Royal Ascot: On Friday, we went to Royal Ascot with Judie’s sister Kathy and her husband Jim. It is an expensive day out for what is basically just a day of horse racing. There are two things that makes it special. First, the Queen comes to all five days of Royal Ascot and each  of the days open with her being brought down the track in a carriage to the Royal Pavilion. (See the picture below of her passing by while Judie and Kathy are taking pictures.) And second, everyone who goes gets incredibly dressed up, so the real entertainment is looking at the other people there. Photos of us follow:

        

A few more notes about the experience. To get there, you need to either drive or take the train from Waterloo (about and hour, as it it past Heathrow.) I felt a bit silly on the Tube wearing my fancy duds and top hat, but when we popped up into Waterloo, there were lots of people similarly overdressed all streaming toward a platform. We barely got seats on the train, which was a good thing because at each of the six or seven stops along the route more and more people got on, until the cars were more crowed than rush hour Underground coaches (excepts that all of the sardines were very well dressed). When we finally got there, it took nearly 10 minutes just to get off the platform. For £78 a person, we had the privilege of being in the Queen Anne Pavilion, which was right along the homestretch. (The British tracks run in the opposite direction of US tracks.) To be there, we needed to adhere to the dress code. Hats for women, suits and ties for men, etc. But we didn’t get anything else with our ticket, not even a seat. Of course for hundreds of pounds more, we could have sat in special boxes or enclosures and had champagne and strawberries, etc. The bars were easier to find than the food and the patrons certainly drank it up. Pitchers of Pimm’s Cup, bottles of sparkling wine, lots of beer, none of it cheap. It was quite the booze-up. If I ever go again (and I have to say that I’m not inclined to do so), I think I’d go completely over the top and opt for one of the expensive enclosures.

Ultimately, of course, it is just a horse race and you go there to bet on the ponies. When betting, you still have a choice between the parimutuel windows and the bookies on the track, who now have electronic odds boards, rather than the traditional chalk boards. I preferred the bookies, since it made the whole experience feel more like being in a Dick Francis novel. We won ￡200 on the second race and then proceeded to lose most of it, finishing slightly in the black. Since I had budgeted losing a couple hundred pounds, I felt like we came out way ahead. We skipped the last race in favor of beating the crush on the return trains.

All in all, it was fun and one of those really British experiences. It is hard to imagine any sort of event in America where you would see hundreds of men in morning suits and silk top hats and tens of thousands of women in fancy dresses and either hats or fascinators and not a single person wearing jeans or a tee shirt. It is sort of vestige of the class system, but it allows the hoi polloi to join in if they are willing to pony up for a ticket and get dressed up. This slight democratization of the event makes it less horrifying. Of course, the unwashed masses (including us) can’t go in the Royal Pavilion,  which is limited to those who are recommended somehow. A few more photos follow:

            

“Sunset at the Villa Thalia”: On Thursday night, we went to the National Theatre with Chris and Nancy and Kathy and Jim to see “Sunset at the Villa Thalia”. It is set on a Greek island in 1967 and then in 1976 for the second act. It is about a young British couple (an aspiring playwright and his actress wife), who are visited by an American couple. The American husband, Harvey, played superbly by Ben Miles (who NYC theatre fans may have seen as Cromwell in “Wolf Hall”) is force of nature, who you soon suspect is a CIA operative. He charms and bullies and cajoles everyone around him and ultimately convinces the young couple to buy the villa from the Greek family who are emigrating to Australia, really capitalizing somewhat on their desperation. On the one hand, this was a play about the relationships between these couples. But the characters, except for Harvey are not sufficiently developed for there to be real dramatic tension or compelling theatre. Elizabeth McGovern has moments as Harvey’s wife, but she is never allowed to be much but brainless and ditzy, which seems like a bit of a waste of her talents. Pippa Nixon has a few moments as the young actress/wife, but her character is mostly just strident and lacks much nuance. And poor Sam Crane, as the young playwright, has little to do as his character is an ineffectual cipher. The author tries to add some spice to all of this by setting it at the time of the coup in Greece and then returning in the second act with references to the overthrow of Allende. Harvey gets to make speeches about the importance of democracy and maintaining the world order and that sort of hot air (which no CIA operative would ever have said) and, while Miles is so great that he almost makes the speeches convincing, the key word in that last clause is “almost”. Pippa Nixon has a big speech attacking American foreign policy of the period, but it is all pretty obvious. The whole political subplot was both simplistic as political commentary and clumsily tied to the rest of the plot. By the end of the play, you were left wondering, “What was the point of all of that”. However, despite the weaknesses of the script, it was a pretty entertaining night of theatre, simply because Ben Miles and the rest of the cast squeezed whatever there was to get out of that script and the set and lighting were lovely.

Brexit: If you care anything about this issue, you have recently had the opportunity to read countless articles about it in the NY Times and probably other sources. (It would seem to be a great vehicle for John Oliver, but he hasn’t touched it as far as I can tell.) It is certainly the second most important vote that will occur in 2016. Right now, it is beginning to look like the “Leave” group will win, which would certainly be a short-term economic disaster for Britain and bad news generally for the world. It is all a result of a toxic blend of anti-immigrant racism, jingoistic nationalism and a conservative wish to return to days that have long since passed. (Sound a little like Trump?) In addition to causing a recession and a permanent shrinking of the economy here, Brexit could lead to the break-up of the United Kingdom, God only knows what in Europe and Ireland and will lead to the demise of David Cameron. It will set the stage for the vicious far-right wing of the Conservative Party to take control, with their agenda of finally eviscerating unions, privatizing and/or eliminating the Nation Health Service, lowering taxes on the rich,  dispensing with regulations, etc. It could be a very ugly period coming up and I think getting back to the US next Spring will look pretty good, assuming the American electorate doesn’t do the unthinkable.