Claudia and I just returned from a trip to London, and, oh, what a time we had. I hope you enjoy this rather long and I hope, interesting, account. On June 13, the day after school got out, we flew separately out of San Francisco - I to L.A. and then to London - she to Portland, then to Vancouver and finally to London. We were met at the airport by Bob Drach, a Livermore friend who has been on loan from the Livermore Lab to a lab in Wokingham, England for a year. We spent the next 9 nights at his and his wife, Carolyn's house, a house they share with their son, Eric (a 6th grader) and Corinne (a 2nd grader). They were, truly, the best of hosts.
On four different days, we caught an early morning train in Wokingham for the one-hour ride to the Waterloo Station in London, and we generally returned back about 11:30 p.m. Those days gave us a pretty good feel of the city, although there is much, of course, we didn't see. On our first "London day," we got an overview of the city on a bus tour (The Big Bus Company), and that gave us many ideas of where to concentrate our limited time.
On the second London day, we took a short bus tour through another area, and then took in a free concert at St. Martin-in-the-Fields near Trafalgar Square (the church got its name when it was once, almost unbelievably, "way out in the country"). The performance was by an excellent choir called the Hickory Choral Group from, believe it or not, North Carolina. We then visited St. Paul's Cathedral, a beautiful Anglican church where Lord Nelson, Christopher Wren, and the first Duke of Wellington are buried, where Winston Churchill's funeral service was held, and where Prince Charles and Lady Di were married - not one of the Cathedral's successes. We climbed up 236 steps to a gallery about half way up the dome (another gallery was another 300 or so steps up, but I declined). The gallery is called the "Whispering Gallery," and it contains the "whispering wall." Claudia and I stood about 150 feet apart, and we could easily hear soft whispers, as if we were only inches apart. The sounds actually seemed as if they were coming through the wall. It was amazing! Claudia carried on quite a conversation with a German gentleman by "talking to the wall."
After St. Paul's, we went by the Underground to Leicester Square to purchase "cheap" (well, at least "cheaper") theater (British spelling = "theatre") tickets for two plays. That night we saw "Jesus Christ Superstar" which was phenomenal. It was playing at the Lyceum, a recently restored, beautiful theater near Covent Gardens. The actors who played (sang) Jesus, Caiphas, Herod, Mary Magdalene, and Pilate were especially outstanding. After the play, we decided not to take the Underground but walk across the Thames to the Waterloo Station. On the way, Claudia spotted a construction dumpster, and she insisted on taking a brick out of it for our garden back home. Zounds! By the way, the London Underground is fantastic - at least as good as, and probably even better than, the Metro in Paris. London is a huge city (over 11 million people, I think), and we could get anywhere within about 15-20 minutes! The traffic "up above" is awful, and I couldn't get used to the left-side-of-the-road driving and the fast way everyone seems to drive. The Underground is easy to learn, and I don't think we ever waited more than about 5 minutes for a train. And to think it was built in the last century! Why don't we catch on in California - especially in L.A.? I suppose the threat of earthquakes must have something to do with it, but the above ground railway system in England (and throughout Europe) is also extremely efficient, and ours "sucks" - to use a crude teenage expression.
Our third day in London took us to the Tower of London where we were led on a tour by a Beefeater in full costume. We saw the spot where Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard (Henry VIII's "lucky" wives #2 and #5) were beheaded for high treason because they had (or supposedly had) affairs. The chapel of Saint Peter's ad Vincula (in chains) has hundreds of bodies buried beneath it, including that of St. Thomas More,
On the same day, we also visited the Tate Gallery, housed in a beautiful old building. When we arrived there, unfortunately, it was closed down because of some power failure. We eventually were allowed in, but we only had about two hours, and so we saw just a portion of the great art displayed there. There was a wonderful exhibit of the works of J.M.W. Turner which I enjoyed because of the many pieces with mythological themes. Claudia was thrilled to see a small exhibit of works by Anselm Kiefer, an artist she recently studied and wrote a paper on in one of her art classes at Cal. State, Hayward. My favorite work by far, though, was one by Salvador Dali, entitled "The Metamorphosis of Narcissus." I hope to find a print of it someday for purchase.
That night, we saw our second London production - Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Starlight Express" at the Apollo Victoria across from the very busy Victoria Train and Underground Station. It's a skater musical, with the actors/singers racing on roller skates at high speeds around the stage and throughout the audience. At first, I didn't like it at all, but I finally was impressed by the staging, some of the music, and its high energy. Junior high aged kids would absolutely love it.
Our fourth and final day in London took us to Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Harrods department store, Leicester Square, and Piccadilly Circus (Here are some thumbnail London sketches). At Parliament , we stood in line for about 20 minutes to enter the House of Commons and then another 10 minutes to be seated in Strangers' Gallery to watch a session of the House. The discussion was not particularly interesting, and the speakers were being quite civil to each other, as opposed to the shouting and name calling I have heard often goes on there. Just within the entrance to the House of Commons is Westminster Hall, a large cement floored room where many historic events, including some very famous trials, have taken place. Claudia was especially impressed with its ceiling; I can't even recall it!
We walked across the street to Westminster Abbey, definitely one of the highlights of the trip for me, although Claudia found it to be too cluttered. It is a huge church and is mainly famous for all the well-known people buried there - Henry III, Henry V (Prince Hal of Shakespeare fame), Edward the Confessor, Edward VI (Henry VIII's only son, a hemophiliac who died as king at age 16, and one of the two major characters in "The Prince and the Pauper"), Henry VII, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Bloody Mary (Mary Tudor - the first reigning queen of England), Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots, and many more. I found it interesting that Mary and Elizabeth
Queen (Bloody) MaryTudor
Queen Elizabeth I
(half-sisters and bitter enemies in life) are "united" in death, buried right next to each other. Also buried there in Poets' Corner are Chaucer, Dickens, Tennyson, Kipling, Dryden, Robert Browning, the composer Handel, and (the most recent burial) Sir Lawrence Olivier. There are memorials to many other famous writers, including George Eliot, T.S. Eliot, Gerard Manley Hopkins (I was a little surprised to find a tribute to him, a Jesuit priest, in this Anglican church), and D.H. Lawrence. When I expressed surprise to one of the guards about the memorial to Lawrence because of some of his "racy" writings ("Lady Chatterley's Lover," "Sons and Lovers," "Women in Love"), he said, "That's nothing. Look at the stained glass window." There I saw a memorial to Oscar Wilde! Another famous poet buried there (but not in Poets' Corner) is Ben Jonson. Apparently, before Jonson died, the dean of Westminster told Jonson that he deserved to be buried with the other famous writers in Poets' Corner, but apparently Jonson was almost penniless and couldn't afford a "2'x6'." When he did die, he was, however, given a "2'x2'." He is buried standing up! As you can tell, I loved Westminster Abbey, with all its history. Claudia also loved it, although she correctly pointed out that it seems so cluttered. By the way, 38 of the 40 monarchs of England since 1066 (the Norman Invasion) have been crowned at Westminster, the last being Queen Elizabeth II on June 2, 1953. One of the 2 not crowned there was Edward VIII who abdicated the throne in 1936 to marry the divorced American, Wallis Simpson. The other was Edward V, one of the nephews of Richard III, whom Richard had killed in the London Tower.
We left Westminster and went to Harrods department store, a store that was about 5 or 6 stories high and covered a few city blocks. Claudia wasn't allowed to go in with her backpack, and so we had to check it at a place across the street for 1 pound, the equivalent of $1.70. The "luxury" bathrooms also cost a pound to use, and Claudia told me that, as soon as she had "done her thing," a lady went into the stall immediately afterwards to clean it. I especially enjoyed the "food markets" in Harrods, and they had everything - including quail eggs in a jar. We ate a pizza (the most expensive pizza of my life), but it was great fun. The prices in general were astronomical though.
From Harrods, we went to Leicester Square and, near it, to Piccadilly Circus. Both are very busy, very crowded, very exciting sections of London with a lot of theaters and a lot of night life. People-watching in both places was really fun. All of our kids would have a blast hanging out there and at Covent Gardens, a similar kind of area, with many pubs, street performers, and outside markets. When we were in Covent Gardens (it has nothing to do with actual gardens, by the way), we witnessed a large group of young men hanging from a second story balcony of the "Punch and Judy Public House," most with beers in hand, having fun usually at the expense of those passing below. At least two of those passers-by responded by flashing BAs - and that was with hundreds of spectators around! A group of three young men, their bodies painted black, wearing only grass skirts, and carrying spears, walked by us, drinking beers, and they seemed to fit in perfectly! What a city!
There are, of course, many things we didn't have time to do with only four days in London. We didn't go to the British Museum, Buckingham Palace, with its daily changing-of-the-guard, Madame Tussauds (there was always a huge line waiting to get in there), the Torture Museum (more long lines), Soho (similar to North Beach in San Francisco with its "sexy" nightlife), and speakers' corner in Hyde Park (we especially wanted to go there, but much of our time in London it was raining). On the bus tours, we went by all those places, including Big Ben, which was named after Benjamin Hall. I guess it's a good thing his name wasn't Richard! We also talked about going to Windsor Palace,
about 30 miles outside of London, but we didn't find time. Also on the bus tours, we saw the store where the queen buys her underwear, the shop where George III, the mad king and the last king of America, got his tobacco, a pub frequented by Oscar Wilde and J.B. Priestly, one of Dicken's many homes, John Adam's home, the HQ of General Eisenhower during the European Campaign (WWII), the home where Thomas de Quincy wrote "The Confessions of an English Opium Eater," the home where the queen was born, the home of the guitarist, Jimi Hendrix (just down the street from Adams' home), the American Embassy (the largest in the world), Scotland Yard, the address on Baker Street where Sherlock Holmes "lived," etc. That Baker Street address gets about 10 letters daily from people around the world asking Holmes to help solve some mystery. We missed so much of London that I guess we'll just have to go back again someday!
There were 4 other days when we didn't go into London at all. The first of those was my favorite day of the whole trip - the day we went to Hampton Court , the summer palace of Henry VIII. We caught a boat at Richmond for the approximate 1 1/2 hour ride to Hampton. On the way, we passed homes owned by Mick Jagger, Peter Townsend, Twiggy, Alexander Pope, and saw the spot on some island where both The Stones and The Who got their starts in a since burned-down hotel. We also passed the home of Trevor Bayliss who invented the clockwork radio, a radio that poor people in third world countries use to send out distress signals in emergencies, a sort of poor people's 911. As we passed his home, he happened to be out on his deck, and he waved to us. According to our pilot/guide, the first floor of Bayliss' house is entirely a swimming pool with a bar in the middle. We passed through the Teddington Locks, raising about 16 feet and were told that a particular seat on the boat was taken daily by a man who never paid, who always had a gin and tonic in hand, who entertained the other passengers, and who died about 3 years ago. The freeloader - Benny Hill!
At Hampton Court, we toured the ancient kitchens. In one kitchen room there were large spits where young boys had to turn the boars or hogs over the very hot fires. Guards were in the room to make sure those boys kept their clothes on and didn't urinate in the fire! After the kitchen tour, we toured the royal apartments of William and Mary (rulers of England in the late 1600s). The apartments were exquisite but not gaudy like those of the French kings at Versailles. Our third tour at Hampton Court was the Henry VIII tour, and we were led by a young lady dressed for those times. We saw the Great Hall where he fed 600 or so landed gentry daily and threw great parties and his chapel where lucky petitioners were actually allowed to talk to him. I already knew a great deal about Henry, but I was surprised to learn that Hampton Court first belonged to Cardinal Wolsey, Henry's Lord Chancellor who died on his way to the Tower because of his inability to persuade the Pope to approve of Henry's desired divorce from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. At that time, Henry confiscated Hampton Court, as he also did the home of Thomas More (Wolsey's successor) at Chelsea. I also learned that Catherine Paar (Henry's sixth and final wife - the one who outlived him) lived at Thomas More's place in Chelsea after Henry's death and there tutored Henry's only son, Edward VI. Here's a little riddle to help you remember Henry's wives:
He DIVORCED wife 1, Catherine of Aragon (after 23 years of marriage) because she failed to give him a son, only giving him a daughter, Bloody Mary. Catherine was the daughter of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain and the aunt of King Charles of Spain. He BEHEADED wife 2, Anne Boleyn, because of an affair. She was the mother of Elizabeth I. Wife 3, Jane Seymour, DIED in childbirth, giving birth to Edward VI. Henry officially considered her his first wife, illegitimizing the first two marriages, and he is buried next to her. He DIVORCED wife 4, Anne of Cleaves, and, in fact, he never consummated the marriage because he considered her ugly. The marriage was a political union, as Anne was of royal German blood. He BEHEADED Catherine Howard, wife 5, who was about 30 years younger than he, for an affair she had. She only lived to age 21. Henry's 6th and final wife, Catherine Paar, SURVIVED him, as he died in 1547. Henry considered her his 2nd wife.
Hampton Court Palace was built in 1514. Five of Henry's wives lived here, and the ghosts of two (Jane Seymour and Catherine Howard) supposedly haunt it. It has the world's largest grape vine, the famous Hampton Court maze, (which we didn't have time to see), an astronomical clock, and Henry VIII's tennis court. I hope to go back there some day.
Oh, on leaving Hampton Court, we walked a few blocks to catch a bus back to Richmond. On the way to the bus stop, we passed a home once occupied by the great architect, Christopher Wren, and right next door, one once occupied by the great scientist, Michael Farraday, of the mid 19th century. I was stunned. When we got back to Richmond, we were walking down a side street, and we passed a house where Virginia Woolf lived early this century. Where in Livermore...?
On our second "non-London" day, we went to Ascot to the famous horse race track. Luckily, we were there during the week known as "Royal Ascot," as the queen attends the races daily, coming from nearby Windsor Palace. And even more luckily, we went there on "Ladies' Day," which, along with the Kentucky Derby, is probably the most famous racing day in the world. The women all wear hats and very expensive outfits, the men wear morning coats and top hats, and "anybody who is anybody" is there that day. Of course, we weren't allowed into the main area (which includes the royal box), but for 10 pounds ($17 apiece), we could have gone into the Silver Circle, a very crowded, standing area with not the best view of the track. And so we walked down past the race track to an area that borders the one-mile track that heads into the grandstand area. There we saw the queen, Prince Phillip, and other royal family members, as they passed about 100 feet in front of us in the royal coaches. It was exciting! We also saw the start of one of the one-mile races. Claudia was standing up on a gate next to a hedge row to take pictures when a BBC truck, filming the race, crashed into the hedge. Fortunately, Claudia wasn't hurt. Carolyn accompanied us that day and said that Claudia should fake a neck injury and sue BBC. But the real attraction of the day was the hats, and I wish I had the capability now to include some of the pictures she took of them. One funny incident - a group of reporters suddenly ran to a certain area to film and interview someone, and, of course, we were curious. Claudia managed to get a picture of the celebrity who turned out to be Tracy Rose, a London fashion designer. One of the reporters told me she shows up every day during Royal Ascot to be photographed in some outlandish costume. He also told me that she usually wore much less than she was wearing that day (it was raining), and my response was, "Oh, damn!"
Our third "non-London" day took us to Oxford, the great university city about 2 hours south of London. We took a bus tour to get an overall view, and then we ate lunch at a great pub called "The King's Arm." Unfortunately for us, it was the last day of the school term, and so all the colleges (there are 38 colleges that make up Oxford University) were closed. In the pub, we struck up a conversation with 4 young people seated at the next table. There was Greg, an army captain and graduate of Oxford's St. John's College, his girlfriend, Pipa, a graduate of Oxford's Wadham College and presently a med. school student, her brother, Tom, a literature major at Oxford's Hertford College, and Elpy, Pipa's and Tom's cousin from Australia. When they learned how disappointed we were about not being able to tour one of the colleges, Greg invited us to go with them to St. John's, the richest of all the colleges, as he was sure he could "pull strings" and get us in. That he did! We went with him into St. John's library, looking at books dating back into the 1400s, toured the gardens (beautiful!), and saw the dining hall with its oak tables and impressive art work. It was a great day!
Our fourth and last "non-London" day was a day of relaxation, sort of. We slept in, Claudia and Carolyn shopped at a local Wokingham outdoor market, we took Bob, Carolyn, and Corinne to lunch at a very nice pub ("The Crooked Billet") in a beautiful rural setting, walked through the beautiful little town of Marlow along the Thames (in Marlow, we saw the home, in the early 1800s, of Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley, a home where they were visited by Lord Byron), picked up Eric from his play practice at his school, and had a dessert back at Carolyn's and Bob's and met their next-door neighbors, Bridget and David.
Then, on June 23, the time came to leave that "Merry Old" place, and that day turned out to be the only sour experience of the entire trip. We took a train from Wokingham to Reading and then a bus from Reading to London's Heathrow Airport. The airport was a disaster! We stood in line for an hour and a half just to show our ticket, had to then get in another line to get a boarding pass, a third line to turn in our baggage, and a fourth line to show our passports and have our carry-ons inspected. Finally, two and a half hours after our arrival at Heathrow, we entered the "inner sanctum," only to learn that our 3:55 flight was now delayed to 6:00. When we finally boarded about 6:00, the air-conditioning on the plane was non-functional, and we had another 2 hour delay. We finally left at 8:20 - almost 4 1/2 hours late. Of course that meant we arrived in L.A. at 11:30 p.m (instead of 7:00), and we had arranged to rent a car from there and visit my Aunt Tat and Kathleen in Irvine. We arrived at Irvine at 1:30 a.m. and then had to catch a 5:00 p.m. plane back to San Francisco. You can bet we weren't too happy with British Airways, and I strongly suggest, if you ever go to London, fly into Gatwick not Heathrow.
By the way, I've always heard that English food is terrible. Well, I wasn't thrilled with the food, but we both loved their fish & chips, their tea is far superior to ours, and I really like their beers. Everything is very expensive (especially in London), but the best food and prices were at the pubs, not at the restaurants. We also found the people to be very friendly (not "stuffy," as advertised), they love scandal (especially concerning the royal family), and they do have dry senses of humor. One example of humor - a train station attendant named David at Wokingham made it his daily task to put cheer into people's lives. For instance, one morning there was a lady with 2 heavy pieces of luggage starting to board the train. He said, "Love, let me help you." He took the 2 suitcases (supposedly to carry them on the train), put them down, and then picked her up like a gunny sack over his shoulder to carry her on the train! Another time, he got down in a push-up position and shouted, "The train from Richmond will be here in exactly 2 and 1/2 minutes; it has 47 people aboard, and 18 of those haven't paid!" He saw a young man across the tracks in a plaid, stripped shirt, and he quipped, "Nice shirt, mate. I have a table cloth just like it at home." He also sang songs and announced the series of train station stops in a very funny, rhythmic fashion. What a character!
We were also fascinated by some of the English words and expressions. Here are a few that I can remember:
All in all, 'twas quite an adventure!
Love,
Jim
