You can tell that everyone is getting run down now, though, and a few weeks of fireplaces and candies and booze are in order, to properly recharge. The other night, we tried watching The Lion King in the common room, and fell asleep while Mufasa was still alive. I don’t envy the half dozen of our crew who took off for Berlin this weekend – a few days in Harlow with no commitments sounds alright to me.
After a lazy Thursday, myself, Kayla, and Allie took a cab to Bishop’s Stortford in the evening, a community on the way to Stansted Airport, in Hertfordshire. We went to check out an acoustic open mic night at the Half Moon Pub, in a single room that felt like a cozy recital hall rather than an appendage to a pub – a pub that also happened to serve pints of a 7-point-something-percent cider at the usual £3. Most of the performers were about two and a half times as old as the b’ys that get up on stage at the Breezeway, and the audience was a whole lot different too – one guy at the table next to us was reading a novel throughout the sets.
Yesterday morning, the sun was shining, but it was one of those autumn-on-the-verge-of-winter kind of days. I’m guessing most of them are going to be like that now, until they’re full-fledged winter days. I took the 10:36 train out of Harlow Mill by myself, heading for a day dicking around London; most of the people left behind for the weekend used Friday to do some self-exploration of the city. I scribbled down a few things I wanted to see before heading back to Canada, and after picking up a day’s travelcard for the underground tubes, I set off, first for Bethnal Green, just east of Liverpool Street.
The V&A Museum in Brompton, which we visited a few weeks ago, has a separate branch dedicated to toys, games, figurines, and all sorts of other fun things, appropriately enough called the Museum of Childhood. The museum has been in operation since 1872, but it only became a specialist museum dedicated to childhood in 1974. That was my first stop: a huge open building, with tiered landings dedicated to different eras and types of toys, from 1970s-era Star Wars figurines, to windup creatures from the 18th century.
The front room had a weird little forest display, made by some local schoolchildren under the supervision of visual artists. The small creation had the misleadingly cool named of “The Stuff of Nightmares” and was made to represent the fairytale “Funevogel” by the Grimm Brothers, a foundling who gets in trouble with a witch in the forest.
Once inside, I could tell that the Museum of Childhood wasn’t exactly my scene: seven-year-olds were running around, screaming and pointing, while their exhausted parents sat and watched and said “That’s nice” every so often. On the other end of the spectrum, grey-haired codgers walked around, looking at Victorian dollhouses as if they remembered them from their childhood. Even though a lot of the displays were pretty cool – some working zoetropes (an early, circular moving picture device) and train sets and windup monkey musicians – how do you go up to a group of excited children and politely say, “Excuse me, I’m 22 and here by myself, but could you please move so I can have a look at the damn Lord of the Rings toys now?”
You don't ask – you just push 'em out of the way
It was about lunchtime when I took off from the museum, and hitched a ride on the Metropolitan line to King’s Cross, where I poked around the British Library for a second time, flicking through the bookstore and re-visiting the Sir John Ritblat Gallery, complete with the Magna Carta and some original Beatles’ lyrics.
Come to think of it, I did a scatter bit of re-visiting old haunts yesterday. After the museum, I headed to Westminster, walking along the bridge by the base of Big Ben and the Parliament Buildings, before heading north to Camden Market, to do some shopping amongst the cramped stalls of oddities and knick-knacks. Lots of novelty t-shirts, Middle-Eastern incense and hookahs, clocks, records, food, and flashy fashion, shopkeepers all vying for the crowd’s attention as they meandered through the aisles like cattle – my “shopping” mostly turned to browsing, which was still a pretty decent way to spend a few hours.
Come 5 o’clock, I reconvened with Kayla and Adam at Covent Garden, where our plans to see The Lion King Musical were quickly dashed by a full house. Who’d have thought that one of the most popular West End musicals would sell out on a Friday night? Instead, after darting back to Soho and grabbing some noodles for supper, we decided to take in a totally different show: Legally Blonde: The Musical.
Remember the Reese Witherspoon movie from 2001 (holy shat, is it that old?) about the ditzy blonde chick, Elle Woods, who goes off to Harvard on the heels of her douchebag ex-boyfriend, and ends up lucking into a murder case where passing ‘Fashion and Hair Care 101’ saves the day? Er, umm . . . me neither. I was busy welding or barbequing or tuning up my hot rod or something. But I did hear something about it.
Come to think of it, parts of it do stick out . . .
When we first saw the massive, glittery silver sign outside the Savoy Theatre a few months ago, I wondered if anything could be made into a West End musical. Legally Blonde: The Musical debuted on Broadway in 2007, and has been a staple on the West End since 2010. Turns out that it wasn’t just something tacked together to make a quick buck -- but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Before returning to Covent Garden, after some hemming and hawing, I decided I really wanted a £7 souvenir program from Wicked. I know, I know, I should have just got it the other week, when we actually went to see the musical, but there’s no time better than the present.
Well, not exactly, since going back to the Apollo Victoria Theatre was very nearly a disaster. The little boutique of souvenirs didn’t open until 6:30, which was about the time we left Piccadilly Circus. It wasn’t far at all: one stop to Green Park, a line change, and then another stop to Victoria. Should be no problem to get there and back again in an hour, right?
I’ve seen the tubes crowded before. More than once. But I don’t think I was ever in so much of a hurry as I was right then and there. The approaching trains were full to the brim, and the waiting platform was almost as crowded. I don’t mind the claustrophobia, but there was no guarantee you were even going to fit on the next train, nevermind the fact that the lines moving out of the station went at a snail’s pace, and it was only every so often that you saw an opening big enough to wiggle through and gain about 4 feet. It was 7 o’clock when Kayla and I found ourselves at Victoria station.
Panic is the best kind of muse. I flew out of the station as soon as the opportunity presented itself, made the quick jaunt to the Apollo theatre, now illuminated in green light, clambered up the stairs . . . and immediately got grabbed by an attendant, demanding a ticket.
“But I just want a program!” I said, breathless.
By this point, a line was forming behind me, I had lost Kayla, and the guy clearly thought I was trying (badly) to sneak in. I showed him the money in my hands, counted out on the train in an attempt to not be idle, as if this was proof of my story.
“Alright,” he said, “I’ll trust you.”
I was out again in about 30 seconds, thanked the dude, and hoped to God the glossy program was worth this gigantic kerfuffle. Once I found Kayla across the intersection, we ran every chance we had, dashing down the underground stairs, while attendants on loudspeakers calmly announced that the Bakerloo line was interrupted because someone had gotten under the train. Business as usual on the London Underground.
On the tube back to Covent Garden, a few stops past Piccadilly, most of the people were getting Biblically familiar with each other, just by sheer geometry. Cramming that many people in that kind of space was like a losing game of Tetris. The Covent Garden station is one of the few spots in Central London that is only accessible to the streets by a lift or a flight of stairs . . . and guess what? It was good and crowded, the lifts not even visible because of the crowd that had queued up in front of them. In hindsight, Leicester Square was only a quarter of a kilometre away, and would have been a much easier jumping-off point. Of course, in hindsight, we might have done a lot of things differently. Either way, we were there now, and could either wait in another agonizing line, or go up the emergency stairs. All 193 of them, the equivalent of a 10-storey building. Nice knowing you, legs.
The stairs were almost as crowded as the line for the lifts, but there were a few openings where we could make a quick, weaving dash. Once we made it out into the night, we had about 10 minutes to get to the theatre.
Now, which way was it again?
By the time we made it to the Savoy Theatre, we were both good and sweating and felt like action heroes, but found our seats in good enough time to let our pulses drop back below 300. By now, these Europeans must be getting used to seeing me running through their streets, with only a few minutes to get wherever I’m going, lest some disaster ensue. I know I’m getting used to it.
Now, Legally Blonde: The Musical.
It was a chick flick in every sense of the word, and watching it on a date only makes it a little bit less gay. That said, I don’t even care that much – it was a lot of fun, an unabashedly guilty pleasure that brought the plot of the movie into the modern day and purposely overdid everything. No thought or scrutiny was required – you could just sit back and smile. The songs were catchy, with more than a few clever moments where you couldn’t help but laugh out loud. Plus, they had trained dogs – how cool is that? I don’t think it was as significant or spectacular a show as Wicked, but it definitely had some great moments, and makes me wonder why I didn’t take in more grandiose musicals while in London.
Oh yeah, because the theatre is always popular in London, with 2000-seater venues selling out all across the city, even when tickets cost more than a hundred bucks a pop. We ended up in the very back of the stalls for Legally Blonde with a last-minute ticket, so getting the good seats is either a very lucky endeavour (as in the case for Wicked – and on a Saturday night, too) or a real expensive one.
Oh yeah, because the theatre is always popular in London, with 2000-seater venues selling out all across the city, even when tickets cost more than a hundred bucks a pop. We ended up in the very back of the stalls for Legally Blonde with a last-minute ticket, so getting the good seats is either a very lucky endeavour (as in the case for Wicked – and on a Saturday night, too) or a real expensive one.
Still, I’m content with what we managed to see and do. More than content – elated.
Hard to believe last night was our last Friday night in London. Tonight, we’ve been cordially invited (the last time I was cordially invited to something, it was to meet a princess at the Princess Pavilion at Disney Land . . . I’m approaching this thing with some suspicion) to a Canadian Christmas party at the Crown – before that, me and a special someone are getting some cornstarch and making shortbread cookies, my favourite (the last time I made these cookies, me and my roommate Craig burned the hell out of them, but ate every last one).
Remember that part at the end of The Lord of the Rings, when Sam feels torn in two between his old life and his new one? “You cannot always be torn in two. You will have to be one and whole for many years. You have so much to enjoy and to be and to do. Your part in the story will go on.”
Easier said than done, sometimes, but it’s something that everyone has to deal with at some point. Just the same, that reconciliation can go on the back burner for the time being – I’m more concerned about the sugary smell coming from the oven right now.
Cheers,
rb
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