Those of you who have not been enjoying my documentation of the tourism blitz will be happy to note that this post marks its terminus. While we’ll still be doing touristy stuff from time to time, from now on there will definitely be more pictures of weird English stuff and fewer pictures of castles and gardens. However, first we have to get through the last two days of the blitz, and a busy two days they were. However, like most days, they started out like this:
Thanks to Marco for sending me the Smart Cops shirt, by the way!
First on the agenda was Windsor Castle, which is a short trip outside of London via train. For some reason it has always really bothered me when conductors walk around on trains checking tickets. If they do show up I always feel like I anticipate my turn for way too long and obsess over the many ways in which my ticket might be inadequate. If a conductor never comes around I’m always bummed that I could have jumped on that train for free and no one would have been the wiser. These are all completely irrational thoughts, but that’s a window into Daniel’s world on trains.
Speaking of the train, the view when you pull into Windsor is astounding, and I regret that I did not document it photographically. The castle seemed to come out of nowhere and all of a sudden it was dominating the skyline. We quickly got off the train and made our way over to the entrance, where we got audio tours for free with our London Passes. I really like audio tours… not only do I like to know what I’m looking at, but they provide a good excuse to stand around places where you would normally just take a peek and move on to the next place. Largely due to the audio guide, we stood for quite a long time just inside Windsor Castle, listening to the history of the place as plane after plane flew overhead:
Windsor Castle has many architectural highlights, but the most iconic of them is the tower in the center of the complex. In addition to being big and old-looking (and, in this case, it actually is quite old, having been build in 1165) it has awesome, nearly-vertical gardens all around its base:
After looking around outside for a bit we toured the State Apartments. I’m always dubious about touring royal residences since I don’t find royalty inherently interesting, but this one had some really cool exhibits. The first room had a massive dollhouse built for Queen Mary in 1926. To call it a dollhouse is a bit deceiving as it’s a miniature house in nearly every respect, from tiny oil paintings (hand-painted by famous artists) on the wall to real flushing toilets (one must ask… WHY?). They also had an exhibit on royal weddings and a display of works from the royals’ collection of prints and drawings that I really wish was larger. I’m a big fan of prints and drawings and they had some truly astounding ones, including numerous works by Italian Renaissance masters like Raphael and Michaelangelo and the largest surviving sketchbook by Leonardo da Vinci. There were also some really great paintings hung in various state rooms, including some incredible Holbeins and a truly arresting self-portrait by Rembrandt.
Also on the palace grounds is St. George’s Chapel, the headquarters of the Knights of the Garter and a noteworthy example of high gothic architecture. When I had to study architecture in school the gothic style was never my favorite, but I realize now that’s just because I never actually stood in one of these buildings. Gothic architecture is all about opening up the interior space to let in as much light as possible, and light seemed to pour into St. George’s by the bucketload through the incredible stained-glass windows. If classical architecture is like a perfect pop song (all about symmetry, balance and focusing your attention on one key feature), then gothic architecture is like a 6-minute thrash metal epic, a flurry of sensation that comes at you almost too quickly to take it all in. I’m sure you could spend a lifetime in a building like this and still find new things to appreciate every day. Unfortunately I only had about an hour, but I still consider myself very lucky.
While it’s not quite as astounding as the interior, there’s also a lot to love in ornate gothic exteriors, including the famous flying buttresses:
After Windsor Castle we went over to Eton College, which is a famous private school (though here they call them public schools, since any member of the public is theoretically free to pay the astronomical tuition… what Americans call public schools are called state schools). Eton was founded in 1440 by the 18-year-old monarch Henry VI as a free charity school. While Henry eventually was usurped from the throne rather ingloriously, they still have a lot of love for him at Eton, as you can see by this statue in the middle of their quad:
The tour, sad to say, was just ok… maybe even a little boring. Despite the fact that recent graduates include both Prince William and Prince Harry, the place is rather dingy. If, like a lot of Americans, you attended school in a 50-year-old building and were surrounded by very visible signs of decay you can just imagine that and multiply that by 10. We looked in the oldest continually-used classroom in the world and the desks are gouged across every surface with hundreds of years worth of bored scrapings. While carving your name into the desks is a punishable offence, Etonians who are accepted into King’s College, Cambridge are actually allowed to carve their names (or, more accurately, to have their names carved by a professional) into the room’s walls and shutters. With all of this carving on nearly every surface the place looks more like a woodsmith’s shop than a classroom.
In addition to the academic buildings, Eton also had a rather nice chapel that has been standing since the founding of the college. Unfortunately most of the stained-glass windows were blown out during World War II, but one really beautiful one remains.
After touring Eton we grabbed a quick lunch from the local grocery store and ate it on the bridge across the Thames. It was quite a scenic spot indeed:
From there we headed home and Kelly went to see a movie (My Brother Is an Only Child, which she really enjoyed) and I went to see Systematic Death. I got some good pics and videos but I’ll put them in a separate post later.
The last day of the tourism blitz unfortunately ran into a number of snags. First of all, the weather was terrible, one of the rainiest days we’ve had since I arrived in London and chilly too. The first attraction on the list was Aptsley House. This house sits on the edge of Hyde Park and, while it is probably most famous as the home of the Duke of Wellington, the general who finally defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, we wanted to see it for its well-preserved 18th-century interiors. We arrived at 10AM, but after investigating the sign we figured out that our guidebook was mistaken and the place now opens at 11. We went to get a cappucino and came back at 11:15, at which time the place was still closed. Eventually we were able to find someone who knew what the hell she was talking about, and she informed us that the house no longer could afford to open on Tuesday, so we were out of luck. Bummer.
From there it was off to Kensington Palace, which was originally a private house but was acquired as a London residence by William and Mary in 1689, making it a royal palace. It’s also famous for having been the childhood home of Queen Victoria and the residence of Princess Diana after she divorced Prince Charles. Here’s the front of the palace:
Like Windsor Castle, Kensington had some very interesting stuff inside. Clothing was a running theme, as they had an exhibit on some of Princess Diana’s most famous outfits and full reproductions of 18th-century tailor and mantua-maker facilities. I didn’t know this before, but since social status was conveyed primarily by clothing, the “rules” for who got to wear what were so complicated that only the tailors really knew them. There were special tailors who were contracted to make just about everyone’s clothing to royal specifications, and I’m sure they raked in money by the boatload. The mantua-maker’s was also quite interesting, and I’d never realized what a complicated endeavor hand-making lace is.
After exploring the palace for quite a while we went back outside where, thankfully, the weather had cleared up a bit. Since Kelly went to the College of William and Mary she had to have her picture taken with this statue of William III:
They also had a stunning sunken garden out front of the palace. This was easily the most elaborate and colorful garden I’ve seen in England so far:
After Kensington the plan was to take a tour of the Royal Albert Hall, a famous London concert venue that has hosted the Beatles, among others. Unfortunately, though, there was a performance that day so we weren’t allowed to take a tour. Since that was supposed to be the final stop on the tourism blitz we didn’t really have a back-up plan, so we stopped for a tasty Thai food lunch and figured out what we would do instead. We eventually decided on the Banqueting House, which is the only remaining building of the old Whitehall Palace that used to stretch from the Thames all the way to Trafalgar Square (the rest of the complex burned down in 1698). The building is most famous, however, as the spot where Charles I was executed, ushering in the era of Oliver Cromwell’s puritan Protectorate. We also got an audio guide of this place and there’s only one room to visit, so we sat on the benches at the side of the room for about an hour and listened to everything the little handsets had to tell us. Here’s a shot of the throne at the front of the room:
And here’s me taking in the audio guide:
Aside from the expertly-executed neo-classical architecture (which was the first of its kind in England), the most striking visual aspect of the Hall is the gigantic ceiling paintings by Peter Paul Reubens:
Feeling well-acquainted with the Banqueting House, we left the building and made the final use of our London Passes to see a French film called The Last Mistress at the Curzon theatre. The film, unfortunately, was terrible. More specifically, it was the Frenchest film I’ve ever seen in my life. In my personal favorite scene, the film’s two main characters had graphic and intense sex while weeping over their recently-deceased daughter’s funeral pyre. Wow, talk about melodrama! The theatre was premiering the new Joy Division documentary that night and when our film ended there were so many people and so much confusion that we probably could have snuck into that film as well, but we were both exhausted and ready to head home.
And thus endeth the Great London Tourism Blitz of 2008.
Saturday was forecast to be the most beautiful day since I arrived in London, with temperatures in the low 70s and hardly any chance of rain, so Kelly and I headed down to the South Bank for a bike tour. However, when we got there we found out that several other people had the same idea and the tours were all booked up for that day. Bummer. So, we quickly threw together another outdoor-heavy itinerary for this lovely day. First on the docket was the open-air Globe Theater, which is a detailed replica of the theater that Shakespeare made famous. We took a guided tour of the building, though it was only about half an hour long and, while enjoyable, not the most informative tour I’ve ever been on (though, admittedly, I have taught Shakespeare so maybe I know more than most people). Anyway, here’s a pic of the place from the inside:
As you can see, the place has no roof. Since there was no electric lighting in the 16th century, performances took place during the day and were lit by the sun. This version of the Globe is still a working theater and I think Kelly and I will go back and see a performance of King Lear pretty soon since you can get standing spots in front of the stage for only 5 pounds.
I think my favorite thing about the visit was the smell. The entire place smelled like fresh-cut wood, which was especially fragrant in the area around the stage:
Apparently scholars disagree about the extent to which the Globe was decorated in Elizabethan times, but there was some cool painting around the building. My favorite was this painting of the sky and the signs of the zodiac on the stage’s ceilings. Apparently the stage is represented as a microcosm of the universe, with the stage serving as the earth itself, the area above the stage as the heavens and below the stage as hell:
After the Globe tour we headed up to north London for a canal boat ride. The tour took place on a 100-year-old longboat that had formerly been used to deliver coal to power plants. They’ve managed to cram a seat into just about every single space available on the boat, as you can see from this pic. My knees were jammed up into the seat in front of me and I was also crammed under the railing to my left so I had to lean slightly to the right for the entire ride:
The trip started at the northern edge of the Grand Union canal (an area called Little Venice) and made its way down Regent’s canal toward Camden lock, an area of the canal which I’d actually walked along a few weeks ago when I visited Regent’s Park. There were lovely views the entire way and since it was so nice out there were loads of pedestrians walking along the canal’s walkways:
We went through a few tunnels on the ride, which was pretty creepy in a Willy Wonka way. Here’s a shot from the largest one, which was about 250 meters long:
The boat let us off in Camden Town, from whence we took the tube back down to the Tower Hill area to tour the inside of Tower Bridge:
We’d chosen to squeeze this one last activity in today because the weather was so nice, but it turns out that the elevated pedestrian walkway at the top of the bridge is closed in by glass, so it didn’t really matter:
The views were nice, but after being up in St. Paul’s the day before I think that we were, sadly, a little underwhelmed. It was cool to see the Tower Bridge so up close, though, so while I wouldn’t necessarily recommend paying for the tour I would recommend taking a walk across the bridge at some point. If you do take the tour, though, in addition to the elevated walkway you also get to tour the old Victorian engine room. Until the 1970s the drawbridge was moved by hydraulic power. They’ve since changed to electric power, but you can still go down into the depths of the bridge and see the old machinery and learn how it worked:
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, this is steampunk:
and this is not:
At that point we’d eaten nothing all day but a granola bar, so we went back home for a much-needed dinner. After a few hours of rest we decided to head back out because the London pass gave us free game tokens at this big Namco arcade on the south bank. On the way, though, we stopped at McDonalds for one of these Cadbury McFlurry things they’ve been advertising everywhere:
It was nice to get some good old-fashioned American fast food, but this flavor wasn’t anything special… it tasted like pretty much any other soft serve ice cream / candy bar combo that you’ve ever had.
The arcade, it turned out, was a bit of a bust. I knew the Namco name because of their home console games like Katamari Damacy and Taiko Drum Master, and I thought they were one of the more innovative video game companies out there. None of this was on display at their arcade, though, which offered standard b-grade fair like skeeball and race car games. They did have a bumper car track, though, so after a few games of air hockey Kelly and I tried those out. The ride was short, but these were the fastest and most intense bumper cars I’d ever been on in my life. If you clipped someone’s rear end at full speed you could make them spin out and do several 360s.
After spending barely half an hour at the arcade we walked across Westminster Bridge, getting this incredible view of Parliament along the way:
We walked around Westminster for an hour or so, seeing wonderful views of Parliament and Westminster Abbey, both of them beautifully lit. Eventually we came home to more noise from our neighbors, but I finally managed to get to sleep around 1AM.
Despite the fact that the skies looked threatening, Sunday was devoted to the bike tour that we didn’t manage to take on Saturday. We had a ton of trouble making it back down south on the tube… two separate trains that we were on suddenly decided to terminate halfway down the line, and eventually they stopped service completely on one branch of the northern line (thankfully not the branch we needed). We were 15 minutes late, but the tour hadn’t started yet and we managed to join. As we waited for everything to come together we sat in this little area full of carved furniture. Sitting on these things made me feel like Fred Flinstone (even though they’re made of wood and not stone).
Just as we pulled away from the bike shop it started raining, gaining steadily in intensity as we crossed London Bridge and rode into Westminster. The guide took us down with some really beautiful side streets that are quiet enough that you can forget you’re in central London for a moment. Needless to say, the blue placques that denote the former residences of famous artists and statesmen were plentiful in this area. After checking out Westminster Abbey, the tour made its way past St. James’ park and Buckingham Palace and into Hyde Park. By this time it was raining pretty hard and everyone was soaked, so we decided to take an unscheduled break. This picture is meant to show how muddy my backside was after the first leg of the tour, but you can’t really tell so it just looks like I’m pensively looking out over the lake:
Luckily the rain stopped while we were on our break, so we happily continued with the tour up through Hyde Park and into Kensington Park, where we stopped to take in the bizareness that is the monument to Prince Albert (husband of Queen Victoria). After Kensington Park we went back to the other end of Hyde Park, where you can find Speaker’s Corner:
Every Sunday you can find a mix of religious fanatics and just plain crazy people here, standing on steps like old-fashioned mountebanks and telling you that you’re going to hell for one reason or another. In a delightful variation on this theme, this guy wore plastic horns and claimed to be Satan:
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that silver mug is for collecting change; one kid tried to put a coin in it and Satan yelled at him. I never saw him drink from it, but I guess the mug contained a warm cup of tea.
Even more interesting than the speakers is watching the crowds. Most people wander from speaker to speaker based on what interests them, and speakers sneakily try to steal one another’s audiences when they don’t feel like they’re being appreciated enough. There also appear to be a number of people who come here just to argue with whoever will engage with them. Check out the guy in the red jacket going at it with the guy in front of him:
From there the tour took us through Trafalgar Square, Leicester Square and Covent Garden, all of which were extremely busy despite the gloomy weather. Here are some action shots from this leg of the trip:
After we dropped the bikes off we headed up to Bloomsbury, where we had a free pass to see Persepolis. Today was another one of those days when we hadn’t managed to grab much food, so I was thankful that we had time to enjoy an egg salad sandwich on the steps of the theater:
The movie, as our friends Risa and Matt told us, was interesting enough but hardly great. Judicious editing probably would have helped, but Kelly and I agreed that the voice casting and acting were subpar. I think Iggy Pop is pretty much a musical god among men, but unfortunately he couldn’t really pull off an aging Iranian communist. Oh well.
That wraps up the second leg of the tourist blitz, but I’ll leave the punx and skins with the last few days’ ebay spoils. The Agnostic Front is the og press on Ratcage, an unexpected but welcome find:
Tomorrow we’re off to Windsor and I’m seeing Systematic Death in the evening, while Tuesday will be spent in the Kensington Park / Palace area, so look for a post detailing all this in the next few days.
Kelly and I are now officially in full-throttle tourist mode, which I assure you is something to behold. We get up each morning well before our bodies tell us to and we don’t stop until feet are bleeding and/or someone is crying. Seriously, we’re like tourism guerrillas. This post is jam-packed with photos even though it’s less than half of the pics we’ve taken over the past 2 days. Unfortunately I don’t have the time / memory to do a chronological play-by-play of what we did at each attraction (which would probably be boring to read anyway, especially for those of you who have been to London before), so I’ve culled this down to the most interesting photographic moments.
Of course what would one of my posts be without the daily pic of St. Paul’s Cathedral, but I’ve got a surprise for you today… the pictures are from the top of the dome! We went inside the church (which was stunning… especially the mosaics… but unfortunately you weren’t allowed to take photographs) and looked around for a while, then climbed to the top of the dome. Before you reach the outdoor levels you go through this really cool part called the Whispering Gallery, which is at the base of the dome and overlooks the aisles below. It’s called the whispering gallery because you can stand at one end of the vast dome and whisper against the wall and the sound will carry all the way across to the other side. Kelly and I tried it and it really worked…Kelly understood me perfectly when I whispered “It smells like Jesus in here” from 100 feet away.
Eventually we made it up to the first level. Remember the view of St. Paul’s from the footbridge by the Tate Modern? Here’s the opposite direction:
Here’s Kelly enjoying the view:
But this is how she really felt:
This is an incredible view of west London with the London Eye clearly visible:
There are eye-level railings blocking most of your view from the middle level, but once you get to the top there’s just a thin but sturdy iron railing between you and your imminent death on the London city streets. Here’s an upper-level view back toward the front of the church:
And here’s what it looked like looking straight down from the upper level (that’s Temple Bar at the top of the frame):
After St. Paul’s we took the tube over to Tower Hill area for lunch and some other attractions. The tourist passes we’re using to get into all of these attractions over the next 6 days give us buy-one-get-one-free meals at this restaurant called Wagamama which serves a mix of Japanese, Indian and Chinese food. We luckily made it into the restaurant just before a pretty nasty hailstorm went through. For those of you food pic junkies, here’s my meal, a tasty bowl of chicken ramen:
Unfortunately I didn’t eat much of this as Kelly’s dish was so spicy that we had to trade.
After lunch we went next door to the Tower of London, which is actually a castle and not a tower. This site has been owned by the British monarchy since William the Conqueror invaded in 1066, and many of the buildings here date from not long after that (luckily the great fire in 1666 stopped just short of the Tower of London, especially since the site contained an armory with much of the nation’s supply of gunpowder). We got there just in time for a guided tour given by one of the yeoman warders who have been guarding the tower since 1485. If you visit the tower I would suggest planning to tag along on one of these free tours because they’re very informative and the beefeaters (as the yeoman warders are called) are actually pretty funny. Here’s a shot of our tour:
There’s a lot to do in the Tower, so unfortunately I can’t document all of it. After the tour was over we went to see the Crown Jewels, which I must say was underwhelming. Why is it exciting to look at ordinary things like plates and swords that happen to have been dipped in gold? We were also not too interested in the White Tower, which is the former location of the armory and contains a museum of British weaponry. However, the museum did contain this gem… Henry VIII’s suit of armor from his fat period, complete with exaggerated codpiece:
While tons of people were imprisoned in the Tower over the years and dragged up to Tower Hill for their public execution, a few people have been executed inside the Tower itself. This sculpture is a monument to them, and I must say it’s hideous. A glass pillow? Kelly agreed with me:
Around one edge of the Tower are these beautifully-preserved Tudor houses. Unfortunately you couldn’t go inside them as they’re actually residences for the governor of the Tower:
Here’s me consulting the trusty guidebook outside of White Tower:
You can find graffiti carved on the walls inside many of the rooms which formerly held prisoners. Since the Tower was mostly used to imprison people of rank, this isn’t your typical graffiti, as this well-preserved example illustrates:
Speaking of being imprisoned in the Tower, if you had money it actually didn’t seem to be that big of a deal (aside from the fact that you were almost certainly slated for execution). You could have your family and servants join you in the prison and you were not confined to a single room but free to roam within the Tower’s walls (which basically comprise a small city). They’ve actually redecorated one of the cells as it might have been used by Sir Walter Raleigh. The room looks more like a study than a prison cell:
Many of the buildings have been restored to what they would have looked like at various points in the Tower’s history. This room is decorated in the style of one of the medieval bedrooms that would have been used by the king:
Here’s some stained glass in the same building:
After looking around the buildings we walked around on the casements that form the Tower’s outer wall. At the southeast corner you get great views of Tower Bridge, and we even passed by just as the drawbridge was being raised:
We exited to the north, where you can see the front of the Tower:
We were planning on going up in the Tower Bridge today also, but unfortunately we ran out of time so we headed home for dinner. We stopped at the grocery store to pick up some supplies on the way and for some reason Kelly thought the yogurt section looked cool:
After dinner we went out to see this movie called Happy Go Lucky, which is a new film by British director Mike Leigh. Leigh improvises all of his films, shooting without a script and essentially writing the film as he goes along. Unfortunately, while this film showed signs of promise it turned out to be exactly what you’d expect from a film without a script, as it was pretty long and very slow in places. Oh well, it was free on our London Pass, so at least we got to get out and see a nice theater.
Friday morning we woke up and headed out to Chelsea for a tour of the Chelsea Football Club stadium. I was nervous about this tour since I don’t really know anything about soccer, and there was a chance that this tour could consist of some 90-year-old reverently showing us the spot where Nigel Killingsworth ate an egg salad sandwich before he scored the winning goal against Liverpool in 1973. Fortunately, though, the tour was great… it seemed to be tailored for those of us who don’t know a lot about British soccer but I’m sure the die-hards enjoyed seeing this backstage view of the stadium too. Here’s the view from the front-row box seats where the tour started:
We got to see the player’s dressing rooms:
And the room where the post-game press conferences take place. In addition to being the desk where those conferences take place, this is also the desk where every player who has signed to Chelsea in the past 15 years has signed his contract:
At the end of the tour they march you through the player’s entrance on the field and pump crowd noise through so that it seems like the stadium is going wild as you enter the field:
They let us go right up to the pitch, but not onto it because gardening a field of this type is a pretty intense endeavor from what I gather. However, Kelly managed to take this shot, which is what your view would be if you were about to take a corner kick at this stadium:
We noticed this sign after the tour and thought it was hilarious:
I’m sure Brits find it hilarious that Americans call it ticket “scalping,” so no harm, no foul.
After the tour of the stadium we went out to Kew Gardens, which has been a royal garden since at least the 18th century (maybe longer… I’m feeling too lazy to look it up at the moment). It’s best-known for its massive Victorian greenhouses, which simulate nearly every environment on earth, from icy alpine winds to suffocatingly humid tropical rain forests. Before we started exploring all this, though, we had some lunch next to this dragon statue:
This was our view during lunch:
Unfortunately Kelly’s attire meant that I kept losing sight of her in the denser displays:
In most of the greenhouses you could take stairs up to the ceiling level where you could see the tops of the taller trees and see the other plants from above:
Here’s a picture of the biggest seed in the world:
The indoor lilly pond, which was being cleaned when we looked at it:
I loved these cacti in the desert section. I like to call them “attack watermelons:”
This gigantic bud (which is about 4 feet tall) will eventually bloom into something called the “rotting corpse flower,” so-called because of its extremely strong, disgusting odor. The plant secretes this odor in order to attract the carrion flies which pollinate it:
Here’s the only North Carolinian contribution I could find in the gardens, the venus fly trap:
Here’s a view from the top of one of the greenhouses, looking back toward one of the other wings:
And here’s one of my favorite plants in the place. It’s a pine tree whose branches are fanned out like the leaves of palm trees. It struck me as very tragic… a pine who wants to be a palm:
Another cool view from above:
And I’ll finish up with probably the weirdest plant in the entire place:
After the gardens we went back to Wagamama to enjoy another half-price meal. This time I had a chicken curry and it was, again, excellent. While walking around Picadilly Circus we also found a tourist shop selling SS Decontrol commemorative bears! I got the “Springa at the final gig” edition:*
*Apologies to the significant portion of my readership who have not seen American Hardcore and hence will not find this joke funny at all. Hopefully the rest of you enjoy it.
Now we’re back home where I’ve been working on this post for upwards of two hours while our neighbors have an extremely loud and extremely obnoxious party. Being in a place like London is great, but living right over top of a bunch of completely inconsiderate people like this makes me realize why I love our little house in Carrboro.
Tuesday started off pretty well for 2 reasons. First of all, Kelly was due to arrive that morning. Second of all, when I woke up, extremely groggily, at 6AM I checked my email to discover that Kelly’s plane had been delayed and I got to climb back into bed and stay there two more hours. Her flight was actually delayed by four hours, so even with two extra of sleep I had a nice leisurely morning and still had plenty of time to make it out to Heathrow. Once I got there I discovered that the flight had been delayed a further hour and a half, so I ate a tasty tomato and cheese sandwich at an eatery that was surprisingly cheap for an airport eatery and read my novel. I half expected Kelly to be cranky about the flight when she arrived, or at the very least extremely groggy, but she had been upgraded to first class for the trans-Atlantic leg of her flight, which meant that she was not only very well-rested (first class seats fold down and become completely horizontal) but had a belly full of gourmet food. Even with my delicious fish and chips meal the night before I was extremely jealous.
During the hour-and-a-half tube ride home Kelly and I caught up on everything that had happened to her in the past few days, and I could already feel how much more excited I was to be sharing this experience with her rather than just keeping it to myself. Eventually we made to East Finchley and Kelly seemed to like the place… she even thought the flat seemed a little bit larger than she’d imagined based on the photos. Still, it was tough fitting all of her stuff into this small space and we’re still not really comfortably unpacked 2 days later. We had basically no food in the house so after a short nap we made the walk over to Muswell Hill, which I wrote about in a previous post. However, before we set out we recorded a 1970s soft rock album… here’s the cover:
Kelly’s arrival somehow made the weather magically turn beautiful in London; while it was a tiny bit chilly, the sun was out, the wind was low and everything basically felt perfect. Before we hit Marks & Sparks we went to Slug and Lettuce for dinner. I half wanted to go there because it looked like they had tasty sandwiches and half because it cracked me up to be eating in a restaurant with the same name as the long-running crust punk zine. I ended up getting a steak baguette with a tasty dijon mustard sauce and fried red onions. I even snapped a shot for those of you who have been requesting more food pics:
After dinner we went straight to Marks & Spencer and bought three big bags of groceries that will hopefully last us for the next week or so. We didn’t do a lot of lolly-gagging around Muswell because we were carrying heavy groceries, but here’s a pic of Kelly in front of the nice little cathedral in the center of town:
Thanks to Kelly’s jetlag and my laziness we were in bed by 9PM at the latest and slept for a full 12 hours.
This morning we planned a visit to the Tate Modern Gallery, but first had a few errands to run. Kelly wanted to get her British Library card, but unfortunately just as we walked up to the room where you apply for the card I remembered that you needed 2 forms of ID, so we couldn’t do that. From there we went to Piccadilly Circus to pick up our London Pass, which is this card that basically serves as an advance ticket purchase to a ton of tourist attractions around town and lets you jump to the front of the line for popular attractions. We also went to the Apple store because I realized yesterday that my ipod headphones had broken. I like the Apple earbuds because they fit really nicely in my ear, and I knew it would be expensive to replace them but I didn’t expect 19 pounds! That’s almost $40US for a pair of earphones! I had to pass on that and ended up getting some other ones from HMV that cost less than half as much but sound just as good, even if they are slightly more uncomfortable.
After a short walk through Soho we took the tube down to Southwark. I had been wondering since I got here how to pronounce that word… to us Americans, south would rhyme with mouth and wark would rhyme with fork. However, to the Brits it’s pronounced suth-erk (with the accent on the first syllable). I always used to find British pronunciations baffling and more than slightly humorous, but I’m starting to discern the pattern I think.
Once you emerge from Southwark station they have painted all of the lampposts that lead to the Tate Modern orange, so instead of constantly consulting your map you just look for the next bright orange lamppost and walk toward that. Pretty ingenious system I think. Here’s a picture of a really cool-looking condo development that sits next to the Tate Modern, and in the pic you can clearly see the orange lampposts:
Before we went inside we ate the sandwiches we brought with us. Unfortunately we managed to find the least scenic spot on the building’s perimeter but here’s a pic of Kelly anyway:
According to my guidebook the Tate Modern is now London’s most visited attraction, which is quite surprising to Americans since your everyday person in our country has absolutely zero interest in (and usually a distaste for) modern art. Perhaps people are coming for the building itself, which really is astounding. The building is famously a decommissioned power station that was gutted and redesigned by some famous architects or another. It’s very industrial chic and the giant wide-open spaces are perfect for an art gallery.
The collection is pretty big and the museum is free, so the plan was to just see a small part today. We decided to start at the beginning, which is a gallery that seems to be weaving together a bunch of threads in early 20th-century art that culminate in American abstract expressionism. The Tate Modern strikes me as the kind of art museum you put together when money is no object. Have a series of 7 Mark Rothko 10-foot by 20-foot canvases that he insists be shown all together in a room with no other works and specially-designed low lighting scheme? No problem, chap, we’ll put it right here. Most paintings have their own dedicated wall and the rooms are gigantic, with ceilings that must be 20 feet tall, so there’s more than enough room to stand back and really take in even the gigantic Pollack canvases. I’m a big fan of abstract expressionism so seeing them in this ideal environment was a real treat.
After seeing that gallery, which collected works that were broadly within an expressionist tradition, we took a guided tour of different works which were broadly within a conceptual or minimalist tradition. While these weren’t always aesthetically powerful (in fact, more often they were aesthetically nauseating), they did provoke a good conversation between Kelly and me, which is what they were created to do I suppose. The guide for our free tour was also very good, so I highly recommend going in for one of those if you make it to the Tate Modern.
By the way, I don’t really have a transition into this photo, but it’s pretty ridiculous so I thought I’d share it. In the corner of the 5th floor there’s this area with a big sign that says “Bloomberg presents Interactive Learning at the Tate Modern.” How are they getting you to interact with the artwork, you ask? Holographic images of Jackson Pollack paintings right in front of you? A create-your-own conceptual video montage station? How about… brace yourself… BOOKS ON A TETHER!
Well, at least they were books full of naked women, as you can see.
After the guided tour we went out front to see the much better views at the main entrance to the building. Here’s a shot of the building itself:
And here’s a view of the north bank:
I hadn’t walked along the south bank of the river and I must say that it was astounding. I guess that when you have lopsided development on either side of the river (as is, more or less, the case with the Thames) one side is going to have the awesome buildings and the other is going to have the awesome views of those buildings at any given time. After milling around for a little while we crossed the footbridge you can see in this picture:
The footbridge went straight across into St. Paul’s churchyard; you can see the dome quite clearly at the end of the bridge in this pic:
Kelly quite liked this little dyke structure, which was emblazoned with the motto “I EAT RUBBISH:”
And your daily picture of St. Paul’s, taken by Kelly this time:
After coming home, resting for a while and eating a tasty dinner of bangers and mash, Kelly and I decided to take an evening stroll. Before she left home she loaded up her ipod with podcasts of walking tours of London, so we chose the closest one, Highgate, and set off. Here’s a picture of me at the train station:
If you’ve been reading these posts you’ll remember that I wasn’t too impressed with Highgate when I wandered around on my own, so I was hoping that this tour would take us around to some nicer places than I found on that jaunt. While the style of the walking tour was a little odd (the presenter seemed frazzled and disorganized, much like many regular tour guides I suppose), it really did take us past some amazing spots in this wealthy community. It was especially great to see all of these places lit up at night. Here’s a street view with St. Michael’s cathedral in the background:
And here’s a view of of St. Michael’s itself:
Having this guided walking tours was quite nice because, without it, I would have taken a look at this, said “nice cathedral” and continued along my walk. However, from the guided tour I learned that Samuel Taylor Coleridge is buried underneath the center aisle at this very church. I tried to get Kelly to do her best ancient mariner pose, but unfortunately she wouldn’t do it. In addition to this spot, the tour was quite good at pointing out all the blue plaques that I would have otherwise missed, which included former residences of Charles Dickens and A.E. Housman. Since the lighting was getting dodgy by this time I don’t have any pics, but I assure you they were all quite nice.
Today Kelly and I are starting a 6-day tourism blitz, so the photos will be coming fast and furious from here on in.
The weather has finally warmed up in London, so even though the forecast called for rain I was out and about at a rather uncharacteristic time of morning. Today’s first destination was the former home of Samuel Johnson, a legendary 18th century wit, novelist, literary critic and author of the first authoritative dictionary of the English language. During the period I’m writing my dissertation about Johnson was one of the most famous men in all of England and arguably the most famous and recognizable author in the English-speaking world. The house that is preserved is one of many that he lived in during his lifetime, though this is the house in which the bulk of work on the dictionary was completed. Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. I hopped off the tube at Bank station and walked up past St. Paul’s on the way to Gough Square, where Johnson’s house sits. I thought this was a lovely view down Cannon Street, with St. Paul’s dominating the skyline:
I know I’ve posted a lot of pictures of St. Paul’s already, but I approached it from a different direction this time which I thought was quite striking:
Johnson’s house is just a few blocks down from St. Paul’s, and after paying the rather steep 5-pound entry fee I was in. This is the view of the house’s front door from the inside:
The door is outfitted with several 18th-century security measures since, apparently, break-ins were a big problem (like crime in general in the city, since there was no police force). You can’t see this in the pic, but there is a small window above the door which has been outfitted with a wrought iron bar across it so that thieves cannot boost children through the window and have them open the door from the inside; this is also why one of the latches is very high on the door, at about eye level for me (remember that the average height of English people in the 18th century was much shorter than the average height of Americans and English today). The door is also outfitted with a heavy chain; they encourage you to lift and inspect it and it must have weighed at least 25 or 30 pounds. The chain hooks into a spiral latch on the right side so that intruders would not be able to unlatch the chain with a hook from above. Leaving the house through this door every morning must have been at least a 5-minute process.
As museums go, I have to say that Johnson’s house as a little underwhelming. Though as an 18c nerd I was happy to pay five pounds just to walk around this great man’s house, there wasn’t a lot of information and what was there tended toward toward the cheeky. There also were very few original artifacts from Johnson’s life. The walls were decorated with engravings made after portraits of Johnson and his friends (and a few oil copies) and there were a few glass cases containing ephemera like this commemorative flask sculpted in Johnson’s image:
One thing I did enjoy was seeing this reproduction of the original folio edition of the dictionary. It’s actually sitting on a rather large table and it takes up almost half of the surface area:
Johnson was apparently fascinated by China and this brick from the Great Wall is one of the few of Johnson’s actual possessions that you can see at the house:
As for the cheeky stuff, there was a 25-minute video where actors playing Dr. Johnson and James Boswell recited virtually all of the information I’d already read on the little cards that illustrate the rooms and the artifacts. For no apparent reason, the video started with Johnson and Boswell, in full 18th-century garb, arriving in Gough Square in a modern black cab. Also, whenever the men entered a new room the director chose to use a rather primitive special effect that portrayed the men as walking through solid doors and walls. While it was frustrating that these weird parts of the video weren’t explained, what was even more annoying was the way they portrayed James Boswell as a buffoon. My guidebook actually made the mistake of assuming Boswell was one of Johnson’s assistants (I assume due to this video), which couldn’t have been further from the case. Anyway, now that I’ve lost 90% of my readers I’ll move on…
In another inexplicable move, there is a dress-up area with child-size costumes of Georgian clothing for children to try on, which I assure you would be the ONLY thing in this museum children would have the faintest interest in. I spared myself the indignity of trying on a costume made for someone 1/3 of my size, but I couldn’t resist trying on this tri-cornered Georgian hat:
Johnson’s will:
The top floor of the house is where most of the work on the dictionary took place. I wanted a picture of myself in this room, but since there was literally no one else in the entire museum aside from the one attendant working the door I had to settle for this masterpiece taken with my camera’s self-timer:
After trying my damnedest to squeeze every bit of enjoyment out of the place, I had finally exhausted Dr. Johnson’s house after about 90 minutes. So, I walked back toward St. Paul’s. I realized at this point that I’d forgotten to pack a lunch, so I grabbed a cup of soup and ate it on the steps of St. Paul’s, which is about as scenic a place as one can find in this world. Unfortunately, while the weather is much warmer than it has been for the past 2 weeks or so, it was just short of being warm enough to sit in the sun and read for hours on end. While I stayed pretty warm walking around, by the time I finished my soup my butt felt like a block of ice and I had to go inside, so I grabbed a cup of coffee and read a novel for about an hour.
From there it was off to Islington to check out one last record store before Kelly arrives. Walking outside of Angel tube station I was quite pleased to see this site, the Screen on the Green theatre:
Punk historians will recognize this as the site of an important 1976 Sex Pistols gig, months before they even signed to their first label, EMI. Opening for the Pistols at that show were the Clash (in their short-lived 5-piece lineup with Keith Levine on 3rd (!!!) guitar) and the Buzzcocks (Spiral Scratch lineup with Howard Devoto on vocals). As this gig featured so many of my all-time favorite groups in these barely-documented, infant stages I actually obsessed about this gig for a long time until I actually acquired a tape of it. Unfortunately I can’t remember what the tape sounded like at all and it’s long gone now… oh well.
After stopping in one shop that was more or less a bust I found my way into Haggle Records, which was your classic rotting warehouse of vinyl, one of those shops with records hanging from the ceiling, records in random piles on the floor, records overflowing from every bin and records everywhere else one might reasonably have the idea to store a record. Normally shops like this are a bust, but looking through the 12″ bins I did manage to find 2 records I was after, the Ramones’ It’s Alive 2xLP (was this only released in the UK? I’ve always wanted this on vinyl but I could never find it in the States… I see it in nearly every shop here but not usually at decent prices) and a long-time staple on the want list, the Bad Brains I & I Survive 12″.
The shop’s main floor was all LPs, so when I went to pay for these two 12″s I asked the attendant if they had an punk singles. It turned out they had 6 long wooden boxes behind the counter, all of them stacked on top of one another with the full weight of each box crushing the tops of the records beneath them. I went through these boxes one-by-one, occasionally pulling out something mildly interesting like an X-Ray Spex or UK Subs single. On the 5th or 6th box, just as I’d determined to give up, I hit the mother-load of first-generation oi! rippers. I nabbed some killer stuff including the 4 Skins’ One Law for Them, Blitz’s All Out Attack and Infa-Riot’s The Winner. There were also a few crucial non-skinhead jams in there as well, including the Fall’s Bingo Masters Break-out single and the Saints’ I’m Stranded single. While I wouldn’t expect it from a store like this, everything was marked with slightly sub-ebay prices and when the guy rung everything up he knocked 15% of the total. Here’s the full take:
Needless to say, I was almost skipping back to the tube and the ride home was very happy.
By this point I was starving, though, so I hit up the fish and chips shop 3 doors down from my apartment. Here’s what that beauty looked like:
The photo definitely doesn’t convey the size of this beast… those aren’t McDonald’s-style skinny fries, they’re full on steak fries that are almost an inch wide, and the piece of cod is probably a foot long. While I managed to down the whole thing (with much effort), in the future I think Kelly and I could split this meal and both walk away pretty full.
Speaking of Kelly, she finally arrives at 7:30 AM tomorrow! I’m going out to Heathrow to meet her and I can’t wait. I imagine this blog will probably change somewhat once she arrives… at the very least there probably will be more people in the photos. Anyway, until then…
Despite the crummy weather I was determined to get out and about on Saturday. Without much of a plan I headed toward the city and, surprise, surprise, I ended up at a record store. I actually went back to the Music Exchange at Notting Hill Gate because they had great stuff last time and it seemed like such a busy place that I was curious to see if they had much turnover. There were, indeed, a bunch of new records in the bin, though not a lot of punk. I did manage to grab singles by GBH and Stiff Little Fingers, and while perusing around I found a bin marked “hardcore” that I’d missed on my first trip to this store. Said bin was very fruitful, yielding two LPs that I’ve been specifically hunting after for a few years: HDQ’s You Suck and the Spermbirds’ Nothing Is Easy LP, and both of them dead cheap at that. It’s always cool to find good records in a store, but it’s even better when you stumble upon things that were actually on your want list. Here’s a pic of the haul (note: the Chaos UK came in the mail that day via ebay):
After that I headed down to Tottenham Court tube station because this area of Charing Cross Road is littered with music stores and I wanted to replace the volume knob on my guitar that had broken during shipping. The sheer amount of music stores here really is staggering, particularly on this side street that contains nothing but guitar stores on the ground floor (sorry the pic isn’t that impressive):
Since the music store population is so dense, most of the stores are very specialized. I ended up buying the volume knob from a store that specialized in Gibson guitars and basses. I also saw a store that specialized in obscure and vintage basses and equipment (some very cool stuff in their window, including a 1970s SG bass that I could see myself rocking out on if not for the 2,000-pound price tag) and a drum store that had an exact replica of Keith Moon’s drum kit (including the painted heads and shells) in the window. Neat. I attempted to treat these stores like guitar museums, and I half thought of getting in some surreptitious bass practice since I didn’t bring my own bass to London, but unfortunately an overwhelming amount of guitar stores means an overwhelming amount of guitar store employee douchebags. Seriously, what other industry has a 3-to-1 customer-to-employee ratio?
After growing frustrated with all that I walked down the street and stumbled upon Forbidden Planet, which is a very famous (and very big) comic book and toy store. I was struck by this item in the front window, which I’m still at pains to figure out the purpose of:
This shop was a lot more browser-friendly than the guitar stores, so I killed a good half hour looking at Lost action figures and an entire display of Sex Pistols and Clash memorabilia including coffee mugs, action figures, zippo lighters and a zillion other things that I’m sure I’m forgetting.
From there I headed toward Oxford Street, and on the way I was asked by an American couple for directions to the British Museum. I didn’t know precisely how to get there (it turns out it was just one block up), but I used my map to point them in the right direction. I must walk around London very purposefully and authoritatively, because I’ve been asked for directions several times. I wonder if people are disappointed when I respond with an American accent?
Since I was going nowhere in particular I decided that I would also go and have a look at the British Museum building. I’d actually been reading a book about the Museum’s 18th-century beginnings at home, but it’s a heavy coffee-table-type book so I wasn’t able to bring it with me to London. Anyway, just across the street from the museum I passed this pub whose signs inexplicably, were decorated with portraits of Jonathan Swift:
The Museum itself could use a power wash I think… and the iron fence around the perimeter is a little intimidating:
By now the rain was getting heavier so I started making my way toward the tube station, but I did take a slightly scenic route through Bedford Square, which I’m pretty sure is the oldest Georgian garden square in London. The style of architecture was very familiar to me from 18th-century illustrations of London, and this was the first time since I’ve been in London when I really felt transported back in time. Here’s a pic of some of the buildings:
The University of North Carolina actually owns one of these houses (not one of these in particular, but a very similar one on the other side of the square), and with a bit more planning and substantially more money I could have stayed there for this trip. When I heard about the opportunity I dismissed it as expensive and silly, but after seeing the house and the neighborhood I kind of regret it. Oh well, at least I can walk by it any time I please.
Here’s a view of the garden in the middle of the square, which is unfortunately private (and under lock and key):
From there it was home and to work for the rest of the evening. I was planning on sticking close to home on Sunday, but being unable to get any work done due to restlessness, I decided to burn some energy by taking a long walk. It turned out to be a beautiful day… sunny and much warmer than it has been since I first arrived. I plugged in my ipod and set out on the 2-3-mile walk to Highgate, a neighboring village which I’d heard a lot about. Once I got through all of the gas stations and lumber yards that stand between East Finchley and Highgate, I actually wasn’t that impressed. Perhaps I didn’t see the best parts of the town, or maybe it was built up too much by my guidebook and other things I’d read and heard. If you’re looking for a quaint north London village, I’d say Muswell Hill is the superior choice. Anyway, here’s a cool building that I saw… I think it’s part of some kind of school:
The weather has been so dreary here that the blue sky in the pic above is honestly a little jarring. Anyway, I walked all the way through Highate to Archway and then started tracing my way back. On the way I encountered a great little park called Waterlow:
I really liked this park. It wasn’t as manicured as some of the fancier sections of Regent’s or St. James’ and it had a very local, non-touristy feel. There were few enough people here that the big open spaces were still in really good shape since they hadn’t been used and abused by soccer players.
Waterlow Park is adjacent to Highgate Cemetery, which I took a preliminary peek at. Kelly and I will go back for a full exploration there I’m sure, if only to see Karl Marx’s grave. Back to Waterlow, however… there was a little duck-pond in the middle of the park that was a little scummy but still nice:
After walking up and down all of the massive hills in this area my calves were killing me so I ended up taking the tube home. I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve actually sweated in London, and it felt good. After burning off all this nervous energy I was finally able to come back to my flat and get some work done before bed.
Apologizes for losing track of the blog for a couple of days. I’d love to say it’s because I’ve been out and about, enjoying swingin’ London, but unfortunately I’ve mostly been hunkered down in the flat. Between the chilly weather and finally being struck by the fear of God in regards to my lack of work on the dissertation, I finally found the motivation to sit down, write and research. I’m happy to report that it’s going relatively well so far. However, while I’ve spent a lot of time staring at the computer screen, I have managed to get out a bit.
Wednesday I was determined to go for a nice long walk despite the chilly forecast, so I bundled up, ate a big breakfast and set out for London around lunchtime. As I was riding the tube into the city, a bunch of skateboarders who were made up to look like old (like 90 years old) men boarded the train along with a team of photographers. Judging by the swag that everyone was decked out in, they were doing a photo shoot for a company called Plain Lazy (whom I later looked up and do, indeed, exist). The train was fairly packed, with all of the seats already taken up, but the models still proceeded to treat the subway car like a jungle gym, hanging on all of the various bars and railings, doing skateboard tricks on the floor and making crazy faces and poses for the camera. While this was fun to watch, what was even more hilarious was the reaction (or more precisely the lack thereof) from the commuters. There was mayhem taking place all around them but with very few exceptions no one even looked up from their newspapers… everyone seemed determined to act exactly as if nothing odd at all was happening around them. Since I’m an American I felt free to stare and laugh at the antics, but the British capacity for straight-faced-ness truly astounded me.
I jumped off the train at Charing Cross station because I was planning to explore St. James’ Park, which is a relatively small but well-kept park that runs from Trafalgar Square to Buckingham Palace. Since the forecast called for rain I brought my gigantic umbrella rather than the tiny portable umbrella I always have with me. The portable umbrella just barely protects me from the neck up, while the large umbrella is more like a portable dwelling. Well, if you ever want to ward off rain all you have to do is carry around an incredibly heavy umbrella all day, because, wouldn’t you know, it didn’t rain a single drop the entire day. Oh well.
Though it didn’t rain, the weather was still quite gloomy and winter-like:
When I arrived I walked straight along the side of the park and up to Buckingham Palace. Unfortunately I had just missed the changing of the guard by about half an hour, but I’m sure I’ll come down for it some other time (though this would have been a good day due to the crappy weather, which meant less tourists). Here’s the approach to Buckingham Palace:
In front of the palace there are some very large and colorful tulip gardens that struggled to assert that fact that we are, indeed, in spring. However, the skies and the other foliage told a different story, insisting that it’s still winter:
Here’s the monument to Victoria in front of the palace:
After a long ramble around the edge of the palace, making obligatory stops to inspect the striking gold gates and gawk at the guards, I peeked over into Green Park next door because I was struck by this monument. Apparently it’s a monument to Canada’s contribution to World War II:
Green Park looked nice, but today was about St. James’ so I walked back into the park, where I took a bench and read for quite a while. Here’s the view from my bench (the park’s pond is just outside the frame to the left… I’m not sure why I pointed the camera in this direction):
The park is full of waterfowl, including a few swans. This one swam right up next to me:
After sitting for a while I walked around pretty much the entire area of the park… I think that I was there for at least three hours, maybe a bit more. While the entire park is quite nice, the best views are from the footbridge crossing the pond. Here’s the view back toward London and the south bank:
And here’s the view of Buckingham Palace. I’m surprised that willow tree has managed to survive in a spot that so clearly obstructs a classic photo opportunity:
After over four hours walking around the park and its surrounding environs I took the train down to Brixton to get a case for my new guitar. This was my first trip south of the Thames, though I don’t think that Brixton is entirely representative of what south London is like. Anyway, I didn’t get any photos and I didn’t stick around too long, but Brixton was interesting. It seemed like a more working-class area with a lot of immigrants (I heard a lot of West Indian accents) and a bit more of a “lived-in” feel than the other areas of London I’ve been exploring. It actually reminded me of the outer boroughs of New York, which makes sense really. After that it was back home to work on my dissertation for the rest of the night.
I actually got into a good groove with work on my chapter Wednesday night, so I got back to work right away upon waking up on Thursday. I pounded away at the keys right up until I had to leave for dinner, which I was having with previously-mentioned family friend Jenni and her boyfriend John. We met at a pub near Leicester Square and had a drink first as well as some great conversation. I hadn’t met John before and he is a laugh riot… and (even more interestingly) he is a fanatic about the Grateful Dead (collects live bootlegs and everything) even though he hates hippies. Go figure. After the pub we had dinner at a lovely Indian restaurant that, to my amazement, was not crowded at all. The food was excellent, though my dish was so hot that I was drenched in sweat by the end of the meal. I’m sure that I looked like I’d just been to India rather than an Indian restaurant.
After dinner we had a stroll around Pall Mall. Jenni suggested we walk around here when she heard that my research is on 18th-century London clubs because this is the area where the most exclusive modern-day clubs are. Most of them had open windows that allowed you to see into their parlors, and it was astounding to see this entirely different, entirely more posh world happening just one floor up from us riff-raff. Thanks so much to Jenni and John for the wonderful dinner, the great conversation (especially the jokes) and the lovely walk. I’m sure I’ll be seeing more of them once Kelly arrives.
Today, unfortunately, has been devoted to errands (though hopefully I’ll get to a little dissertation work after finishing this post). The boringness and annoying-ness of these tasks was compounded by the freezing temperatures and the fact that everything costs twice as much as I’m used to. First on the agenda was getting a haircut:
Before
After
I guess that a haircut doesn’t make all that much difference in appearance when you’re as bald as I am, but god knows I felt better afterward. I’ve been cutting my own hair (with Kelly’s help on the back) for the past couple of years, so it was particularly hard to hand over 9 pounds ($18) for this haircut. At least it’s a pretty good haircut, I think… definitely better than a $10 Hair Cuttery haircut from home and it’s already done wonders for my confidence and poise.
From there it was off to do laundry, which all told cost me just over $20 American. Wow. At least I didn’t have to deal with the money-sucking broken machines and other assorted hassles of your typical American laundromat. They actually had two attendants working in a place that had maybe 15 washers and 10 dryers, and as I walked in one of them proceeded to walk me through every step of the process as if I’d never done laundry before. It was quite nice of her and I appreciated it, actually, but I could see how it would annoy some people.
In one final note I thought I’d give an update on the vinyl acquisitions. I’ve discovered ebay.co.uk in the past week, which I’m finding is far, far better than most of the stores I’ve been to. Not only does ebay (obviously) have a wider selection than any record store, but the records on there cost a fraction of the price (even including shipping, which is quite cheap here) and tend to be in FAR better condition than the ones you find in stores. Here’s what’s come in the mail over the past few days… most of these cost between 1-3 pounds:
It seems like if you come across a real obscurity in a store it’ll be worth picking up, but for common stuff (and almost everything I’m after is fairly common here) it’s probably best to stick to ebay, especially since most of the records I’ve seen in stores have been beat to hell. OK, that’s all for now… no idea what my plans are for this weekend yet but I’m sure I’ll post again soon.
Writing the title of this post I realized that I have now been in London for two weeks. I’m not really sure what to think about that at the moment. On the one hand, just the other day I was thinking about how being here feels right in a way that very few other places I’ve traveled have felt. London just feels like somewhere I’m supposed to be. Sure, there’s something invigorating about the daily struggle to communicate, get around and just live in a place like Tokyo, but London doesn’t even feel foreign to me. It just feels right. I wonder if part of that is just that this trip is so long that I can’t yet see the light at the end of the tunnel. I don’t even entertain thoughts of being home because it’s just so far away. On the other hand, there are a few things about home that I’m really starting to miss. First and foremost would be the people, especially Kelly. I don’t think I’ve been two weeks without seeing her since we met, and I really miss her. I also miss all my friends, and I really miss playing with my bands. While it’s ultimately not as important, I also miss my record collection, my mac (I’m starting to hate the tiny, tiny monitor on this laptop I brought with me) and semi-predictable weather (as the forecaster said on tonight’s news, this is the time of year when you walk around London with sunglasses in one hand and an umbrella in the other).
I think part of the reason I’m feeling a little down in the dumps is because the novelty of going out every day has started to fade ever-so-slightly. I’m beginning to feel pressure to stay in my flat and work for a significant portion of each day; as a result, going into London is feeling more and more like a mild pain and the 20-minute tube ride is feeling longer and longer. However, if I’m to remain excited for the week until Kelly gets here I think I need to keep making regular trips into the city to remind myself why I’m here. It was with this in mind that I made a trip to the National Gallery yesterday:
I’m sure that Kelly and I will be making multiple trips here, so today I thought I would just make a short visit, getting the lay of the land and visiting some of the museum’s highlights. In particular, I knew that the museum held two paintings by perhaps my favorite painter, Jan Van Eyck. I’d never seen these in person before, and it was astounding how small they were. The self-portrait of Van Eyck wearing a red Turban is smaller than a sheet of notebook paper, and the Arnolfini wedding portrait isn’t much bigger than an 11″x17″ piece of paper. However, they are still breathtaking. While I love the painterly canvases of artists like Van Gogh, when I look at these two paintings by Van Eyck it’s like the materiality of the paint and canvas disappear and I’m staring into another world, a world full of sharp focus and brilliant color. Both of these pictures are seamless, and if it weren’t for the crowds elbowing their way past me to see for themselves, I’m sure I could have lost myself in the colors and textures for hours. Once I finally dragged myself away from Van Eyck’s room I looked around at some other Dutch paintings and took a little peek at the Gallery’s collection of Renaissance masters. Particularly captivating was Leonardo’s cartoon drawing of the Holy Family, a slide I remember very well from high school art history lectures. However, since it’s a 500-year-old piece of paper that is starting to look its age, that piece is displayed under very low lighting that makes it hard to appreciate fully.
After spending a couple of hours in the gallery I walked out onto Trafalgar Square and hung out for a little while, enjoying the view and watching the tourists and street performers do what they do:
I had planned on walking around St. James’ Park, but just as I went through the incredible gate a downpour erupted. Unfortunately I didn’t have any good reading material that would have allowed me to kill some time in a coffee shop, so I just took the tube home and got back to work.
I had planned to stay around the flat most of the day today, but the weather was so gorgeous that I had to take a walk. I found a little park down the street while scoping out potential jogging destinations on google maps, so I decided to have a look. Compared to Regent’s Park or St. James’ this little park is definitely nothing to look at, and unfortunately it’s also too small to make a worthwhile jogging destination. I also walked a little around the edge of Highgate, the snooty area of London just to our south (which apparently is home to a few celebrities), but without any sense of where I was going I got nervous about getting lost and cut things short. Here’s a pic of the little “aesthetically challenged” park:
Part of the reason I was so anxious to get home was because of this bad boy, which finally came in the mail today:
From the moment I found out that I was coming to London I was making plans to buy one of these guitars. The brand is called Gordon Smith and they’re hand-made in a little shop just outside Manchester. Leatherface fans will recognize this as the same type of guitar that Frankie Stubbs and Dickie Hammond play, and since Leatherface’s monstrous roar is pretty much my favorite recorded guitar sound I’ve always wanted one of these. Luckily they’re fairly cheap here, especially if you get them second-hand. I got this one on ebay.co.uk, which is also proving to be a lot more interesting (and WAY cheaper, even with shipping) than any of the record stores I’ve been to so far. Anyway, with my dream guitar finally in my possession I stayed in pretty much the whole afternoon and evening playing until my fingers are so sore that I can’t even touch the thing anymore. Not only did I lose all of my callouses in the 3 weeks since I’ve played guitar, I also feel like I’ve lost a lot of my skill and finger strength, and things were definitely clunky as I made my way around the fretboard. Still, I couldn’t be more excited to have this thing, and I’m eagerly anticipating the moment when I plug this beast into my double-stack at home.
Tonight’s plan, after hunkering down during the day and getting some more work done on my dissertation, was to hit the Camden Underworld to see Polish Punk legends Dezerter. When I first saw that Dezerter were playing the Underworld I was skeptical that this is the same band whose 20-year-old Underground Out of Poland LP I know and love. I checked and re-checked, and despite my inability to read Polish I was convinced that, indeed, some incarnation of Dezerter would be playing in London tonight.
First, however, I decide to check out the new(-ish) Rough Trade store. Unfortunately, it was a total bust. The space is huge, which makes it all the more remarkable that it contains absolutely nothing that I want. There is a cafe in the front of the store and I guess it would be cool to hang out, drink coffee and browse records if I wasn’t strapped with the crappy US dollar, but despite a concerted effort to kill time there I managed to be bored silly. Oh well.
On the way back to the tube I snapped a picture of this view. I’m pretty sure the white building is Christ Church Spitalfields, but I could be wrong. Anyway, I stepped in dog crap while taking this photo, so try particularly hard to enjoy this one:
So, after the record store I took the tube to Camden Town, where I expected to enter the club to find 7-10 pathetic record nerds using hastily-learned, halting Polish to request autographs of carefully-preserved, 20-year-old pieces of vinyl. Instead, when I walked out of the tube station I found a line stretching around the block. I had to trace the line from its end all the way to the ticket counter to be convinced that it was the line for the Dezerter show. Once I took my place in the queue I did not hear a solitary word of English for the next 3 hours. The place was so packed with Poles that the club actually had to hire special Polish-speaking staff for the evening! I never would have thought there were this many punks in London, let alone Polish punks.
Once I got inside I was shocked to see that the rather large venue was completely packed with several hundred Polish ragers, a good 50% of them drunk off of their asses. The opening band, Non Profit, was already playing. I was disappointed to see the members wearing shirts of crummy American bands like Hatebreed and Sick of It All, but their music was actually really good. From the first note I heard it was instantly recognizable as Polish punk. Not only does the language have a particular cadence that is instantly identifiable, but also the guitarists of all the Polish punk bands I know (which, admittedly, are not that many) have a thick, melodic style that reminds me, if anything, of Bob Mould’s playing on the early Husker Du records. As you might expect, Non Profit dropped some (tasteful, I must say) palm-muted riffing into that mix, but at the end of the day they were just a solid Polish punk band.
Non Profit:
As soon as Non Profit put their instruments down, though, mayhem erupted. The crowd immediately started chanting DEZ-ER-TER, occasionally interspersed with lyrics from various songs. The 15-20 people in front who were most excited started invading the stage well before the band even came out to tune up. I’m not even sure what they were after… it’s like they wanted so badly just to inhabit the same space as this band, even if it was only for a few seconds before a bouncer viciously shoved them back to the ground.
Once the band walked on-stage I was flabbergasted for the entire length of their 75-minute set. Through the first 3/4 of their set they only dropped 1 song from Underground Out of Poland (though that song happened to be “Ku Przysztojci,” which is my favorite song by them), but I swear that every single song they played was worthy of being on that monster of a record. I’ve listened to mp3s from their recent albums on their web site and they definitely sounded overproduced, but in the raw live setting this band was 100% punk rock… just raging, furious hardcore the likes of which I’ve only witnessed a few other times in my life.
Dezerter:
The band pummeled the audience with song after song, stopping for only seconds to check their tuning. The only words the band said outside of their lyrics were during this brief interlude, when some exceptionally vicious bouncer tactics forced the band to stop the song and defend their audience (move to the end of the clip if you want to see the “riot”:
After about 40 minutes of face-melting hardcore punk (which, in my mind, is just about the perfect amount) the band cooled things down with 2-3 slower, heavier songs with a pronounced reggae influence. Once this brief interlude was over they went in for the kill with a string of crowd-pleasers, almost all of which were from Underground Out of Poland. When they ended their set the chants of DEZ-ER-TER immediately started again, and the band quickly came out to play 3 more songs. Even when these songs were done the crowd hadn’t had enough, and kept chanting the band’s name even after the background music went on, the lights went up, and the less dedicated fans started to file out of the building. Unfortunately, though, the band didn’t come back for a second encore.
As I, too, gave up hope for another encore and made my way out of the building, I felt like I should be pinching myself repeatedly to be certain that I was really here. Not only had I just seen one of the 5 or so best shows of my entire life, but the environment in which I saw it was so completely weird. It’s like someone took Warsaw and dropped it in the middle of London for 3 hours, and somehow or another I was lucky enough to wander into the middle of it. I’m still in shock, not only at how amazing this gig was but how fortunate I was to witness it.
Unfortunately I wasn’t in a very good spot for pictures, but I did manage to get some videos for youtube. I tried to concentrate my filming on the old songs, which meant that I missed the first few seconds of each song (including the whistle, WHICH THEY ACTUALLY BLEW AT THE START OF THE SONG! YESSS!!!!). I’m not sure if the awesomeness will come through the grainy picture and the muffled sound, but here they are anyway:
And here’s a particularly crazy one. This video is of “Spytaj Milicjanta” (which I know more colloquially as “the whistle song”), which was the last song before the encore. This is definitely the “hit” as the crowd goes CRAZY!
Since I had more or less completely neglected my dissertation (the reason I’m ostensibly in London) since I arrived, I hunkered down and attempted to get some work done this Friday. Unfortunately, I wasn’t successful. I think most of the problem is that I haven’t yet acclimated to living in a studio apartment; I usually have completely separate spaces for working, eating, relaxing, sleeping, etc., which makes things a lot easier. Here, when I sit down at my computer to work I’m sitting at the same spot where I watch TV, eat my meals, waste time on the internet, read and do just about everything else I do in this place. So, unfortunately I fell into the trap of wasting time on the internet rather than writing.
I didn’t have any plans to go into London today because at night I would be taking a train to nearby Guildford for a DIY hardcore gig. I made my way down to Waterloo station and while I was nervous about figuring everything out, it was quite easy to buy my ticket and board the train, which got me to Guildford in only about 40 minutes. This train felt luxurious in comparison with the tube trains… the travel was smooth (so smooth that I was able to read without motion sickness, which I usually can’t do very well in moving vehicles) and the seats had a ton of space, about the size of business-class airport seats.
I arrived at Guildford right around dusk, and it’s a nice little town. I had arrived at that moment in the evening where all of the regular shops are closing up for the day and the night clubs are just starting to open, blaring music into the street because there’s no one inside:
While I didn’t have much time to look around, I’m pretty sure I did see the famous Guildford castle (which supposedly dates back to Saxon England, i.e. about 1500 years ago) sitting atop a hill in the center of town, but I didn’t think to snap a picture. Here’s another view of the town at dusk:
After a short walk I arrived at the gig, which was being held at the Guildford Youth Centre. This place was actually very cool; they were even playing the Double Negative LP on the PA when I walked in! The room has the vibe of an elementary school classroom, but unlike these sorts of spaces in the US, you are allowed to drink inside. I’m pretty sure that if you were able to have legal BYOB shows at places like this in North Carolina our punk scene would be 5 times as big and our shows would be 15 times as crazy. Anyway, during the daytime the place is a walk-in shelter for the homeless, and there were posters everywhere advertising that they were giving haircuts for 1 pound earlier in the day. The only stipulation was that your hair had to have been washed, but they provided shampoo and towels if you needed them. I kind of wished I’d arrived earlier as I’ve been getting a big shaggy and I’ve been wincing at the prices to get a haircut here.
The first band to play was Whole in the Head from Southampton, who are much better than their name would indicate. They played a very burly take on Extreme Noise Terror-style crust punk with some really cool and rocking moments that reminded me of Totalitar. Unfortunately for them they were cursed with opening band syndrome and everyone just stood like statues and watched them, but they amused themselves cracking on each other and the audience. I quite enjoyed their between-song banter and I’d say that these guys have a future in stand-up comedy if the whole crust punk thing doesn’t work out.
Between bands I chatted with Ellis, the guy who put on the show and helpfully provided me with the directions to get there. He and I share a love of 90s British melodic punk (Leatherface, Snuff, etc.), early 80s HC and Japanese hardcore, so we got along quite well. Ellis also plays in a RIPPING band called the Shitty Limits who I’ll be very excited to see when they open for Annihilation Time in London next month.
The second band up were Cracks in the Wall from the Netherlands, who were on tour with Reproach. I managed to snap a couple of pics of these guys:
Cracks in the Wall played late 90s-style hardcore a la Tear It Up, Dead Nation and all the bands of that era, e.g. post-”bandana thrash” but before bands like Career Suicide and Direct Control started really nailing the early 80s sound. They even covered “Play to Destroy” by Tear It Up, which was weird but pretty cool I guess. Overall this band was pretty decent but I think they were held back by their drummer, who was a bit sloppy and made some noticeable flubs. They ended with a really cool song that they said was a BGK cover, but I didn’t recognize it.
After Cracks in the Wall were Reproach from Belgium:
I guess these guys have been around for a few years now even though I hadn’t managed to hear them. They played a fucking vicious, ripping set that reminded me at times of Infest mixed with some of the same 90s HC influences that Cracks in the Wall were drawing from. Reproach’s fast parts were almost mechanically tight, but I think what really sets them apart are their slow parts, which (like Infest’s slow parts) filled me with barely-containable violent urges. I don’t know how well they’d come across on record, but I’d definitely check these out live if they come to the USA.
After blasting through 10 or 12 songs, Reproach finished with a GG Allin cover followed by two Black Flag covers, which finally set the crowd off. I’m pretty sure this is during “Gimme Gimme Gimme:”
By now it was about 10:45 PM and I was starting to get nervous about getting home, so I quickly said my goodbyes and power-walked to the train station. The last tube home is at 12:35, so I thought I was in pretty good shape when I got to the train station by 11 and boarded a train that was only 2 minutes away from leaving. Unfortunately, though, it was an incredibly slow train, and so bumpy that I couldn’t even read during the long ride. Guildford can’t be more than 25 miles or so from London, but this train bumped along at the pace of a light jog, making about 12 stops along the way. At one point I’m pretty sure I heard the conductor say that we would arrive in London at 12:30 (giving me a whopping 5 minutes to make my way to the Northern line platform), but fortunately for me we arrived about 12:10, making the journey back nearly twice as long as the journey there.
Here’s a pic of Waterloo station as I stepped off the train… I was very happy to see this place with enough time to spare:
I’m pretty sure that I caught the next-to-last tube home, which was completely full of drunk people. One girl who got on once all the seats were occupied just collapsed in the middle of the floor and somehow magically woke up just as the train pulled into her stop. I finally made it home a bit after 1AM, completely exhausted.
Unfortunately I had run out of groceries, so with only a cup of crappy instant coffee in my belly I set out for the supermarket first thing at noon on Saturday. I had gotten tired of the tiny selection of prepared meals in the small supermarket across the street from my flat, so I consulted google maps and found that there was a bigger supermarket about a mile away. It turns out the place is located in a lovely little town called Muswell Hill, which is a good deal bigger than East Finchley and has many more shops and restaurants. It also sits atop a large hill from which you can look back all the way toward London:
While I set out looking for a Sainsbury’s, I found a Marks and Spencer so I decided to shop there instead. While they have most regular grocery store items, Marks and Spencer seems to specialize in prepared meat and side dishes that you take home and heat up in your oven. While I don’t have a conventional oven, unfortunately, I did manage to find some tasty-looking microwave meals that look reasonably healthy. I also stocked up on the essentials like bread, milk, etc. I’m pretty sure I’ll be heading out in this direction regularly for the views, the shops and the food, especially once Kelly arrives.
After I got home from the walk I enjoyed a tasty microwave bangers and mash meal and finally got down to some dissertation work. I discovered that by facing in a different direction I can simulate the effect of a dedicated working space, so hopefully that strategy holds for future writing sessions because I’m terrified of returning home having done absolutely no work at all.
