We went to the Unitarian Church again Sunday and I was going to light a candle for the Mets, who won the NL East the night before. I ended up not doing it, partly because I figured it wouldn’t be meaningful to anyone and maybe wasn’t serious enough, neither of which was really the case as I listened to the remembrances. I still didn’t get up, because, in the back of my mind, I think I just didn’t want to jinx them before the payoffs. They have been on a pretty magical run the last two months and it has killed me to miss it (and to miss Gary and Keith and Ronny describe it). I can get videos the next morning, but it isn’t the same, and I just have trouble staying up until 3:00 AM, although I will for the playoff games, I guess. It was a nice bit of luck that the pennant clincher was a late afternoon game, so I could actually watch it from 9:00 to midnight or so.

The English Rugby team lost a 10 point lead and the game to arch rival Wales Saturday night and were eviscerated by the sporting press. That night there was all of the noise down on the street and we went out on the balcony and looked out and there were eight big police vans and the street in front of our building was closed down. We assume it had something to do with the Rugby–either excessive celebrating by the Welsh supporters or excessive sorrow drowning by the English, or a toxic combination of the two. It seemed to be mostly noise and police overreaction, but we never really heard what happened until the next day, when the guy at the front desk confirmed our suspicions.

On Saturday, we attended the London Design Festival, much of which was taking place in the “Shoreditch Design Triangle“. We went to an international design show which was set up in this empty warehouse space of what used to be Truman Brewery (the world’s largest in the 1800s), which is about three blocks from our flat. In addition to English designers there was a Norwegian Room, a Danish Room and a huge Italian section and a Korean section and even a little Lithuanian section and much more. It was really great fun and some of the things were very clever and beautiful. I spent hours walking around and chatting with designers. (Judie got sick of it and went home earlier to take a well-deserved nap.)

After church on Sunday, we realized that the Newington Green bus would take us to London Bridge, so we went to Tate Modern to see the exhibit “The World Goes Pop”. I was expecting an exhibition with lots of Warhol and Lichtenstein, etc., but it turned out that the focus was on the impact of Pop Art in the 60s on the rest of the world, so there was all of these Eastern European and South American and Asian artists influenced by the ideas and materials of Pop Art. Many of them took the use of popular culture icons and new materials (plastics, silk screening) and used them to make serious point about politics, Vietnam, repression and, especially, feminism and the role of women. The art that they created was recognizably Pop, but with more power.