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June 3, 2005
A perfectly British day
The ballet was not performing yesterday. I began the day by writing notes from the night before, then going out to stalk the wild wireless signal. I must look quite eccentric sitting in a shady corner by the church, tapping away. One fellow came up to me to ask what I was doing, and would he not need his broadband either if he got a wireless card? No problem, says I, if you’d like to walk about the city like a homeless person to get your email. A second older man came up to me to warn me that the neighborhood was dangerous and that marauding bands of thugs would come up to me and whack me to get my expensive laptop. I told him I would be careful.
It was sunny and lovely out so after working out and some food I headed into town to take a walk and be a tourist, something I don’t do much of in London, oddly. I got off the tube at Covent Garden and headed to St. Martin’s Lane. First stop: Freed of London on a pointe shoe mission. Mary has teeny tiny feet and needs a size 2.5, single X, deep vamp. Capezio no longer even makes that size, because it’s considered a child’s size and they don’t want to encourage pointe work at too early an age. Alas, no luck for Mary. There were none.
St. Martins Lane takes you past several theaters including the London Coliseum where English National Ballet performs. St. Martins-in-the-Fields is where the road ends at Trafalgar Square, opposite the National Portrait Gallery. I went in to the Gallery to look at the queens and kings.
The gallery is as much an art exhibit as a history lesson. It begins at the War of the Roses and continues through the upheaval of the Reformation and the Act of Settlement on to the present times. The thing that struck me was how placid one likes to think of English history – a succession of rulers down history from William the Conqueror through to Elizabeth II – and how scandalous it actually was. Wars, beheadings, bastards, abdications, infidelities, intrigue and treason . . . English royal history seems anything but regal. The current crop we think of as so debased are only following in their ancestors’ footsteps. I made it through the Tudor and some of the Hanover galleries when the building was evacuated due to a minor power outage. I took that as a sign to keep moving.
Trafalgar Square was jammed with people enjoying the sunny day.
Crossing it, I walked down Whitehall past the Queen’s Horse Guards
And the Banqueting House, all that remains of Whitehall Palace. King Charles was beheaded here. There are major occupational hazards to being royalty.
More views of the walk - The London Eye and a War Memorial.
And I ended at Parliament.
I took the tube from Westminster Station on the District/Circle line back to the hotel. Some of those stations are above ground and are quite interesting because they seem to be quite old.
After returning, I turned on my computer, which decided to be cranky again. It turned on, but refused to illuminate the screen. I considered searching for any handy marauding band of thugs to beg them to take it off my hands, but a torrential, though brief, downpour stopped that, and after a brief rest my computer screen lit up as if nothing had been the matter. It’s as eccentric and cranky as me, but perhaps it’s time to replace it.
Dinner was very special. At half past six my friend Brendan picked me up and we headed to St. James to meet his wife Susie at the Athenaeum Club.
I’ve never been in a British club before, but it’s exactly as one would imagine it. High ceilings, large heavy furniture, wide marble staircases. We had a champagne in the lounge, then went downstairs to the Garden Room. Here Susie proudly pointed out two costume renderings done for Pavlova, one of a doll. Though the doll looked like the costume for Karsavina in Petrouchka, I think the renderings were for the small divertissement solos that Pavlova did on her tours.
On to a very rich dinner in the main dining room. I had steak, which they did awfully well. I’ll let you know in two decades if I get Mad Cow. The conversation ranged throughout dinner; I found it amusing that Susie was most interested in (and brought up) Friday Catblogging. Love my cat, love me.
After a dessert trolley, coffee and tea were served upstairs in a reading room rather prosaically out of vacuum thermoses. I guess I expected china and urns! Susie took me through several of the libraries that also serve as smaller private dining rooms. There are several Gentlemen’s Clubs on Pall Mall, the Traveler’s and the Reform Club are adjacent. Susie was one of the first female members of the Athenaeum; the club only admitted women from 2002.
After dinner the sky was perfectly clear and a perfect shade of intense but light blue that indicated nightfall. By the time we got back to Kensington it was still clear, but lapis. Night had come to the end of a perfectly British day.
Posted by Leigh Witchel at June 3, 2005 5:49 PM
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Comments
Sounds like you had a wonderful day... and sounds like Javi has another member for her fan club!
Posted by: Steve at June 4, 2005 4:57 PM