The the­atre, and the Continent!

Pre­pare your­selves for a long mes­sage from me today! Maybe read half, make your­self a cup of tea, and come back later. So much has been hap­pen­ing here and there in our lives.

Last week­end we had the excite­ment of a day out across the river, and an evening at the National The­atre. Since see­ing it in sev­eral movies and tele­vi­sion shows, I was really hot to cross the Mil­le­nium Bridge, a foot-traffic-only slim­line affair cross­ing just past the Black­fri­ars Bridge. So we col­lected Avery from her sleep­over with Anna, and got our­selves bun­dled up to go out for our adven­ture. We took a long tube ride to the near­est spot on our side of the Thames to the bridge, and then walked toward it, being totally sur­prised to find our­selves face to face with the enor­mous spec­ta­cle of St. Paul’s Cathe­dral. Part of it is under refur­bish­ment, so in the typ­i­cally clever Eng­lish way, they have painted an exact archi­tec­tural replica of the Cathe­dral on the can­vas sheet­ing cov­er­ing the scaf­fold­ing! Odd, really, kind of sur­real. Avery was ter­ri­fied of the bridge, for some strange rea­son, although it does bear a sort of insub­stan­tial del­i­cacy. You can see for­ever from it, to Tower Bridge on one side and nearly to the Houses of Par­lia­ment on the other. We descended finally, and I broke my vow of No Art and we all went to see the exquis­ite and mas­sive Rachel Whiteread instal­la­tion called “Unilever”, a series of piled up plas­tic casts (as she always casts the inside of a neg­a­tive space) reach­ing nearly to the ceil­ing in places, of this for­mer power sta­tion, known as the New Tate Mod­ern. Really impres­sive and fun to chase each other around the piles, some ran­dom, some very pre­cise and sym­met­ri­cal. It reminded me of the divine Tara Dono­van show of some years ago at Apex Art on Sev­enth Avenue in New York. Never for­got her rooms full of tar paper, tiny pen­cil cities, and drink­ing straws. Loved it.

Then really super pizza and salad at a warm, cozy spot called, with a sin­gu­lar lack of felic­ity, The Gourmet Pizza Com­pany, on the river as well. We ended up at a book­sellers’ just clos­ing up and snapped up a copy of the his­tory of King’s Col­lege, Avery’s sis­ter senior school! Thence to the the­atre, for “Once in a Life­time,” the famed David Suchet vehi­cle I had been hear­ing so much about. Since we all love him as Agatha Christie’s “Poirot,” and John and I had fond mem­o­ries of see­ing him onstage in “Timon of Athens” our last life­time in Lon­don, it was really some­thing to anci­ti­pate. The play itself, from the 30s by George Kauf­man, was over the top ridicu­lous with hilar­i­ous gags and extrav­a­gant cos­tumes, but Suchet was worth the whole price of admis­sion. Gone was Poirot’s pre­ci­sion and ele­gance, replaced with a sort of Anthony Trollope-ish wheel­ing and deal­ing busi­ness man, only set to music! Loved it.

Then a short cou­ple of days of vaca­tion, spent mostly watch­ing the Olympics and one day­time adven­ture, a skat­ing trip at the out­door ring in Canary Wharf, the new devel­op­ment across the Thames where Reuters is based. It alter­nated foxy bril­liant skies and rain­drops, but hey: we were ice skat­ing out­doors in Lon­don, so what could we expect? Amaz­ingly John was able to take out an hour of his busy day and join us, and after­ward for hands-down the worst lunch I have ever tried to eat: hot tuna and sweet­corn in some poi­so­nous bread. UURGH! Go there for the skat­ing, by all means, but skip the tuna panini!

Home to make microwave pop­corn (thank you Alyssa!) and watch the incom­pa­ra­ble Audrey Hep­burn in “Roman Hol­i­day,” in prepa­ra­tion for our trip! Avery loved the film as I knew she would.

So crack of dawn Wednes­day we were up in the dark to get to Liv­er­pool Sta­tion for the train to Stansted air­port. Never heard of it? Nei­ther had I, but it houses a lot of the new bud­get air­lines, one of which we were fly­ing, Ryanair. I was slightly dis­turbed to read big head­lines the day before where Ryanair refused to com­ment on under­cover inves­ti­ga­tions of their appalling treat­ment of staff and crew… but since I have so bravely got over my fear of fly­ing, I threw cau­tion to the winds. Well, we get to the sta­tion, huff and puff our way onto the express train, feel­ing quite smug, only to real­ize that we had no… pass­ports. Oh, John had his, the expe­ri­enced busi­ness trav­eller. But it never occurred to me to fer­ret out Avery’s and mine! A last ves­tige of the baby wife, I sup­pose. Noth­ing for it than to go home, put them in our bag, and wait till the next flight, hop­ing we could get on it. Back out, on the train, and sure enough, with a lit­tle penalty we were OFF!

Can you imag­ine that in less time than it takes for my par­ents to fly from Hart­ford, Con­necti­cut to Indi­anapo­lis, Indi­ana, we were in ROME? I couldn’t believe it. A very racy ride from the lit­tle Ciampino air­port (where scary incom­pe­tent air­lines are forced to land, what fun), to our hotel in cen­tral Rome, in the via del Mascherone, just off the Campo dei Fiori. And there our adven­ture began. We are about to land right now (on our way home, com­pletely knack­ered!), so more tomor­row after a good night’s sleep in our own beds! Buona notte…