Recollected a couple days later.
1) Craig was keen for me to see the Borough Market near London Bridge, so after some tea and toast off we went to a Foodie Paradise teeming with people. I was so busy seeing it all that I never took photos! Under and around a bridge, a maze of every kind of food: cheeses, paellas in enormous pans, bushels of baked goods, artisanal oils and vinegars, chocolate, you name it. I am still thinking of some creme brulée doughnuts I didn’t get to try, but I have time to go back.
2) Then we got on the Underground to explore the same kind of experience in Camden Town, at the market there — which turned out to be more like a very large version of Shop Therapy in P’town. And much more crowded, oppressively so. But it was just about noon, and I talked Craig into joining me in a frozen negroni offered by a distiller there. “Frozen negroni” sounded like “negroni slushie” to me, but it was really a pre-mixed negroni in a paper cup with a very large ice cube. Nevertheless . . . not unwelcome.
On the Camden Town canal.
3) About five minutes after Craig pointed out the fresh gull poop on the canal railing and told me not to put my hand in it . . . I put my hand in it.
4) The other advantage of Camden Town was proximity to Primrose Hill, which I had never seen, and the Shakespeare Oak — which was doubly appropriate considering our evening plans. Walking there, we were delighted to find a pub called The Engineers with Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s portrait as its logo (but they were understaffed and only serving food for parties with reservations; I give them points for honesty).
The Shakespeare Oak.
5) Primrose Hill had attracted more people than just us, and we had a nice chat on the summit with a Couple Older Than I from Liverpool who had come down for the day. And I was amused to see a little girl, obviously new to walking, nearly get out of reach of her grandmother (?) as she started to toddle downhill.
5a) We shortly followed suit to the Shakespeare Oak, which Craig explained was not the original Shakespeare Oak, but a replacement that had been planted by no less than Dame Edith Evans Herself. I did my best to remember bits of the Bard I had known — “But if the while I think on thee, dear friend//All losses are restor’d, and sorrows end,” “If music be the food of Love, play on! Give me excess of it, that surfeiting, the appetite may sicken and so die” — but it’s been a long time since I paid active attention to Shakespeare.
5b) We weren’t the only ones there. I particularly noticed a big ol’ drooling dog, who belonged to a couple Men Younger Than I nearby talking, who clearly wanted someone to Throw the Ball. One of the men, in fact, had a plastic stick with a cup on the end for exactly that purpose, so he didn’t have to touch the ball — which was really good, since that doggie was drooling a tidal wave.
6) A pub called The Albert did for lunch, somehow full of families on this Saturday afternoon. We sat in a sort of anteroom between the pub and the back garden (complete with apple tree), at one of three tables. A father and his little boy were playing cards at one of the other tables until the boy became inconsolable as friends were leaving for home. After that his mother gave him his pillow, and his tears gradually subsided.
7) For some reason there was an awful crowd at Camden Town underground, and we chose to walk to St. Pancras, which was ultimately the right decision, despite the heat.
Just before the start of the second half; Shakespeare may have five acts, but this theatre presented them in two halves. Theatre in the round.
8) But the main event of the day was yet to come: the Bridge Theatre’s new production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a once-in-a-generation theatre sensation. I haven’t been so excited by live theatre in such a long time! Days later it’s still the most exciting jumble: Hippolyta presented in a glass case as a museum exhibit, the rude mechanicals costumed in bright-colored workmen’s jumpsuits, the fairies cast as burlesque dancers (male and female), the astonishing acrobatics of most of the cast working with aerial silks, and 1,001 line readings. Listening to the actors, I felt I was hearing the entire play for the first time*.
8a) Which is all the more significant since I played Demetrius with the Little Theatre long ago in Lago di Carlo. I had even forgotten that “The course of true love never did run smooth” came from Midsummer, and one of my favorite throwaway lines from all Shakespeare, Hermia’s “I am amazed and know not what to say.”
9) I was buzzing after the show, and we walked along the riverbank by Tower Bridge among the nighttime crowd — not just from the theatre, from all over — which helped me to come back to myself a bit before ending the day.
*In the words of the late Addison DeWitt, “A dull cliché.”