Alex has been visiting the past week or so from Philadelphia. So I have been doing a lot a stuff with him and doing less painting and writing and New Unity stuff. I have also been distracted by doctor’s appointments and medical tests about my swollen left leg. It turned out to be blood clots and I am now on blood thinner medication. Not great news, but at least I know what it is and I’m being treated. The only real bad thing is that this means that I cannot fly long distance for three or four weeks, so I am going to miss accompanying Judie on her next big tour of the U.S., which starts in about a week. That trip includes a visit to see Hannah in Olympia, which is the only part of it that I am upset about not doing. Anyway, enough about my health, which I don’t like to write about.

White Hart Lane: White Hart Lane is the name of the stadium where the Tottenham Hot Spurs play. Alex has always wanted to go to a Premier League football (soccer) match and I managed to find tickets on Stub Hub for a game between Tottenham and Manchester City. (All the Premier League games are sold out, at least around London, so it was surprising to get tickets for a game, especially one between two top squads.) Manchester City came into the game undefeated under their new coach, Pep Guardiola, who they lured from Bayern Munich for a gigantic amount of money. (Man City is the richest team in the Premier League and also routinely buys all the best players, so they are a kind of international squad.) Tottenham is also very good, but the Spurs’ best player, Harry Kane, was injured for the match.

White Hart Lane turned out to be a relatively intimate stadium, holding 35,000 or so. It is being replaced by a big, new stadium, which is under construction next to it. I’m sure it makes economic sense and the amenities at the current stadium are a bit primitive, but I’m glad we got to experience what seemed to us to be more of the real thing. One of the things we noticed right away was all of the Korean fans. The Spurs have a forward, Son Heung-Min, who has recently been scoring a lot of big goals, especially with Kane out, and he has become a fan favorite. So there were lots of Korean (and probably other Asian) fans in attendance, many sporting Son jerseys. Our seats were in the corner, right near the goal line and seventeen rows up, so we had a great view of the action at our end, but couldn’t see one of the far corners.

We got there entirely too early since we had to pick up tickets and were expecting a lot more security than there was, but game time finally came and the stands filled up. As the game began, the stadium began singing a Spurs song to the tune of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”. We were thinking “Isn’t that cool” and then we figured out that we were seated in the part of the stadium where the most lunatic and loyal Tottenham supporters sat. The entire corner of the stadium we were in neither sat down or stopped singing (except to cheer or scream at the ref or the Man City players) for the entire rest of the game. It was deafening. I am certain that the players on the field couldn’t hear each other at all. And the fans didn’t have just one song. They had a whole repertoire and seemed to magically go from song to song in unison. Some were just things like “When the Spurs Go Marching In”, while others were tributes to individually players or the coach. There was a  subset of anti-Arsenal songs and they sang a few. (I assume this is something like Red Sox fans chanting “Yankees suck” even when the Yankees aren’t there.) All the songs were to popular tunes and, when I looked on line, I discovered there are 200 songs in the Tottenham fan’s catalog.. They kept singing the song for the teenage future superstar Dele Alli, since he had a great game, but Son is apparently too new to have his own song yet. (I hope it doesn’t turn out to be racist.) The game was very exciting. The Spurs dominated the favored City squad and won by a very convincing 2-0 score, which might have been worse but they missed a penalty kick. Both teams were in attack mode for the whole game. It appears that is Tottenham’s style and City fell behind early and were under so much pressure that they had to attack. Son is great and, if he isn’t already the biggest deal in Seoul, he will be shortly. In the end,though, it wasn’t the game that I’ll remember. It will be the experience of being surrounded by fans singing and bellowing so loud that it was actually blowing my hair.

“The Entertainer”: On Thursday night, we all went to see “The Entertainer”, the final production of Kenneth Branagh’s year-long series of plays at the Garrick Theater in the West End. The play, by John Osborne, may be best know as a vehicle for one of Lawrence Olivier’s greatest performances. It is the story of Archie Rice and his family. Archie is a failing Music Hall entertainer, in a time when the Music Halls are about to die. (There is also a side plot about the war in Suez–it is 1956–involving Archie’s two sons, which demonstrates the parallel Osbourne sees between the collapse of the Empire and the collapse of Music Halls.) As usual with Osborne plays, the characters are desperate and unhappy with a life of trying to make ends meet in an unfair social order. There are a number of scenes set in the Music Hall, in which Branagh is maniacally trying to entertain what you guess is a minuscule crowd, but his joke fall flat and he neither sings or dances all that well. (I suspect it is difficult to play a mediocre talent.) And then in the other scenes at Archie’s flat, the family just tears into each other. Gawn Grainger, who plays Archie’s dad (a legendary Music Hall performer who Archie cannot live up to), was especially memorable. But, typically, the entire ensemble of actors were terrific and it was fun to see Sophie McShera (Daisy in “Downton Abby”) do something very different. Branagh was wonderful, a big personality, gradually being beaten down by the new age and his own failings, but refusing to give up.

Ted and Wallace: Ted Hunter, a UUCM friend of ours, was in town this week. He works at the Arms and Armor section of the Metropolitan Museum in NYC and will become the Armorer for the Met when the current one retires later this year. It was lots of fun to see him and to have few beers at pub. He has encyclopedic knowledge of arms and armor and was in London to give a paper on the subject at a conference and to meet with his brethren in the field. He told us some good stories about armor in Britain. Apparently, the Royal Armor was moved from London to Leeds some time ago, apparently on the theory that it would revitalize tourism there. It hasn’t really, which he thinks is partly due to the fact that Leeds Castle is nowhere near Leeds, so that when people (like him) go to the more famous castle (which is this incredibly beautiful, historic castle, built on an island in Kent, by the town of Leeds), figuring to see the armor, they are disappointed because the armor is in the city of Leeds, in Yorkshire, which is many hours to the North.

Ted told us that the best armor in London is at The Wallace collection, where I had never been, so Alex and I had a day of art the next day. We started at the Royal Academy to see the Hockney portraits, which I was particularly interested to see again since I had started my own portrait series. I picked up a few things about painting faces, although I also learned that I have no hope in mimicking Hockney’s style which combines unexpected colors in a way I could never hope to do. We dropped by the Abstract Expressionism exhibit too, before walking over to the Wallace Collection to meet Judie. It is housed in a big mansion in Marleybone, once owned by Duke of Hertford (who I think were from the line of Seymours going back centuries and were, in any event rich aristocrats of long-standing). It was an amazing collection of arms and armor (as promised) and each room had several books on reading stands in which you could read more about the individual pieces. Very nice idea. There was also a substantial collection of paintings, including four Rembrandts, “The Laughing Cavalier” by Hals and a number of other impressive works from the 1650-1850 period. It was all accompanied by lots of Louis XIV sort of furniture and decorations and tons of other things that they collected. It is quite a place and you cannot see any of the art or armor anywhere else. When the Duchess of Hertford donated it to the State upon her death in 1897, she stipulated that none of its contents can leave the house.

I’ll leave the rest to another post. This is getting pretty long….