Judie and returned from Spain Sunday night and were greeted in our flat by Barbara and Mike, who had just finished their tour of Northern England and Scotland.They are a couple we only see rarely and it is fun to catch up with them. Mike is someone who, like me, likes to stay up drinking red wine and talking. Let me just say that I had a lot of recycling to do by the time he left. They left at the crack of dawn on Wednesday to return to Albuquerque. The next day, Judie’s sister Robbie and her husband Bob arrived and a whole new round of events started.

The Chelsea Flower Show: On Friday, we met Robbie and Bob at the Flower Show, after they had spent the early afternoon at the V&A Museum. It is one of the biggest flower shows around and was quite an event. It was mobbed with people checking out an endless number of beautiful flowers and a number of show gardens. It is run by  the Royal Horticultural Society and a good part of it is an incredibly fancy trade show, where you can get seeds and flowers for you own garden, along with garden sculptures, garden furniture, garden gates and pretty much anything that might be possible to put in a garden. Jenny Bakshi, who isa landscape designer in Montclair, was there with Phil and her brother, so we got to meet up with them. There was one “eccentric” garden that would activate every 15 minutes and the trees and topiaries would spin around and bushes would come up out of the ground and flowers would rotate around a little house. Ridiculous , but cute. There was another one that was dedicated to the end of slavery. Many of the big ones had water and/or sculptures and/or houses. And then there were little cute ones that were more like incredibly nice backyard gardens. I’ve been thinking about doing some gardening improvements in Montclair when we get back (and have been since the “Painting the Modern Garden” exhibit at the Royal Academy), so this all gave me some ideas.

Trooping the Colors: The next morning, we were off to see Trooping the Colors. Actually, what we were seeing was a rehearsal of the event. The formal Trooping the Colors before the Queen will be held on June 11th and televised around the country. It is something like the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, only on steroids. It takes place on the Horse Guards Parade Ground, just across for St. James Park, which is about the size of two football fields. A huge number of soldiers with the red coats and black fur hats marched in, each with its own band. There was all of this very fancy marching around, with one of the groups carrying the Colors (which appeared to be a fancy UK flag). Everyone stood when it went by, like a slow motion wave. There were also guardsmen on horses, some with red highlights in their uniforms and others with black, but all wearing shiny helmets. And there was horse-drawn artillery too. There were hundreds of them all on the field. It was really an amazing spectacle, and we didn’t even get the flyover that will end the real event. One has to wonder what all of that pomp and circumstance costs and whether it is really worth it. But it is one of those things that the British do and it has to be said that they do it really well. A few pictures follow:

   

One of the special benefits of going to this event was that our seats required us to enter via Downing Street, which is normally closed to the public. Here we are 100 feet from Cameron’s front door:

A Guided Walk: On Saturday afternoon, we went on a guided walk from St. Paul’s to the Monument to the Great Fire of 1666, via Bankside. We had an entertaining guide (Johnnie) who delivered a sort of stream of consciousness patter as we walked from place to place. A few of the best nuggets:

• An artist named Ben Wilson became famous for creating tiny painting on the chewing gum left on Millennium Bridge. He apparently lies on a yoga mat and paints the tiny bits of gun pushed in the bridge grating. The police arrested him once for doing this, but he could not be convicted since he pointed out that he was not defacing public property by painting on the bridge because he was actually painting on garbage. He may have moved on to different locations (or perhaps a different medium), but there are still numerous of these little paintings all along the bridge. Most people, including me, never see them because your eye is drawn to the beautiful views of St.Paul’s, Tower Bridge, the skyline and the Thames. A sample gum painting is below.
• Next to the Globe Theatre on Bankside is a small and old white building, which has a plaque stating that Christopher Wren lived there while building St. Paul’s, so he could watch the progress from across the river. Good story, but it isn’t true. In fact the sign was put on the house by its Norwegian owner in the 1930s as a joke. That area had been nearly destroyed during the blitz and there were plans to knock down that house and the two old houses next to it for a development, but the sign made it appear to be an important landmark, so it was spared from the wrecking ball.
• All along Borough High Street, there used to be alleys containing pubs and inns. This is where travelers would pull in with their horses or coaches as they approached London Bridge, which was the only way to cross the Thames for hundreds of years. There is only one of these places left, a pub called The George. Its buildings are pretty ancient and it is actually owned by the National Trust, which operates the pub. I have to go sometime. It is nearby the place where the tavern that is in Canterbury Tales was located. It was the place where the pilgrims met and told their stories before leaving.
• There were a series of bridges at the site of the current London Bridge. The most noted one was the one that was covered with a virtual little city of buildings. At the southern edge was a gate and on top of the gate were heads of traitors and criminals and pirates, mounted on pikes. According to Johnnie, the reason it was the only bridge across the Thames for centuries was that the boatmen’s guild was able to pressure the government into not constructing new bridges, thereby protecting their trade. When the Westminster Bridge was finally built, the guild received a large compensation payment.
• There is a theory that theaters like the Globe based their designs on the big inns like the George. The inns would have pubs with rooms to let above them which had balconies overlooking the alley. This would be on both sides of the alley and it is thought that there would b performances at one eld of the alley, with most just standing in the alley and the more well off being able to watch from the balconies.

“Showboat”: On Saturday night, we went to see a production of “Showboat”, the Hammerstein and Kern musical that gave us “Old Man River”. It is seen by some as the first true piece of modern musical theatre, premiering in 1927. It was the first time that the songs in a theatrical piece were completely linked to the plot. And there were scenes about black and white relations that must have seemed revolutionary at the time. We had front row seats, which were actually cheaper than the seats behind us. It was a good production. It actually had an American, Chris Peluso, playing the leading man, which seems unusual in a London production. It seems to me that you see more Brits on Broadway than vice versa.) Gina Beck, who played Nola, the female lead, had a great voice. The actor playing Captain Andy, Malcolm Sinclair, was someone we’d enjoyed in the Hampstead Theatre production of “The Meeting” and he was quite good, although his Southern accent sort of came and went. It was fun and there are a few great songs besides “Old Man River” (the show’s presentation of this song was very moving), like “Only Make Believe’, “Can’t Stop Lovin’ That Man of Mine”, “After the Ball” and “Bill”.

“Elegy”: Tonight, we went to see “Elegy” at the Donmar Warehouse, a famous small theater in the West End. Written by Nick Payne, it is based on the premise that a form of brain surgery can correct brain diseases, but that in curing the disease, you lose parts of your memory. This presents an impossible dilemma to the main characters. Do they do nothing and let a loved one slowly die an ugly death. Or do they save the person, knowing that in doing so they will not be the same person. And by waiting to do the surgery, savoring the relationship that still exists, they cause more memory to be lost in the surgery, leading to a situation in  which all memory of the relationship is erased. The play begins post surgery as Carrie (played by Barbara Flynn) tries to cope with the fact that her wife, Lorna (played by Zoe Wanamaker), who she still loves deeply, doesn’t know who she is. The play then proceeds in backward chrononology, until the end, when the first scene is replayed, but now the audience has the memory or what has led up to it and it resonates completely differently. It is like the first scene is Lorna’s point of view and the last scene is from Carrie’s.

We are off to Bath tomorrow morning with Robbie and Bob, so I have to finish this…..

Saturday night. Madrid. Judie’s Birthday. The Bruce Springsteen concert. The stadium was too far to walk, so we had to figure out how to get there on the Metro. Finding the route was easy and the trains were nice and well mapped (although not in English at all) and the only real trouble we had was working the ticket machines. (Getting back at nearly 1:00 AM was a snap and the streets were crowded along the Grand Via as we walked back to our hotel. Much more so than London, which shuts down the Underground by that time.)

The stadium itself was pretty enormous. It is where Real Madrid plays and is comparable to a football stadium in the US. The security was significant. First we had to go through one long line in order to get on another long line for our gate. The throng was pretty huge but organized and patient. I wonder if this is the same routine that they follow for big football matches there. We noticed that a fair number of people bought beers before getting on  line. It took 10-15 minutes to reach the front, where there were big recycling bins to throw the beer cans. So maybe that is what fans in the know do.

Once inside, we noticed a few things. The directional signs said “vomitorio” with a section number and we found ourselves wondering whether this had something to do with over-drinking footie fans. It turned out that vomitorio refers to the way for fans to spew out of the stadium. Cigarette smoking was permitted in the stadium, something that has been banned in the States or restricted to some special area for years. And beer is sold by vendors withe small kegs attached to their backs.

  

Bruce: We were wondering what sort of concert this would be. Would the Spanish fans know the words to the songs? Would they be into it? As it turned out, they knew the words and how to participate in the various Springsteen singalong moments and when to wave their hands or turn on their cell phone lights. The concert began at a little after its announced starting time of 9:00 (everything starts later in Spain, I guess), with Bruce opening with “Badlands”. It was still light and it was impressive to see the entire stadium floor bouncing with people. We had pretty good seats really, but recently we’ve seen Bruce from the floor or from fairly low down in an arena, so it was different being slightly more of an observer than a participant. Being on the floor is a more overwhelming experience, particularly when the crowd is all singing and rocking away.

This was “The River” tour, so they played a lot of songs off that album, including things like “Sherry Darling”, which we hadn’t seen him do for a long time. Bruce also covered the Patti Smith song “Because the Night”, which we’d never seen him do, although it is a natural fit. He and the E Street Band play continuously for three and half hours, playing a lot of the big hits (although not “Rosalita”). The stage was set up so that Bruce (and sometimes other band members) could get out into the crowd. They did all of the usual Bruce things, like the “Hungry Heart” singalong and getting a woman out of the crowd to dance with Bruce (and have now added having  a guy picked out of the crowd to dance with Patti.

   

All in all, it was a classic Springsteen concert. High energy, entertaining, good-natured. The energy level remains astonishing. The E Street Band is still incredible, despite the loss of Clarence. Bruce tried to speak to the crown in  Spanish once in a while although you could tell he was reading it off papers taped to the floor. The crowd didn’t care. They at it up.  For anyone really into Bruce and the E Street Band, her is a link for the setlist for the concert. (I thought initially that it also included links to You Tube videos from the concert, but they are from other concerts. Of course, there are videos on You Tube if you search. Here’s a link to the acoustic version of “Thunder Road” that ended the concert.)

Happy Birthday Judie.

 

On Friday morning, we left Barcelona, taking a high-speed train to Madrid. It is a two and a half hour ride, mostly through the countryside. I’d like to be able to report more on the scenery, but trains seem to put me to sleep, so I missed a big chunk of it. Judie told me that there were castles and vistas.

Madrid: I don’t think that Madrid is one of the cities that is viewed as a must-see destination and, having been there, Judie and I could not figure out why that is.  It has beautiful architecture, great museums, good restaurants, an efficient subway system and it is much warmer than places like London. The part where most of the tourist stuff is located is walkable and not too big. It is inexpensive to go there from London, which is probably why there seemed to be countless “hen parties” and bachelor parties featuring oddly-dressed, inebriated Brits.

We stayed at very nice hotel on The Grand Via, which appeared to have just been renovated and reopened. The Grand Via is a major street in Madrid and is lined with a series of lovely buildings, mostly made of white stone with balconies and turrets and bay windows, interrupted occasionally by wide avenues and squares containing outdoor cafes. The street is home to many hotels and theatres. At one end is the beautiful City Hall, a former communications building of all things, and the Prado and the other main museums. At the other end is the Palace and Cathedral. While Judie was working on Friday afternoon, I wandered around for an hour or two and finally parked myself at an outdoor cafe and just enjoyed the early summer weather and watched people walk by. When I finally returned and Judie finished her last call, we retreated the roof of the hotel, where there was a bar with nice views and comfy places to sit.

   

That night, we went to a restaurant called La Baracca. I had looked into going to Botin, reputed to be the oldest restaurant in the world, but couldn’t get reservations. So I made reservations at this other one and it turned out to be across the street from the back door of our hotel. They specialize in paella and it really was delicious. The seafood in it was just OK, but the rice was just wonderful. It had great flavor and was both fully cooked a just a little crunchy, which we guessed may have come from cooking it in individual paella pans. The best we’d ever had.

The next day, we took one of those on-off tourist buses, taking a full loop around Madrid to decide where to get off. We got to see everything and get slightly sun burned at the same time.The Palace and the surrounding parks are up on a hill (which is why Madrid is where it is), with some pretty views. We decided to skip going into the Place since the lines were too long and went to the Cathedral next door instead. (I have become pretty sick of hearing about royal families and their histories. All of the European capitals seem to have this stuff. At a certain point, it just gets to be boring stories about a rich families. We did happen to walk by the Palace when the guards in funny uniforms out front were marching about and shouting.) We went up to the dome of the Cathedral (elevator part of the way made it easier) for some great views of the city. We continued on for a fairly long walk back to our hotel, via Plaza Mayor, a gorgeous square in the middle of Madrid with a long history. It is ringed by restaurants with alfresco dining and drinking.

        

Catastrophe Averted: By mid-afternoon on Saturday trying to find Plaza Mayor, Judie and I gave up and were sitting at an outdoor cafe (little did we know that we were two blocks from the Plaza we were tying to find), surrounded by hen party groups, tourists and families. We were eating Iberian ham, gazpacho, patatas bravas and fresh anchovies and washing it down with sangria and beer, when this kid comes up with a menu, puts it on the table and begins talking to us and pointing at it. There is a moment of confusion and then all of a sudden my old NYC radar kicked in. What is he doing here? He’s not my waiter! Why is that black peddler looking at him like that from over there? I instinctively slam my hand onto the table, moving the menu and instantly both of our hands are on my iPhone, which he had put the menu on top of. He gave up and ran away as I was screaming at him. A really close call…..

The Prado: On Sunday morning, we decided to go to the Prado. It was tempting to go to the Reina Sofia Museum, which is where Picasso’s “Guernica” is, but the Prado was a shorter walk and it is hard to go to Madrid and not go there. It was a pretty spectacular museum, although I have to admit hat I eventually got sick of all of the paintings of Jesus, Mary and various saints and martyrs in various states of torment and torture. But getting to see Hieronymus Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights” was a treat, as was a room of paintings by Goya from his “Black period”. There were lots a lovely paintings and the museum was very well laid out. Here is one of those Goyas I particularly liked:

As a bonus, there was a special exhibit of the paintings an artist named George de La Tour, an Alsatian painter who seemed to be influenced by Caravaggio. There are only 40 of his works known to exist and the exhibit had 31 of them. The were just spectacular. Who is this guy? Two of them are below.

      

Copa Del Rey: After the Prado, I convinced Judie to go back to Plaza Mayor for a final visit and alfresco drink. It turned out to be a little further than I though and, even worse, all uphill, so I was not dealing with a happy camper by the end of the walk. But it really turned out great. The Plaza was hopping because it happened to be the day of the Copa del Rey, basically the Super Bowl for the Spanish football (soccer) league. The game was to be played in Madrid (at Athletico’s stadium) and featured mighty Barcelona (with their front line of Messi, Suarez and Nemar that is so great that it is almost unfair, plus great players like Ineinesta, Pique, etc.) vs. Sevilla, who are also no slouches (but without the star power). Fans for both teams, in full regalia, converged on the Plaza Mayor and were drinking and singing and marching and waving their colors. It was all high spirited and great fun. (Barca won 2-0 in overtime later that night.)

   

Judie and I went to Spain last weekend. The trip was to be centered around going to see Bruce Springsteen in Madrid on Saturday night (Judie’s birthday), which I’ll describe in greater length later. But about two weeks before we left, Judie found out that she had been scheduled to speak at a conference in Barcelona the day before our trip to Madrid, so the whole thing turned into a grand Spanish tour.

A Short Walk Around Barcelona While Judie Was Working: I had wandered around Barcelona quite a bit in the past, since Judie had been sent to two conferences there while she was at American Express and, as a result, I’d already seen most of the major sites. Since I had only part of an afternoon to do some exploring (on a stunningly beautiful day), I decided to take the Metro down into the city center and concentrate on my two favorites things about Barcelona: Gaudi and the food.

Boqueria: My first stop was the Boqueria Market, which is just off the Ramblas, a beautiful, tree-lined boulevard that cuts from the waterfront up into the city. I had forgotten what an incredible place it is. As much as I love Borough Market in London, the size and selection of the Boqueria really puts London to shame. The colors of the vegetables and fruit and ham and fish and meat and everything else was just kaleidoscopic.

    

The market, of course, has lots of little places to eat, so I stopped for lunch at one of them and had Iberian ham, which they seem to routinely serve on crusty bread with a little tomato sauce, fresh, fried whitebait and fried artichokes. All with a couple of glasses of white wine. Really heavenly.

    

Casa Battlo: Now fortified, I proceeded to stroll up the Ramblas, checking out all of the beautiful buildings and the people sitting at outdoor cafes enjoying the wonderful weather. Barcelona is a city that was laid out with a number of large and wide boulevards, which then have smaller streets off of them. It allows for lovely vistas and the planting of trees along the streets, something that is missing (and perhaps not possible) in the small and narrow old streets of London. It is also a city that seems to be aware of design and seems to be concerned that, at least in the older parts of the city, the overall presentation is harmonious. Very unlike the hodgepodge that is New York or London. My destination on the walk was Casa Battlo,  one of the great Gaudi landmarks. It is not as famous as Casa Mila, with its iconic helmet-like chimneys, or Sagrada Familia, the church that is his masterwork, or Park Guell. But I’d had tours and visits of those landmarks on prior trips. Just the walk to Casa Battlo was great, because it is along an avenue where the homeowners seem to have been competing to build the most spectacular building. Casa Battlo is a six-story townhouse, so it is on a smaller scale than Casa Mila, which is an apartment building. The facade is a profusion of colorful tiles and organic shapes and is really unlike any building you have ever seen. I suppose one could call Gaudi’s style Art Nouveau, but it is so original and unique that it is really not fair to even try to categorize it. I went into the building for the tour and the organic shapes and colors continued inside and onto a back terrace and finally onto the roof, which feature incredibly sensuous tiled chimneys. The various Gaudi architectural gems are so memorable that it is impossible for me to really name a favorite. But this place is right up there. A few photos, which hardly do it all justice:

       

Dinner: Eventually, Judie got away from the conference and endless phone calls with some very needy and difficult clients and we stopped in the hotel bar, where we met a few interesting industry people (including a guy I met at a dinner in Copenhagen) and then went to dinner. Since it is Spain, nobody eats until 9:00 (although the restaurants do open at 8:00, probably for tourists). I assume that they must work later in the day. The owner of our favorite Shoreditch restaurant, Super Tuscan, had recommended Paco Meralgo, which turned out to be a tapas place with seemingly a very hip, young clientele. The food was delicious and the service was great. At one point, the entire staff stopped working, put on silly hats and wigs and went to sing Happy Birthday to someone. On the way back, one of them posed for this picture with Judie (soon to be a birthday girl).

Lawrence After Arabia”: Last Thursday we went to the Hampstead Theatre (which has turned into our “go-to” theatre—a bit like The New York Theatre Workshop or the Public) with Barbara and Mike (Judie’s friend from high school in Korea and her husband who are visiting) to see “Lawrence After Arabia”. This was another one of those historical dramas, which they seem to do very well here. Of course, often history can be so interesting that it really beats anything that you might make up. T.E. Lawrence was certainly such a figure. This play focuses mostly on the time after World War I, when Lawrence wanted to get away form the limelight and enlisted in the RAF under a false name. At the same time, he was friends with George Bernard Shaw and his wife and was spending some time with them and trying to edit a sort of memoir he had written about his experiences. Most of the play takes place in Shaw’s sitting room. While Shaw is trying to finish “St. Joan” (by dictating to his long suffering secretary, Blanche Patch), Shaw’s wife, Charlotte is looking after Tom (Lawrence) and helping him with his book. There are occasional flashbacks to the war and scenes with Prince Feisal and Field Marshall Edmund Allenby. And Lowell Thomas, the American journalist who became famous by covering the story of Lawrence of Arabia, appears occasionally to show the sort of pressure that Lawrence was under. One of the big points of the play is that Lawrence was tormented by his role in World War I and felt that he had double-crossed Prince Feisal by assuring him that there would be a unified Arabia after the war with a capital in Damascus. Feisal and the Arabs fought successfully against the Ottoman (Turks) (it is referred to as the Arab Revolt) and helped the British win that part of the war. But at the Peace conference, the winners simply went back to their old, misguided colonial habits and arbitrarily divided Arabia into “countries” that the French and English got to exploit. Lawrence argued that this would never work and that Europe would be reaping a whirlwind. In a private meeting with King George V, he declined a knighthood for his services in the Arab Revolt in protest of the treatment of the Arabs. So there is a contemporary political element to the play, as it portrays Prince Feisal as a potentially effective leader, who might have unified an Arabia that would have been functional, independent and friendly. Instead, we have ended up with dysfunctional countries like Iraq and Syria, etc. and our current mess, which one might arguably trace back to this mistake As is always the case at the Hampstead Theatre, this was a wonderful production with particularly great sets and a top-notch cast. Jack Laskey (who you would know if you watch “Endeavor” on PBS) was very good as Lawrence and Jeff Rawle was a very convincing and charming Shaw. Probably the most famous actor in the cast was Geraldine James, who has been in countless plays movies and television dramas and played Charlotte. William Chubb had a few great moments as Filed Marshall Allenby and Rosalind March’s understated portrayal of Shaw’s secretary was just great.

Oxford Pub Crawl: On Saturday we took the train up to Oxford (seventy minute from Paddington Station) to meet Jane and Paul Jee and their friends for the day. The plan was that Mike and I were to join Paul and his friend Jeremy for a pub crawl, while Judie and Barbara were to join Jane and her daughters and Jeremy’s wife and her daughters for sightseeing and shopping. (Actually, in the end it turned out that one of Paul’s daughters, Charlotte, and a friend of hers, Lizzie, joined the pub crawl, so it wasn’t as sexist as it looked like it was going to be.) We met everyone at the Turf Tavern for lunch and a couple of pints. The Turf Tavern is a very old pub, reputedly the last place where cockfighting was legal in London and the spot where Bill Clinton didn’t inhale while he was at Oxford and, I’m pretty sure, a regular location on “Inspector Morse”. I’m not certain of the names all the pubs we went to on the crawl. I know that we went to The Bear Inn, one of the oldest pubs in Oxford and one which, for some reason, displays pieces of ties, presumably worn (and then donated) by patrons. We also went to the Eagle and Child, a pub famously frequented by the Inklings, a literary and drinking group whose members included J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S Lewis. I’m pretty sure that we ended up at the Rose and Crown, a pretty little pub recommended by Lizzie, Charlotte’s friend who was just finishing her degree at Oxford. (It was her “local”.) And we went to two others, whose names I’ve forgotten, including one where we ate some scotch eggs and pork pies and another where we had an extended Brexit debate led by the spectacularly conservative Jeremy on one side and by Charlotte and me on the other (the debate was somewhat heated, probably because it was at pub number 4 or 5, but friendly). Finally, somewhere between eight and ten pints of beer  and three or four miles of walking later, we met up again with Judie and Barbara (who at one point had left the other women shopping and had gone to the Ashmolean Museum) and the others at a restaurant (whose name I had no hope of recalling at that point) and had a wonderful multi-course meal that Paul had arranged (with each course accompanied by wine). We then fell into a cab with Barbara and Mike and went back to our hotel, although we did stop at a nearby pub for a final “cleansing ale”. Quite a day. Certainly the most beer I had drunk in a single day in over 40 years.

Punting in the Thames: Sunday was a lovely and sunny day in Oxford and we spent a lot of it just wandering around the impossibly beautiful town. We spent some time checking out the Botanical Garden, which was in full bloom, and walked past the various colleges to Balliol College, where we met Anna Geier, the daughter of one of our friends, who spent the better part of last year living with us in Montclair. She took us around Balliol, which may be the oldest college in Oxford University (there is apparently some dispute between the colleges), including the Hogwarts-like eating hall. After a lunch at the White Horse pub, we said goodbye to Anna and continued to wander about. I had the idea of going punting on the Thames, since it was such a lovely day. It turned out that lots of people had the same idea and the river was very crowed, which made getting around hard, since the punts are difficult to control. You have long poles that you stick in the water and push off the bottom and then try to control the direction by swinging the pole through the water off the back. It is pretty easy to end up going sideways into a bank or slowly ramming another boat. Shortly after Mike had turned us around to head back (no small feat), I took my turn again. I was pushing us upstream and suddenly the pole got stuck in the mud and I was trying pull it out as the boat drifted along. I should have just let go of the pole, since it turns out that they float, but I had pictures of the pole sinking and us being stuck in the river with no means of propulsion. While all of this is flashing through my mind, the boat just moved out from under me and all of a sudden I realized that I was about to fall in the water and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Sure enough, I fell off the back. It might have been worse. I had given Judie my phone to hold and taken off my shoes since my feet were killing me the first time I did the poling. But I was soaking wet and lost my glasses. A number of other punts came over to help out (holding onto the pole for me was very useful) and I managed to get back into the boat eventually. The river is pretty shallow and I found that as we got near to the shore I could reach the bottom and then get to a point where it was very shallow and easier to get in. But I was soaking wet and fairly muddy and we still had 20-30 minutes of poling to get back to return the punt. But we made it and everyone at the punt rental place was amused. But I was still soaked so, as a result, I now own a new pair of Oxford University sweat pants and tee shirt, which I wore back to London. Oh well, at least I created a memorable experience for our guests (but at the cost of my glasses).

New Painting: I’ve been fiddling with this one for a while. It is based on a picture I took while walking around Hyde Park with Karen and Jerry Fried. I got the napping guy on the bench and the bird done pretty quickly and then got stuck on the background. Maybe I should have done it in a different order. Anyway, the background got to be too complicated and I kept trying to get it right and then finally put the damn thing aside to start anther one. I came back to it, made a few changes and decided to call it a day. Actually the one I’m currently working on is also very detailed. I think I’m going to switch and do something with bigger fields of color after that one is done. Here is the one that is finished:

Geffrye Museum: This museum is right up the road in the Hoxton area of Shoreditch, a fifteen minute walk. We went with Linda and Chris last Saturday. Geffrye was a self-made man who came to London and became an ironmonger and eventually Lord Mayor and head of the Ironmongers Guild. He died in 1714 without a family and left a portion of his large fortune in a trust to provide for an almshouse for retired ironmongers or their widows who were needy. A number of the guilds in the City built almshouses in Shoreditch, but this is the only one that survived. On Saturday, the only part of the structure that still looks like it did originally is open for special tours. In seeing the rooms, you realized that it wasn’t a very cushy deal for those needy ironmongers. They got a room, an allotment of coal and one shirt a year, so the rooms were sparely furnished. Chapel was compulsory and there was a curfew. Eventually, as the number of ironmongers fell, the rooms began to be filled by retired school mistresses or nannies and the like. The rooms become better decorated. (They had such a room decorated as if it was occupied by a woman in the Victorian age.) Eventually, the train line came along, built by the back of the almshouse, and the city reached the formerly bucolic site with a vengeance. By the end of the 1800s, the almshouse was in the midst of such a cesspool of humanity and industry that the residents petitioned to be moved out. Fortunately for them, old Geffrye’s trust still had money in it and they were all moved to Kent or somewhere like that. That left the question of what do with the now former almshouse. All the other ones in the neighborhood had been demolished or repurposed, but this one was saved, although not for the buildings. It was saved because its large gardens were more than 10% of the open space in the borough and the local government bought it to keep the area as a park. It is now a museum with a series of rooms that show how people lived over the centuries and a rear garden, which illustrates the evolution of garden design over the same period. The formal front garden is quite big and is open to the public, which uses it as a park.

Other Thoughts: I occurred to me recently that we have gone through a stretch where the visitors we have had included a number of accomplished artists, all of whom have actually sold paintings. (Karen Fried, Judie’s sister, Linda, and my sister, Sally.) They all work in different mediums and are all talented. They were all very encouraging about my efforts and gave me some good suggestions. In looking back, while having them visit me wasn’t exactly intimidating, I wonder if I actually painted less while they were here. Of course, just having visitors cuts down on my painting time and is otherwise distracting. I do seem to be doing more art right now, for whatever reason.

“The Suicide”: On Thursday, we went with Sally and Alan to see “The Suicide” at the National Theatre. It is a dark comedy, adapted by Suhayla El-Bushra from a play be the same name by Nikolai Erdman. Erdman was a noted poet and comic writer in Russia during the 1920s, when he wrote “The Suicide”. Unfortunately for him, Stalin and his friends didn’t appreciate the humor and Erdman ended up in Siberia. The play was banned before it was even rehearsed and was not performed until 1969, after the script was smuggled out of the Soviet Union. El-Bushra updated the play extensively, while retaining the central idea.

In the play, Sam (played brilliantly by Javonne Prince), is depressed because he is chronically unemployed and has lost his benefits for being late to meet his social worker. He is fighting with his wife and his life seems to be a disaster to him. So it is all very real life in terms of problems faced by poor people in London today. He is thinking about suicide and it standing on a bridge at night when his suicidal angst is filmed by some kids, who put it on line, where it goes viral. Sam is then beset by people who want to use his suicide to make one point or another, including a documentary filmmaker who wants to use his suicide as a revolutionary act, a social worker who want to use it to attack the local MP, the local MP who wants to use it to attack the psychiatric services provided through the NHS, a restauranteur who wants to get famous by making his last meal, a buddy who becomes famous by reciting poetry jam verse about his impending death and others. There were all of these great little parts in the play of people wanting to get something out of him and some memorable little performances. Sam is offered fame and money and all the things he never had in his life, but only if he kills himself the next day at noon. He gets swept up in the momentum of it all and the desire to show that he can support his wife, even if he can only do it by killing himself. It is a bit creepy, but had a black humor that worked. It is very cleverly written and wonderfully staged. It was very funny and a bit sad, while making some serious points about the state of our society, the sorry state of politics and government and the warping impact of social media on everything. I think this one will stay with me for a while.

“Sunny Afternoon”: We saw this with Linda and Chris on Saturday night, after visiting the TKTS booth in Leicester Square. It is a musical based on the music of the Kinks. It started at the Hampstead Theatre (one of our favorites) and moved to the West End when it became a big hit. It is essentially about the Davies brothers, Ray (the songwriter and lead singer) and Dave (the lead guitarist and wild little brother). It had most of the great Kinks songs, so it couldn’t be too bad and it was pretty cleverly done. I guess they could figure out how to work “Lola” into the plot, so it ended up being used as a big audience sign-along at the end. The guys who played the Davies brothers were talented and the actor playing Ray was especially good, and he had to be, since the who show really centered around him (not a big surprise, since the real Ray Davies helped to write it). I really like the Kinks, so I was more interested in seeing this that something like “Jersey Boys”. If you think about this as an example to of the “Rock Musical” genre, it is certainly one of the best. (Off the top of my head, I’d say that “Tommy” would be the best of that genre. It is a lot easier to come up with mediocre ones.) An enjoyable night in the theatre, but, unlike “The Suicide”, ultimately forgettable.

Gull Eggs: When were were over at Jane and Paul Jee’s house for Easter, their friend Jeremy told me that I had to try gull eggs, which were just coming into season. According to him, they are harvested by people who climb up or down cliffs to take them out of gull’s nests. He said that the government licensed individuals to harvest gull eggs in World War II to deal with food shortages and that there are very few left. (According to a Daily Mail article from 2015 that I found, there are only twelve licensed gull egg collectors left.) The classic way to eat them is with celery salt. After we saw “Sunny Afternoon”, we took Linda and Chris to dinner at Sheekey’s, a famous seafood restaurant in the West End. There on the menu were gull eggs with celery salt and mayonnaise. (£7.50 per small egg, soft boiled.) I had to try it. The taste was slightly more delicate than a regular chicken egg, but still definitely an egg. I’m not sure what I was expecting…..

 

From the Ridiculous to the Sublime: Britain is building a state-of-the-art, sea-going research lab and someone had the bright idea of letting the public name the ship through an on-line vote. The winner, by a landslide, was “Boaty McBoatface”, a joke suggestion which went viral. (Repeat after me: “You can’t make this stuff up”.) As you can imagine, the government was not keen on the idea of attaching a stupid name to its expensive new vessel. So they decided to name it after David Attenborough, in honor of his 90th birthday. But they are going to name a small, remote-controlled research submarine Boaty McBoatface. In response, there is apparently an online petition seeking to change David Attenborough’s name to Boaty McBoatface.

And in the Real Election: As you may recall if you have been reading this blog, Britain had local elections on Thursday. The Mayor of London and four other cities was decided, as was the Sottish and Welsh Assemblies (and maybe the Norther Ireland one too) and various local councils around England. At the same time, the Brexit vote is looming in six weeks and the Conservative Party is in chaos, caused by a series of missteps as well as internal disagreements about Brexit. And Jeremy Corbyn’s Blairite enemies in the Labour Party were sharpening their knives and predicting a bad result due to his unpopularity.

On Election Night, the BBC and the other networks had all of their spiffy sets and electronic gizmos all ready. The problem was that there was nothing to report. They seem to have this habit in Britain of waiting for the votes to actually be counted, rather than breathlessly calling the result based on exit polling or whatever. (What would Wolf Blitzer think?) To make matters even slower, the television coverage of election official actually counting the votes revealed that they were all dealing with huge piles of paper ballots which all had to be separated, unfolded and put into piles. (No computerized or mechanical voting machines for these Brits. I guess the good thing is that there are no hanging chads.) And as if the paper ballots didn’t slow things enough, after the first preferences are counted, they have to go back and count the second preferences. It is all such a time-consuming mess that the results of the London election were not announced until late on Friday afternoon. (Actually, that was the point when the papers were willing to report the result even though the actual counting had not finished completely.) That London election was not all that close and you can bet that in the USA, the networks would have announced the winner about 15 seconds after the polls closed. Here they acted like it was all a big mystery for almost a day.

So what exactly happened and what does it all mean? Here is what I think:

• Sadiq Khan (Labour) won the London mayoral election pretty easily. Zac Goldsmith (Conservative), risked his reputation on racist attacks on Khan late in the election, trying to link him to Radical Islamists. It backfired and you’d think that Goldsmith’s political career is over. (Kind of tough in a way because he was pretty progressive for a Tory and was very good on a number of issues, especially the environment. But he’ll just have to go back to being absurdly wealthy.) Khan basically ran away from Corbyn during the election, especially at the end, so it is hard to see how Corbyn and the Labour leadership can claim much credit for this win, although they will try.
• Scotland had traditionally been Labour territory, but in recent elections they had been losing out to the Scottish National Party (SNP) and had dropped to second place. This election was the only real disaster for Corbyn, as Labour lost a lot of seats and dropped to third, behind the Conservatives. (It seems like the Tories took over the spot in the electorate that opposes leaving the UK, which, while not nearly enough to give them a chance at governing, did make them the choice of those who want to restrain the SNP.)
• Wales is even stronger Labour country and they kept control, although they did lose a few seats. Interestingly, the party who picked off the Labour seats in Wales was UKIP, a right-wing, anti-immigrant party that probably got a boost from all of the the anti-immigration talk surrounding Brexit. They are pretty close to being fascists, so it is a bit worrying that they are showing any strength at all.
• As for the local Council elections, Labour looks like it will lose somewhere around 25 seats. Normally a party out of power gains seats in one of these by-elections, just the way the Republicans usually pick up sets in an off year election when there is a Democratic President, and vice versa. So on one hand, Labour should have been expected to pick up seats. One the other hand, Labour picked up a large number of seats (for the same reasons) in by-elections four years ago, so it may not have been realistic to expect another huge gain. A large cohort of Corbyn haters were predicting that he was leading Labour off an election cliff and that they were going to loose 150-200 seats. So basically it wasn’t that bad for Corbyn, although the haters are switching to complaining that Labour didn’t add seats. (Although, you have to wonder if you can glean anything about Corbyn’s leadership from local Council elections, which are more about local than national issues.)
• In the end, Corbyn survived. He didn’t do well enough to silence his many critics but he also didn’t do badly enough to embolden those critics to try a coup. It is not hard for me to see Corbyn hanging around until the big Parliamentary elections in 2020, constantly besieged by unhappy MPs (with rumors of plots) and belittled by much of the press, but ultimately supported by enough of the membership that he makes it to the big election, when I have no doubt he will lose spectacularly and fade into oblivion. If that scenario is correct, the big winner tonight is the Conservative Party, since they get to keep their favorite punching bag and don’t have to deal with a stronger leader (although it is not entirely clear who such a leader would be at this point). Of course, the whole Brexit thing is the real wild card in the whole equation and the aftermath of the vote is likely to throw the Tories into absolute turmoil. In such a circumstance and without Cameron’s ability to mask their true colors, it is possible that the electorate could be well and truly sick of the current government (if not actually repulsed) and ready for any sort of change. That would be the Corbyn pipe dream.

Spring and the Long Weekend: Monday was a Bank Holiday, giving everyone a long weekend. (Well, everybody but Judie, who still had to deal with American clients who were unaware that England was off work.) No one seemed to be able tell me precisely why the first Monday in May is chosen for the holiday. Maybe it is is honor of May Day (International Workers’ Day), although that doesn’t sound like something banks would want to celebrate.

Fortunately for everyone, Spring decided to arrive for the Long Weekend. OK, maybe not spring in the sense of beautiful days in the mid 70s, but at least it was pushing 60 and wasn’t cloudy or drizzling. As a result Shoreditch was an absolute madhouse. My sister Sally and her husband Alan arrived on Sunday afternoon from Denver (just as Linda left to visit Chris, her new friend (and possibly more) in Harrogate). We took a walk around the neighborhood and it was actually tough to walk down Brick lane, which was jammed with people drinking beer, eating street food, listening to street musicians and shopping at pop-up places. It was like a giant, impromptu festival. (See below.) At the same time, Old Spitalfields Market had been cleared out of the usual vendors and they were replaced by a Barcelona Boqueria food fair, with all kinds of ham, croquettes, fried fish, sausages, padron peppers, anchovies, paella and mass quantities of Estella beer.

I went out with Sally and Alan the next day, saw an exhibit about Georgione at the Royal Academy and then walked around London. Green Park and St. James Park were both lovely. The trees finally are starting to have leaves and there were tulips and other flowers everywhere. We walked past Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, The Eye and all the way down to London Bridge along the south bank of the Thames. On the way back to the flat, I took the wrong bus and we had to get off, so we walked by the Bank of England and Mansion House. We took a detour to see the Ai WeiWei sculpture under “The Gherkin” and discovered a work crew taking it down. That was a little upsetting since I really liked it (and the Damien Hirst one that was already gone). The workers told me that the sculptures were only supposed to be there for six months and would be replaced shortly. Incredibly long (22,000 steps) walk though and my feel were killing me that night.

     

Mayoral Vote Approaches: The mayoral election to replace Boris Johnson will take place on Friday. It has not really gotten the kind of exhaustive coverage that I expected. Perhaps all of the fury (and colorful name calling) about the upcoming Brexit vote has overwhelmed this election. Or it might be that there is a perception that the election is not going to be all that close. It seems to me that Sadiq Khan, the Labour candidate really should win, but there has not been extensive coverage on the BBC about polling for the election (making it very different from a US election). It would be nice to say that the lack for focus on polls means that the news focuses more on the issues. But that hasn’t really been the case. Hopefully, the desperate and racist attacks on Khan by the Conservative (about which I have previously written) will backfire. It will be interesting to see if a Khan win gives any boost to Jeremy Corbyn, who seems to be besieged yet again, this time over anti-semitic comments made by a Labour MP. Corbyn and the Labour leadership came down hard and seem to have said the right things, so it is a little hard for me to see how that has become a leadership issue. I suspect that the still-irate losers from last year’s leadership vote (the Blairites) are just looking for any excuse to trash Corbyn and create a series of phony crises in hopes that they can eventually topple him and get back into power.

Leicester City Wins the Premier League: It is hard to describe what an enormous upset this is. Leicester City has been playing 132 years and has never won anything of significance. This is more incredible than the Cubs finally finning the World Series. I can’t come up with a good American analogy. The bookies are apparently taking a huge bath, since they gave incredibly long odds of this happening before the season (5,000 to 1). Everyone loves an underdog, so this has gotten tremendous coverage (and not just in England–all over Europe).

Mets and Yankees: Part of my routine now is to get up in the morning and see what happened with the Mets (and watch the MLB.TV highlight package). I sometime see the beginning of the games and, very rarely, a whole game if it happens to be a day game. (I really miss the Mets announcers.) It is all looking pretty good for the Mets and their pitching hasn’t even been as good as it should be. If the Nationals stay hot, the Mets may not win the division, although my bet is that they will. But I’m certain that both team will make the playoffs, in the absence of a bizarre series of injuries. The Yankees, in contrast, are off to a terrible start. It is a team of formerly great players increasingly past their prime and for the past couple of years I’ve been waiting for the wheels to fall off. Until this year, the Yankee superstars, even diminished, could play well enough for the team to contend. But now it is beginning to look like the clock has struck midnight and they are all turning into pumpkins (or mice or whatever you like in your Cinderella analogy). It could be an ugly summer in the Bronx.