England and Scotland for Dad's 70th
Day 5 - Monday - England
I awake to a bright and shiny morning and I can't
stop smiling thinking about the impending trip to the Local Hero beach!
Dad and I wait for Francesca to get away to work
("Knock knock! Is Francesca still here?" "Is her key still in the
door?" "Yes." "Yes."). After she's gone, Dad's in his favorite
room in
the flat (taking a bath in her bathroom which he loves so much -- so
bright yet compact -- she even has a little washing machine inside what
appears to be a tile counter), and I'm making some calls to map out the
rest of our England time: the R.A.F. museum in Colinwood (where's
that?), Windsor Castle (no answer, just an info line and I don't know
the significance of that garden they're talking about being closed on
Tuesday), and Stratford-Upon-Avon for a bed & breakfast. Dad
read about the B&B in one of Francesca's books, describing its
general loveliness and how it's run by a former actress, Mary
Kenton. Mary answered the phone, and she was delightful, giving
me all assurances of a wonderful time in her town ("Will you be going
to a play? When you're here, you really must see a play!
Let me get my book and see what they're doing Thursday..."). She
did request I send her a post card confirming our reservation, since
two different people just stood her up (I said sure, but we'll probably
beat it there), and she gave me the number for the RSC box office.
Now then, onto the rest of the day.
Our first assignment today is checking out the
theater scene for tickets to a swell London show. Francesca and I
agreed Dad really needed to see one (you get spectacle in London you
just don't get in Atlanta), and debated Les Miserables (the newest one
I was in favor of, but Francesca said it was d-e-p-r-e-s-s-i-n-g) and
Phantom of the Opera
(Francesca's recommendation for big and not as
depressing). While looking through the Time Out theater listings,
I commented that tired old thing CATS
was still running and told her
all the jokes in New York about how only tourists see it. Then
Dad said, "I'd like to see CATS."
I said, uh, okay, and Francesca
said she'd never seen it, so, schedule permitting (she's good Monday,
maybe not Tuesday, no on Wednesday and we're leaving Thursday), we'd
get three seats for CATS.
Our plan was to see what tickets we
could manage, then call Francesca at work and hopefully meet at the
theater that night.
So we go to Piccadilly Circus and scope out theatre
ticket booths to check for return tickets for CATS (which were not only
cheaper than regular cost, they were available), our fingers
crossed. We talked with one ticket bookie, who said he could get
us tickets to anything, and it would cost this much more. I said,
what a minute, I don't think you're the guy I want to talk to, and he
nodded and winked us over to Leicester Square, which is where I really
wanted to go. So we stand in line with people who are hoping to
get tickets to Rent, Saturday Night Fever, Phantom and a bunch of other
stuff that isn't CATS.
When we get there, I ask if there are any
seats available for CATS
(it's been running since 1981 and tonight is
sold out), and he asks how many. "Three?" I feebly ask, and he
whips out a seating chart and shows us a variety of possibilities,
promising us the three he is pulling up for us are very good seats (he
seems trustworthy, unlike ticket sellers I've bought from
before). So we leave, thrilled with tickets, and we're off t our
next series of errands for the day.
First we call Francesca, who's equally pleased, and
she recommends we meet at 6:30 at the Covent Garden station and have
dinner. Then it's off to the train station to book our tickets
for Thursday and Friday (Rhona suggested with the holiday weekend, we
need to reserve train tickets), and I tell the very nice train guy that
we want tickets that will take us from London to Stratford-Upon-Avon to
Edinburgh and back from Edinburgh to London. He looks at me
nearly horror-stricken and says he'll do it, but he's glad he's not
riding it. So ages later, he finally comes up with a series of
tickets that will take us from London to Edinburgh, but Thursday we'll
get off at Birmingham and change stations to pick up the Stratford
train, return the next morning to resume the Edinburgh train, and just
go straight from Edinburgh to London on Tuesday (saving us 60 pounds on
each ticket). We pay half with travellers checks, half with a
credit card, so he leaves to deal with the credit card, the other train
guy closes his window for lunch, and the line behind us is getting
cranky (but they're polite to us). We finally leave.
The next couple of hours is consumed by trying to
find somewhere to cash our travellers checks, buy a post card and stamp
to send Mary Kenton (I wind up with an airmail stamp, so she might get
my post card via New York), lunch at Wendy's (lousy chicken sandwich
but great fries!), a quick stop at The Body Shop where they have
discontinued my favorite moisturizer you could only get in London (the
rosehip moisturizer), and
finally back to Westminster Abbey where Dad wants to take a real tour
of the place (closed during the service we attended -- when people
tried to look at stuff, the church people waved them away) and see the
Poets' Corner.
So we get to Westminster and whew! The crowd
of tourists! All crammed in lines throughout the huge cathedral,
arrogant church tour guides -- we skip straight to the Poets' Corner
for
graves of Byron, Dickens, Robert Browning, Chaucer, W.H. Auden, Ben
Johnson and Laurence Olivier (new for me, since he died during one of
my earlier trips to England). More dismissiveness and confusion
and
constant reminding us that we were in a church and to act accordingly
(as if we were the ones charging 5 pounds at the door and selling
coffee in cloisters), and we accidentally asked a very nice retired
lady who was volunteering as a guide something and fell into a very
pleasant and long conversation with her. She explained the Order
of the Bath, pointed out where Elizabeth and Charles sat during
ceremonies and what the heraldry over various seats meant, as well as
where I would find Mary Queen of Scots' tomb and (her favorite) the
woman next to her was the woman who arranged the marriage that ended
the War of the Roses. She also pointed out her favorite statues
and pulled out a picture from her church, discussing her theory of how
saints are portrayed as Christ-like over the years. When it was
time to leave, she took my hand and hugged Dad good-bye. More
looking and leaving.
4 o'clock -- a bad time. Too late to get
anywhere before it closes, too early to give up and go home. We
could go back to the flat and stop by Harrods or... we could swing by
the Globe Theater and see what they've got?
The Globe Theater was driving me crazy. I've
studied (in relative terms) Shakespeare forever, and I never could
picture the theater he
was writing plays for. Then some construction company a number of
years ago stumbled
over the site of the original Globe Theater (with construction walls I
couldn't quite peek
through during my Christmas visit in the early '90s)
and Sam Wanamaker and friends successfully managed to build a
reproduction of it (I met some of those friends during a lecture stop
in Atlanta, long before they finished it). Plus a friend in L.A.
told me I had to see it, if not see a play there, at least try to tour
it. But their season was starting the next day, and I doubted
they would still be giving tours. Every time I saw a poster for
it in the train stations, it drove me nuts, because I knew we didn't
have time to see it -- we were cutting back as it was, no Brighton,
maybe no Mdme Toussauds, who knows?
England and
Scotland for Dad's 70th
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