London Calling

Today was the fifth time waking up in Essex, and I still have no idea how to work the shower.

I’m getting better though. There’s no fixed place for the nozzle head, and just about everywhere that you put it, it either completely falls off, or points itself towards the corner or over your head. Meanwhile, there are only two temperatures for the water, and no spectrum: hot enough to cook a pack of Mr. Noddles in under 30 seconds, or else having the water come out in really small frozen cubes.

That’s about the only bad thing I can say about this place. I just spent the last two hours planning what shows our group would see over the next three months: Wicked, Aladdin, Matilda, Priscilla . . . and hell, how about going to the London Dungeon on Halloween weekend? Who does that on the first day of school?! Listen to this non-made-up descriptions: “Enter the dark, dank crypt of All Hallow’s church, where the rotting corpses of the dead fester.” Plus, one of the rides is called Traitor!: Boat Ride to Hell. My ten-year-old self would do terrible things to my twenty-two-year-old self if I didn’t go to this.

Noting that all of this came about after a walking tour of London, itself coming after a satire writing seminar with Mary Walsh. Jaysus, who does that?!

Weekend first. Saturday started the way most Saturdays start . . . whitewashing a 400-year-old wall that got defaced by Sharpie graffiti the night before. Not by us . . . “Harlow trash” I think the dude from the bar called them, after he explained how a Harlow group had once stolen the piano in the Maltings common room from the Crown about 15 years ago. Still, when you see "I <3 Canada" on the wall, the decent thing to do is grab some brushes and repent. Took a spin around the park with a few other Harlovians that threatened to get rained out, but it was just a sun shower.

By then, it was time for wings and a pint at the Crown. More repentance.

For supper Sunday evening, the lot of us got together for a cooked supper. The cooks and front desk staff are all off on the weekends, so we were in charge of the menu, running between the two floor kitchens to put something together. Stew and sweet potato fries were the main course, with mango cake and tea for desert. Nothing better – what’s especially cool is that it was a group effort, right from the get go.

Early night yesterday evening, to get “ready” for class this morning – a few of us played Settlers of Catan (which is freakin’ wicked) and watched Aladdin (not to be confused with the pantomime show we’re trying to book for November). Mary (is it cool to pretend to be on first-name basis now? I haven’t had to call her by name yet, and I’m not really sure what the protocol here is) got us all together and talked about just about every social issue on the go right now. That’s the key to satire – that, and being a bit cranky. Hilarious though, and oddly easy to talk to.

By then, it was time to take our first train through the English countryside to London.

 Streets of London

The first major stop on our D. Nichol-patented tour was St. Paul's cathedral. One of these "Shite, how did people actually build this thing?" Just the ceiling painting inside the rim of the dome in the quire (I'm cultured now, I can use words like that - I couldn't take a picture of it though, without getting told off by a shaking-his-head-in-disgust security guard) is jaw-dropping.  

Getting vertigo looking at St. Paul's

Outside the cathedral

After hanging out in the crypt-giftshop combo, we went across the Millennium Bridge. Same spot where, four years ago, I put on my best pretentious voice and said we were crossing the Thames . . . pronouncing it phonetically. Finally remedied that faux pas today, thank you very much.

/tɛmz/

Then, it was onwards to the reconstructed Globe Theatre, where Billy Shakespeare put on a few half-known plays, and then to Southwark, a tucked-away cathedral that Chaucer's pilgrims used as their jumping-off point in another half-known (and less than half-finished) poem.

Tell us a story

And by then, it was time for another half-familiar spot, bringing us full circle back to Liverpool Station:

The Tower Bridge, not the one that fell down

Whadda day in one of the coolest cities east of St. John's. I didn't even get robbed or lost - things are looking good. If only I could figure out how to work that shower.

Class again tomorrow, and then another trip to London, this time to the Foundling Museum. No biggie (read: pretty much a biggie).

Cheers,

rb