London AGAIN

Do we ever stop going to London on the weekend? So old. But, amazingly, there's always new stuff to see.

We've been meaning to go down for the last few weekends to visit our relatives and we didn't have any other plans this weekend because we thought it was Easter weekend until a few days ago (we seriously did - we were like, "Grace's calendar that she bought in Paris for cheap must have been on sale because it's inaccurate and lists holidays at the wrong time." It wasn't until I googled "Easter 2007" that we learned the real date.). For the real Easter (which is definitely next weekend) we're going to Bournemouth to be with Grace's relatives.

Anway, another one of our friends was also in London this weekend visiting his girlfriend, so we had twice the people to see.

We overslept and still, amazingly, caught the 9:30 train to London (I had to bike as fast as I could to stand in line for tickets and then we got on 30 seconds before it left). In London we dropped out stuff off at my relatives, played with the baby and headed over to the Theatre district to grab lunch, meet our friends and try to get tickets to the Blue Man Group. The weather was the nicest it's been yet in London, really sunny and warm.

So Grace and I grabbed lunch at this Indian deli where the guy behind the counter was delighted to see us. Seriously, it was like serving customers just made his day. We knew it was a good choice because the Scissor Sisters' song "I Don't Feel Like Dancing" was playing. Grace was more than tapping her foot to that infectious song and the guy behind the counter said, "Yes, dance, why not? It's sunny!" with a big smile on his face. So things were off with a bang.

We were early so we went in to see about cheap walk up tickets to the Blue Man Group. We couldn't get the student discount because we didn't have ISIC or NUS student identity cards, but there were some 20 pound tickets available. Unfortunately there were only 2 available for the matinee and we couldn't really go at any other time. We told him we would think about it. We came back and asked about the nine o'clock show, but there were only expensive tickets available. So we left. Then we came back and asked about Sunday's show, but again, no luck. Our friends arrived and we went back in one more time to think about going to the 6 o'clock show. We really didn't want to because that was the only time we could see a lot of our relatives. Anyway, apparently our willingness to walk away forced the ticket guy into a tight spot because he called us back with an offer to sell us four expensive seats to the matinee for the 20 pound price. We jumped on the deal.

With the show not starting for two hours we went on a walk around covent garden in the nice weather. The area is not a garden really but a big, open air pedestrian mall with lots of performers. Living statues were all over. One poor guy covered in bronze paint was suppossed to be a frightening murderer or something - he had a creepy face and he would freeze in a position like he was gesturing you to come closer. If you did, he would reveal a bronze painted plastic butcher knife. Anyway, a pack of kids were trying to take his knife but he managed to ignore them and keep his knife close I think. There were other performers on the guitar or performing skits. One was hilarious.

We saw this huge crowd of people around a wide open circle. Inside this circle a performer was pretending to throw knives at a blindfolded volunteer. The volunteer was against a big foam wall and he had some kind of bucket over his head. This volunteer didn't realize then that the knife-thrower had an assistant (another audience volunteer) who would stand behind the victim's back and stab knifes into the foam wall as the performer pretended to throw knives. So the audience knew what was going on, but when the guy took the bucket off his head he saw that he was surrounded by knives which had "missed" him by inches.

Anyway, before the final throw, which was to be between the victim's legs, the performer, knife in hand, got a big speech going about how he needed the audiences support for this last trick and if he didn't get it, well, he turned around in a flash and pointed his knife straight at a little girl sitting in her mothers lap: he would kill them!

The little girl broke out into tears and didn't stop crying for several minutes! The knife-thrower ignored her.

Anyway, we got some ice cream, some tea, a pint and then it was time for the show. I've seen Blue Man Group in New York when I was maybe 14, and again with my family a few years ago. It was the same bizarre show as always with percussion and deadpan humor and blacklights and a sea of toilet paper. Unfortunately all the jokes were kind of old for me, but everyone else really liked it.

We went for a long walk after this, through Trafalgar square, along the bank of the Thames, next to the London Eye, across from the Parliament building. More living statues, more tricks. Who are these living statues who consent to being covered from head to toe in metallic paint again and again? What kind of routine do they have? How long does that stuff take to put on and take off? What's the ride into work and the ride home like? How do people break into that scene? We speculate that the minor leagues of the living statue circuit is Cambridge. We've recognized one guy, but most of our street performers were not as elaborate as the ones in London. Not as nice props or costume.

We parted after that and Grace and I went to meet our relatives. We had dinner with them and then hung out with them the rest of the night.

We got up early the next day and attended church with them. It was our first UK mass and it was a bit depressing. The cathedral was mostly empty, the people were mostly old, the reading was slow and without energy, there was no singing. I get the sense that Christianity is merely holding on in Europe whereas it is a living, vibrant force to be reckoned with in the States. Only some 6% of Christians in the UK regularly attend church.

Later that day we headed over to the Royal Academy of Arts where one of my relatives works. Attending with someone who works there was the greatest. She let us into the member's only cafe, with it's lush couches and statuary. We got 50% off the museum food, bringing it back to normal prices. And, best of all, we got into the main exhibit for free and with those little headphone audio tours.

The Royal Academy doesn't have much of a permanent collection and instead puts on rotating collections from around the world. We were there for something called "Citizens and Kings," a series of portraits from between the 1600s and the 1800s. We recognized a portrait of Napolean on loan from the National Gallery of Art in DC and a Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington (surely from some nice US museum). They also had the famous painting of Marat murdered in his bathtub. Without context the painting is a chilling visage of death and murder. But the audio guide told us Marat was in the tub because he used to work there all the time, since the water soothed his chronically skin condition. He saw lots of visitors in the tub and that's how someone got in to murder him. Furthermore he was murdered by a moderate of the French Revolution because he was too extreme in his application of the guillotine, one of the chief architects of the reign of terror. Anyway, it's different to know that the dead guy in the tub was kind of a jerk.

We spent Sunday afternoon with our friends again at Spitalfield Market. This was really cool and I don't think we ever would have found it on our own or known how cool it would be from a guidebook. It was just an enormous, gigantic indoor market. It wasn't a place for tourists either - it specialized in the sort of artisan, hand crafted, independent things you might actually want. Grace bought a handmade dress, for instance. You could also get food, purses, clothes, decorations, music, houseware, fur rugs etc. The place was absolutely crammed with booths, overflowing with them. And people were everywhere, forcing you to move in little people trains through the crowded aisles. It was a great atmoesphere though and all the things being sold were actually nice, which isn't exactly the case in Cambridge's market square. We spent the better part of two hours there and most of that time was just spent walking along without stopping to look too hard at anything.

After that we walked along brick lane with it's Asian grocery stores (Bangla-city supermarket) and Halal food. Here there were not booths but people with crap on the street. Half the time it looked like they were selling their old clothes. Here was was were you could get pirate dvds and porno. One of our friends said you usually could come here to buy back your bike after it was stolen. Here there were women in the full veil, which is causing so much debate in the country. We didn't get very far before things started closing up - it was already four o'clock.

We parted ways and went home to a mountain of dirty dishes. I have to do them presently.