It should have been only about a 2-mile walk but Evelyn based her route on a description we got from a friend that the hotel was in sight of Victoria Station. After getting lost a few times we found Victoria Station and it is a city clock big. From the front we couldn't see their hotel. I told Evelyn a few times that this trip seemed silly, that our friends would probably not be in. But the whole way Evelyn kept giving responses that we were almost there. But also as we walked Evelyn's memory of the description of where the hotel was became hazier and hazier. Either the hotel could be seen from Victoria Station or Victoria Station could be seen from the hotel. We had no other description. We headed off in one direction that the description might have indicated and no hotel. I asked someone where it was but they were as new to the area as we were. Finally Evelyn got directions to the hotel. Our friend had engaged in hyberpole. The hotel was in the neighborhood of Victoria Station, but neither could be seen from the other. We finally got to the hotel after walking out of our way for about 75 minutes, though in the heat and after a day on our feet it seemed more. Evelyn had been too tired to go to a play but still had arranged this little junket for herself which was in itself pretty exhausting.
At any rate, we are at the hotel and call up our friends' rooms. They are, of course, not in. Evelyn wrote them a note that repeated the phone message, and we headed back to our hotel. We took the Underground and paid the same price we would have from the theater. After we got off the Underground we stopped at a grocery and bought two cans of soda. One was ginger beer; one was shandy (lemon soda and beer, 1.25 proof). After we got back to the hotel, I put our cassette of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA in the Walkman and, so Evelyn could hear, I put the earpieces each into a cone of paper made from magazine covers. It worked and the paper cones became decent speakers. We re-arranged our plans so we could see all three plays. Well, it's now 1 AM Sunday. Ev is already asleep.
August 23 (9:46 AM): I was too before long. I recently saw a film called ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS, a remarkable musical. One of the scenes shows a cutaway of a boarding house and what is going on in each of the rooms. It is an English film and if I look out our window, I can see what may have inspired that scene. I can see a cross-section of a partially demolished building. Only the wall towards me has been removed (and most of the floors, though there are still metal supports for the floors). It looks a little like a scene out of the Blitz.
(2:17 PM): Well, I skipped breakfast and we took the Underground to Hyde Park and Speakers' Corner.
The subway in New York saves themselves a lot of trouble by saying it is one fare wherever you go. The result is that it is a bargain for going long distances and nobody wants to take the subway for short jumps. It costs too much on short hops because you are subsidizing longer trips. The question is how to charge by distance without incurring too much overhead. Well, the British Underground improves on the situation. You pay by distance to exit. They check your ticket as you leave. IT is marked by where you got on. As a check, you feed your ticket through a machine as you get on and it verifies you have a local ticket, unlocks a turnstile for one turn, and passes you your ticket back.
I think England has had things pretty good the last few years. I think when we were here last time there were more malcontents speaking at the Corner. Today, except for a couple of religious speakers, everybody seemed to be there for a good time. There was very little political comment.
The first speaker we saw was one we'd seen eight years ago and is still around. At that time he'd had a rough edge. 'I am a dirty Jew!' he used to proclaim. These days he seems more interested in getting laughs than in shocking people. This time around he saw me and picked out that I was an American because I had a striped shirt (well, he said it looked like a cross-walk). He said Americans were a very friendly people but that he'd like them to do one thing...take their MacDonalds and Burger Kings out of England. He said that that food causes children to be hyperactive and people should not eat fried foods. But if they do, the best fish-and-chips restaurant in England is 'such-and-such' and he gave instructions on how to get there. He clearly had no interest in being taken seriously.
The next guy we went to was from the Unification Church. Dull! The next guy claimed to be a scientist and was explaining why as a scientist he believed in God ('life is a low-probability event' sort of argument). There seemed to be holes in his arguments.
From there it was back to the ex-dirty-Jew who was now giving a pro-Israel speech but also throwing in that he wanted to see the West Bank turned into a homeland for moderate Palestinians. That is generally a pretty inoffensive policy.
The final speaker we heard was advocating thinking about the great questions.
(Ah, hold that thought; I missed one.)
After the pro-Israel guy, we went to the Socialist Party's gathering. The main purpose of this one was, I suppose, to sell copies of the newspaper of the Socialist Party. All the talks are heckled to some extent, but the Socialists really seemed to depend upon it and would have had virtually no audience without it. They were presenting repartee with some regular hecklers in the audience as a come-on to attract an audience to sell papers. Not that the hecklers were shilling, but they all seemed to be on a first-name basis and it had the taste of the kind of arguments that go with professional wrestling. It was kind of fun to listen to, but could not be taken seriously. (Not that I listen to pro wrestling arguments a lot. A barber I used to go to would have pro wrestling on his television.).
Then we went to the guy who talked about confronting the great questions. This talk also depended mostly on heckling and when it wasn't, the speaker was usually joking with the audience. Evelyn and I were having some fun with the speaker, mostly Evelyn. I will let her cover the talk. He claimed Americans were always chewing gum. We gave him a stick of Dentyne which he clearly didn't like but put the gum into his handkerchief (after having chewed it for about 20 seconds) and said he would chew it later.
After that we headed out for Hampton Court by taking the Underground to Waterloo Station, then taking the train to Hampton Court. Every country seems to have the 'luxurious palace of exruler so-and-so.' Hampton Court is much like Peter the Great's digs near Leningrad, opulent and dull and done in excruciatingly bad taste to act as evidence of somebody's wealth. This one had not so as much gold as some, but it still could have rated a picture spread in HOUSE GARISH.
Cardinal Wolsey, one of the richest and most powerful men in England, built his country house up to magnificence, rivaling the royal palace. When he lost henry VIII's favor, he gave Hampton Court to henry as a gift in a vain attempt to win back henry's favor. It didn't work, but Henry kept Hampton Court, built onto it, and turned it into a royal palace.
Several monarchs used it as the Royal Palace, notably William and Mary. The last was George II. In 1838, it was opened to the public and has been dedicated to tourism for a century and a half. You enter it passing a number of stone animals holding shields and bearing constipated looks on their faces. Following that you get to the Clock Court, seen over by a giant clock face. The clock shows the hour, the minute, the month, the day of the month, the Julian date, the phase of the moon, that state of the tide; it has eight alarms, a stopwatch, a calculator, and it unfolds into a robot. Many of these features Henry did not understand and when Wolsey tried to explain them, Henry thought Wolsey was making fun of him and it only made him madder. 'I just want to know what the bloody time is!' Henry is reported to have said. Anne Boleyn apparently mastered the intricacies of the clock (it took 250 of the Thousand Days), but on the day she was beheaded, Duke Edmund of Casio, who had had the clock constructed, fled to the Netherlands with plans for the clock and something he was working on that he called a 'PCinterface.' The plans were on a Dutch ship to the Pacific sometime in the next century but were lost with the ship and a descendent of Edmund. History is sometimes stranger than fiction. Sometimes.
Well, what can I tell you about the innards of Hampton Court? The paintings cover some of the walls mural-like and sometimes continue up on the ceiling with the transition between the two rounded. The painter was Antonio Verrio, who did most of the painting about the turn of the century (well, the turn of a century, about 1700). His motif was Greek mythology. There are Muses, Ceres, Flora, Pomona, and river gods. Hercules shows up because he was William III's favourite hero (I spell it 'favourite' because, of course, Billy was a Brit). Unfortunately William died too soon to see a Steve Reeves movie, which might have either enthralled him or changed his mind. If I ever strike it really rich I will have my walls painted with pictures of Quatermass, Galois, Thomas More, and Doc Solar. Maybe I can make it into HOUSE GARISH. The King's Guard Chamber has the walls decorated with over 3000 arms which I thought was some kind of record until I got back to my hotel room and found four millipedes crawling on the wall.
We didn't any bathrooms, but you should see how impressive the King's Privy Chamber is. It is also called the King's Audience Chamber ('different countries, different customs, don't be too quick to judge'). The King's Drawing Chamber had all the king's drawings removed and had paintings by other artists.
Wolsey's Closet was a walk-in and also had paintings all over.
The Haunted Gallery is so named because Catherine Howard, Henry's fifth wife, ran along it trying to get to Henry and protest her innocence to charges of hanky-panky. (Apparently all six wives were guilty of fooling around on the side and only Henry stayed pure and virtuous through his entire reign. It has never been determined which of the wives gave Henry syphilis.) A guard caught Catherine and dragged her back along this gallery (in fact, he dragged all of her). Her ghost is said to still shriek along this corridor.
The Great Hall is impressive and quite a place to entertain (we never entertain in our hall). The kitchens and wine cellar are huge.
The Cartoon Gallery is decorated with ten cartoons by Raphael, none particularly funny.
There is also a Chocolate Court, so named because one of the kings ate chocolate candy every morning for breakfast like my nephew. Well, I suppose the royal portrait painters were adept at covering up acne.
Afterwards we walked around the huge gardens and the maze. We traversed the entire maze traveling by the right-handed rule. Then there was just time enough to get a cool drink and we took the train back to Waterloo and the Underground to Leicester Square where we ate Indian food, walked around for a while, then returned to our hotel where we worked on our logs.
August 24 (4:13 PM): Well, today was the most anxiously awaited day of the trip and very possibly of the whole year. In one day we are going to see the National Maritime Museum and THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA is booked through April of 1988. How we got five seats together on three months' notice seems to have been a stroke of luck. I thought they charged a premium on us, having to send the stuff to the United States. Nope, they charged the price of the tickets. They asked for a stamped, selfaddressed envelope, but we were all out of British stamps. So we asked them to add the postage to the charge. Apparently they didn't. But I am getting ahead of myself. I am sure I will have plenty to say about the play later.
Ev slept late this morning and I wrote in my log. If you want to know what I wrote you will have to look around the part about Antonio Verrio to the beginning of this passage. |
