| Submitted by: Evelyn C. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 11 February 2005 |
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During the interval, Alan Bennett walked through our ante-room. It's almost like being backstage. For the second play the usher put someone else in the box with us (after asking our permission). We weren't sure why but after the show we found out his original seat in the stalls had collapsed and we had a couple of the few empty seats. He was grateful we had let him join us. After we had exchanged a couple of sentences he asked if we were royalty. I answered, 'Do we sound like royalty?' (meaning our accents) and he said, 'To me, you're royalty.' And they say the British are cold.
After we left the theatre we joined Kate and Susan at Garfunkel's (establishing which one we meant ahead of time was of vital importance). They had already eaten but I got an avocado and decaffinated coffee. They have very good avocados here.
And so ends another day. I suppose I should observe that the crowds seemed stranger-looking--it must be Saturday that draws them out. London-or at least the souvenir sellers--seem to relish the punk image; there are a lot of postcards and posters of people with punk hairdos and outfits.
April 2, 1989: Our last full day in London. The vacation has just been too short. But then, there's so much to do in London, or as Samuel Johnson said, 'When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.' Of course, Dr. Watson referred to it as 'that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained,' so who can tell?
It's raining. I suppose we can't complain since we've had beautiful weather up to now, but it would have been nice to have it last. Kate and Susan went off on a day trip to Stratford and Oxford, hoping the rain would let up. (Ken assures us it will: 'Rain before seven, clear by eleven.')
Given that there's not much to do on a Sunday morning in London, we decided to go to the Jewish Museum, only a few blocks away, since we hadn't seen it on either of our other two trips and it opened at 10 AM. So off through the rain we slogged.
The Museum is actually a single large room on the second floor of a building which also houses other Jewish organizations (such as a burial society). The building has a more secure entrance than other museums--you enter one set of metal doors (opened by a buzzer inside) and stand in a small entranceway with room for about a dozen people. The second set of doors won't open unless the first set is closed. (Sounds like a fire hazard, actually.) All the internal doors have mezzuzot, but the entrance doesn't. It seems strange, especially as the building is labeled.
The actual collection of objects is small, much smaller than that of the Jewish Museum in New York, but they do have a couple of videotapes explaining many of the objects. (Mark found out that tradition would have required that, as godfather, he hold Stephen during the bris, so he's glad Alan and Joan weren't real traditionalists.) We ran into some other people from our tour there as well.
From there we decided to walk to Hyde Park and Speakers' Corner. It was still raining (so much for 'clear by eleven'), but not heavily and we were protected by awnings for much of the walk down Oxford Street. And I did get to use my umbrella, so it wasn't a waste to pack it. We got the Hyde Park about noon. The rain put a damper (so to speak) on the activity; there were only four or five speakers. We recognized a couple of the speakers (and a couple of the hecklers!) from last time--there is obviously a set of regulars. A though occurred to me: I wonder if all these people are employed by the Tourist Board as a tourist attraction. (I suspect not.)
We stayed about a half hour, then tubed to Sloane Square for the National Army Museum. Sloane Square looked familiar; we had stayed near there last time we were in London. In fact, we also passed the Russell Hotel (where we had stayed on our first trip) earlier today, so this was a sort of nostalgia day.
Walking toward the Museum we found an Indian restaurant and had lunch, splitting a vegetarian and a non-vegetarian thali. No tea, however--their machine was broken. (I didn't understand this; surely all you need is a way to boil water.)
The National Army Museum is a newish building (1970s, probably). Its exhibits cover '500 years of the British Army,' as it describes itself. Admittedly the first one or two hundred get less thorough treatment than more recent times, but there was a fairly complete exhibit of arms and armor from the pike to the rocket launcher.
The main halls show a chronological history of the army. Of particular interest were the descriptions for each war or campaign, each giving both the long-term and short-term causes. Of course, these are from the British point of view, so for the War of 1812 the long-term cause given is fear of United States expansionism and the short-term reason given is the United States invasion of Canada. The British impressment of United States seamen, given in United States schools as the cause, is not even mentioned. Which, I wonder, is the truth?
Another interesting idea is that when a sign refers to the Civil War, it's talking about Cromwell in the 17th Century, not Lee in the 19th. Somehow, saying this sounds trite or obvious, but it is a bit of a mental hiccough.
We left the Museum at 5 PM and the sun had finally come out. We arrived back at the hotel just in time to change clothes (well, socks anyway) and blow-dry our shoes before going out again for our Jack the Ripper walk ('On the Trail of Jack the Ripper'). This left from Tower Hill Station, so Susan got a good view of the Tower (from the outside) while we were waiting.
The same person who led the Holmes walk came around to collect the tickets and/or money and I was a bit worried that he would be leading the tour but, no, he was just doing the bookkeeping.
The actual tour leader was Martin Fido, a recognized expert on Jack the Ripper. (There's even been a television documentary based on his theory.) He began by giving us the chronology of Jack the Ripper's crimes, which was helpful, especially since we were visiting the sites in pretty much reverse order (except for the murder site of Liz Stride, which was further away in a court off Berner Street and which we weren't visiting at all). In other words we started with the site of the killing of Catherine Eddowes (a.k.a. Kate Kelly) (killed 9/30/88 in Mitre Square), then that of Mary Kelly (killed 10/31/88 in 26 Dorset Street), then that of Annie Chapman (killed 9/8/88 in back of 29 Hanbury Street), and finally that of Polly (Mary Ann) Nichols (killed 8/31/88 in Buck's Row). We also saw other sites pertinent to the investigation including the site where the bloodstained apron was found and where 'The Juwes are not the men who will be blames for nothing' was scrawled on the wall. (Well, sort of--the passageway is now blocked by a door, since vagrants had been using it to sleep in.)
I will not elaborate all the theories that Fido described, nor his own theory--you can read up on all these if you want. He did say that the recent Michael Caine made-for-television movie was a total fabrication (though the Gull theory has been put forward by serious scholars). Much of this we talked about during the pub break we had about halfway through the walk, when we got a chance to ask him questions that he wouldn't have had time for during the walk itself.
The only really scary part of the walk was when we were standing in a narrow alley and a car need to get by. We all pulled to one side or the other, but Kate stumbled just as the car went by and fell against it. Luckily it was going slowly, and did not run over her foot (as we thought in that first instant), but we were all pretty shaken up.
When the walk finished it was almost 10 PM. We decided to go back to the hotel to eat, and rushed to get back by 10:30 (which we thought was the closing time for the coffee shop). It seemed as if the Fates were conspiring against us. First the train sat in one of the intermediate stops for about five minutes. Then it turned out we had purchased 60p tickets, but the ride from Whitechapel to Great Portland Street was actually a 90p ride, so we all had to pay extra (which took time). It turned out that on Sundays the coffee shop closes earlier anyway, and there is only room service for food after that. Susan ordered some dinner, but Mark and I settled for a candy bar, since we weren't really hungry anyway.
April 3, 1989: We had a bit of extra time this morning before we needed to be on the bus, so we made a quick dash over to Samuel French's, where Susan tried (unsuccessfully) to purchase a copy of A WALK IN THE WOODS. Apparently Mark got the final copy. I took this opportunity to get TALKING HEADS, so it wasn't a wasted trip.
Most of us were on the bus by 10:45 AM. We were scheduled to leave at 11 and wouldn't you know it, there was one person who didn't arrive until precisely 11 AM. (Hi, Brad!) That's what happens when you have engineers, but Ken was convinced this person was off somewhere and would be late. We managed to worry ken also, because we had no luggage outside our door to be taken to the bus, and he was worried either we had forgotten or the hotel had misplaced it. Several people returned unused theatre vouchers to Ken, which he said he could use for a mentally-handicapped theatre group he was working with. (I'm a bit suspicious; he could just as easily re-use them for the next tour and pocket the money allocated for buying new ones, but I suppose it doesn't matter.) I was surprised that people didn't use them, especially as this was billed as a theatre tour, but I guess some people just weren't interested.
On the way to Heathrow Ken talked a bit about what we were passing. One of the sites was a theatre where Tod Slaughter used to perform his melodramas and Ken occasionally had bit parts in them. Tod Slaughter (for those who don't know, which I suspect is 99% of you) was an actor in the 1920s and 1930s of melodramas such as THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET and THE RED BARN. Some of these were filmed and the videotapes of these are just becoming available; they're a bit of a cult item.
Security at Heathrow was very thorough, no doubt as a result of their recent lapses and the bad press surrounding them. We went through three different security checkpoints and they made us demonstrate that the cassette players and radios were actually what they appeared to be. We had just enough time (barely) to grab a quick cup of tea and use up the last of our British money (well, I have twenty-one pence left) before we boarded the plane, which then sat on at the gate for over an hour before finally getting clearance and taking off.
The flight back was uneventful, the food mediocre, and time passed fairly quickly. On arriving back at Kennedy we were through Customs in about five minutes (we had only carry-on luggage, so didn't have to wait for the luggage to be unloaded, and we had nothing to declare). But when we got to the arrival area in the terminal, Binayak, who was supposed to pick us up, wasn't there. We gave him a few minutes, then called him at work. No answer. We called him at home. No answer. We waited a while longer. Kate and Susan left on their bus to Hartford. My soc.motss friend had to write us a check for $10 so he could have cash for the bus ride home, which came up higher than he expected. Finally, after about an hour we called another friend. She said she would pick us up if he didn't show up in fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes later we called her back, but when she realized we were at JFK, not Newark, she said she couldn't pick us up because she had a prior commitment later in the evening. However, she tried Binayak again and he was home. He apparently thought he was supposed to pick us up Wednesday, not Monday. So he raced out to JFK, finally arriving about three hours after we had.
Our adventure was not quite over. On the way home, we missed the correct exit leaving JFK and ended up going through Queens and back down the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway to the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. |
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