All the World's a Stage

The church of St. Mary Abbot's, around the corner from my house, has a bellringers' guild. I know this because their website says so, and I know that because I spent many a long hour last December Googlestalking Kensington instead of writing papers.

So Thursday night, I set out to find them. 

As you'll remember, I've spent quite a bit of time in St. Mary Abbot's, but finding the bell-ringers was a new experience entirely. Instead of the brightly lit chapel entrance, I headed around the building to a back gate to a narrow and creepy alley with a tombstone in it. The photo below I took on Friday morning, when there was light; the incident I describe occurred after dark, in the rain. 

Heading through this narrow alley, I found a dark and ominous, but unlocked and open, door. This led into a spiral staircase of such steep and constricted dimensions that I was fairly sure I was going to die. But up and up and around and around I went, with the bells reverberating above me. I was fairly certain I was going to get to the top of the tower and step out into the Middle Ages, which led to additional concerns that I was seriously underdressed. 

Instead of the Middle Ages, I found myself in a carpeted tower room full of people and covered in plaques. Ten of the people were standing in a circle, each with a thick rope in his or her hands, pulling and releasing in careful sequences. All of them were off in another world, staring unseeing straight ahead or standing with their eyes closed, grabbing the rope by touch.

I, having read up on bell-ringing protocol, sat my butt down on the nearest bench and didn't move or speak until the bells were silenced and the ropes were still. Then the zen-like atmosphere broke up, and the bell-ringers smiled and laughed again, and gossiped with one another, and got a cup of tea, and asked me if I was a ringer and if I wanted to learn. I answered no to the first and yes to the second, and soon I was getting three-minute lessons on the history of English bell ringing in between sets. The whole evening felt very much like a cross between a Zivio folk dance rehearsal and a Salt Lake Scots pipe band performance. I guess that volunteer community groups specializing in obscure arts are pretty much the same wherever you go.

When ringing practice was over, I was invited to go 'round the pub. I accepted, and one of the ringers kindly bought me a lemonade amongst everyone else's beers. So that's three goals settled in one evening: seeing bell-ringing, going 'round the pub, and having someone buy me a drink. I was exceedingly pleased with myself. Someone offered to buy me another, but I declined, pleading an early morning. 

And what had I to do in the morning, you ask?

Well, Friday is Walking Around London Day.

We started this particular walk at Tower Bridge, which you'll remember from last week. Here's another picture of it anyway, in case you don't know what it looks like yet. 

Walking along it, I discovered that there are apartments or offices or something inside the towers. There were lights on. Further investigation is called for. 

We walked over the bridge and along the south bank of the river, seeing many lovely and interesting things, including Southwark Cathedral, which is very pretty. It's also smack across the river from St. Paul's cathedral, so it's kind of like that one spot in Salt Lake with the two stake centers right next to one another. Because boundaries are weird sometimes.

What I found interesting, and a little hysterically funny, was that in this precious real estate, smack in the Thames river, pure solid tourist gold, was a semi-enclosed mall, and in the middle of this semi-enclosed mall was a large pit of sand.

Is it an art installation? A spa treatment of some kind? An archeological activity center?

Nope. Know what it is? It's a pétanque court.

A pétanque court.

A game that, by its very nature, is made to be played on any old dirt road or random spot of grass you can conveniently find, has its own custom-built pitch in the middle of the London with a million-dollar view of the Thames. The world is very strange.

I also stumbled across Sir Francis Drake's ship, the Golden Hind.

There it is. It didn't do anything interesting, like steal stuff from the Spanish, while I was wandering past, though. 

The ultimate goal of all this walking was this week's glorious tourist adventure: the theater. The Theater.

Yep. That Theater. 

Our guide was one of the most delightful storytellers I've ever heard. She recounted tales of the Globe, both then and now, with perfect deadpan and a steady rhythm of additions and pauses that never let my attention wander for a moment. I learned a ton, including that the Globe is the first London building constructed with a thatch roof since 1666, that it's acceptable to lean on the edge of the stage and try to trip the performers, and that at the theater's opening, an actress playing Elizabeth I rode through the groundling yard on a white horse to salute Elizabeth II, seated in the royal box, and to be saluted by her. The Queen and the Player Queen, the Then and the Now. Where does today meet yesterday?

In a box that's bigger on the inside, of course.

Waiting for a player to trip. 

I also learned that recently the Globe did a whirlwind series of the Complete Plays, each one done by a theater group from a different country . . . in that country's native language. A Midsummer Night's Dream in Korean, by a Korean team, played to a houseful of English Londoners without translation. Troilus and Cressida in Maori, played by Maori actors and dancers, in a precolonial cultural context. Julius Caesar returning to the roots of its roots, played in Italian. The delicious irony of The Merchant of Venice by an Israeli company in Hebrew. Venus and Adonis in a mix of five different South African languages.

The box office contained a series of photographs from the plays, as well as some of the sonnets translated into the represented languages. This one's for my dear friend Pania Matthews.

Stay tuned for Saturday, when, in classic Shakespeare style, the plot thickens.

There is too much. Let me sum up.

Okay, so. Weekend. Guess what I went to see?

Yep, Lisa DeLong and I went to see the awesome immortalness that is Agatha Christie's Mousetrap. Here she is, to take a bow.

Whodunnit? I can't tell you. I'm sworn to secrecy.

Sunday was an adventure into the wilds of south-of-the-river to reach the ward to which I have been assigned. It's a long way, but not unmanageable. It did involve a bit of walking, which resulted in some hot spots, but no actual blisters or bleeding. So success! The ward is filled with nice people from all over. It was . . . odd . . . to be in an LDS congregation and feel conspicuous, not because I'm tall, but because I'm white. Odd, but kinda cool.

I was informed I'd be serving in the primary. My compatriot Jo was informed she was serving in Relief Society. We had a conversation, and then informed the ward leadership that we would be switching. And everyone was happy.

Here are my compatriots resting their tired feet on the trip home. 

Wednesday was our first official trip out of the city. First stop: St. Alban's Cathedral. My gosh, so gorgeous. The day was gray and misty, but never actually rainy . . . just soft and cool. And the church was extraordinary, both inside and out. 

I couldn't get a huge dramatic shot of the inside of the church, because there was SO much going on inside. So here are some little shots. Here, for example, is the little chapel at the very top of the cathedral, which was tiny and lovely and adorable. 

Here's Molly, lighting her very first prayer candle. This was something a lot of the students had never done.

And here's the actual shrine of actual St. Alban, which means that maybe sorta I've completed a pilgrimage now. I started in London, I went to the cathedral, I visited the shrine and said the appropriate prayer . . . that counts, right? I need a medieval Catholic friend to clarify these things for me. 

Oh, and here's St. Alban getting martyred.

After the cathedral, we walked through a lovely park* over to the Museum of Roman Stuff, which was extremely cool. It was a small museum, but was very well put together and quite clearly had an awesome collection of artifacts. These were my favorites: 

I WANT ONE. 

Also very cool was the mosaic-ness going on, pictured below: 

And here are a couple of my fellow travelers doing what the adage recommends for such times as these.

And on our way back to the bus, we got a lovely parting look at St. Alban's, above the green fields and below the gray mist.

St. Alban's explored, we moved on to Cambridge, where I grabbed a quick pasty in the market square because I haven't seen any pasty shops yet. They were YUMMY.

Pictured: All the pasties I didn't get to eat. 

Cambridge is a very bicycle town. The things were everywhere. Also, in the market I could have purchased a used but road-ready mountain bike, plus a U-lock to secure it with, for 45 pounds. I didn't, but I was tempted. 

Our charming tour guide, a retired teacher named Hugh, took us around Trinity College and King's College, giving us a run-down of the history and how the college/university system works on this side of the pond. Here he is telling us about Henry VII's mum, who is actually not in the niche above this doorway (that's just a very feminine-looking John the Evangelist). 

And here we have Henry VIII, great patron of the school, holding a royal chair leg because the students stole his scepter so many times the administration was forced to just leave it like that. 

Not pictured is the Wren Library, as we were not allowed to take photos. But it is a beautiful space, filled with beautiful old books. On display were, among other things, the first folio of the collected works of Shakespeare, a first edition of Newton's Principles, and the original handwritten manuscript of Winnie-the-Pooh. The only thing that could possibly have upstaged that for me was a copy of Sir William Cavendish's treaty on horsemanship. After spending so many months buried under mountains of research on Sir William and Lady Margaret Cavendish, to actually see one of their books nearly brought me to tears. 

Crown jewel of the experience was the chapel at King's College, which had quite the most dizzying ceiling I have ever seen. 

The only bit of actual sunlight we got was while we were in here, so the stained glass just lit up and covered the pillars in all these crazy streaks of color.

The windows (a full set of 25, all as they were originally designed and intended by the original craftsmen, telling one coherent story of the life of Christ all the way around the building) could have been upstaged only by something really spectacular. Like a Rubens painting of the Adoration of the Magi. 

That's the whole altar. No cross, not even a raised platform. Just a table, two candles, and the painting, under the blazing windows, surrounded by plain white limestone walls. Just lovely. 

We got to wander Cambridge for a couple of hours, and I caught one shot of the lawn in the middle of King's College just as the light was starting to fade. 

At the end of the day, we got to hear Evensong sung by the choir that was endowed by the house of Tudor and is still singing the services, in Latin and in English, every day. It was truly truly lovely.

And now, happy but spent, I leave you. 

*I spent fully five minutes in this park just watching a duck dive. The water was clear enough that I could see it all the way down to the bottom. It was immensely entertaining to watch. 

Dead on My Feet . . . But Not as Dead as a French Aristocrat, Which is Nice

Whew! What a day.

I slept in and skipped breakfast in order to make it to the Tower on (something like) time. Not quite on time, but eh, who cares?

This was probably the prettiest morning I've seen yet in London: blue sky in every direction. The sunshine was simply blissful.

Our mass of 50-some people broke up into groups of six or seven to explore the Tower in relative independence. For those who were worried: the ravens are still there, and are looking lively. They must have just had fresh batteries put in.

Enjoying the King's view of the river.

Stained glass, all lit by the sun, in the chapel in Wakefield Tower.

Nice place to take a nap. They've even got ropes around the bed so everyone knows not to come up and disturb you.

I also was pleased to find a dragon, for Bethe. The signage informed me that this dragon's name is 'Keeper.' He is made of weaponry and objects representing the various uses of the tower. This isn't a very good picture of him, I'm afraid, so you'll all just have to take my word for it that it's very dramatic.

And I'll just include this tantalizing photo . . .

Sadly, we weren't allowed to take pictures inside, so I'll just inscribe the word 'sparkly' and leave the rest to your imagination. Also, if ever you're in need of a one-meter-wide gold punch bowl, this is the place to enquire.

I was informed by signage that the golden mace representing royal authority must be present in order for the House of Lords or House of Commons to meet. That strikes me as a peculiar vulnerability; all someone'd have to do would be to steal the mace, and it'd bring the government to a standstill. Unless they went back to the collection here in the tower to get an older mace to use. But what if someone stole all the maces? Would they have to cast a new one before Parliament could sit? And how would they appoint funds to make the mace at all if they couldn't convene?

By the time we'd given the Tower a thorough going-over, we were all pretty hungry and tired, so we popped out across the road for Pad Thai. Since I hadn't had any breakfast, I ate everyone else's leftovers.

After that, it was time for our weekly London Walks assignment. We have awkwardly-shaped, spiral-bound walks books to act as tour guides. They're a little wordy, but whatever. Our assigned walk around the East End traced most of the route of the Londinium city walls, which do a C-shape against the north bank of the river.

We started the walk in good spirits, navigating rather haphazardly as our instructions were complicated by lots of construction in the neighborhood. We saw many cool things, including the memorial to those lost at sea during the Great War and this lovely church, designed by a student of Christopher Wren:

It's super pretty inside, but I didn't take any pictures as it is still an active house of worship and I thought that'd be rude. It had a beautiful modern triptych behind the altar, though: the left panel the Burning Bush, the right panel the sun, and the center panel a rainstorm on a plain . . . the kind that looks like the clouds are made of watercolor paints, and God has dragged his paintbrush through a puddle on the paper to pull it down onto the ground. A bolt of lightning cuts crosswise across the storm, so it looks like it is striking the plain gold cross that rests in the center of the altar. Gorgeous.

We also found some markets and a skating rink, and all that was fun . . . but it was suddenly gray and faintly rainy, and we'd all started to realize that our feet and backs were starting to hurt. Nonetheless, we soldiered on. (It must be admitted that we cut a few corners in our eagerness to be done.)

There was one corner that we didn't cut, and I'm very glad of it. Our guided tour took us into a little bit of grass and flowerbeds called Postman's Park, where we found this beautiful memorial wall.

The artist, one Watt by name, is the same guy who did the "You are now being run over by a horse" statue in Kensington Gardens, of which I've already given account. This very different project is just a wall of tile memorials, each one honoring a common person who lost his or her life trying to save others.

It's really a lovely piece, in this lovely, tiny garden tucked behind a tiny church in the middle of the financial district. And the sense of reverence it imparted helped us all to feel better, just as we were hovering between "Isn't this hilarious, being exhausted and wet?" and "No, this isn't hilarious, I'm ticked off and I want to go home."

So, at long last, having circled the entire Roman town, we dragged our tired feet onto the Tube and went home. I stopped on the way to pick up groceries, and the slightly-more-than-half-a-mile back to the house with grocery bags in hand was pretty darn exhausting. So now here I am, snuggled on the couch, watching an old and not very interesting adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities while I write this blog and let my legs and feet rest a bit.

Tomorrow being Saturday, and entirely at my own disposal, I propose to sleep in a bit, make a pot of mushroom-and-artichoke pasta, go for a wander in the National Science Museum, then grab dinner and see The Mousetrap with my friend Lisa. And then I can tackle the looming problem of which ward I'm supposed to be in.

Settling In

So, we're slowly figuring out what "normal" looks like here at Hyde Park Gate. Classes have started, so there is now work to be done. But we're still finding time to do some exploring and meet up with old friends. Like Prince Albert.

Thanks for the Christmas tree idea, man. That was awesome.

And the waterfowl at the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens.

And this guy on a horse, who is not anyone in particular but represents . . . ambition. Or something. Mostly it represents (to me, at least) how it must look the split second before you get trampled to death by a horse.

And let us not forget Her Imperial Majesty, Queen Victoria.

Here is one of those fun panoramas of where Victoria is hanging out, which is just in front of Kensington palace at the west end of the park. Please print, wrap into a circle, and place around your head . . . you know the drill.

And last but not least, I spent tonight getting back in touch with two of my very dearest old friends at the Duke of York Theatre. Well, three, if you count the cow-creamer.

Dang, I look cute in this shot. Well selfied, self. 

And I've got to be at the Tower of London at 9:15 tomorrow morning, so here I sign off and go to bed, without further cleverness of any kind, for that rest that does something or other I can't remember just now to the ragged sleeve of care. 

Sunday in London . . . or Most of London

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.

Dr. Seuss

---

This is where I walked on Sunday.

First, I woke up. Missed breakfast. Then I walked down to St. Paul's cathedral, where I head most of a service (I was late for that, too).

I now consider myself the inaugural member of the St. Paul's Cathedral 1st Branch.

Yeeeeeah. I got to go to church in that.

Then I thought to myself, "Self, I think we'd like to walk along the river aways." So we did.

You'll note it was a little cool and breezy, but nothing drastic. Much more temperate than I had anticipated.

I also encountered this old friend:

Obviously an earlier, prototype model. I tried to see what size it was on the inside, but it was locked.

At this point I was not planning to do the rest of the walking that I did . . . I figured I'd turn around when I got tired. You can see how well that turned out.

So after a while, the river turned south, and I came to this:

As I wanted to head west, I left the river at this point and went wandering through St. James's Park, which was very pretty and had lots of geese and ducks and things. Also some trees. Also this.

This turned out, on closer inspection, to be Buckingham Palace. 

I honestly wasn't planning on walking to Buckingham palace. I just stumbled across it. I swear. I didn't even realize it was there. But there it was.

So rather than stopping in to pay a call on the Royal Family, I went past Buckingham and through a park called Green Park (aptly named) until I got to the corner of Hyde Park. And then I thought, "Well, self, since we've come this far, we might as well head for the Hyde Park chapel and go to the YSA ward's sacrament meeting."

So I walked along the edge of Hyde Park for a while until I found the church marked on one of the Barklay's Cycle Hire maps. (Side note: There is a nice little 'what's around you' map at every bike rental station and every bus stop. You are never more than half a block from a map. It's very nice.)

As I was walking up Hyde Park, some tourists who did not speak English as a first language stopped me and asked me the way to Buckingham Palace. I set them in the right direction, feeling very pleased with myself.

I got to the chapel in perfect time for church, only to be informed by one of the visitor's center sisters that the YSA ward wasn't meeting that week, as everyone was off on holiday. So if I die this week I guess I'm going to hell or something. But I did try.

But as long as I was in the neighborhood, I thought I'd head over to my housing office and see what that was like. On the way, I stumbled upon this:

It looks like a large frosted brain, but really it's the Royal Albert Hall. For concerts and stuff.

My neighborhood is . . . um . . . 

It's filled with houses that were the houses that Downton-Abbey-esque families lived in when they were in Town with a Capital T. They have servants' entrances.

Most of these buildings have now been divvied up into flats, which are still absurdly expensive even if you don't have to pay for a household staff anyomore. The servants' quarters are another flat. The ones that haven't been divvied up are now embassies. 

So I went to the housing office, said hi, and then wandered around the corner to my own house, which I illustrate here: 

It is tall and skinny and deep and Victorian (or possibly Edwardian) and has an area railing. The red building on the right is the Embassy of the Netherlands. I'm not kidding. 

But I couldn't go into my house until Tuesday, so instead I went over to Kensington High Street and caught the tail end of a fish'n'chips lunch special. By then it was getting dark and wet and rainy, so I headed into the church of St. Mary Abbott to warm up a bit. And then I sat in the church, because it was nice, and read some chapters from Luke on my Kindle. And then the bells started ringing, and that was so nice that I sat to listen for a while. And then I fell asleep a little. And then I figured I'd been sitting there so long that I might as well sit a little longer and listen to the evening service, which I did. It was a service with lots of singing, which was nice, as I got to work some of the catches out of my still-scratchy voice. It was, all in all, a nice evening, just sitting in a Victorian church with nowhere to be. It was very restful.

And when the service was over, I finally got my rear in gear and headed back out into the rain and caught the tube to go back to my temporary housing at the London School of Economics (housing pictured below, not a reconstruction).

From the sublime to the ridiculous, as they say. 

The LSE was cramped and sketch, and I'm glad to say I'm now quit of it and am settled into my new digs, of which I will upload a video tour in a bit or so.