Day Fifteen and Sixteen: London

Day Fifteen: London, A Night at the Theater

I am going to skip ahead.  I have a lot to say about Belfast (I actually wrote a blog about my first thoughts already but did little to advertise it), and will leave the remainder until I can finish processing thoughts.

Not that today requires any less brain matter.

I confess I am getting tired.  I am thrilled to be in this city, but I have been going, going, going for over two weeks now.  I have had a down day or half here and there.   But, seriously, this is a marathon of walking (which is mostly good) and learning.  I left the heavy handed stuff for the end and I don’t just look at stuff.  I think about it and chew on it for a real long while.  

Anyway, I set off pretty early from Belfast.  I had another fantastic taxi driver, who enjoyed talking about his city - including the major industries that have come and gone.  Like, for instance, Belfast was the ship building capital of the world (Titanic is the most famous) as well as the leading manufacturer of cigarettes in Europe.  Both of those are gone now.  The big employer is Bombadier, an aerospace manufacturer from Canada.  

I got on the plane with relative ease - except for forgetting I had a water bottle in my purse.  But, even with that, let me tell you the security going out of that airport was so… I don’t want to say relaxed.  Kind?  Which is curious… with the fact that their not so distant history is not so distant.  And (part of what I’m still processing) the police station two blocks from my relatively posh b&b was a military fortress.  Maybe the airport thing is because they know what real terror is.  Not a water bottle in a purse.

Anyway, I crossed the water (as they say) pretty quickly and arrived at my hotel.  It’s in Lambeth.  The taxi I took from Paddington drove through Regent Park and Green Park, places I used to walk on my way home from Soho to South Ken.  (There is a little castle in between there.)  There were so many people about.  So.  Many.  People.  It lengthened the cab ride, but on the other hand got the need to see those places out of my system.

I’m staying in Lambeth, which isn’t too far from Westminster.  I could see the Eye on my walk last night.  On the south end of the Northern Line.  It’s a newly refurbished (gentrified) hotel over a pub.  The pub is more foodie than classic English, but that’s okay.   I spoiled myself a little bit with this - it is my birthday afterall.  The bathroom alone is totally worth it.  A claw foot tub and a nice shower - which after the economy sizes of Irish showers, my long limbs are happy for a chance to stretch out.

I could have just stayed here all night.  Only I didn’t want to waste a night here as I am not here for very long.  I decided to take a train to South Bank.  It’s hot here - hotter, it turns out than it is at home now.  I decided to wear a different set of shoes with no socks… which was a mistake because I ended up getting blisters, which stopped me from lingering too long at the street festival taking place along the Thames.  I was on a mission to get a theatre ticket, but the whole walk along the Thames was full of people, food vendors representing cultures from all over the world, carts selling Pimms, and musicians playing.  I haven’t been to the South Bank in a few years - seven - and I’m impressed with the improvements.  It really is a dynamic place to go.

I wanted to go see a play at the National.  I try at least once or twice a year to go see an NT Live production.  I’ve been doing that since I lived in Newton and saw the broadcast of the National’s Hamlet.  I have gone to see shows there in person and have always been impressed by the production quality and talent.  I figured I would see whatever play for which I could get a ticket.

I got lucky with my first attempt.  Chiwetel Ejiofor, who was in the film of Kinky Boots and Solomon Northrup in Twelve Years a Slave is now onstage in Everyman.  I have to admit I wasn’t over the moon with the thought of the play - more the thought of getting to see him.  Everyman is based on a medieval morality play.  I was so surprised at how much I liked it.  Maybe not the most ideal thing to see two days before turning 40 - or maybe the perfect thing.  It was set in the context of the everyman on his 40th birthday, a major blowout of drugs, sex, and all those sins.  God is impatient with man and sends Death for a reckoning.  It is a medieval premise, but was very modern - especially with the concept of materialism and greed.  The stage was black, but for an obvious pit (oh how it would be delightful to work in such a space).  But it filled with light and media images and dance and color.  The dance was as much a part of the storytelling as the dialogue.  And God… was a woman.  I know NT Live broadcast it once.  If they have an encore, I would encourage seeing it.  I imagine some things will get lost in the film… but it was so thought provoking.

Thoughts I found myself pondering about my impending birthday when I got off the train and turned the wrong way, walking with my blistered heels in a very large circle.  I guess London is the city where I know how to get lost and find my way again - but it isn’t as fun at night with aching feet.  That said, it was the best sensation to come up to my comfy bed and find sleep.

Day Sixteen: London, The Imperial War Museum

Not that I made a plan for Sunday that was very uplifting.  I figured I would (sort of) give my feet a rest and keep my radius within one that I would not have to take the train.  Granted, that plan meant a half a mile walk to go to the Imperial War Museum, around which I decided to walk for four or so hours.  But it was the sort of attraction from which I needed to decompress and allowed myself the afternoon to enjoy a good soak in the tub when I got back.

I’ve been to this museum every time I’ve come to London.  It is one of my favorite museums, which is kind of bizarre because it isn’t exactly… uplifting.  If you’ve never heard of it, it is a museum that was opened after WWI in the former Bethlehem Hospital (Bedlam).  Last year they shut down for a rehab in honor the first centennial of the Great War.

I have to say, I’m not really impressed with the new and improved museum.  They’ve hidden a lot of the stunning architecture of the hospital.  Though I know enough about museums and old buildings to suspect that has something to do with the strength of the building and conservation.  Exposing your objects to sunlight and the damp that leaks through windows is not healthy for metal.  The newer space is darker and cleaner, but lacks… character.

The exhibits are designed a little differently.  In the old museum, there were two major galleries - one WWI and the other WWII.  They followed a relatively easy to follow narrative in a chronological fashion.  They also had a trench that attempted to give you an idea of what it would feel like (they even had something that smelled like sulfur) and a bomb shelter into which you would cram with other visitors when they shut off the lights, rattled the seats, and played sound effects of the Blitz.  That was very much where museums where at in the turn of the 21st century - multi-sensory, appealing to hearing as well as smell.  I was in museum education at that point and remember that being the thing.  It isn’t the thing now.  I realized as I was lamenting the new structure (most noticeable in WWII) that it is meant to appeal to a new way of thinking - the eye that scans through Facebook and catches snippets.  It isn’t about multi-sensory.  It’s multi-media, with digital screens and projections and some voiceovers.  That’s what they do where I work - how they recreated the Higgins exhibit.  It’s not about recreating the experience.  It’s about interpreting it.

Huh.

Well, I can say I was disappointed to some degree.  But I still learned a great deal… some of it was through that new interpretation.  Not surprising, the key exhibition was WWI.  It did follow a relative timeline, but there was some more context.  When you walk in, there were a lot of facts flashed onto a movie screen about the world of Great Britain preceding the war.  Things I did not really think about before was how 1 in 20 people emigrated from Great Britain.  Because, of course, all of Ireland was still in Great Britain.  1% of the population had 70% of the wealth.  That puts the whole Downton Abbey thing in a whole other light.  I was able to put together pieces of history that I was reading about a few days ago in Belfast about the Easter Rising and realized all that was happening at the same time - which I knew… but I didn’t really know.  

There’s another novel in that.

Anyway, beyond those clarifying statistics, I did spend quite a bit of time going through.  Reading some things I already knew.  I was keyed into details of the Somme, as I have seen poppy wreaths all about commemorating those losses.  And even as I ‘knew’ a great many of those details, the numbers struck me more as I read about the losses.  So many souls.  And already the statistics fade from my memory because they were too massive to comprehend.  But the Somme - where every day thousands and thousands and thousands of young men were sent to their deaths.  Because it was the war to end war… but that didn’t work out so well.

I decided to go to the Holocaust exhibit - even though I’ve seen it before… and that is not something that you can easily forget.  But I read through the personal histories and confess I got to a point where my ability to absorb reached a saturation level.  It reinforced to me that using the word Nazi or Hitler should not be done lightly.

There was a special exhibit on Fashion on Ration.  The museum is free, but I opted to buy the ticket to the exhibit.  I actually have a Make Do and Mend keychain from my last visit to IWM.  I find clothing rations more fascinating than food.  A few months ago, John Oliver did a piece on the ridiculousness of the clothing industry - how the markup is obscene and that most clothing is made by slave (child) labor.  Reading about how these women were innovative within the confines of their limitations illustrated even more how ridiculous our clothing waste is today.  I don’t think anyone could be convinced of the virtues of mending stockings now… but it’s not like we couldn’t.

I enjoyed their tea room and lamented the fact that I have one more day of tea rooms.  We really don’t know how to brew a strong pot of tea stateside.  Strong enough to have cream.  But then the cream stateside isn’t great.

I definitely feel the mental and emotional drain of all that information.  Something I knew would happen.  I knew it enough to not do it on my birthday.