 free inflatable seat cushions before going to find a bite to eat before our next show. Always resourceful, those Pilling Aunts! I'm just not sure they will get used before we return to Canada, so far we haven't sat long enough to have sore bums that need seat cushions.

We took a 'rickshaw' ride to our next performance (more on that later), and we saw Merrily We Roll Along. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it. A little too adult-themed for Gabe's understanding, but he still enjoyed the musical numbers. Gabe and Wyona went back to the hotel room during the interval (intermission), he was so tired... he put on a brave face, but with only 3 hours sleep in the past 36 hours, he was fading fast. The best number was in the second half. When they started singing The Blob, I was laughing so hard I had tears in my eyes, yet another show I cried in.

I went to Trocadero on my way home... what a lively place at 11pm! Took the tube back to the hotel room, called home to see how Art, Zack and Audra were doing, then slept soundly until 8:30 a.m. the next morning. Oh yeah, those two were still awake watching Waterworld on tv when I got back to the hotel, so we didn't go to sleep until 1 a.m.

What a wonderful first day... although now for the post about all that went wrong... 

On Living Yesterday Again

We had two May 6ths.

May 6th – Day 1 and May 6th – Day 2.

... evening in Petropavlovsk ...

The purpose is to get us back in sync with the rest of the world, since we have been gaining all of these hours and now have to give them back some way. Greg sleeps in. Wyona sleeps in. I try to dress in the dark and slip out to walk the halls of the 7th floor – 3 minutes to the other end, and 3 minutes back again. Getting out the door is has its difficulties. My watch is on upside down. I have a sweater which I have now put on inside out, and the second day, inside out and upside down. With just one speck of daylight in the room, I think I could do better.

... the sailout ...

I had a fantastic day yesterday. A fellow Canadian at our table is a decade older than me. His wife sits by him, since he can’t always hear the conversation and she gets very close to his ear and then speaks in a loud voice for him – and that is with his hearing aids in. I can look at him, tell a story as loudly as I can, think he is lip-reading, but he gets hardly anything. Last night John, from Australia sat by him and kept the conversation going. But John’s wife kept poking him in the ribs, telling me that he had to talk softer, since she couldn’t keep the conversation going on the other side of the table. The old man still needed John to speak louder. The louder John spoke, the more his wife kept giving him pokes in the ribs, whispering in an aside to us that the loud voice was due to the 3 afternoon martinis and that no one needs to talk that loud.

Oh, this is fun!

... night seas ...

Yesterday the waiter forgot to give Greg his main course at lunch.

The woman next to Greg called over the maitre d’, told her that the guest had not received his meal yet, and that this was unacceptable. The poor waiter came back cowering with his supervisor. The food was just late from the kitchen. Greg would have gone without 10 meals before he would have said anything, let alone in that form of complaint.

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Before that, the woman had bawled Greg out for using her bread plate – which was really his bread plate, but I she had decided it was his, even though she said she doesn’t ever set tables with bread plates. In the mean time her husband had alerted the waiter twice that he needed ketchup on his hamburger, even though the hamburger was many minutes away from being served to him. Subsequently her pasta was sent back to the kitchen because it tasted too much like spicy ketchup. All of the while the man was telling us he is an investment counsellor, in insurance and he can tell us how to invest our money for the next two years where it will get maximum returns. Wyona had told him that our ship is not running sailing at maximum capacity, and he dismissed her information, saying that the stats on the empty rooms is inconsequential and that what he doesn’t like is being nickled and dimed to death as is done on this boat. I don’t know why all of this was so fun. The only time the man was thunder-struck was when he asked Wyona how many children she had. Long silence from her. She said eight. Finally he was spechless.  

... sunset ..

Long silence from him. Then “Are you Catholic?” 

No, she said. 

He said, “I am the 7th of 7 kids. My mother was 45 when she had me.” When he asked Wyona how many grandchildren she had, long silence again. That is because Wyona hasn’t got enough fingers to count them all, and she doesn’t have Charise at her side giving her the right answer. When Wyona finally came up with the number13, there was another long silence.

A lunch hour always to be remembered by us.

Arta

The Year of the Pig in Gold

“Do not walk alone in places that are unknown to you.” That is what the sign said as I looked down a side alley off of Haiphong Road. And that is what is keeping me from doing an early morning walk all alone. So I laid here thinking about window shopping yesterday.

The gold jewellery in the window is exquisite and reminds me of the gold souks in Dubai, -- at least the amount of gold.

What makes this different is design, especially a choker necklace with the main design being a large pig, three columns of baby pigs hanging 4 deep from the sow’s underbelly. A fantastic tribute to those born in the year of the pig and the first time that I have been sad about being a dragon.

Down one isle of the Ocean Terminal Shopping Centre were a series of display cases, each holding two watching which were each circling 360 degrees, slowly, slowly and the sparkle coming off of the watches was so amazing that Greg, Wyona and I were all drawn in for a closer look.

We talked for a long time about the spectacular design, Greg finally remarking, “All of that and a watch besides.”

Wyona said of the salesmen in high end dark black suits standing near-by, “I bet those young men double as armed guards. I am going to find out the price of one of those watches.” She came back.

“Four million Hong Kong Dollars.”

That math was too hard for me even though I have been dividing every HKD price by 7 to get an idea of the cost in Canadian dollars. Having to work with six zeros at the end of some figure closed me right down for a moment. “That would be half a million dollars,” offered the salesman who had come over now to give Wyona more details on the watches on the pedestals. Exquisite beauty and a joy to look at.

We travelled on to other glass windows. In one shop, the silk skirts of the dresses were billowing, aka the famous Marilyn Monroe shot over the sidewalk grate. We searched to find where the fans were placed – in the far corners of the windows. A shop close by had large, fluffy 3-D clouds hovering down at the mid point of the window – eye-catching, though I can’t remember anything that was in the window except the clouds.

When we passed the diamond watches today, I heard the tone in Greg’s voice change to gruff. He said to Wyona, “This is the last time I will ask you. Do you want one of those watches or not. I am not bringing you back here. Either get it now or never!”

Arta

The Travellers in First Class

Yes, Tonia -- I am one of those who love train travel.

To get Wyona's and my tickets for the Britrail passes, there was only once choice, due to our advancing ages. We had to travel first class.  That was hard on two women who are always looking for sales.

Still, I am hooked on train travel.

That would make sense, considering the number of times I have stood at the side of the tracks and waved to those who are passing by. 

 2... our passes let us travel through England, Scotland and Wales ...

And I am missing my travel companion
Greg and I were lucky.

We had Wyona who would figure out the schedules, look for destinations that would work between stations, pack a lunch for us, make reservations for hotels if we had to stay over, and she would act as the alarm clock -- the one who got us out the door on time, for trains wait for no one. 

... the feast?  Wyona's box lunch for  us ...

When Greg retired he got a new life and I lost an old one -- the one where I did lots of train travel.

What would be good for me is if he would go and find some contract work.

Then Wyona would be mine again. l

I miss those picnic lunches on trains. 

Arta

Thriller

On sea days Moiya, Wyona and I are looking for something to do. 

In the ship’s daily newspaper called the Compass I read, "come and learn to dance the Thriller". 

On the list of things to choose that I call “Things I Might Not Do Otherwise”, that item was in the top three. Wyona and I were on the dance floor for the first lesson and Moiya joined us for the second lesson. 

We should have known something was unusual when the dance directors wanted to know our stateroom phone numbers and when we were handed out two pages of instructions about the dance moves. At the end of the second lesson they said that the Thriller dance number was going to be peformed before one of the evening events called the Quest, and that we would be getting front seats in payment for our performance. 

That is when Moiya and about 8 others of the dancers went to the side saying we/they were opting out. The cruise staff are adept at twisting arms and giving positive feed back: don’t worry, we will be in the front line for you to follow; no one will be noticing you through the smoke and strobe lights; people who have done this before on other ships have said the performance was one of their cruise highlights.

This didn’t seem possible to me. In the first place, I had been on a previous cruise and the participants that time had been given 5 hours of practise, not the 3 that our shortened cruise had assigned for the dance practise. I told Wyona the next morning that I couldn’t sleep all night, waking all night to practise in my mind all of the phrases I could remember – boogie to the left, boogie to the left, swim, swim, turn to the thriller pose, etc., imaging where my feet would be going. She laughed and said she was having nightmares – that she was mad at the cruise dance directors because they had changed the steps and so she had mutinied and got a group of the other dancers to agree with her that they would do it the old way ... against the wishes of the instructors. 

Jewellery compliments of Seattles Best Coffee Shoppe

In real life, Moiya was absolutely OUT – with every excuse in the world. She folded (but just barely) to group pressure and stayed in, if she were to be allowed the middle spot in the chorus line-up, – thinking that there she would be hidden the most from the view of the audience.

Alex came to the pre-performance practise – in the ice rink where a floor slips over the ice so that there is a place for dancing and for the quest events that were to follow. 

Alex filmed us on the video of Wyona’s camera – a clip worthy of u-tube.

Here is the problem for the three of us – we know no Michael Jackson songs – not even Thriller, nor have we watched the Thriller videos. 

3 of Royal Caribbean's Independence of the Seas most talented dancers

As Moiya whispered to me weeks later, “Why would I have the lyrics to any of the Jackson tunes in my mind. Twenty years ago I put that music in the category of wickedness that I should never listen to."

The three of us persisted on board, practising our moves in the cabin, pre and post breakfast, lunch and dinner. 

When we reached the point of the final choreographic touches to the dance (a place none of us thought the others would reach) Wyona was identified as a confident looking dancer and assigned a place in the back of the line – which at one point turns into the front of the line -- an assignment that made her shoulders slump and her feet stamp a bit and her head shake in disbelief, but what could she do? Look confident! The reward is front line billing – at least when the back line turns into the front and the front to the back.


“Nope,” she said. “We seem to be the only ones in the theatre that are hearing these words for the first time. We are listening cold. The rest of the audience is hot – look at them silently mouthing the words along with the singers.”

After the intermission we were changed. Perhaps it was the Pepsi we drank. But we were actually, entranced. I wonder at this moment what the word transmogrified means, for that word pops into my mind about us. The lyrics, the dancing, the miming, the band, the gymnastics, the costuming, -- magical moments on stage. A fantastic show. Following the audience’s wild clapping and cheering at the end of the show, the cast did a reprise – many more numbers – among them, the Thriller song and the moves that Moiya and I had learned on the boat. People in the boxes were standing, their bodies swaying, doing all of the steps that the cast was doing on stage. Moiya joined in, doing the moves we had learned on the boat, her feet stamping and her hands clapping – the deadman walk, the steps where the head and shoulder meet to simulate a tick, the lion pose – I was crying, I was laughing so hard watching her.

Image from Website

Moiya wants me to mention that Thriller is not really a show with a plot. All they do is play Michael Jackson songs which are both sung and choreographed. There is a child who comes onstage at first, singing one of Jackson’s earlier songs. And there is another figure that looks like Jackson as an older performer ... but no plot line ... just the songs.On the way home in the subway, we began to plan our costuming which is going to go over the top the next time we get on a boat and there is a chance to perform the Thriller dance. In fact, we were five long tube stops past the place we should have alighted to get the Northern Line home by the time we stopped our conversation and tried to think of how we were going to get home. Moiya was right. There is mortal danger in being Michael Jacksonized. 

Move on a few weeks – to yesterday. Wyona left Woodside Lane for Calgary. Moiya and I left Woodside Lane for downtown London, wondering which of the yet unseen West End Musicals we could add to our agenda. We slipped into the theatre where Thriller is staged, not believing that we would get a ticket since Wyona has been there many times and she had never been able to get tickets. But the stars were in alignment – we got producer tickets, right in the middle of the theatre, about 8 rows from the front for the very cheap price of £32.50. We warmed up to the ambiance we could feel in the crowd in the first part of the show, though we napped a bit. I turned to her and asked, “Moiya? Do you know any of the songs. Ever heard “Dirty Diana” or “Bad” before?”

The Captain's Lunch

“How did they get in without an invitation?”

That was Greg’s question tonight. 

The three of us received an invitation to the captain’s lunch – meant for pinnacle, diamond plus, diamond and platinum members.  A payoff for returning patrons.  Lucky for me, I have reached one of those categories because I tag along with Wyona and Greg and get to have my name put on invitations with theirs.

Before this first event for me, they would go off to hear the Captain talk – everyone in the room with a glass of champagne in their hands, or off to the Captain’s brunch or hors oeuvres with the Captain. Now this invitation had my name on it as well, and said in a kind way, in order to be admitted, the card had to be shown at the door. 

And yes, we were checked at the door.  When I went in, about five steps ahead of Greg and Wyona, instead of offering me that sanitizing cloth that everyone has to rub on their hands before they go in to the dining room, the one the woman was holding one in her hand, instead of putting it in mine, she held it behind her back and she asked me, “How could I help you today?” 

Now I had dressed up for the occasion (was smart casual) and my name was on that invitation. I had on my new cameo, the one I have been practising wearing, the one I wanted one ever since I was a child.  Older women would wear ones in the late 1940’s, ones that I would admire and in my 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, even 50’s, I would go by Birks and looking longing at samples in the windows, wondering when my time (enough $$$) would come to get one. 

When I was with Mary in Pompeii, I bought one and have taken to the practise of wearing it, since I have so many decades that I missed wearing one in and must make up for it to get the cost per wearing down.  Even that piece of jewellery was ready and on for the Captain’s specialty lunch.

“I am here for the Captain’s lunch,” I explained.  “My invitation is with them,” I answered pointing to Wyona and Greg.  The sanitizing cloth came immediately to my hand, along with a lovely welcome, though the invitation was securitized as they passed it to the gatekeeper on their side of the isle.

We were seated and soon another couple joined us in the MacBeth dining room.   

“How many cruises have you been on,” said Wyona and when they answered this was their first one, the rest of us handled the news with aplomb, not missing a beat but as Greg said, how did they get in --and asking them how they were enjoying it, would they take another and where were they from, what shows they had enjoyed onboard ... to which the answer was they were from Lutton and after the shows, the bars are so full they can’t find a place to get a drink. That is about it for how much conversation they offered. Greg worked hard for the rest of the meal, keeping the dialogue going, but he couldn’t get any information from them...about the man’s work, their family, what else they liked to do. 

We had seen someone turned away from the dining room the night before, miffed and loudly arguing with the person who had denied them entrance, but every Cruise Compass reminds people of appropriate attire: bare feet, shorts, tank tops and t-shirts are not permitted in the dining room.  This couple, however, made it passed the gatekeepers and the couple were wearing shorts and t-shirts and without a captain’s invitation, unlike me, dressed to the nines and still stopped. 

Events like these take a lot of time for the three of us try to figure out how that just happened.  Did they make it through because they were so old no one stopped them? Perhaps they are so deaf they didn’t hear someone telling them to stop which is Greg’s guess.  A good guess given they only nodded and smiled at him all dinner when he tried to get conversation going?   

Or did they accidently take their place in this dining room, since it is their usual assigned one for evening sitting and they just missed knowing which meal they were going to and came to lunch instead of supper?   

Who knows, but the whole incident makes the three of us burst out laughing when we talk about it.

After the Fact... London with Arta

After the better part of a week spent in London hounding the streets for a home to rent for the year, I was left with one free day to spend with Arta. The three of us headed off to Leicester Square, to the half-price booth to get theatre tickets for the last night. The plan was to head in different directions: Arta wanted to see "Love Never Dies" again, and Wyona wanted to spend her last night with "Dreamboats and Petticoats".

Ten minutes before hitting the Tube station, we'd had a long talk about how to meet up with each other if we got separated... the easy answer is of course just to look back for Rebecca's hair. :-) In a moment of irony, the two women went through ahead of me, and my Oyster card ("bus pass") denied me entry (I had run out of money and hadn't noticed).... the line up to re-nourish my depleted Oyster card was long, and the women were gone...Arta, though, in typical Arta way, had decided for fun to see how easy it was to find me, and had noticed I was gone. They came back, spoke to me through the barricade, and we sent Wyona ahead to wait in the ticket line up while I lined up for the Oyster card. Nice start to the day... way to practice finding each other after getting lost.

Just proving that different paths do not always run at the same speed, Arta and I somehow still managed to arrive at the Leicester Square before Wyona.

Go figure. 

So... tickets purchased, we split up for the day: Wyona to visit her favourite scarf sellers (What?! More scarves?!), and Arta and I to visit the National Gallery.

One of the recent 'installations' at the national gallery is the "Eco Art" outside. VERY westcoast!

They have planted grasses and small mossy growing things all over one of the walls of the building.

Not sure how visible it is in the shot, but the effect from some ways back is a bit like a Georges Seurat painting... it just looks like a lovely watercolour painting. Pretty groovy!

Arta and I have not spent much time in museums TOGETHER (as adults, that is... i certainly spent time following in her path of educational exploration as a child...you know, "fossil rock walks in downtown Calgary", "identify bat guano in fish creek park", etc).

But it was a revelation to see that she is just as bad as me in her desire to consume til your belly/brain explodes.

In between our own wanderings, we took in the 10:30 and 2:30 guided tours, each of which offered a more close exploration of 5 or maybe 6 paintings.

Christ Healing the Blind Man by Buoninsegna

We started out looking at some panels from an alter piece done by Duccio di Buoninsegna (c. 1255-1260 – c. 1318-1319), the most influential Italian artist of his time.

The first one we saw has Christ healing the blind man. 

It is fun to look at the conventions for telling story through image: here, you see the blind man both before and after being healed. 

The panel that goes beside this one has Christ appearing to the apostles.... when they are set along side each other, you can see that the "healed" blind man is looking up at the body of Christ in the panel along side. 

Fun.

We also learned that this was painted on wood, which was then covered with linen, and then covered with plaster to make a smooth surface to paint on. The paint was egg tempera, which would give you vibrant colours, albeit without tons of nuance: the paint would dry very fast, so you only had a short time where it could be pliably worked). 

Annunciation of Mary

In the afternoon session, we returned to Duccio, to look at another painting of the Annunciation (Mary getting informed by the angel that she was going to have a baby....). 

We listened to a nice discussion about the number of people who would have participated in making the painting.

Different artists in the studio would have done the people, and the buildings (would would have had painters specializing in buildings)

Then we moved up a hundred years, to spend time with the Spanish Bartolomé 

St. Michael Triumphs Over the Devil

Bermejo's 1468 painting "St Michael triumphs over the devil". This one is in oil, which explains the greater nuance and emotion captured in the paint. We also learned more about just how much gold leaf there was on the original. First there was a 'cartoon' of the painting... like a paper version laid over top of the prepared canvas. then someone would poke holes through it onto the prepared canvas below, so that the outline of the painting was transferred there. Then the gold specialist would be next, and would cover certain part of the painting with a red glue, over which was laid tiny pieces of gold flake. The gold would then be further pressed it into the wood with some kind of embossing tool, so that the painting would be even more luminescent when seen in the candlelight of the darkened church. Only after all the gold pieces were laid down would the artist come into to paint the figures and images in the scene. When you look at it now, there is not so much gold, and the background looks reddish... that is just the red glue stuff (which had some special name i have forgotten) showing through. If you click on this link, so will get the picture on the national gallery's website, and can zoom in to get a closeup of the monster! The feminist in me was so happy that the guide did eventually take us to a painting by a woman artist! Here were looked at a painting by Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (1755 - 1842). This is a self-portrait of her, but she is also showing off her skills as a painter by making hers a version of a similar painting by Rubens, on the right of the gallery and which you can see beside her in this post. What she was doing here was making a 'calling card'.

Self Portrait of Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun

She is showing herself AS an artist, showing off all the skills she has, letting male viewers know that she can make their wives look this good but that they needn't worry about leaving their wife alone with her. I also like how she is holding her hand out, encouraging them to give her a commission! There was more, but I am getting tired. :-) which was just what happened to us too! So.... in between the two guided tours, we went for a "Talk and Draw" session. Here, they set up 40 chairs in front of one painting.

Artist: John Constable

In this case, the painting was John Constable's "Cenotaph to the Memory of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Someone talks to you about the painting for 20 minutes, then they give you two drawing tasks, to practice some of the techniques that were used in the drawing. They hand out these nice big easels for you lap, boxes of pastels, pencils, conté, etc. So we had two tasks. First to draw a single tree from the painting by building up layers of colour (ie. start with black, go over with red, with brown, yellow, etc). Second task was to show perspective in the same way (ie. capture the darkening woods in the distance). I will confess, we both had to come to terms with some of our limits! hahaha. And yet, it was totally fun, so sit, listen, draw, and laugh. At the end, they had people set their drawings at the front to compare what people had produced. We also then had to head to the bathroom to wash the evidence of our crimes from our fingers (stained by the pastels). I felt very much like Lady MacBeth! We did bring our drawings home and showed them to Wyona at the end of the night. I will not be more specific re which of the drawings below belongs to Arta and which belongs to me... but I think Wyona was arguing that one of the paintings looks less like 'the woods', and more like a Judy Chicago plate! You can see that neither of those two women was taking my artist production very seriously.

Artists.

They are never appreciated while still alive...

Lend Me a Tenor & Million Dollar Quartet

Some sights are so visually out of the ordinary that they stay with me for a long time.  One was Rebecca standing on the floor but with her coffee mug raised to the ceiling, trying to catch the fine Stream of water that was pouring out of the fire alarm detecor, splashes of it landing on her haïr, her shoulders, the rug and the bed beside her.

"Call the front desk.  Just dial zero.  Tell them what is happening here."

"Hello.  Water is streaming out of the roof.  Would this be consisent with the history of this room?", I said.

“Run, get me another empty cup from the bathroom,” called Rebecca, at the same time the clerk saying “I will be up in five minutes”

“I don’t think she can stand there with her mug in the air catching the water that long,” I replied.

I hung up and at that moment the fire alarm went off – in our room only.  Rebecca’s arms holding the coffee mug came down and we both reached for the three things we would want most  if we had to leave our hotel bedroom and never come back.

The clerk was at the door by the time we had our shoes on and our passports and money collected.  “I will find you another room, he said as he opened the door to our room.  At that moment the fire alarm in the whole building went off.

People began streaming out of their rooms and walking down the stairs, all of them in the same condition as we – only half woken from sleep and marching in tune to the fire alarm.

Two hour later we had repacked our bags, moved to the lower floor, a bigger room and were again unpacking and remarking how nice it is to do that with a heightened level of adrenalin flow.

June 4, 2011

Yesterday, Rebecca had taken advantage of pre-booking her plane seat to the bulkhead, a place with plenty of leg-room.  I slipped out of my seat in the row behind her and by the time we had taken off and the plane leveled out, we were both scanning the choices of movies.  Rebecca mocked me – nothing trashy or light.  I was  interested in the Dutch biopic Goethe – knowing nothing more than how to spell his name and a few minutes into the film, charmed by the good acting and clever dialogue.  I do not know what Rebecca and I had been talking about at the airport, but she had said to me, “Don’t speak ill of the dead,” and then she laughed and said, “though I don’t know why not.”   

Don’t speak ill of the dead is a phrase straight from Goethe.  And speaking of the dead, dead tired is what I was.  I couldn't manage any more of the plane movies!

June 5, 2011

After telling me not to come to the Heathrow to pick her up, Wyona changed her mind, gave me consent. I travelled the Picadilly Line to fetch her at the airport, playing the part of all of those Brits who stand at the Airport Exit, either with signs or waving to whomever they are to help continue on their journey.  Every tube stop has its charm.  I am getting to know and love Earl’s Court, finally knowing where the lifts and ramps are for luggage.  Watching Rebecca lug suitcases up and down 83 stairs works to help me spot other alternatives.   When I am paired with Wyona and lift is broken, it is easier.  We look like two old characters our of a movie, struggling to get those suitcases up some stairs.    A true gentleman on the run must have had a few extra minutes to spare and he stopped to help us.

June 5, 2011

Wyona and I left for Central London to get tickets for tonight.  Rebecca got on the phone making appointments to have renting agents show her flats to let.  Our job was easier – since it is easy to find te ticket office for Legally Blonde and the Leister Sqare Ticket wicket marquee held promise of half price shows we have not seen.  All three of us were sitting in Lend me a Tenor by the eveing, Wyona set up with her drinks, her candies to kee her awake and an empty chair on the left side of her to accommodate her left arm. 

The show made me laugh until I cried.

Then tears spilled down my cheeks for a different reason -- over the sentiment of the show's message. 

Rebecca said the same thing happened to her. 

”Pure cheese,” she said, “but it feels so good.”  

The show was rich in stereotypes: the ingénue, the tempermental opera soprano and the fiery Italian wife on the one side and on the male side, the famous Italian tenor, the opera house manager and the yet-to-be-discovered singing sensation.  A comedy of manners – at one point three tenors are on stage, all pretending to be the same person.  The show satirically reference popular and high culture with the same intensity.  It was in the opera singer’s aria when she sings a bit of Butterfly, some of Die Walkerie, the soprano’s aria in the The Nightingale and  show stoppers in10 other operas that I was l

laughing so hard I was crying.  

How can so many operas make their way off the stage and into tunes we all know – either via elevator music or background tunes in cartoons?

Lend me a Tenor is still in its previews.

June 7, 2011

We tried to get day tickets to see Berlioz’s Faust but with standing room only and in a place where we couldn’t see the surtitles, we wasted our time in that line-up, though we did get one free performance out of it at the Collessium.  Wyona poked me when she heard a commotion at the box office and I listened in – a well-dressed Ruropean was complaining that he had been sold a ticket where he couldn’t see the stage – just what we had turned down.  He was wanting his money back.  Then he was demanding to see the manager.  “I am the manager,” said the clerk.  “I want a manager higher than you,” he shouted when he was told that the Collesium can’t honour ticket sales purchased from any other venue. 

Then out marched the man I had seen in a suit, hanging out by the programme stall and about who I had said to Wyona – wow!  The programme man is well dressed.  He was now playing the role of the bouncer, and bodily shoved the man to the door and then pushed him out the door forcefully, with no thought about damaging the beautiful wood or the brass handles on the door.  The man was right back in the door, shouting at the top of his voice, demanding respect and satisfaction.  I was moving to get my back against the marble pillars, this being the closest thing I have ever seen to a bar fight.  The rest of the Brits in the opera line-up seemed to keep theirs eyes on the books they were holding as they stood in the line-up as if they couldn’t see anything. happening.  The first bouncer was joined by a second one who helped shove  the opera patron through the door – a more brutal push than the first exit he had been given.  The man in the expensive leather jacket ending up on the street again, walking down toward the Thames, shouting more loudly than ever and waving is fists in the air. 

“That bouncer has no respect for the beautiful door that opens into this theatre, shoving a person through them like that,” I said to Wyona.

“All I can say is that was a performance at the Collesium we didn’t have to pay for,” Wyona said as we wandered off to the Noel Coward Theatre to get tickets for the Million Dollar Quartet for this evening. 

You might have seen reviews about the Million Dollar Quartet, a story built around the night in 1956 when Sun Records brought Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis together and recorded their evening jam.  People were swaying to the music as they entered the theatre and singing the words of the old tunes to each other as they passed each other in the isles:  Blue Suede Shoes, I Walk the Line, Hound Doug, and Great Balls of Fire. 

This is the short form of our theatre review.  Wyona said Greg and she tried to get tickets to this show when they were in New York earlier this year and it was sold out.  She was glad to see it here and hopes to bring Greg when they come back in the fall.  I hope future shows are sold out in London as well.  A night of music to be remembered and so interesting to get an overview of the history of early rock and roll this way and seeing some riveting musical performances from the past brought to life again.