nickinshoreditch

Mea culpa: I am in something of a trough. I have not been writing frequently enough. It is partly because I feel guilty about posts that exceed 1500 words (as this one does). So I tend to cut them off, figuring that I’ll just put it in the next one. Of course, by the time I get around to the next one, I’ve got too much to write about and it is lost (if I even remember it). Some good thoughts lost. I could try to blame all of this on a persistent cold or the generally depressing environment of London in winter. But is more simple sloth. This sort of ennui has extended to my painting. I  have grown tired of my landscapes and feel like doing something different, although I have been not sure what. And I feel like I would like to try a different approach to portraits as well. When this happens, I go to museums, seeking inspiration from the masters.

Paris–Art and Food: Honestly, is there a better reason to go to Paris? Especially in January, when it is absolutely freezing? And you catch a cold as soon as you arrive? I had some memorable meals, two with Judie and two solo lunches. There were a bit pricey and utterly delicious. It is probably just as well we didn’t move to Paris (as was a possibility at one point early on the process). I would have ended up like that Monty Python character who explodes after a huge meal. What I ultimately found to be more interesting than the food was the people:

• One evening, Judie had one of dinners for clients, potential clients and friends. Someone cancelled, so I got to attend. It was an interesting and high-powered group. It was a great evening and a very long conversation. (We closed the restaurant.) The turning point of the evening was when Judie played one of her ice-breaking games. In this one, she asked everyone there to say the worst job they had ever had. It seems kind of simple, but after it was done, a number of the guests commented that French people would never play such a game, since it was unheard of to speak about failure in such a public way. They were all delighted in an odd way and the evening took off from there. We talked about ways to bring people together, religion, politics, why gift cards don’t work in France. On the latter subject, we were told that everyone in France can have bank account and a debit card very easily, so they either give a real gift or transfer cash. It is a different gift-giving culture.
• On our final day, I went to Bistro Volant for lunch. I’d read that it a classic bistro and it was near to our hotel, just off the Place Vendome. I discovered that Parisians eat lunch at 1:00. When I got there at noon, the place was empty, but there was only one table available. The food was delicious, of course. The sweetbreads were probably the best I’d ever had–crispy on the outside and meltingly soft in the middle. As the bistro filled up over the next 45 minutes, I noticed that a pretty big percentage of the clientele were businessmen. At least 2/3 of the diners were men in suits, all earnestly talking. There were four men next to me. One was an American who was giving them a talk about how his firm believed that Trump would impact business. It was an interesting view of the concern he is causing throughout the world. I can’t say that I learned much that I didn’t already know from reading the NY Times, but I suppose French businessmen don’t read the Times. He was sitting four or five feet from me and I had to resist the temptation to correct him or to say “You are not taking the possibility of him blundering into a war or the turmoil his administration will cause or the real possibility of endless scandals and litigation.” But I didn’t.

I went to three museums while I was there. I started at the Museé D’Orsay, which might be my favorite museum in the world. Every museum has Renoirs, since he was so prolific, especially towards the end of his life. But the D’Orsay has astonishingly great ones, which reminds you of how great he was and why everyone ran out to buy the mediocre nudes he churned out when he was old. There is the best group of Manets anywhere. I could go on and on. And of course, the museum itself is gorgeous. Usually, when I go to a museum, I take pictures of paintings that inspire me or give an idea of a new style that I might use. Unfortunately, on the way over, my phone decided to turn itself off in the middle of the Tuilleries and I could not get it to turn back on. I was afraid it had given up the ghost, but when I got back to the hotel and plugged it in, it revived. The slight sense of panic I felt at the thought that my phone was permanently dead was a reminder of just how much I rely on it, and not simply when I am traveling.

The next day, I went to the Pompidou Center, moving up the timeline of art to the Twentieth Century and beyond. I hadn’t been there since the 1980s. It’s its 40th anniversary this year. They have an enormous collection and can only show a tiny portion of it at any one time. (The have the largest Kandinsky and Rouault collections in the world. Both gifts from the artists’ families.) This particular exhibition seemed to concentrate on Russian artists and the impact of social and political movements in the 20th Century on art. There was a lot done by artists associated with the French Communist Party in the period from the 1930s to 1950s. (Picasso was member for while.) Lots of red and black. It wasn’t always breathtaking art, but it was interesting. The same general theme continued in their exhibit of new acquisitions. Lots of Russians. American artists were not terribly well represented, other than one room with a Rothko and a Jasper Johns etc. The one exception was a big exhibit devoted to “The Genius of Cy Twombly”. I feel odd saying this, but can someone explain to me just what it is that makes Twombly a genius? I didn’t find the vast majority of his works interesting at all. And I don’t know how anyone could call them beautiful. (We are actually seeing the play “Art” next week, which explores this very question.) Twombly was buddies with Robert Rauschenberg, whose art I also don’t “get”, although at least with Rauschenberg there is more going on. (Sometimes too much.) I have to assume that both men were consummate salesmen, who could come up with raps about the meaning of their pieces that were sufficiently compelling or mysterious or profound or timely or whatever, that collectors were convinced to pay millions for their works. Incidentally, if you ever go to the Pompidou Center, have lunch at the restaurant on the top floor. It is not cheap, but it has phenomenal views of Paris. Unfortunately, Paris was cold and foggy/hazy and generally miserable the entire time we were there, so while the views were nice, they were not worth photographing.

Our last day, after my lunch at Bistro Volant, I went to the L’Orangerie. The highlight of the museum and the reason that you have to visit it are two huge rooms containing eight gigantic Monet paintings from the Water Lily series. It is pretty astonishing to see so many of them in one place. (MoMA has (had?) that one lovely Water Lily room, but this is a multiple of that.) Below those galleries is a wonderful exhibit from the collection of Paul Guillaume, a Parisian art dealer who donated his collection to the museum. It has a representaive slection of the Impressionists and a large number of Modiglianis (his friend and client) and Soutine (another client). Chaim Soutine was someone I’d never really heard of and his paintings are very striking–somewhere at the intersection of impressionism and surrealism. The big temporary exhibit there was one about painting in America in the 1930s. It begins with Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” (apparently the first time it has been outside the US). There is a lot of Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, some Edward Hopper, lots of WPA artists and works from the Harlem Renaissance. It was an interesting view of the period and had works by artists who normally don’t get much attention. It spent a lot of time explaining American history of the era, which I didn’t really need to read. I think it is coming to the Royal Academy in London next, so I may see it again.

Things I Will Miss About London: I get e-mails all the time from various theaters announcing new plays or casting decisions. Today it was the Old Vic. Two days ago, it was the National Theatre. It is one the many reasons we see so many plays. It is painful to get these notices and realize that we won’t be around to see the plays.  I suppose we can (and will) become members of the Public and BAM and New York Theater Workshop and Roundabout and maybe Lincoln Center and others, when we return to NYC, but I am going to miss London theatre terribly.

Judie’s knee: After hobbling around in pain for the last month or so, Judie finally had an MRI and discovered that there really is something quite wrong with her knee. (Spontaneous osteonecrosis, which may not be quite as bad as it sounds.) The only way to treat it is to stay off it. Her doctor told her to take a taxi home. Of course, the problem was that Judie was scheduled to take a business trip to Washington, D.C. the next day (with a side jaunt to Tarboro to visit her mother). The doctor advised that she use a wheelchair at the airport. When she gets back, we are going to Lisbon the next weekend with Andrea and Peter. I have no idea how that is going to work. At some point in late February, we are thinking of going to a beach resort, where she can just sit and relax.

Visa Issues: K&L Gates hired a solicitor who specializes in immigration issues to deal with our visas. We were only able to get a six month visa last summer, because Judie had just started at the firm. We were initially told that we didn’t need to worry since we were leaving in April. Then she changed her mind and decided that we did need new visas. By this time, it was going to be a very expensive expedited version, which would require us to return to the US to be fingerprinted. (You might wonder why we couldn’t do it here or at the US Embassy. It is just the rules.) So what they decided is that, when we return from Lisbon (when our visas will run out in two days), we are to come in on a tourist visa. We were told to buy our plane tickets home on 3 April and plan a vacation or two (thus the plan to take a resort holiday). Judie is officially no longer working in the London office and she will not be able to work for UK clients. The plan is complicated by the upcoming visits of Terry Cummings on 22 April and the 10-day visit of Paul Weeks in early March. The fact that Judie can get a note from her doctor about her knee may be helpful. I can’t picture us being deported or denied entry, but there is a danger that this whole thing won’t work.

More to say, but this is already too long. Hopefully, I can remember to put it in the next post. Inspired by my museum visits, it is time to paint.

The Women’s March: The highlight of last week came on Sunday when we joined countless thousands of people in London for the Women’s March. I was the organizing force behind the turnout from our New Unity congregation, making announcements, figuring out a meeting place (the Animals in War Memorial on the edge of Hyde Park) and getting everyone formed up to march together. Going in, we had a picture of us all marching along with banners and signs and we believed it would be a good opportunity for a little free publicity for us. So we had a new banner made, which you can see in the photos below. We also had reusable signs made, but they never turned up. I thought we had a banner saying “Birthplace of Feminism” (in reference to Mary Wollstonecraft), but we couldn’t find it. Anyway, 25-30 congregation members met up with us at the Memorial and we added some miscellaneous Unitarians who were attracted by our Standing on the Side of Love shirts. So the organizing worked very well as we set off on the two block walk to Grosvenor Square, where the march to Trafalgar Square was scheduled to start.

Unfortunately, we never really got to march. As I understand was the case at venues around the world, the march organizers were apparently overwhelmed by the size of the turnout. Grosvenor Square was shoulder-to-shoulder and no one could go anywhere. After being there about an hour and half, we had made it half way around the square and were nowhere near starting the two-mile march. But we all had fun together, reading all of the signs and talking to the people around us. Judie and our friend, Susan, had both brought these combination cane/seat things for the march, since their knees are killing them. You can see them in the photo below. We all sang songs. “We Shall Overcome” and the UU standby “We Are a Gentle Angry People” (with improvised lyrics like “We Are Nasty Nasty Women” and the like). We weren’t moving but we were spirited. At about 1:30 Judie, Susan and I decided we’d had enough (and we were meeting people in an hour), so we left the march by getting out a side street. Judie and Susan were resting on their devices when we saw the rest of our group walking down the same street with the banner. They ended up walking along with a large number of people who had given up on the main march route, but they never reached Trafalgar. It was just as well, since I heard the next day from someone who had made it there that when he and his wife arrived it was so packed that no one could enter. (The official police capacity of Trafalgar in 20,000 and the CrowdSize app says it is 35,000. But there were lots of people who, like us, gave up along the way or left when they couldn’t get in there. A total of 50,000-100,000 marchers does not seem unreasonable.)

South Africa and Julia Child: On the same day as the march, we had made arrangements to meet our friends, Jane and Paul Jee, at the British Museum and then have them over to our flat for dinner. They wanted to see the special exhibition there about South African art, having gone on a two-week trip to South Africa in early December. It was a nice, relatively small exhibit, which combined ancient art and more recent native art, with recent works by current artists which drew on the history of art there. The exhibit sort of followed South African history, which for the last 400 years was most about how unspeakably awful the Boers, but more importantly the English, treated the local populace (which in the case of the English include the Boers). It is almost impossible to overstate the genocidal viciousness of the English during their long colonial period.

On the way back, Paul directed us to two wonderful pubs for drinks. The first was The Princess Louise, which featured a late Victorian interior of etched glass and dark wood and a number of little glass booths around a central bar. See below. You could imagine seeing it in a castle or a museum, but it was pub. The next one was the Cittie of York, another very old pub that has gone by different names over the centuries. Its interior had a very high ceiling and it felt like Henry VIII might come in after hunting at any moment.

The plans for the march and museum made trying to figure out dinner a bit problematic. (and they had invited us over to eat too often to go out to a restaurant and possibly end up fighting over a check.) So it had to be something that could be mostly made ahead of time. I ended up making the Julia Child’s Boeuf Bourguignon recipe from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. It is perhaps her classic recipe (which is said to have led to the publication of the book), which I’d made before. This was by far the best one I’d ever made and, as a matter fact, was the best one I’d ever tasted anywhere. It may have been the fact that I used really nice meat or that I used a bottle of good Malbec or that I made it the night before and it got a chance to sit and soak up flavors. I served it with the classic sautéed mushroom and braised onions and sliced, boiled baby potatoes and a really nice Aloxe Corton. Heavenly.

The Moth in London: Earlier in the week, we went to a story slam in Shoreditch, which was a part of the NPR show, “The Moth”. Alex gave it to us as a Christmas present. They have these all over the US and they now have them in London once a month in Rich Mix, an arts center on Bethnal Green Road, less than ten minutes from our flat. Each event has a theme. The one this time was “Voyage”. When you arrive, you can put your name in a hat to be called to tell a story that can be no longer than six minutes. There are audience judges who rate each storyteller. Judie and both put our names in. I suspect that in an event like this in New York, there would have been 30 or more names, but the actual stories limited to 10 people. So I doubted that we would get picked. But I did! (We found out later that there were only fifteen volunteers.) I got up and told a story about water communions and the time that Hannah fell into the Nile trying to get some Nile River water to bring home. She was six years old and when she fell in she completely disappeared from view–much to my shock. As adrenaline rushes were coursing through my veins and I was about to race the three or four steps to the water’s edge to dive in, the boatman who had given us a tour of the lake was walking by and casually reached into the water and pulled Hannah out, depositing her, sputtering, sobbing and soaked on the shore, still clutching her film canister of water. It was a good story with a nice arc and a beginning that linked up with the end. (The majority of the other story tellers really did something closer to a stand-up routine about travel, rather than a real story.) I thought my story was pretty good, but I wasn’t close to winning. The judges who were all under 30 (like 95%+ of the crowd) seemed to vote for the ones they thought were funniest, rather than whether they were a coherent stories on the topic. But I’m not really complaining. It was fun. At the end, they had Judie and the other four folks who weren’t picked, get up and tell the first line of their story. Judie’s would have been about the importance of toilet paper when she was a student in Senegal. It was an entertaining evening and I’m glad we discovered the arts center. We’ll try to return.

The P.M. is desperate to such up to Donald: British governments, especially the Conservative ones, all go on and on about the UK’s “special relationship” with the US and its president. I’m not sure that US Presidents ever had the same reciprocal warm and fuzzy feeling. As Teresa May has declared in favor of a “Hard Brexit” that will separate Britain from Europe, she needs to find a way to show that this policy is not simply screwing the UK economy by cutting off free access to its largest market. Thus, she hopes that Trump will be her lifeline and that they can develop some sort of trading partnership as soon as possible (which may legally not be for more than two years). Trump said nice things about Britain in a newspaper interview conducted by a creepily sycophantic Michael Gove (Cameron’s former Legal Minister and Brexiteer, who destroyed his career–at least for now–when he double crossed Boris Johnson after Cameron quit). Of course, it is extremely doubtful that Trump knew what he was saying or meant anything by it, but hopes a running high at No 10 Downing Street. May is racing over to visit the Donald shortly.

Health Updates: I don’t ever want this blog to evolve into a health commentary, but having mentioned stuff in the past, it seems fair to give an occasional update. Judie’s knee is not getting any better and she is going in for an MRI shortly. The blot clot in my leg (DVT) is basically resolved and I’ll be off blood thinners in a month or so.

Visa Problems: When we got our new visas last summer after Judie changed firms and our old visas automatically expired, they were good for six months. So they expire on the 9th of February. We had raised this with the K&L Gates immigration lawyer months ago and she advised us that there was no need to get an extension. Now she has changed her mind and we both need to get extensions. The problem is that (a) it will now be much more expensive since we are doing it at the last minute and (b) we have to apply from the US and have our fingerprints retaken there. It is idiotic, but there is not much we can do. Judie was already scheduled to go the D.C. in about a week, so it may be possible for her to get her visa at the same time. In theory, I could go along, but the solicitor hasn’t confirmed that either of us could actually get a visa at the end of January. It is all sort of up in the air. I doubt we will be deported or anything, but it is a bit of a mess.

Something We’ll Miss About London: Free museums and reasonably priced theatre tickets. I was looking at Broadway ticket prices the other day and was horrified.

Something We Won’t Miss About London: How dark it is in the winter time. Between the seemingly perpetual overcast and the shorter days this far North, it is just depressing.

It has been a while since I have posted. I find it somewhat difficult to write on a phone and I am usually too distracted when we travel back to the States to do anything. This last trip was no exception and it didn’t help that I caught a cold upon arriving. It was a nice trip, if generally uneventful. We stayed at an airbnb in Montclair. It was perfectly nice, although it was a little hard to fit all five of us there comfortably, which gave Hannah an easy excuse to spend most nights staying with friends. So we saw a bit less of her that we had hoped, but (perhaps because of that?) she was in a great mood whenever we did see her.

A few highlights of our trip:

• We went to the UU Montclair Christmas Eve service. It was great seeing everyone and Judie got to sing in the choir. The kids were with us and it was a pleasant evening. The service itself was a bit too Christian for me. This was probably thanks to our Interim Minister, whose style I am not crazy about. But he’s only the Interim and will be gone in six months or so and I know he is supposed to shake things up and challenge us to take a look at how we are doing things. It was certainly a change of pace from Charlie’s services. But the tone of the service was to religious for me and made me uncomfortable.
• I made J. Sheekey’s fish pie for dinner on Christmas Eve. It turned out great. I think the kids were a little skeptical, but ended up enjoying it. The next day, I made a Rib Roast, with wild mushrooms. The airbnb had a nice kitchen that was well-equipped.
• The airbnb host allowed us to hold our Yankee Swap party there and we had a big crowd (in a space that was a little too small for all of us). It was the usual good time. The hot gift was a “squatty potty”.
• We went to the Metropolitan Opera on Boxing Day and saw “The Magic Flute”. It was the Julie Tamor production, so it was visually spectacular, with lots of puppetry and great costumes. It was an abridged version, presumably to make it more child friendly for the holidays, so we got out in less than two hours. But we missed out on a lot of Mozart, although we got to hear two great arias by the Queen of the Night.
• Lots of dinners with friends.

Back in London: Being “on the road” is wearing, even when you are on the road in your home town. There was something very odd about renting a place and staying within minutes of our house. Not unpleasant, just weird. It was nice to get back to London and to our flat. I do think that I am beginning to feel the end coming, which is simultaneously sad and exciting. I find myself thinking about the move to come and the logistics of moving back into our house. At the same time, I keep thinking of things I really need to do before we leave (Visit Scandinavia? A day at the Old Bailey? More Theatre, naturally! Windsor Castle? Question Time at the House of Commons?) The list goes on, as time flies. We have tentatively planned our good-bye party for Saturday, 1 April (I’ve come to prefer the English way of expressing dates) at Super Tuscan, our favorite restaurant.

New Year’s Eve: We got back late on the 30th, so we had plenty of time to recover for New Year’s Eve night. We decided to skip trying to get to the Thames to see the fireworks near Big Ben and the London Eye. It is a mob scene that is so bad that they now require tickets to get any where near the River. We saw the fireworks last year on our boat excursion with the family, so we felt free to skip it this time.

We began  our evening by going to Ba Shan, a wonderful Hunan restaurant in Chinatown/Soho. Preserved duck eggs with chilis, fried prawns, cute little pork rolls, soft-shell crabs in a wok with tons of dried peppers, lamb in a sauce covered with fresh peppers, bok choy cooked with garlic and rice. I don’t know how anyone can have that meal and eat all of the peppers without spontaneously combusting. We picked most of them out and still had burning lips and tongues.

After dinner, we walked over to the Donmar Warehouse near Covent Garden to see Bernard Shaw’s “St. Joan”, starring the incredible Gemma Arterton. (We had seen her last spring in “Nell Gwynn” and I decided that I had to see her in this. I think I must have lucked out on returned tickets, since we go the last two tickets and they were literally in the center of the front row!) Judie was not sure about seeing a tragedy on New Year’s Eve, but Gemma did not disappoint. The play opens with Joan outside a castle and the lord’s men inside trying to convince him to see her, saying “there is something special about her”. He finally lets her in and when Arterton enters, there is something very special about her. She was transfixing from the moment she appeared on stage. The entire cast (the rest are all men) is superior, with some great performances. I especially liked Fisayo Akinade as a charmingly aware and effeminate Dauphin, Rory Keenan as The Inquisitor, and Elliot Levy as Cauchon, but as usual, it is hard to pick anyone out as the acting was so uniformly great. However, Arterton was just mesmerizing whenever she was on stage. She carries it all before her. It was made even more amazing by being so close. It is a performance I won’t soon forget.

The production itself was interesting. The scenes were all set in corporate board rooms, rather than the courts in a 15th century palace, with the scenes linked by “BBC newscasts”. (The first detailed the raise in egg futures since the hens had stopped laying, a problem that is miraculously solved when Baudricourt agrees to send Joan to see the Dauphin and go on to the siege of Orleans.) It made the point that Shaw’s play has real modern themes, without going overboard on it. (Interesting fact I learned: Shaw did not like to be referred to as “George”.) “St. Joan” was written shortly after she was canonized in 1920 (nearly 500 years after her death–the only saint ever killed by the Church itself and probably one of the few to be un-excommunicated 25 years after her death) and shortly after women’s suffrage was passed. It is sometimes referred to as Shaw’s only tragedy, although it also often said that there are not real villains in the play. And it is actually true that the Church and the various other protagonists were stuck in the middle of a French civil war and a war against the English and were struggling to do the “right thing”, at least from their viewpoint. (But I would have to say that the vile Warwick, the Englishman who arranges Joan’s betrayal, capture and ultimate death, seems pretty damn evil to me.) There is a fascinating scene (that is classic Shaw) in which Warwick and Cauchon, the French prelate, discuss the problems presented by Joan. Cauchon and the Church are concerned that Joan is bypassing them and speaking directly with God. (Only the Church is allowed to do that.) She is an existential threat to the Church’s power. At the same time, Joan is the first “Nationalist”, in that she claims that the king has the divine right to rule and that nationhood is supreme. If it is nation and king, rather than the aristocratic rule that resulted from the Magna Carta, this presents an existential threat to the control of the land and money by the English aristocracy. Warwick plans to spend a great deal of money to capture Joan and turn her over to Cauchon, but wants to be sure that she will be burned at the stake. Cauchon, as a cleric, cannot directly agree to that, but by the end of the scene, Joan’s fate is sealed. So the play is very much about men conspiring to get rid of a powerful  and threatening woman. It might have been interesting to set it in political party offices, since there is an interesting parallel to Hillary Clinton.

We got out after the show and Judie’s knee, which had been bothering her for weeks, was now stiff and very painful. We figured we could just take a taxi home, but discovered that all of London north of the Thames was closed to traffic from Westminster to Blackfriars. So there we were in the Soho/Covent Garden area, completely without traffic for once. It was kind of magical and it would have been fun to experience it. But Judie really couldn’t walk, so we found a pedicab to drive us to where the cars were allowed to go, finally caught a taxi and made it home in plenty of time to ring in the New Year. We went out on the terrace at midnight, but couldn’t see much. But we could certainly hear constant, deafening explosions for the next 10-15 minutes, while we watched the main event on TV. They really do the fireworks celebration well here in London. New York can’t really match it at all, since their ceremony is in Times Square, which is unsuited for a massive fireworks display.

Happy New Year!

We are going back to the States for the holidays, leaving next Tuesday. We are looking forward to it. It will likely be my last trip back until we move back for good in early April. So I haven’t got too much time to catch up on this blog and finish up paintings in progress.

A New Portrait: Once again, I can’t say that this portrait looks exactly like the subject. The mouth isn’t quite right and he looks older than he should. And I had a lot of trouble with the ears. Despite that, I am fairly pleased with the progress I’m making doing these portraits. I may break down and take a class in it at some point because I suspect there are tricks in painting faces that would make it easier and better. It probably wont be until I get back to Montclair though, since that would be contrary to my ongoing artistic experiment, i.e. to see what happens if I paint without any lessons at all. The new painting follows:

“Mary Stuart”: Last Wednesday was another of the New Unity Women’s Group meetings at our flat, so I had to vacate the premises. It’s better than trying to hide upstairs and it gives me an excuse to do something. So I decided to go see “Mary Stuart” at the Almeida Theatre in Islington. It’s blocks from New Unity’s second building and it is where I saw “Oil” with Chris A. last month. It is a play originally written by Friedrich Schiller in 1800 and adapted by the director, Robert Icke. One thing I’ve noticed in the last few months is that many plays make a point in the programs of drawing parallels between Brexit and whatever they are doing. For example, while I suppose that almost all of Shakespeare’s plays have political references, one has to strain to find Brexit in “King Lear” (and who really needs to ultimately when you have superstar actors playing the role). But, actually in this case, I could see it. The play is about the period when Mary Stuart, driven from Scotland and seeking sanctuary from Queen Elizabeth, is being held in jail and has been sentenced to death following a questionable trial. Mary is eloquently arguing for her life and freedom to jailers and ministers who have neither the power or inclination to grant her request. And Elizabeth has no desire to execute Mary, but is under great pressure from the public who hate Mary for being Catholic and suspect her of plotting to overthrow Elizabeth. She is being pushed by court intrigue and public opinion to do things that she doesn’t want to do. That has the whiff of Brexit for me. Ultimately Mary dies when the execution warrant, which Elizabeth means to hold onto, is accidentally delivered (and Mary has a hard Brexit.) One of the more unique things about the play was the beginning when the two main actors Juliet Stevenson and Lia Williams join the cast on stage. They are dressed the same. Lia Williams said “heads” and one of the actors flipped a coin, which determined that she would be playing Mary that night. Both of them were wonderful. The first act is more about Mary and the second more about Elizabeth. Juliet Stevenson is an actor who you would recognize immediately, either from countless BBC roles or for movies like “Bend it Like Beckham”. The supporting cast was typically first-rate. It probably would have been a good thing for the women’s group to go to.

“Wild Honey”: You know that you have become a real theatre geek when you see two different adaptation of Chekhov’s “Platonov” in six weeks. The first one was an adaptation by David Hare at the National Theatre to start the memorable three Chekhov plays in one day marathon. The one we saw last Friday at the Hampstead Theatre is an earlier adaptation by Michael Frayn. (Frayn is fluent in Russian, having been trained by the National Service during the Cold War. The only use he made of it was doing things like translating this play.) They were very different in their approaches. The original, Chekhov’s first play, only discovered after his death, is well over six hours long. So there is plenty to choose from. The Frayn version simply eliminates one of the subplots and characters in the Hare adaptation. He also stresses the farcical nature of the play and spends much less time on the financial problems of Anna Petrova and the other characters or Chekhov’s observations about country living, preferring to concentrate on the humor. Platonov dies completely differently at the end. Platonov was played by Geoffrey Streatfield, who had played the miserable title character, Ivanov, in the earlier Chekhov marathon. His portrayal was very funny, as were the rest of the cast. It was a production that was going for laughs rather than Russian drama and misery. This Anna Petrovna was far less elegant and more of a party girl (which actually made her infatuation with Platonov more believable). An enjoyable evening. Who know Chekhov could be so funny?

Diana (a friend of Judie’s from high school) and here husband Gene have been staying with us. We used to see a lot of them back when we both lived in Brooklyn, a somewhat frighteningly long time ago. They moved off to Seattle years ago and we have rarely seen them since, so it has been fun having them visit.

Brexit Appeal: This week is the argument of the government’s appeal of the High Court decision holding that Parliamentary approval is needed to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, thereby starting the process of leaving the EU. It’s a case of major constitutional importance, so I was anxious to watch the proceedings, both as an interested citizen and as a former appellate lawyer.

Imagine my surprise when it turned out that the appellate proceeding turned out to be a cross between a Cricket Test Match and a particularly endless law school lecture. While the U.S. Supreme Court would have given the parties the usual hour for oral argument (or maybe two since it is such an important case), this proceeding is scheduled for four days. I mean, I know this is a major constitutional issue–but four days!? The lawyers for the government droned on for the entire first day and into the second. It was like one of those especially slow part of a cricket match in which neither side seems to be interested in doing much. But the second day picked, as the judges began to question James Eadie QC (whose is “Treasury Devil”, the term for the main lawyer for the Treasury) and poke holes in the government position. He fumbled about in a rather unimpressive way and the two government lawyers who followed him were worse.

But then Lord Pannick QC took the stage to argue against the government and in favor of parliamentary power. (To continue the cricket analogy, after a desultory first inning, the government declared and a great batsman took the pitch for their opponents.) He is apparently a legal superstar and, over next four or five hours, proceeded to prove it. He has a manner of speaking and explaining matters that makes everything he says seem completely reasonable. (Of course, it is easier when you have won below and have really good arguments.) He had the judges in the palm of his hand and it was a pleasure to watch him work. This is complicated legal matter, tying together the unwritten constitution, the prerogative rights passed down to the ministers from the monarchy, the interpretation of treaties and the laws enacting them and the application of common law and case law. Lord Pannick wove it all together brilliantly.

There were still other issues to be argued as I write this. Since certain Parliamentary powers were supposed to have been devolved to the legislatures of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, don’t they get a say in this? And how about the recent Scottish referendum? And if the whole Brexit thing impacts the Good Friday Accords which settled “the Troubles” in Northern Ireland, how does that factor in? This is just the tip of the iceberg of messy issues that Brexit will engender.

But Brexit appears to be an inexorable thing, something like a lava flow. It almost certainly cannot be stopped, but is there a way to limit the damage that it could easily cause? In the middle of the Court hearing, Labour forced a Parliamentary debate on May’s refusal to reveal anything to them (or anyone else). She reacted by agreeing to provide a “plan” if Parliament agreed that Article 50 would be invoked by the end of March. (I’m betting that the plan won’t contain much.) Since this was just a motion and not an act of Parliament, which Lord Pannick’s argument would require, it doesn’t completely answer the Court case. But is does make it seem pretty irrelevant.

Four plays in Four Days: It all began last Thursday when we went to “Cymbeline”, which wrote about in my prior post. On Friday night, we went to the West End to see “Nice Fish”, a play created by Mark Rylance, based on the poems of Louis Jenkins. It is set on a frozen lake in Minnesota, where Ron (Rylance) and Erik (Jim Lichtscheidl) are ice fishing. The play is sort of about the two guy and about ice fishing, but it really very philosophical and about the nature of life in general. It is directed by Rylance’s wife, Clare Van Kampen. They are a superstar couple and it will be fun to see what they do in the future. (She is writing a screenplay of her amazing play, “Farinelli and the King”, which we saw about a year ago.) “Nice Fish” was originally produced by the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis and the cast, which is largely drawn from members of that company, was great. It is an absolutely lovely little play, with language so enjoyable that we bought a copy of the script on the way out.

On Saturday night, we wen tot the National Theatre with Diana and Gene to see their production of “Peter Pan”. This was the J.M Barrie play, not the musical. One major change that they made from the usual staging was to make Mrs Darling turn in Captain Hook, rather than having the husband morph into the role. And they made no effort to hide the wires and guys working the system that make Peter et al. fly about. (The changed “fairy dust” to “fairy string”.) So it was fascinating to see the guys moving into place as the next flying interval approached. There were lots of mainly upper class looking kids all dressed up with their parents in the audience, which was sort of sweet. (I wonder if working class kids get to go to weekday matinees, perhaps with their schools?) The programme had a special kid-friendly design, which was clever. It was all very nice, without exactly knocking your socks off. The most memorable thing about it, other than the staging, was the performance of Anna Francolini as Mrs. Darling/Hook. She was deliciously evil and the way she was swallowed by the crocodile was great theatre. Finally, an interesting factoid: London has one of the original children’s hospitals, now called the Great Ormond Hospital, which was supported by Barrie (and Dickens and Queen Victoria). Barrie ultimately gave the hospital the copyright to “Peter Pan”in 1929 and Parliament amended the Copyright Act in 1988 to provide that the “Peter Pan”copyright would never expire. So every performance of the play anywhere in the world assists sick children.

On Sunday afternoon, we went with Diane and Gene to see David Bowie’s “Lazarus”. I had seen it a month earlier when Chris was visiting. It’s still good and Michael C. Hall is still wonderful. The music is great, especially if you like Bowie’s sound. I found the theme of death and trying to deal with and find death more overwhelming this time. A nice, Bowie-like way to check out? It is a bit of a strange and violent production and I wonder if it will just end up being an oddity–a sort of footnote or coda on Bowie’s career. Or might it have some staying power as a work of theater? It isn’t really set in any time, so it won’t become dated in the way that “Rent” or “Hair” or countless other things have. I guess time will have to tell.

Judie and I were back in the States for ten days around the Thanksgiving holidays. We are returning for good sometime around the end of March and the trip was an affirmation of why this is a good thing.

We have a very comfortable life here in London. For me in particular, my routine of writing, painting, exploring, going to theatre and museums, vacationing and working with the people at New Unity is quite satisfying. I don’t miss having a car and we live in a great neighborhood and in a very nice flat. I truly enjoy walking around the neighborhood, going to the markets, eating the street food and generally sightseeing. Livin’ is pretty damn easy.

But returning to Montclair was a reminder that there is much that I am missing while living across the Pond. What it comes down to is community. The evening we arrived in New Jersey, we went to the Annual Auction at the UU Congregation, an event I had run for about ten years and then helped to run for five more. I was wonderful seeing all of our friends, who were excited and surprised to see us. Judie and I did really feel like returning heroes, which was incredibly gratifying. And I just kept running into people I knew, either while walking down the street or going to pick up coffee or standing in line to get bagels. This, of course, virtually never happens to me in London and it is really nice to be in a location where there are connections everywhere you look. We got to stay with Ivy and Debbie and have lunch with Peter and Andrea and then dinner with Karen & Jerry and Bob & Karen. And then we went to Boston for Thanksgiving and got to see family and many of my lifelong friends. We really got to wallow in love and affection for a week. We will never get those sort of feelings here.

For me, probably more that for Judie, there is another dimension to all of this. In London, I am not even a small fish in a big pond. I am more like plankton, except in the little fish bowl that is New Unity. Judie is more recognized through her work and the connections she is making in legal and business circles here. So for me, it was nice to return to a place where I have at least some level of gravitas as a congregational leader, former councilman and serial volunteer for many causes. It is a feeling that I rarely experience in London and the recognition felt good.

We returned to London, where Judie’s sister Linda and her friend Chris were already at our flat. The next day was my birthday and we went to the Clove Club, a spectacular restaurant located in a part of Shoreditch Town Hall, a 10 minute walk. It was quite a meal, comparable to going to Per Se (only half the price). Very attentive service and a delicious multi-course meal. The menu is below:

It is impossible to pick out the most delicious of these dishes. The most memorable was probably the one that started with a glass of 1908 Medeira. We drank that (amazingly layered tastes and a fabulous nose), while the wine steward told us about the house that made it. We left a little in our glasses and he poured a warm consommé of duck, morel and ginger over it. We also ordered the wine pairing. Judie got the regular one and I go the premier one, so we ended up tasting 20 wines while we were at it. When it was all over, almost three hours later, we blissfully walked home. You can’t do that in Montclair.

The next evening, it was another walk, this time a 20 minute stroll to the Barbican Theatre to see the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of “Cymbeline”. It is one of Shakespeare’s last plays and is rarely performed. It is also one of his few plays that is not based on another story (which he then retells incomparably better than the original). The plot is pretty convoluted. It centers around Innogen, a princess whose two siblings were stolen in infancy. She has displeased Queen Cymbeline (the production changes the king to a queen and the Queen Mother to the Duke) by marrying Posthumus, a commoner, rather than the Duke’s son, Cloten. Her husband is banished and she eventually has to flee as well, dressed as a boy, when Posthumus is fooled in to thinking that she has been unfaithful and tries to have here killed. She is pursued by the vengeful Cloten. In the meantime, in a wonderful parallel to Brexit, Cymbeline and the Duke decide that Britain doesn’t need to be part of the Roman Empire and refuse to pay taxes, causing a war. There are battle scenes, Posthumus returns, Cloten is beheaded by one of the stolen children, now grown, who Innogen unknowingly meets in the forest before taking a draft that makes her appear dead. I’ve left out at least one whole subplot and various twist and turns. There is a pretty implausible denouement in the final scene in which all is revealed and everyone lives happily ever after (except the headless Cloten and the evil Duke). The performances were wonderful, especially Bethan Cullinane as Innogen and Marcus Griffiths as Cloten. We had actually seen much of the cast in “King Lear” a week earlier. There was original music accompanying the play and some clever bits of staging. There is a kind of hilarious scene when Innogen wakes from appearing dead and finds herself lying next to the headless Cloten, dressed in Posthumus’ clothes (too complicated to explain here). It was a bit like the “Romeo and Juliet’ scene on acid. The whole thing was extremely enjoyable, if typically long. So long, in fact, that we had to walk back to the flat to get some food since most of the restaurants in that area were closing.

So the past two weeks was a period in which I was reminded that my heart is in Montclair and that it will be easy to move back home. But at the same time, I was reminded how wonderful it is to live in London. We mean to enjoy the next four months of this experience and look forward to our return to Montclair and to many visits to London.