"'Tis no sin for a man to labor in his vocation"

Finally sitting down to write down my opinions of In the Heights last week reminded me that I never wrote about my experiences with theater while I was in London.

When John and I arrived at Shakespeare's Globe I reverted to a fifteen year old English lit geek. I don't remember what John and I talked about in queue because I was memorizing the details of the lobby. I took dozens of photos which I deleted later because although each photo op seemed pressing in the heat of the moment, I really didn't need pictures of the door handles and floor of the (all modern) lobby.

We bought tickets to Henry IV Part One, and although I was disappointed that our plan to see Macbeth had been thwarted by box office sales I agreed with John when he said "you can't really beat seeing Henry the Fourth at the Globe Theater."

Obviously, it's not the original Globe Theater, which burnt down in 1613 and was rebuilt on the same site. The second theater was shut down in 1642 by Puritan rule. This replica is as authentic as possible,  built in 1997 (through the efforts of an American actor/director), a mere matter of meters away from the site of the first (and second) Globe Theaters. It was the first building allowed to have a thatched roof after the Great Fire  of London.

Original thatched roof or not,  to watch Shakespeare performed by some of the world's best known classical actors in a space that aims to duplicate the experiences had by Shakespeare's first audiences, is a treat.  We took our place in the Yard with the other groundlings, and I took approximately a gazillion more photos of the intricate interior of the theater as we awaited the start of the show.

My hand touching the stage. I'm in heaven.

The show opened with a flourish of dance and music. All the instruments were period, and played by actors. Mummers with grotesque and exaggerated costume pieces staged a comedic street performance on a platform smack dab in the midst of the groundlings. After a bit of bawdy banter they were interrupted by the entrance of  King Henry, sir Walter Blunt and the rest of the King's court who then proceeded to take the stage and dive into the plot.

All the characters were strong. Hotspur (Sam Crane)  and his unintentionally comical bursts of temper.  Prince Hal (Jamie Parker) with his boyish grin, and torn loyalties to street life and prince-dom.  King Henry (Oliver Cotton) with his loving but firm reproach of his son's behavior. In fact, the highly complicated relationship Cotton and Parker created between this famous father and a son very nearly brought me to tears several times. Still one man managed to steal my heart the show.

Every critic has said it in one way or another, but in the event that you're not keeping up on reviews of shows in London right now I'll say it too: Roger Allam was born to play Falstaff. He's exactly what you want in a Falstaff: a booming voice, impossibly expressive face, and dead on sense of timing. Allam's Falstaff doesn't shy away from the parts of his character that are disgusting (binge eating, drinking to excess, lying and thievery to name a few), and still comes off as the lovable, mischievous man we all would gladly share a bar counter with. If only for the stories we could tell later.

The show ends after the Battle of Shrewsbury with all out reveling and a full cast song and dance number, the nature of which made me feel as though I were actually peeking into a tavern window in the 1400s and not standing on concrete in an open air theater with hundreds of strangers.

I would absolutely love to see Part Two. Anyone want to fly to London for a matinée?

London: people * places * [things]

...specifically, things you can't  or don't get back home, because that's part of the fun of traveling, right?

As I sit here, to my left is an empty gold wrapper. That wrapper belonged to nothing else but a Cadbury Crunchie bar.

My love affair with Crunchies began when I was in grade school, performing at Irish Step Dancing competitions around Massachusetts. One thing that every feis had in common was a smattering of items for sale, from ghillies to tara brooches, from custom made dresses to fancy bags to carry them in. And then there was UK candy.

Naturally when I was reunited with Crunchies in London last week I was delighted. 

"Of course," John said when I asked if I could stop at one of the tiny shops at Heathrow to stock up on my way home.

I grinned. 

Tonight, sitting in my small, hot Cambridge apartment letting the chocolate melt off the honeycomb in my mouth before I chomp into the bar it's like I'm ten years old again. I'm sitting on a folding metal chair in the back room of an east coast town hall, the smell of Aquanet mingling with the fresh leather smell of my ghillies, waiting for my mother to take the curlers out of my hair so I can pin my number card to the front of my dress and dance.

Thank you, London, for that. 

Another fun example (one of many)?

At a bar/club called Barrio Central in SoHo, John drank a beer from Cuba. 

That's certainly not happening over here any time soon. Silly me, I stuck to rum and cokes.

London: people * [places] * things

So many of the places I visited in London deserve their own entry, and will most likely get them.
Some deserve their own entry and won't get one and I can only hope my memory of them lives on anyway.
Places are never just places though are they? They're really just about people and things only you add in smells and sounds and room tone.

On our first day in London we hopped on and off the Big Bus Tour, so we had eyeballed most of the prominent sights in the city by 6pm. We had photographed Big Ben, gawked at Westminster Abbey, meandered around Picadilly Circus, stood on London Bridge, and wondered at the lions in Trafalgar Square.*  It had been a while since we ate at Costa that morning, we tried to find a decent pub. The World Cup was on and we were near London Bridge. The odds were against us, but we prevailed.
We settled on dinner at a pub called Mudlark.  It was situated just far enough from the London Dungeon that we couldn't hear any touristy screams, but near enough that on our way there I got my photo taken with two blood-stained actors wandering the streets. (Score!)

At the pub John tried the fish and chips, and I ate delicious steamed veggies with my fingers while I drank a Fosters.**  I took a photo at the table because I couldn't get over how casually we were drinking in the shadow of a medieval church.
As we were leaving, a football game was picking up between some of the young men drinking their beers on the street outside the pub. Two men rode by on bicycles. Big Ben chimed.

Oh, London.

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* Later we would return there and witness a celebration that broke out when England beat Slovenia.
  This involved shirtless men standing in the middle of the fountain in Trafalgar Square waving flags and screaming while people danced and screamed at the base of the fountain and tourists like us circled the scene wondering why soccer is so popular everywhere else in the world.
** Which meant I was hungry again about an hour later. Brilliant.

London: [people] * places * things

One of the best parts of traveling is the meeting of new people.

Here are just three examples from this trip to London:

When I asked Sam if I was in the right place he put his arms on my shoulders and called me "love," which confirmed my suspicion that all British people speak like my friend Sally Hull. 

Sam, of course, was the gregarious guide of the walking tour we took on Wednesday night. 

The event was touted as a ghost tour, and was free with our Big Bus tickets.*  The tour actually had very little to do with ghosts and a lot more to do with drinking and shmoozing at the Sherlocke Holmes Pub. After we pounded our ales, Sam led us about casually "I hate big groups of people," he said with a straight face, "so try not to stand like we're a big group of people." At every monument or "haunted" establishment that we hit Sam demonstrated his ability to tie sex into almost anything. He was hilarious and high energy, often having to pause and draw a deep breath after spouting off paragraphs of information. His guidance was spiked equally with jokes at the expense of British history and fond memories of his own grandmother. I was sad to leave him.

Alison Wilkie is a ferociously hip screenwriter who I met in the staff room at St. Mungos. When she isn't writing  scripts she is running a  creative writing group for homeless people. She is also both an actress and an established stand up comedian. When she found out that I also split my time between comedy and working for the homeless, she put her arms around me and we both laughed like children. 

Alison's story is crazy, she's done everything from working as a chicken keeper in Bethlehem to performing as a dancing girl in Milan.  She has also been street-homeless in London. Now she uses both her understanding of homeless life and her artistic talents to help others unlock their own experiences. 

The 62 year old man from forty minutes outside of London who was my seat mate on the plane ride home is named John. He has a sister who lives in Massachusetts, and he has only recently begun flying internationally to see her. He's been all over New England. "Naught teew diffehrent, then." His accent was so foreign to me that sometimes I had to ask him to repeat things, and sometimes I just nodded and smiled and he would laugh, knowing I hadn't understood him through his countryside dialect.

He was wearing bright socks  that didn't match his shirt or shorts, the way my grandpa Ben does. 

His were lime green and lemon.

 "I have 20 more pairs in my suitcase," he explained. "People say I'm too old and I think, 'too old for what? For fun?'" 

 He'd been trying to find a pair of American flag socks, but couldn't.

 "I wanted to wear one American and one British one for the fourth of July!" he smiled. "One year we went out, and we were in Maine and I put up the American flag on one side and the British flag on the other. People looked, but they know it's a laugh. It's all just a laugh."

Then we traded trivia about wars. You know, like people do.

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*The only reason, I believe, John agreed to accompany me on something called "Ghosts By Gaslight"**
**Despite the distinct lack of ghosts there WAS a gaslight on this tour.

how to get to London

As the plane touched down on one of Heathrow's runways I was fairly vibrating with anticipation.  John, my friend and traveling companion, grabbed our luggage from the overhead compartment. Minutes later I stepped foot, for the very first time,  in the airport featured so prominently as a place of true joy and happy reunion in that classic Everyman movie, Love Actually.

It was everything I wanted it to be. Although no one was there to great us personally, I felt as though England and I would become quite good friends. Thus, we began the second leg of our journey - waiting in queue for approximately a kabillion hours in customs.*

By the time we arrived at Victoria Station  (rail to Paddington, one wrong train, and then the Circle Line to Victoria) we were both exhausted. My inner excitement hadn't waned, but I needed a caffeine fix to make up for the sleep stolen by the Time Zone Bandit.  John doesn't drink coffee, but the traveling had zapped his energy as well. So we checked into the hotel, located an appropriate nourishment vendor, in this case a Costa, and noshed. Coffee for me, tea for John and we were on our way.

Before we bought tickets for a Big Bus,*  and sunscreen (so responsible!) we decided to arm ourselves with Underground Passes for the week.

"Do you mind if I ask you some questions, then?" the man behind the counter asked.
 I had asked his advice: Oyster Card for the week? Or daily passes?

"Where do you think you'll be visiting the most of?" he smiled. His English accent was so thick I could have hidden four of Fagen's boys inside.***  I rattled off a list of places, including my intention to visit St. Mungo's.
I told him, "I'm a nurse."

"A nurse!" he exclaimed. Then he lowered his voice conspiratorially.
 "I have kidney stones," he said. "I mean, I'm passing one right now.. hopefully today. But you probably don't want to hear all that."

"I've heard worse," I laughed, "go on."
So he did.

Overhearing this conversation, John approached the counter. The man initially mistook him for a doctor,  ("you medical folk will have a splendid time!" ) but was just as pleased to find out John is a writer.

Not in the country even four hours and we made a friend. Not too shabby, London.
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* Ah, the romance of the road!
** More on that later...
*** Oliver! jokes!

London, so far

First off, I emailed my Mom to tell her I got here alright and she never wrote back. So I wrote to my brother, who seems to be updating his status without trouble, but has also not gotten back to me.
 I know they're alright (thanks Facebook), but will someone nudge them into letting me know they've gotten my messages?

Fantastic.

 I thought I'd get in a quick note or two about the trip so far before I set out on today's adventures.

The window of our hotel room overlooks chimneys and rooftops, and off in the distance we have a great view of Big Ben framed by the London Eye.

As I write it is 10am here, and below me the city is well into her day, double decker buses cruising here and there, and the funny little taxis darting around like bugs. The bell tower is striking, and it reminds me of  the Mary Martin version of  Peter Pan which I watched about once a week as a child. Seriously.

After two days of exploring the city together (and a night of crazy fun dancing)*, John and I decided to take this day apart.

I have a list of things to do, so I'll be heading out soon. After a day of wandering around one of the Royal Parks I plan to meet up with a staff member at Florence Nightingale House, which is something like our Barbara McInnis House. There I will tour the facilities, and hopefully sit in on The Great Escape, which is one of their most well known homeless rehabilitation programs. I'm hoping to learn a thing or two.

My day after that involves a lot of meandering near the Thames, perhaps revisiting Tate Modern (since I only saw part of it yesterday) grabbing a Crabbies in a local pub (my new favorite drink) and then meeting John at 6pm to go see The Lion King.

I am feeling very, very blessed.

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* More about all that, later on when I'm feeling more narrative.