A New Painting: I feel like I have been working on this one forever. Of course, I actually had to redo the building completely at one point and I left it over the holidays for two weeks, so I really has been sitting in the kitchen for quite a while. The subject is yet another view from the Isle of Skye. I have lots of lovely subjects from there, but I need to find new subjects for landscapes, etc. I’m getting sick of the mainly green palette. I have had some problems with this one. First, the building wasn’t right and then the writing on it was crooked, so I had to start that part over. And I was never able to get the bottom left and center right. It is all very busy and the green algae on the stream coming out from under the distillery was impossible to capture. There are lots of layers down there. I finally decided that it finally looks OK and that I am really sick of it. Not one of my best efforts, but they can’t all turn out well, I guess. I’m sure that famous artists have had canvasses that they just throw away in disgust. (Probably not Picasso, who would just sell it for lots of money.) I’m not quite to that point with this one and it may be that I’ll go back at some point and see if I can improve it, but, at least for now, I am done with it. Here it is:

“This House”: Last Wednesday was another meeting of Judie’s Women’s Group in the flat, so I had to vacate. This has turned into my evening to go to the theatre by myself, trying to see plays that I don’t think will appeal to Judie that much. This time, I picked “This House”, playing at the Garrick Theatre in the West End, following an initial run at the National Theatre. It is very political play, set in the offices of the Whips of the Labour and Conservative Parties in the late 1970’s. This was the period before Thatcher became PM and Labor had tenuous control of the government, requiring them to constantly make sure that their MPs showed up for the votes and trying to bring over the votes of the various minor parties. It was real inside Parliamentary politics, which I found fascinating. For example, one of the subplots involved the tradition of “pairing”. This happens when an MP is ill or away on government business. The whips meet and such an MP is paired with an MP of the other party, thus cancelling their votes. As a result of a dispute during the play, the Conservatives stop the practice and the Labour whips have to go to great efforts to get their members in to vote. One very sick member is simply moved into a bed in an office. This invokes another Parliamentary tradition, “nodding through”, in which the vote of a member in the building but too ill to appear is counted anyway as a courtesy. This particular member is eventually sent home and, in the climactic scene, the Labour party is faced with a vote of no confidence which could end their government. They need the vote of this terribly sick guy. But they realize that calling him in to vote would probably kill him decide that this is where they have to draw the line. (They had previously drawn the line at nothing in struggling to retain power.) Labour loses the motion by that one vote, an election is called as a result and Thatcher is elected PM, as the play ends. The play is not about policy or the important ministers. It is all behind-the-scenes maneuvering and the characters are really appealing in a ruthless sort of way. The stars are really the Deputy Whips, who do most of the dirty work. The Conservative side is exactly the sort of upper crust types that you’d expect. Nathaniel Parker (Inspector Lindley on the TV mysteries and Henry VII in “Wolf Hall” on Broadway) plays the Deputy Whip and Malcolm Sinclair (a fabulous actor who is great at playing snotty upper crust types and who we already had seen in “The Meeting” and in “Show Boat”) was the Whip. The Labour side were appropriately working class blokes. Steffan Rhodri was brilliant as the Deputy Clerk. Phil Daniels was a wonderfully Cockney Whip in the first act. When he was forced to resign, the new Whip was played by Kevin Doyle (Mr. Moseley in “Downton Abbey”). Another great character on the Labour side was a young woman that they added to the team, played by Lauren O’Neill (who we saw in “Reasons to be Happy”) as even tougher than the men. This is “One of the Things I Will Miss about London” (you’ll be seeing this a lot in the coming months): not just seeing great actors, but seeing the same actors over and over in different parts.

“Sleeping Beauty”: When Diane and Gene were visiting up before Christmas, they made a point of going to see a “panto”, which is a bit of an English tradition. We had never seen one. So, on Saturday, we went to one. It was the last weekend for Christmas pantos and we went to the Hackney Empire, what appears to be an old Music Hall theatre in diverse, working class Hackney (see photo below). It boasts one of the more famous pantos in London, a new one of which has been created and directed by the same woman each year for nearly 20 years. A panto is short for pantomime, but it is not really a pantomime. It is a form of family holiday entertainment, that includes music, big production numbers, comedians, traditionally including one dressed in drag, often a pie throwing scene, and lots of bantering with the audience. This version of Sleeping Beaty only loosely followed the plot, which was notably changed so that her nanny wakes her with the kiss and she becomes a warrior princess who goes to rescue the prince, who has been kidnapped by the evil witch. (The witch and her minions were all Caribbean, which reflects the demographics of Hackney.) The evil witch and Sleeping Beauty were played by talented women, with great big voices and the other star was the nanny, dressed in drag and played by Gavin Spokes, who we’d seen playing Nicely Nicely in “Guys and Dolls”. There was a long string of Brexit jokes included in the show, notably a song sung by the Nanny and the King called “Never Ask the People What They Want”. At the end the Nanny comes out in an outrageous dress that is half Union Jack and half EU flag. My favorite Brexit joke from the show was when the King announces that he is trying out a new court jester. He is asked “What happened to the old court jester?” and he answers “He is the new Foreign Secretary” (a fairly hilarious reference to Boris Johnson). The Nanny does all sorts of stuff with the audience. The best was when she went down to the stalls and picked out a hunky looking guy in the front and says he is not looking well and sprays him in the face with his special nanny elixer. He gives the spray bottle to the poor guys date and periodically through the show, stops everything and says “You are not looking well, Kieran. Please spray him in the face for me” and the guy’s date gleefully sprays him. A great running gag. The show ends with the Nanny coming out and reading out birthday wishes to kids in the audience, a joint sing-along and a big final number. Great fun.

I think that I will make the following a running theme in the rest of the blog, appearing at the end of each one.

One of the Things We Will Miss About London: We will miss getting to walk over to the fitness club in the morning (or in Judie’s case recently, hobbling), going through our routines and then stopping at the local conveyer belt sushi restaurant for lunch afterwards.

One of the Things I Won’t Miss About London: The British, with one notable exception, don’t seem to invite people to visit them in the homes. Except for Paul and Jane Jee and a Bryan Cave Goodby Party, the only people we have been invited to visit are various American expats. Is this shyness? Is it some sort of house shame? Is it the fact that people seem to meet at pubs? I am not sure, but it has impeded our ability to become close friends with people here. I will say that it is a trait that the Brits appear to have lost on the voyage to Australia.