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.

“The Painkiller”: On Thursday night, we went back to the Garrick Theatre (with Linda) to see the Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company’s production of “The Painkiller”. It was hilarious. The play was adapted by its director, Sean Foley, from a farce by the French writer Francis Veber. It is set in two hotel rooms with a connecting door. In one is Dudley (played by Rob Brydon), a depressed photographer, in town to take pictures of a big trial across the street, who is planning to kill himself if he cannot convince his wife to return to him. In the other room is Ralph (played by Branagh), a hired killer who is there to assassinate the defendant in the trial as he arrives at the courthouse. What could go wrong? Well, pretty much everything in this wild farce. There the dialog is very funny and there is a large amount of truly brilliant slapstick humor. Branagh is constantly being hit by doors or other objects or kneed in the groin. At one point he is mistakenly given a shot of a narcotic (intended to calm down the suicidal Dudley) and has a stretch in which he is barely able to stand and slides down seats lands on the floor in a number of riotous ways. It all goes on at an appropriately breakneck pace, which accelerates when a policeman comes to ask about someone who was seen out on the ledge of Ralph’s room (one of Dudley’s suicide attempts) and the arrival of Dudley’s wife. The lunacy is punctuated by appearances by the hotel clerk (played by Mark Hadfield, who we had seen earlier in the year in “The Meeting” at Hampstead) who seems to arrive just as Dudley and Ralph have fallen in to a position of apparent sex. There is no point in trying to describe the action any further, since it is so antic and so much of the humor is pure slapstick. The leads were wonderful, as was Hadfield and rest of the cast. It is just great to go to the theatre once in while and laugh hysterically.

More on the Freemasons: So it turns out that those big briefcases that the masons were bringing to their big meeting (see the prior post) contained their aprons, which apparently you wouldn’t want to wear dirty or wrinkled to such an event. According the site for the Freemason’s Hall in London (I have to go to visit the museum and library some time):

Judie’s sister Linda arrived as Jane and Judy left on Tuesday and I spent Wednesday doing some London Stuff with her.

“The Caretaker”: We went to the Old Vic to see a production of “The Caretaker”. It is one of Harold Pinter’s earlier great plays, first performed in 1960 with Donald Pleasance and Alan Bates. It is a play about three men who are broken in various ways. It all takes place in a wreck of an attic festooned with junk. It begins as Aston, the tenant of this dump, brings a vagrant (Davies) back with him. The vagrant ends up staying there for some time. Aston has a threatening younger brother, Mike, who actually owns the place, who comes around periodically. Actually very little happens over almost three fascinating hours, over-layered with a feeling that something just dreadful will befall these guys. This is the kind of play that you can probably play in different ways. In this version, the humor is stressed, but only up to a point. Daniel Mays is just terrific as Aston, who  has a famous speech in which he talks about his time in an asylum, delivered in a masterful low-key way. (Pinter’s directorial instructions had been that Aston should be a man who has not had a conversation with any one for ten years and will not peak to anyone for twenty more when the play ends.) Mick, played by George MacKay, is also wonderful and is menacing just in the way he speaks and pauses and stares at Davies. He has some famous long riffs which he delivers in a stunning way. The play really revolves around Davies, who never leaves the stage. He is played by Timothy Spall (probably best known for playing Peter Pettigrew in the “Harry Potter”movies and J.M.W. Turner in the recent biopic). He plays him as a disgusting, smelly, selfish bum, who is simultaneously repulsive and appealing, funny and horrifying, dangerous and helpless. I thought it was an effective interpretation and it was certainly entertaining. It’s Pinter, so it is an odd and sometimes uncomfortable night out. But by the end, you are glad that you went, which I think is the essence of good theatre.

Sir John Soane’s Museum: This is a museum I had been meaning to go to and, since Linda wanted to go, I went along. John Soane was a well-known neo-classical architect in the the period 1780-1830. He was the youngest son of a bricklayer, but apprenticed to an architect and created himself. Much of his walth came from his wife’s uncle. He designed a great number of buildings in the neo-classical style (including the Bank of England) and believed that building in this style would cause Londoners to behave like the great Greek and Roman civilizations and lead to a sort of golden age. But his theory never really caught on and eventually the neo-classic style fell out of favor and many of his buildings were torn down, often replaced by neo-gothic structures, which Soane hated, (The neo-gothic architects had the own, similar theory that the gothic look would recall the piety of the middle ages and lead to a religious rebirth. It turns out that architecture can do many things, but it cannot change the behavior of men.) Anyway, over aperiod of years, Soane purchased three buildings at Lincoln Inn Fields and completely renovated them. The interior is designed in a unique and clever way. He is responsible for the design of art museums that brings in natural light through skylights, etc. and he uses these ideas to bring light into his house, even the basement. His picture room, which holds paintings by Hogarth and Canaletto and others, is relatively small but holds a large number of paintings by having a number of walls that swing out to reveal more artwork. Very clever. And he also collected all sorts of classical statuary and remnants, which are in a colonnade and in his study and other places. His oldest son died and his youngest was a gambler and a reprobate, so Soane decided to leave his homes and their contents to the people of England and the museum was created by a Act of Parliament shortly before his death. It is quite a place.

Freemasons: After that museum, Linda and I were walking toward Covent Garden when we saw a big building with Stars of David on the doors and a large crowd outside. It was a great big Art Deco building and it turned out to be the Freemason’s Grand Temple. Normally, we might have been able to go in (as I understand the interior is striking), but on Wednesday there seemed to be a big freemason’ enclave and literally countless older men in black suits were all converging on the place. There was camera crew there filming it. I looked it up later and it was the annual investiture of Grand Officers, a big ceremony for which tickets are required. (Since Freemasons are believed by conspiracy nuts to control the world secretly, I had been hoping that their meeting had some more interesting purpose–to decide how the Brexit vote would turn out or figure out what to do about Trump. So the stated purpose was disappointingly pedestrian, but, of course, who knows what they were really doing!?) Here are some shots of the guys in suits arriving, which don’t really do justice to the weirdness of it all. They were all carrying briefcases or bags that were a bit too large. Suspicious yet?

English Spring: As of yet, there has been little sign of anything I’d call spring. It is basically days struggling to get over 50 and night dropping below 40, with mostly cloudy days mixed with equal amounts of sun and rain. It’s not exactly depressing, but I am ready to put my L.L.Beans coat away. It is hard to imagine how bleak it must have been back when the air was incredibly polluted. There was actually a brief snow flurry today–first snow I’d seen all year here.

More Racist Comments from Boris: Not content to muck up the London mayoral election with a racist and anti-Muslim attack on Labour candidate Sadiq Khan, Boris and the “Leave” campaign did it again in responding to Obama’s support of the remain people. Incredibly, Johnson actually said that it was all because of Obama’s Kenyan heritage and resulting anti-British Empire upbringing (or something) that causes him to take the position, citing as proof that Obama had taken the bust of Churchill out of the Oval Office. (Obama coolly responded that he would think that most people would understand that he thought it appropriate to have bust of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in his office and that Churchill is well represented in the White House.) It is a kind of a minor tiff, but a sign that the “Leave” side are very concerned about the impact of Obama’s remarks, just as the attack on Khan is a sure sign that the Tories are going to lose the mayoral election. But the fact that they are pulling out the race card is disturbing. I had hoped that British politics was above American-style race-baiting. Nope.

Shakespeare on the Thames: Over the weekend, it was the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. (Actually, it is unlikely that anyone really know the exact day that he died, but one of the days this past week is the one that is accepted.) They set up 37 video screen along the south side of the Thames and each one had an excerpt of one of his plays. (One screen for each play and each video was around 8-10 minutes.) Jane and Judy went earlier than me and saw close to 25 of them. I had a New Unity meeting and only saw about eight or nine. The films were often taken from productions at the Globe, but a number of them were filmed on location. The “Hamlet” I saw was filmed in Elsinore (and had the soliloquies done in Greek Chorus fashion by five great actors) and the “Henry V” was filmed in Agincourt. All the little films were good or even great and it was a tremendous concept.The whole thing was really a lot of fun and there were pretty big crowds, given the crummy weather. I am watching “Twelfth Night”with Mark Rylance below.

New Painting: This one is based on a photo I took in Italy over a decade ago. I started it about a month ago and couldn’t finish it before we went to Copenhagen and America. And then when I got back, I wasn’t sure what to do to it, so I started another one. I think I like working on multiple paintings at the same time. It gives me something to do even if I am sick of one of them or just stuck. I keep thinking I might go back and add some stuff to this one or one of the earlier ones. I’m somewhat torn about this. I have little doubt that I could improve some of my earlier paintings, since I have taught myself better technique over the last six plus months. But I also think that the most interesting this about these paintings, as a group, is the progression from start to now, and, if I go back and fix up the earlier ones, that will be lost. So I guess I won’t.

Our visitors, Judy and Jane, took us to see “Funny Girl” last night. They had managed to get tickets, although it is already sold out for most of its run and opened to rave reviews. I had never seen it on stage, although I, of course, saw the movie (with Barbara Streisand and Omar Sharif). The success of the show depends on the central performance of the role of Fanny Brice, the part made Streisand a star. Sheridan Smith, an accomplished British actress, was marvelous in the part. They did not try to recreate Streisand’s performance and her Fanny is a bit less broad, a bit more human and certainly a bit less Jewish that the way Streisand played it. She is a smallish woman and they played that for humor by surrounding her with tall chorus girls and a tall Nicky Arnstein. Her comic timing was great and her voice was good. You always wonder if British performers will capture the American sound. In “Guys and Dolls”, the accents were certainly American, but they failed to capture the Damon Runyon cadence. It was kind of the same thing here. The accents were neutrally American, in the modern sense, but you would not think that they were mostly Jews from Brooklyn. But it really didn’t make that much of a difference, partly because the performances were so strong and partly because, unlike “Guys and Dolls” (especially the role of Adelaide), the humor did not rely on the accent. In the end, it was a little odd that Fanny et al. lost their Jewishness, but it didn’t spoil the show. There were certainly a few moments, particualr during the songs “People” “Don’t Rain on My Parade”, where I couldn’t help recall Streisand belting it out with her other-worldly voice. But Sheridan Smith didn’t bother to attempt to recreate that sound and gave them her own interpretation and touch. I was never crazy about Omar Sharif in the movie and Darius Campbell’s portrayal was infinitely better. And it wasn’t just because he is a platinum-selling singer with a lovely voice. He really gave you the feeling that his Nicky Arnstein really loved Fanny. The fact that his Arnstein is a likable gambler rather than Sharif’s shifty gangster makes their relationship more romantic and less doomed from the start. The show was wonderful and Sheridan Smith got the second standing ovation we have seen since we got here.

Seder shopping: This was a reminder that I am living in a secular country and that I am definitely not living in a US city. I decided that it might be nice to bring some Coconut macaroons to the New Unity seder and Andy asked me to bring horseradish and parsley and a lamb shank for the plate. The parsley was easy, but all of the local supermarkets sell their meat bone-free and encased in plastic. But we went out to dinner and I was able to order braised lamb shank and we put the bone in Judie’s backpack. The search for macaroons and horseradish was more problematic. It was a surprise, since not only is London an international city, but this was once the part of the city where Jews lived. But I would go to bakeries and grocery stores and almost no one had even heard of seders or Jewish-style macaroons (the French ones are easy to find). I did finally find a few macaroons when it occurred to me to go to Ottolenghi, a restaurant chain run by Israelis chefs. But they only had 4 or 5. I decided to try the Beigel Shop. The didn’t have macaroons and none of their many desserts were unleavened on Passover. They had at least heard of seders. I guess the fact that they spell bagel wrong should have been a clue. I never found any horseradish other than horseradish cream (the kind of thing you might put on a a roast beef sandwich or something). I even tried the Banglatown supermarket, which had a whole aisle of spices, some of which I’d never heard of, but no horseradish. (Rev. Andy did find horseradish in a store in Islington, so we had a complete seder plate.) It was a little weird to experience a Passover where no one seems to be aware that it is happening. And having it follow the un-Jewish “Funny Girl” sort of accentuated that. I probably should not have been surprised since this is such a secular place.

The Seder: This was the first Passover in over 20 years when we did not go a seder at the Rothbergs and we missed that continuity. But our Unitarian seder was very nice. It used a UUA Haggadah, which had all of the main elements of the traditional seder (glasses of wine, a shortened version of the exodus story, the plagues, the “Hillel sandwich”, etc.) and added some UU touches (ten modern plagues such as racism, homophobia and environmental degradation and added an orange to the seder plate the symbolize the quest for freedom by LGBT people). It capture the spirit of the seder ceremony in a UU sort of way and the food that everyone brought was great, even if it was all vegetarian. Judie’s traditional apple kugel might have been the best she has ever made.

Happy Birthday to Liz: It is the Queen’s 90th birthday today. Even though it is her actual birthday, it is not “The Queen’s Birthday” celebration and holiday, which doesn’t happen until June. I assume that there is some justification for this odd rule and I imagine I could look it up, but I prefer to regard it as a British oddity. I frankly don’t pay much attention to the Royal Family and it is not a big part of life here, except on holidays or birthdays like today’s, although I imagine that that there some upper crust types for whom the Royals are a central focus. In thinking about the Queen, I will say that she has been remarkably successful in finding the right balance between her utterly irrelevant government function and her completely mindless ceremonial function. I assume that she must have an opinion on what is going on and whether she thinks the current PM is an utter twit, but she never lets it show. And she patiently attends all kinds of stupid events, even though she really doesn’t have to because, after all, she is the Queen. But it is the willingness to appear at the opening of a butcher shop, while scrupulously expressing no opinion on anything of substance that has kept the monarchy a part of British society. She deserves a lot of credit for maintaining what is, at the very least, an important symbolic and tourist institution. Hers will be tough shoes to fill.

Back in Shoreditch: I was walking down Commercial Street today and the panhandler (I wonder what the British term is for him) always outside of Tesco said “Hello. I  haven’t seen you around. Been on vacation?” Oddly heart-warming. I wandered around Old Spitalfield’s Market and ended up at Wright’s Seafood, where I stopped for £1 a pop oysters and chatted with the French waitress I know there. Then it was on the the incredible French cheese store a few doors down. The cheese in Britain and Europe generally is much better than the cheese you get in the USA, mainly because they aren’t as worried about unlikely diseases, which causes America to adopt rules that kill flavor. Then it was home to chat with the concierge. On Saturday, I will be running the New Unity seder. I was worried that no one was signing up and asked for another e-mail blast. We are now closing in on 30 attendees counting kids. Apparently, they are like Montclair UUs and prefer to wait until the last minute to commit.

Visitors: Tomorrow, Judy Strachan and Jane Gaertner, UU Montclair friends, arrive for a visit. This will begin a stretch during which someone will be staying in our spare room every day until June 25th. I am looking forward to seeing everyone and to sharing our London life with them, but there are things about my new life (like painting and writing) that I don’t want to lose to being a host and tour guide. I will have to keep that balance in mind over the next two months.

Brexit is Getting Ugly: As the campaign toward the referendum proceeds, things are getting increasingly ugly and I anticipate that it will get worse. If this were happening in the US, there would several polls a week trying to forecast the vote and CNN would have innumerable talking heads analyzing the horse race. Thus far, the coverage has been less poll-driven here. To a surprising extent, the campaign is very personal, as it seems to be all about the popularity of David Cameron. He is the most significant politician in Britain and the leader of the “Remain” side. So the “Leave” people have concluded that their best strategy is to attack Cameron and diminish his credibility, even though, in most cases, he is the leader of their party. The whole “Panama Papers” contretemps last week (which was really about his father) actually had nothing to do with the facts (that he is the privileged son of a rich father) and everything to do with Brexit strategy. It is hard to see how Cameron survives all of this. If the “Leave” side wins, he is certainly dead, as that would be the ultimate rejection of him and his policy by the populace. But even if the “Remain” side prevails, Cameron will be stuck leading a party in which at least half (and possibly more) of Conservative MPs have spent the last six months trashing him (actually the British would say “rubbishing”) and it is hard to see how they could go back to accepting him as their leader. Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn and Labour are in the odd position of supporting Cameron, since they almost unanimously do not favor leaving the EU, which must kill them since, in all other respects, I am sure that they loathe him.

So, in the midst of all of this endless sturm und drang, Obama arrives tomorrow. He will say Happy Birthday to QE2, but his real purpose is to express his opinion on Brexit and to support Cameron and the “Remain” people. Precisely what he says is probably less important that the fact that he is making the statement. Obama is very popular here, probably more popular than any British leader. The “Leave” side, of course, has said the he should just butt out, which probably reflects their worry over the impact he might have. The only significant foreign leader to endorse the “Leave” side thus far is the repellant French fascist Marine Le Pin (who is threatening to come to the UK to campaign, undoubtedly to the horror of the “Leave”side), so you can see why they might not want to hear from leaders in other countries. I fully expect Angela Merkel and every other significant European leader to follow Obama.

And if you though the Brexit Campaign is getting ugly: You may recall that the London Mayoral election is in two or three weeks. Boris Johnson is stepping down (and plotting to depose Cameron) and, while there are many minor candidates, the Mayoral race is between Zac Goldsmith, the Conservative Party candidate and son of a billionaire, and Sadiq Kahn, the Labour Party candidate and Muslim son of a cab driver. I haven’t read much about polling in this race either, but you have to think that internal Tory Party polls must be dismal, because Goldsmith and the Conservatives have launched an overtly racist attack on Kahn, attempting (predictably) to link him with radical Islamists. Cameron even joined in on this stupidity during Question Time this week, which seems like an incredible mistake in the context of the whole Brexit struggle and can only be explained by some sort of internal Conservative Party political calculation. Cameron’s remarks in Parliament were met with the Labour MPs chanting “racist” (one of the things you have to love about the British system). Kahn and his supporters dismissed it all as “desperate dog whistling” (I’m not sure what it means, but I love it). There is real chance that this whole racist tactic will explode int he face of Goldsmith Cameron et al. (and it will serve them right if it does), as it turns out that the the alleged radical IS imam has appeared with Conservative candidates as well and was contacted by Goldsmith in the past, seeking his support.

Oh, I’m so glad I visited the USA

Yes, I’m so glad I visited the USA

Anything I want, they had it right there in the USA.

Friends: Of course, the main attraction of my visit was to reconnect and visit with all of our friends. And it was unbelievably gratifying to go to to the UU Congregation or the Legislative Ministry Annual Meeting or to friend’s houses or even my dentist’s office and be greeted as a conquering hero or something. That feeling of love pouring over me from my community is something I will never forget and was a reminder (which I really didn’t need) that our stay in London must be temporary. I am happy to be here and terribly glad for this opportunity, but our visit was a striking reminder of how much we had left behind.

They had it right there in the USA: A real part of the fun of the return visit was to experience various parts of American culture that I had missed here. A few of the cheap thrills:

• American appliances. Doing laundry in a real, functional washer and dryer was a ridiculous delight, after spending months trying to use the pathetic and useless machine in our flat. And it was nice to see a refrigerator larger than a big suitcase.
• Driving: I hadn’t driven a car since the end of August, other than a weekend in Italy in October, so it was fun to drive around North Carolina, New York and New Jersey. I have come to realize that I don’t really miss driving all that much and I am delighted that I don’t have a car in London. But being able to get somewhere relatively instantly is a nice feeling and it allowed me to visit friends more easily on this trip.
• Shopping: I did the tourist thing on this trip. Things like clothes and shoes and golf balls are quite expensive her in the UK, so I came to the USA with a half empty suitcase and proceeded to fill it with shirts, pants, suits and shoes. I had two Costco rebate coupons and went to Costco to spend them and came to the realization that there is very little at Costco that fits into a suitcase. So I ended up buying nice bottles of wine to bring with me when visiting friends.
• Grocery Stores. I know that they have big, American-style grocery stores in other parts of London. They are just too far away for me to shop there. So it was nice to be able to walk into a big grocery store with lots of fresh options.
• Old Places: Somehow, I expected more things to be different. But Corso 98, was the same for dinner and Tierny’s and Egan’s were unchanged. A few stores have closed and a few have opened. People I met who I didn’t know well often didn’t even realize I’d left.

Let’s Go Mets: I got to go to a Mets game with Alex and my fiend Harvey on Wednesday afternoon. We had the law firm seats, eight rows behind the visitor’s dugout and it was a beautiful, sunny spring day. The Mets, who weren’t hitting at all and had just lost four in a row to some lousy teams, beat the Marlins 2-1. That has started a streak where they’ve won five of six, easing the worry of Mets’ fans who are trained to expect the worst after years of heartbreak. They have the best team that they have had in thirty years and, in the absence of numerous key injuries, seem like a lock to be a playoff team. It will be painful to miss this season. I have MLB.TV, which would allow me to watch every game, but almost all of them start at midnight or later. People have suggested that I record them somehow and watch them the next day, but that really doesn’t interest me. I can see condensed games made up of each bit of action (so it is short), but then I miss the Mets announcers, and they are one of the joys in watching the games. Hopefully tis run of good teams will continue after we return next spring.

Montclair Politics: This is something that I care a little bit about and certainly know something about from my time on the Town Council. With the Town election coming up in May, it was a subject of discussion during my visit, but the main topic was why the current Council is running utterly unopposed. It isn’t like they have done a great job or done much of anything at all. They basically continued the plan that we put in place, which led to a decrease in the deficit. They have given in to developers repeatedly, leading to huge buildings at Vally and Bloomfield that are uglier than they needed to be. They have operated in secrecy and have tried to never take a position on anything. They gave up the long-time Council practice of seeking input from the community and barely even return calls or e-mails. It would be difficult to find a way to be less transparent than this Council. They appointed Sean Spiller to the Board of School Estimate, even though he had a grotesque conflict of interest. And, although the Mayor appoint the Board of Education members and the Council participates in approving their budget, they have acted like the Board of Ed is some alien body that they have never heard of. Their style of government is to avoid taking positions, avoid any form of leadership, avoid any input and to simply govern imperiously and paternalistically. One would think that there would be some reaction from the public at Council meetings or some questions raised in the Montclair Times (OK, I know the Montclair Times can barely cover an Easter Egg Hunt, so that may be unrealistic) and at the very least a challenge brought in this election. (It is hard to count Maureen Edelson as a real challenger to Sean Spiller, since she is an identified Republican leader in an overwhelmingly Democratic community. I don’t really agree with Maureen on any number of issues, but I’d still like to see her win, just to shake things up a little.) It is a bit depressing….