I could tell you, but I am afraid of falling into an infinite regression. I might never get out.
At any rate, once Evelyn woke up we had a quick fight about a snippy answer she gave that was totally uncalled for. Then we boarded a train for Tower Hill and the pier for the boat to the National Maritime Museum.
August 25 (8:27 AM): We got to the pier about 10:30 AM and it didn't open until 11. I wanted to get a souvenir for our 'chatchka' table. Not the best place for the kind of souvenir I would like to get but sometimes you have to settle. The Three Laws of Chatchkatics are:
It should represent some aspect of the place you visited and remind one of that place.
It should be small and cheap, unless this is in conflict with the first law.
It should be something a native might buy for himself, unless this is in conflict with the first two laws.
Law One rules out buying a tin of Bayer aspirin.
Law Two rules out buying an ornate pin for holding a tartan sash in place.
Law Three counsels against getting a three-inch-high tin Big Ben.
Ideally you want to get something common and cheap in the visited country but that would be much harder to get and more expensive in the United States. (Uh, I guess non-perishable should be added as Law Zero. Otherwise I might get a local brand of candy bar.)
What did we settle on? You'll be disappointed. It isn't that imaginative. It's a child's toy version of a double-decker bus. About 1-1/2' long, made of metal. Cost: 1.50 pounds, or $2.50 American. Well, the actual exchange rate is about 1.6969. Evelyn says just divide the price by 6 (and multiply by 10). As a continued fraction approximation, I get that the best fit fractions for smallest numerator and denominator are: 1/1, 2/1, 5/3, 17/10, 39/23, and 56/33. Multiplying by 17 is tough so I skip the 17/10 on. That leaves me with 5/3, so in this case Evelyn's approximation is about right. 5/3
10/6, so you multiply the price by 10 and divide by 6. You are off by one part in 56. The 17/10 is off by about one part in 552. So for once Evelyn's rough guess worked out, though if I were a little better at multiplying by 17 I could do much better. Generally, I find that Evelyn in roughly guessing an easy conversion will find something like a reasonable approximation but I can get something a little closer to the correct value with a slightly easier computation. For converting turn-counts between VCRs at home she used 13/6. Not a bad approximation, but 11/5 turned out to be a closer approximation and is the same as 22/10 which gives you nicer numbers to work with. 400 easily becomes 880 while multiplying 400 by 13/6 would be difficult and would give you a poorer approximation of 867. Okay, enough of this. At least this trip we agree that 10/6 is a good conversion factor. One problem with England is their unit of currency is larger than ours. It is demoralizing to see a price tag that says '1.50 but in your currency that 2.50.' I guess we may go to Italy at some point.
The National Maritime Museum is one of the great museums of the world when the people running it let it be. Unfortunately, last time we were here a quarter of it was closed and this time better than half. There is one big building and two smaller buildings which put together are roughly the same size as the big one. The two smaller buildings and part of the big one were closed this time. The smaller buildings are preparing for the presentation for the 400th Anniversary of the Defeat of the Spanish Armada (no doubt Spain will have a much smaller celebration, if any). And part of the big building was closed off for a press reception about a new display of nautical art in watercolors (which seems an appropriate medium, I guess).
(11:24 PM): Lots of catching up to do. Mostly about seeing plays.
Now, where was I? The buildings that were closed are mostly art museums, but they are very good art museums and most of the art is nautical. Most art museums are filled with abstract art that doesn't look like much, portraits of uninteresting people, uninteresting landscapes, still lifes, over-pious Bible scenes, and scenes of mythology that somehow miss the whole fantastic thrill of the mythology. Some of that is worth seeing; a lot is only vaguely diverting while you are looking at it. Nautical art is full of action or scenes of sleek ships. I'd hazard a guess that not one picture in a hundred selected at random from the Louvre would be of more than average interest for me among the art at the National Maritime Museum.
After the National Maritime Museum, we bummed around Greenwich, going into bookstores but not buying. Then we headed for the train, on the way asking directions at a grocery and buying some ginger beer and Indian puri chips.
I should say something about ginger beer. I cannot stand the taste of alcohol and so drink no alcoholic beverages at all. But I do like ginger beer, a strong drink that needs no alcohol to add to its punch. It is a non-alcoholic beverage akin to ginger ale but with a really strong gingery punch. In the United States you can get a fairly good brand called Old Tyme Jamaican-Style Ginger Beer. If you really look you can also find Schweppes Ginger Beer, but it is much weaker. There are other minor brands around, but Old Tyme is quite deservedly the most common. A friend, one Lance Larsen, once recommended to me ginseng soda and I recommended to him Old Tyme Ginger Beer. We agreed to trade off one serving of each. His soda tasted like carbonated potato juice. Not so hot. I never went to his apartment again without him offering me a ginger beer. He knew when he was licked. That ginger beer is good stuff.
The puri chips are a local brand, Phileas Fogg, that specializes in international favorites.
Well, after that we got on the train, went back to the room, changed for the play, had dinner at Garfunkel's (which was pretty American-style), and then walked to theater. The Massachusites showed up. And we went to the play. As it turned out Margaret Thatcher chose that very night to see THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. I didn't actually see her, but the people in front of us could lean far enough forward so they could. The play, reviewed elsewhere, was big success with our group. Everyone burbled afterward about how great it was. We walked to Leicester Square discussing it, got some ice cream, then some of our group was still hungry, so we went for fish and chips, discussing the play and just talking. Then we head back to our hotel, leaving the Underground just at midnight while they were locking up. I was up until 2 AM writing my review, which will appear elsewhere [Attachment 1].
Argh! I just finished talking about Monday and it just turned Wednesday, so I am still a full day behind. Yesterday dawned rainy and stayed raining until evening. Evelyn was late waking up so we didn't leave for Leicester Square until about 10:30 AM. The first order of business was to get myself a hat warmer than the suncap I brought. Readers of previous logs may remember the helicopter cap I got trading away another cap on the Amazon. We got breakfast of sorts; Ev got tea and a brownie. It was 11 AM and I was thirsty so I settled for a can of soda. I found myself a nice stylish rain hat at a men's store, paying 5.95 pounds.
At 11:30 AM we queued up for tickets, talking to a traveler from Montreal. It was raining so we all stood under the awning (this is all at the Leicester Square half-price booth). There were two plays we wanted to see: BREAKING THE CODE and ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD. There were only three plays that had tickets available. Two were the ones we wanted to see; the third was a play with the dubious title WHEN DID YOU LAST SEE YOUR...TROUSERS? London theater seems to have a fair number of plays like NO SEX PLEASE, WE'RE BRITISH with vaguely suggestive titles and situation comedy plots that thrive on tourist business. Last trip we took a tour that included two plays. One was AIN'T MISBEHAVING and the other was NO SEX PLEASE, WE'RE BRITISH. Two nights wasted. The listings seem to categorize the plays as 'comedy,' 'thriller,' 'musical,' or 'play.' The last is a catchall for plays that don't fit into neat categories. I enjoyed THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA a lot, but the two London plays I have seen and respected the most have fallen into the catchall category 'play.' One was NIGHT AND DAY by Tom Stoppard which we saw last time. This time we got tickets for a new play called BREAKING THE CODE. I will say more about it later, but I will say that it was so much better than the touristy sex comedies like WHEN DID YOU LAST SEE YOUR...TROUSERS? that it is amazing that fluff can survive. Well, perhaps not so much amazing as disappointing.
August 26 (12:54 PM): So we are in line, maybe third or fourth in line, and a large Israeli tourist with a girlfriend (or wife) says something about 'The man says the line starts here' and pushes ahead of us in line. It is obvious that he has pushed into line, but he just stands there. I tell him that the line starts further back and he pretends not to hear. His wife meanwhile has disappeared somewhere. Since he has cut in between Evelyn and me, I push forward to get up with Evelyn. He doesn't say anything. I am getting ready to tell him that the three or four people behind us (whom we were talking to) are all one party and should also push ahead of him, but after five minutes or so of standing there he goes off, apparently to find his wife. It has nothing to do with my politics, but Israeli tourists in London seem very pushy and shortsighted. They make very poor ambassadors of good will. No, that is too broad a generalization. We have met quite a few and most seem very nice. But a high percentage of rude tourists seem to be Israeli. My father claims that it is because conditions are hard enough in Israel that Israelis grab for all they can when they can. Possibly true, but not much of an excuse. All they need is a bunch of individuals going around making a bad name for the country.
(4:01 PM): Better than a day behind and on a bumpy train to boot.
We got the tickets and waited in the rain until Dave and Kate showed up. They did not show up until fifteen minutes late and it took about another five minutes to make contact.
From there it was bookstore-hopping for a couple of hours. Then back into the tickets line for the evening performance. Kate was with us and time was growing short, so she agreed to stay in line while we rushed to our 3 PM play, BREAKING THE CODE. I have not yet reviewed that but the review will appear elsewhere [Attachment 2].
Good play. I hope it makes it to Broadway, but somehow I don't expect it. It wouldn't be a high-enough-profit play and would not attract enough of an audience at New York ticket prices. [Actually, it turns out that it will open on Broadway on November 15.] It is a biographical play about Alan Turing, who was one of the great computer scientists and is credited with having cracked the German 'enigma' code, but later in his life was arrested for homosexuality. The play starred John Castle who played on of the more interesting characters in THE LION IN WINTER ('Why does nobody say 'king' and think 'Geoffrey'?'). (My gosh, a sentence requiring five punctuation marks at the end. Must be a record!!!!!!) The play follows four or so different plot lines in Turing's life. In some ways, I suppose, Turing was Britain's Oppenheimer. Following the play we bought a copy of Turing's biography, on which the play was based. The biography is entitled THE ENIGMA OF INTELLIGENCE. Like the play, the title has, of course, a double meaning.
Well, about 5:30 PM Kate met us for dinner. We tried the foolhardy. We went with Kate and Cynthia to an Indian restaurant. Kate is a hamburger, Coca-Cola, peanut butter sort of person and we keep dragging her to exotic restaurants. Ordinarily, people with a taste for prosaic food find Indian food distasteful. Ah, but there is a secret to starting people on Indian food. Just about everyone likes Tandoori Chicken. It is basically just grilled chicken without spice. |
