Rich and Poor

After yesterday, I was all set to once again see a couple of plays. But John, strangely enough, felt like he did not want to see more than one play today. Instead, perhaps because it was a pleasant, sunny day, he wanted to go out to Hampstead. For any of you who are not regulars to London, Hampstead is one of the wealthiest section of the city. It just a plain little village for centuries, but after the plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of 1666 wealthy Londoners began to move here to be out of, yet close to, the city. A few decades later, a doctor claimed healing powers for a spring there and it became a fashionable spa town. By the late nineteenth century, after a rail line linked it it with central London, it became the affluent suburban community it remains. 

Yet it has also been one of those affluent suburbs that has always appealed to an arty, literary crowd. It seemed like just about every other house had one of those London County Council historical markers. 

Just to the north of the center of Hampstead lies Hampstead Heath. A heath, I learned from doing a little research, is a shrub land area with sandy, acidic soils. Some heaths occur naturally, while others are the result of human activities such as cutting forests for grazing land. I am not sure which kind of heath Hampstead Heath is. References to Hampstead Heath occur as far back as the Domesday Book, and at one time the monks of Westminster Abbey owned the rights to the land. 

Today it is a large public park, though there are portions of it that are in private hands. John and I were not up to exploring every part of the park. We just wandered through a bit of it and found ourselves, completely by accident, in Hidden Hill Gardens. These gardens, dominated by a huge pergola, were once part of the estate of Inverforth House, but are now in public hands. 

The gardens were originally built when Inverforth House was owned by William Lever, a poor boy from Manchester who made a fortune selling soap. He discovered a way to make soap more cheaply and effectively by using vegetable oil instead of beef tallow. With his brother James he established Lever Brothers, the manufacturer of, among other products, "Lux Toilet Soap." In the 1930s, Lever Brothers sponsored a weekly show where current movies were turned into radio dramas. It was called "Lux Radio Theater" and John loves to listen to episodes of it - there's about 800 of them on YouTube - as he falls asleep each night. Isn't it amazing how things connect?

In the garden, I snapped a picture of a robin. The European Robin is a completely different bird from the larger American bird of the same name. And I think they are much cuter. 

After spending a good bit of time trying to figure out a way to get out of Hidden Hill Gardens without going back the way we had entered, John and I made it to North End Way, one of the streets that run through Hampstead Heath. We saw The Old Bull and Bush Tavern, a public house that proudly announced it dated back to 1721. 

It had an outdoor patio, and we were hungry. Lunch was in order, and, I am pleased to say, it was quite a good one. Afterwards, we did not feel like walking back to the Underground station on the high street, so we took an Uber back to Leicester Square. 

In the evening we went to see the Aaron Sorkin version of To Kill a Mockingbird. Late summer is not the best time to go to London to see theater. Most of what is on at this point are the big musicals that have been running for decades like Les Miserable, Lion King, or Phantom. We had no desire to revisit any of those and what was new largely seemed pretty lame. We thought about the revival of Anything Goes, but Sutton Foster had left the production and I know just about every line of that play. So, we settled on Mockingbird. 

This version of the story follows Harper Lee's story fairly closely, but the dialogue and the sensibility are distinctly those of Sorkin. I have never been a fan of his work - I found The West Wing intolerably smug and irritating - and this play did not turn me into an admirer. He casts adult actors in the roles of the children. According to the reviews I read, this was supposedly because they were reflecting on the events from a later time in their lives. I did not particularly see that. 

Atticus had to be made less of a hero here, particularly after the publication of Go Set a Watchman. 

And the Ewalls, not particularly likeable in the book, have to be made even more vile because in Sorkin's imagination they are the incarnation of the Trump voter. I am not sorry I went to see the play, but like so much contemporary drama it had a preachy quality about it that is the antithesis of art to me. 

It was late when the play was finally done. John and I wandered down Old Compton Street for a while being jostled by the crowds. We finally stopped at a Japanese robata joint on Wardour Street. 

Tomorrow we leave London to visit our friends in Hampshire. 

Two Plays, a Museum, a Concert, and some Laundry

I usually plan our trips well in advance and research all the possible places to stay and things to do weeks and weeks ahead of our travel. But I was not sure until about two weeks before we actually left if we were really going to go or would have to postpone our trip. So I had not been willing to make any hotel commitments in London until I was sure we were actually going to be there. 

About three days ago, I decided I had to find something. And I was quite excited when I discovered a studio apartment for rent just off Leicester Square. I immediately reserved it. But as soon as the confirmation email came, my heart sank. "The flats are located over three floors of the building," it read. "There is no lift." I wanted to immediately wanted to cancel it because John has difficulty with stairs. But there were no refunds. 

And indeed, once we had arrived, I figured out that our unit was indeed on what the British call the third floor and what we Americans would call the fourth floor. It is set back a bit above the roofline here so you cannot even see it from the street. 

John was apprehensive. He thought the neighborhood was perfect and the building was charming, but he had no idea if he could manage all those stairs. 

As it turns out, he has recovered a great deal of strength since his heart surgery and he managed to get up the stairs without too much difficulty. 

This morning I left our apartment early to take some clothes over to the nearest place I could find offering wash-and-fold service. It had the wonderful name of the Boswell Laundrette. I had images of people sipping tea and reading Life of Johnson as they awaited the end of the spin cycle. As it turned out, the reality was far more prosaic. 

The laundry was near Russell Square, about a mile from where we were staying, so it took me about an hour to drop the laundry off and walk back. When I was almost there, I called John. He told me that he had walked around the block to the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square. I joined him there. 

I had been to this museum a number of times, so I just visited some old friends like this one by Monet

and this one by Turner. 

John likes pictures that tell stories. He wondered how long you can keep an expression on your face after you head has been cut off.

Leaving the museum, he wanted to stop in at Saint Martin in the Fields. To our surprise, there something that was a cross between a concert and a service going on. The music, drawn from various composers, were all settings of the eucharistic hymns of Thomas Aquinas. The singers were brilliant. We had to endure some commentary by Sam Wells, the vicar, formerly of Duke Divinity School, who clearly could not grasp Catholic theology. 

Before he went to the museum, John had bought some theater tickets at the TKTS booth. In the afternoon, we went to see Life of Pi, an adaptation of the best-selling book. I was not rude enough, or maybe courageous enough, to take my own pictures during the play, so this is a publicity picture I found on Google. This is a scene at the beginning where Pi is exploring different religions. 

 

The big attraction of the play is the use of full-size puppets for the various animals, particularly the tiger. This really was quite well done. 

I was not a big fan of the book, and in the end I was not moved by the play, either. Still, the staging was fantastic. It was exactly the sort of thing that you can only do in London or New York with theaters specially adapted for this specific play. 

In the evening, we went to see The Mousetrap. This play has been on stage in London since 1952. We have been too sophisticated to go see if for forty years, but we decided that we should finally just check it off the list. As it turned out, it was a fun evening. 

It was a busy day for two old guys, but a really happy one. 

Not so Easy Jet

This was one of our tougher days. Even though the hotel was less than half a mile to the airport main entrance, we still took a cab as we had bulky luggage and John has medical conditions. The drop off point, however, was still not exactly close to the airport departure area. I wondered what somebody with more challenges than John would have done. Nevertheless, we made it to the airport in what seemed to be more than enough time. I felt like things were going smoothly. We picked up our boarding pass and deposited our luggage. We then went to the office of "special assistance" so that John could have help getting through security and to the gate. We waited there. And we waited there. And we waited some more. Almost nobody spoke to us, and when we finally managed to get someone's attention, he seemed to suggest that we should have come earlier if we needed help. But a young man finally came with a wheelchair and efficiently moved us through security. He was great and I tipped him generously. 

As it turned out, we had plenty of time as the plane was delayed by close to an hour. EasyJet is often called "Squeezy Jet" in the UK as they shove as many people as possible on each plane. If you have ever flown Frontier or Jet Blue, you have the basic idea. Poor John was crammed into a tiny seat with his knees somewhere around his navel. Despite being so uncomfortable, he somehow managed to fall asleep. 

He woke up just before we landed at Gatwick. There was a man waiting there with a wheelchair to help him, and he took John down to baggage claim. While we were waiting for our bags - a process that took over thirty minutes - John discovered that his phone was missing. We immediately figured out that John must have dropped it as he was exiting the plane. We also knew that we had exited from the secure area of the airport and that there was no way we could go back to get it. I figured we had lost it forever.

It took almost 45 minutes for the baggage to arrive. We went over to the EasyJet check-in desk to ask about lost and found. The people there seem befuddled by the question as if nobody had ever left anything on a plane before. One woman made a couple of phone calls, and then told us that yes, a phone had been found on our plane. We asked where and when we could pick it up. She was not sure, but told us to wait in the assistance area and it would be delivered there. 

So we went there and waited. And waited. And waited some more. I finally told John I was going to go back to EasyJet and ask again. I had the same confused expressions from several of the people at the desk there until one woman, apparently a supervisor, seemed almost embarrassed by the situation and decided to get involved. She made a couple phone calls and asked a guy named Gavin to come and deliver the phone to her. It took about a half hour more, but I finally had the phone in my hand. John was so relieved when he saw it!

But by this time we had spent at least an extra three hours in Gatwick. And by the time we caught the train to Victoria Station and a cab from the station to the little studio apartment I had rented for us in Leicester Square, it was late afternoon and we were both exhausted by the ordeal. So we just decided to skip even attempting to go to a play today and we just went out for dinner in Soho. 

As usual, London's Chinatown was crowded and festive.

We had dinner at a good Vietnamese restaurant and then strolled back to get a good sleep. We will be proper tourists tomorrow.

St Andrews

We spent last night at Rufflets, a small hotel outside of Saint Andrews much beloved of professional golfers who come to play at the famous "Old Course" in the city. It's house in an old mansion just outside of town. 

Our room is in one of the two towers. If you look carefully at the picture, you can see John in the window. 

The interior of the hotel, where I should have taken more pictures, was perfect. But the grounds definitely showed the effects of the summer drought. The grass had turned brown and many of the perennials looked like they should be on horticultural life support. But the overall layout in different rooms, separated by walls or hedges, was still rather elegant. 

After we had breakfast and checked out, we headed into Saint Andrews. As the guidebooks had warned, it was not easy to find a parking place. But after driving around a couple times I finally scored a spot and we set off to explore the old town on foot. It is a charming old university city, even on a cold gray day. As usual, John was better prepared for the weather than I was. 

Our first stop was the remains of the old cathedral. While in some places in Scotland churches and abbeys were spared the vicious iconoclasm of John Knox and the Scottish Reformation, the great cathedral, the largest in Scotland, was sacked and burned by a mob and then allowed to completely fall into ruin. Very little is left now except a few walls. 

Most of the stones of the building were taken away and reused as building material around the town. The empty site was then used as a graveyard. 

Most of the graves date from the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Many of the people commemorated died quite young, and the graves are filled with lachrymose sentiments about the shortness of life and the hope of a better one in heaven. But There was one more modern one I found with a distinctly secular theme. 

John and I left the cathedral to explore some of the campus of the university. Saint Andrews is, I believe, the oldest of the Scottish universities and for a long time was its most prestigious. In recent years, though, many Scottish students have preferred the livelier atmosphere of Edinburgh or Glasgow, and Saint Andrews had to work hard to attract students. It quite effectively marketed itself to American kids who wanted to have the experience of being at a British university. And then after Prince William went to Saint Andrews and met Kate Middleton there, well suddenly admission to Saint Andrews became very selective indeed. 

John and I found a small museum devoted to the history of the of the university. We initially planned to just politely pretend to look at the exhibits so it was not too obvious we were really there to just use the bathroom. But we actually found the museum quite interesting and spent a fair amount of time there. Saint Andrews is famous for the red gowns that the undergraduates wear. This, it turns out, was initially about making sure that tavern keepers knew who was a student and would refuse to sell them alcohol. I rather doubt that was all that successful a strategy. 

From the roof of the museum you can look across the water towards the gold course, traditionally considered the place where golf was invented. It looked like just a flat, bare field to me. 

We walked back to the car. Along the way, we passed by Saint Salvator's College, the oldest of the residential colleges there. 

From Saint Andrews we drove about an hour to Edinburgh. We have an early plane tomorrow for London, so I decided we would just stay at the airport Hilton. It is hardly Rufflets, but all I want is to get to the airport on time tomorrow. I did not want to drive into Edinburgh, so I left the car at the hotel and we took an Uber into the city to have dinner. I picked an interesting restaurant from one of the guidebooks, and discovered after we had been dropped off that it had not survived the draconian Scottish COVID lockdowns. We took another Uber over to Princes Street. In the gardens there, we saw a lovely floral display to commemorate the Jubilee. 

Much less charming by far were the piles of trash everywhere. There is currently a garbage strike is Edinburgh and some other Scottish cities. The filth and stench in places were almost overwhelming. Even apart from that, I began to unfavorably compare Edinburgh to Glasgow. In Scotland's second city, it seemed like they had scrubbed every building of the layers of centuries of coal smoke. It glistened, at least in the nice sections where we were. But all the buildings in the historic center of Edinburgh were still coated with black soot which reinforced the sense of dirtiness. 

Anyhow, tomorrow we are off to London! 

Culloden

We rather liked the Palace Hotel even though it clearly needed a lot of work. But I have to say that it has won the award for the absolutely the worst breakfast I have ever had in the United Kingdom ... ever. And that includes many visits to these islands over the past forty years. Before we drove away, we had one sight which had been closed the day before, Inverness Cathedral. This was the first cathedral built in Great Britain since the Reformation. It belongs to the Scottish Episcopal Church.

The interior is not really all the grand. There are dozens of larger and more impressive churches in New York or Chicago. 

Really, the only interesting thing in there were these little knit mouse dolls scattered in points around the cathedral designed, I guess, to make the building more interesting and accessible to children. And they were a fun touch. Here was the mouse bishop on the bishop's chair. 

And here were the mice presenting little mice for baptism. John wondered if Mr. Mouse wondered why one of his kids looked a little different. But no, these are Scottish Episcopalians and I am sure Mrs. Mouse did nothing unrespectable with the plumber. 

After we left town, we stopped for a bit in a shopping center where John picked up some socks and stuff like that. Then we went off towards Culloden Moor, the site of the brutal defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Highland clans who supported him. 

I have been interested in the Battle of Culloden ever since I was a kid. I was in seventh or eighth grade in Ohio and our local library showed films on Friday afternoons. My friends and I usually stopped by on our way home. One of the few I remember was Peter Watkin's 1964 documentary recreation of the battle. So when I figured out that our Highland Drive was going to take us by the battlefield, I knew we had to stop there. 

It was a gray cold day and that made the battlefield even more melancholy. 

We had a great guide who walked us around the field explaining the background of the conflict, the movement of the troops, and the course of the fighting. The actual fighting began when the Jacobites, that is the supporters of Charlie, fired a canon shot that landed on the roof of this cottage. 

The highlanders were no match for the better trained and armed government troops. Notice I wrote "government troops" here and not "English." In fact, Scottish loyalties were badly divided and many of the soldiers who fought against the Jacobite and in support of King George II were also Scots. In less than an hour, the royal forces had decisively won. Hundreds of the highlanders died on the field, and there was absolutely no mercy shown to any of the survivors or their supporters. 

A century later, a Scot placed these grave markers on the field. But, as our guide pointed out, these in no sense actually mark real mass graves. But they do commemorate the clans who actually participated and died. 

Just as we were leaving the battle site, my eye caught sight of this one. I almost stopped breathing when I saw it. 

This man was one of my ancestors and he died here at Culloden. And perhaps that set in motion events that would later lead to my great grandfather emigrating to Canada. 

It was a long drive from Culloden to St. Andrews. We are staying at a really fabulous hotel here, one of my big splurges of the trip. I will show some pictures in tomorrow's post. For today, I am content to leave it on the more somber note. 

 

Loch Ness and Inverness

We left Glencoe fairly early after having a uninspiring breakfast at the bed and breakfast. The checkout time was officially at ten o'clock, but our landlady was knocking on the door at ten minutes before that telling us that she needed to clean the room. I had no desire to stay longer. 

From Glencoe we headed northeast along what is known as the Great Glen of Scotland. The valley is one of those places on earth where it is easy to discern the cracks in the surface of the earth. The fault that underlies the sixty odd miles of the Glen, known as the Great Glen fault, splits the highlands in half with the Northwest Highlands on one side and the Grampian Mountains on the other. About two thirds of the fault is composed of a chain of lakes, Loch Ness being the largest and deepest. 

At the beginning of the 19th century, Scottish engineers constructed a canal to link these lakes to each other and to the sea on either side of the country. The Caledonian Canal, as it came to be called, allowed ships to not only save time when traveling from one side of Scotland to the other, but also to avoid the treacherous passage by the Orkney Islands at the tip of the highlands. 

We stopped at Fort Augustus where the Caledonian Canal meets Loch Ness. It's a cute little town, but it was absolutely overrun with tourists from every spot in the world. 

The reason for this popularity is not the canal, though it is picturesque enough.

No, this is all about "Nessie," the Loch Ness monster. People from around the world have all heard about Nessie and the locals run cruises on the lake where tourists hope that they will actually catch a shot of the elusive creature. So far, nobody has, of course. But while they wait for their boats they can buy Nessie souvenirs and eat Loch Ness themed snacks. 

After a short stop here, we continued on towards our stop for the evening, Inverness. This was a comparatively small town until completion of the Caledonian Canal when it suddenly became the second most important port on the North Sea. Most of the buildings in the city date from the Victorian period, perhaps most famously the fake castle on the hill behind John. 

We are staying at the Palace Hotel directly across the River Ness from the castle. You can identify it from the turrets in the picture below. 

It was a fairly cool afternoon, and John and I found a walking tour in one of our guide books. It started at the clock tower which still dominates the skyline. 

The city hall or "town house" is just across the street. It is a grand bit of Victoriana, isn't it?

There was a kid dressed in a kilt, playing a bagpipe, busking for tourist pounds. 

On the building across the street from the Town Hall, we discovered a couple tablets with various quotations from Scripture, all warning of immanent punishment for sinful behavior. 

The guidebook informed us that a disgruntled resident, unhappy that some of the city councilors drank, put these quotes up to warn them of the dangers of hell fire that awaited them as a result of their tippling. 

At the conclusion of our walking tour we came to the "Old Kirk", the only pre-Reformation church building in Inverness. The walking guide told us that after the route of the Jacobite forces at Culloden, soldiers who had somehow escaped death on the battlefield were summarily shot to death here. 

After having dinner at a Turkish restaurant, we walked home across the "Shaking Bridge," a nineteenth century pedestrian walkway. 

We took home a few leftovers from the restaurant. Back at the hotel, we had a particularly aggressive visitor who demanded a share of the food.