Recollected on Sunday evening.
1) My day began unexpectedly early when, rolling to my left side, a millisecond’s familiar gathering of tension resulted in the usual excruciating cramp in my right calf.
2) I showered and dressed and wrote my pages in the hotel lobby’s Caffé Nero.
3) With this my last morning in Bloomsbury, it was also the last convenient day to visit the Warburg Institute a block or two away. (As mentioned in a previous entry, the Warburg has interested me since I read about its 1934 move from Hamburg to London in The Exiles.) So off I went, and was pleased indeed to have the chance. Their special exhibition on tarot cards had closed only days before my arrival in May, which made me sad. But now they had on view an exhibition about artists’ books which offered me a few facets of original thinking I wouldn’t have seen otherwise.
3a) Tech Rant Incoming: Decks of tarot cards were offered for sale in a case in the lobby, and I was interested in getting one. But the attendant at the door said I had to fill out an order online; she couldn’t just take my card and hand me a deck. So I completed an order on the phone and paid for it, showed the completed order to the attendant, and received my new tarot deck (which is great). Later that afternoon, I got an email from “the appropriate department for processing” asking when I could come and collect my order. She was so happy when I explained that I already had it.
Virginia Woolf in Tavistock Square.
4) The time came for me to check out. The day before one of the guys I knew on the front desk led me to believe they could flag a cab for me (one of my phobias), but when I mentioned it to his colleague, she said in the nicest way possible, “You do it.”
4a) The result was that after seven anxious minutes I managed to flag a cab with an experienced cabbie who enjoys debate on issues like religion and philosophy (NB: it’s not my favorite thing), and we had quite a discourse over the din of London traffic. I was kind of sorry my dad wasn’t able to talk with him.
5) My destination was on the other side of the Thames, near Tower Bridge. I mistook where I was supposed to go, and ended up with all my luggage on a green where an American marching band was performing — because who knew, it’s Marching Band Week in London. And they were pretty awesome!
Flag corps is flagging while the band is banding.
6) “Just follow the music” I texted my host. Before long, I heard “Arranged for your arrival!” as Craig came around the corner to collect me — though we stayed a few minutes for more music. Yes, Craig was my weekend host, and as Mammy said in GWTW, “It sure is good to see home folks.” We stowed my luggage and headed off to the Underground.
Cheese!
7) We met a friend of Craig’s at what I think of as the Automat of the 21st Century, Pick & Cheese, a conveyor belt of servings of cheese and other savory type goodies (but 90% cheese). Is this not novel? A little challenging at first to read the numbered metal tags on each glass dome describing the contents while having a conversation, but one does get the hang of it.
Puppets!
8) This was by Seven Dials, where a crowd was gathering as we left. At Craig’s suggestion we lingered to see what all the fuss was about, and it turned out to be a street performance of a stampede of cardboard animal puppets from the new musical Roald Dahl’s Matilda. Completely unexpected, completely wonderful.
9) We kept walking, through Trafalgar Square and down Whitehall. Passing the Raffles OWO (for Old War Office), Craig suggested we go in and take a look. Big surprise, a hotel ambassador took us under his wing and gave us a good 20-minute tour, including a couple of the exceedingly high end suites, the ballroom, and finally their 007 speakeasy in the basement. Lots of history stories, lots of hotel design/development stories — just fascinating.
9a) We stayed for a Vesper martini each in the speakeasy (not on the hotel’s tab), which was perhaps the most succulent martini I’ve had in awhile.
10) By then we had to make tracks to get to our true destination for the evening, a performance of the Verdi Requiem at St. Giles-without-Cripplegate. The sun was really coming down in force at this point in the evening, and approaching the church I noticed outside the line of audience members waiting to get in, and the long line of choristers in black waiting to make their entrance, too.
Milton’s bust at the back of the church (not the statue at the end of our row).
10a) The church itself is of great interest, but the person of most relevance to me that evening was John Milton, who was buried in the church, and whose statue was at the end of our row. I also noticed a wall monument to Sir Martin Frobisher, of whom I had never heard, but was apparently a hero in the battle against the Spanish Armada back in 1588.
10b) The concert itself was powerful, magnificent, delicate, nuanced — magnificent. Watching the ten rows of ten choristers, I was interested to see who expressed the emotions of the music unconsciously through their faces as well as their voices.
11) Following, we had dinner outside at a little Thai restaurant with a very floral gin and tonic for me. This was a day full of unexpected surprises — and the expected events delivered, too!