London Holiday, 3: The Tower

Okay, now that the bitching and moaning is all out of my system, back to the trip.  In Part 1, I mentioned that we landed, dropped off our luggage, took a brief nap, and powered through the rest of the day with a trip to Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery of Art.  The following day, Dec. 23rd, the worst gale to hit Britain in 127 years began. This storm would go on to flood several rivers and leave thousands homeless or without power by Christmas Day.  In London, the gale took the form of a cold, wet wind with gusts that immediately turned most umbrellas inside-out.  So of course, we decided to visit the Tower of London! (For those who don't know, the Tower is not an actual tower, but a castle complex consisting of walls, residences, multiple towers and a central keep called the White Tower.  A lot of it is outdoors.) The weather was horrible, but bearable, especially since there are plenty of opportunities to duck in someplace, dry off and warm up.

(One of the sceptres.  The Culinar Diamond is the size of your clenched fist.)

We immediately headed for the crown jewels where, after a bit of a line, we saw the biggest f-ing diamonds, rubies and sapphires I have ever seen.  Sadly, pictures were not allowed, but you can get an idea from the stock photos. I thought "jewels the size of an egg" was Monty Python hyperbole. It is not.

(One of the many crowns.  The ruby is indeed the size of a large egg.  The diamond beneath it is cut from the same giant stone as the one in the sceptre.)

From the crown jewels we went to the White Tower where the arms, armor, gifts to the crown, and other artifacts are kept.  There are three floors.  The first is the royal armor through the ages, including the Line of Kings exhibit.

(Henry VIII's armor.  Clearly the man had his priorities with regard to protection.)

The second floor focuses more on the history of the Tower, and the third on its role in history as a prison and as the seat of the Royal Mint. (Fun fact: the first director of the mint, charged with finding ways to foil counterfeiters, was none other than Sir Isaac Newton.) A quick lunch and then off to the Bloody Tower to look at implements of torture.

(The Tower of London chopping block.  Yeah, that one.)

In lulls during the wind and rain, we saw something I was not expecting to see, considering the weather conditions:  the famous Ravens of the Tower. There is a myth that says that if these birds ever leave the Tower, Britain will fall, so the birds are kept there forcibly, but they are well and humanely kept.

(My lovely daughter Olivia snapping a picture of a very friendly Tower raven. He clearly has done this before.)

After the Tower we went back to the flat for a quick change into dry clothes and then it was off to our first play in the West End, One Man, Two Guv'nors, which was one of the funniest (and most fun) evenings I've ever had at the theater. Based on a Renaissance Commedia dell'Arte play, it had great 1960's Buddy-Holly type music and in true Commedia form, the characters frequently broke the fourth wall and addressed the audience directly. I can't go into details without ruining the premise of the show for those who haven't seen it, but suffice it to say that we managed to be there on a truly remarkable night, when the audience participation portions took the actors quite by surprise and they managed to spin it into comedy gold.  The closest thing I can think of to describe it is when Tim Conway and Harvey Korman would go out of their way to crack each other up on the old Carol Burnett Show. 

(If you EVER have a chance to see this show, DO IT.  Seriously.)

After the show we went home to get ready for Christmas Eve, which promised to be a very, very big day.

London Holiday, 2

Backtracking a little for some kvetching:  We flew to London out of Washington, DC's Dulles airport because the travel agent assured us that Virgin Atlantic had more comfortable seats than most other transatlantic flights -- a few more inches of seat and leg room in coach. Since I am 6'5" and 285 lbs., this was certainly a consideration. It was also untrue. While the staff were quite friendly and the food edible, this was by far the most uncomfortable flight I have ever experienced.  Seats were hard, small and cramped, and of course the person on the plane who felt the deep need to recline fully and immediately for the entire flight was the guy in front of me.

Nevertheless, some 7 hours later we arrived at Heathrow. London time, 7 AM. Body time, 1 AM. We made our way to the Heathrow Express train, took it to Paddington, bought our Oyster cards (the fare card that accommodates London's buses and Underground) and took the Bakerloo Tube to Edgware Road, where we called our hosts.  A brief word about our lodgings:  We decided that we wanted to pack light and rent an apartment with a washer and a dryer for our ten days in the UK. Our travel agent friend -- the same one who pointed us to Virgin Atlantic -- suggested a service that offers apartments and flats in London and we booked one in Marylebone, a neighborhood in the city that is part of the Westminster district. The flat was near three major Underground lines and in a beautiful, upper-class area. Or so we thought. The advert for the flat mentioned several "home truths" including an "unassuming exterior" that hid the modern apartment within. "Unassuming exterior" is rentalese for "dump." We thought that this might actually be to our advantage, since nobody would expect a luxury flat inside. One "home truth" that was NOT mentioned, however, was the fact that the building had no elevator and the flat itself was up four flights of stairs. Upon reaching the flat, we discovered that it was indeed quite lovely if exceedingly tiny. When unpacking we further discovered that there was no storage for our things apart from one narrow Ikea wardrobe. No drawers, no closets, no storage for the suitcases, nothing. The flat consisted of two rooms and a teeny bath. The washer/dryer was in the kitchen/sitting room under the sink. It was one machine that did both laundry and clothes drying, and as you might expect, did both poorly. If we go again, we will simply stay in a hotel with guest laundry facilities. As it was, we spent all of our time at the flat tripping over one another or over our luggage.

(The "unassuming exterior." And "Hampstead Lodge" sounded so cool.)

(Inside the flat.  I don't know what kind of lens they used, but this room was maybe 10' square.)

While we were there, the tiny refrigerator kept flopping open and one day we came home to find water pouring out of the ceiling light fixtures due to a drain leak in the apartment upstairs. At no time did the rental agency physically involve themselves in any of the troubles. We cleaned up the water ourselves, and reported it, and finagled a crude fix for the fridge. For the two grand we dropped on the place, I expected a little better. And fewer stairs. One good thing: the flat came with an iPhone with local maps, useful apps, and unlimited data which was extremely helpful to have, as long as we weren't trying to get the actual agency to come over and fix things.  Because they never did.  I'm still waiting to see if we get any of our £1,000.00 security deposit back, even though the ceiling leak was nothing to do with us.

By Christmas Eve my daughter was complaining of cough and running a low-grade fever.  She didn't shake it until the day before we left.  I figured as long as I'm using this entry to complain, I ought to mention everything.  Including listening to a lot of commentary about cost. I did not intend our visit to be about how much things cost, or how poor a value something was for the money paid, or anything like that, but a fair amount of time was spent doing just that. I'm usually the curmudgeon of our family group, but I turned out to be the one saying things like, "Oh, come on! When are we ever going to be able to eat squab for lunch at Harrod's again?" Another example: one of our group accidentally used one of their 3-day London Passes instead of their 2-day pass.  Meaning the third day would be wasted since it fell on Christmas when nothing was open. (The London Pass is a tourist pass that includes pre-paid admissions to big first-time tourist attractions like the London Eye, the Tower, Westminster Abbey, etc. It also usually lets you jump to the head of the line, and is, in my opinion, a decent deal, especially for go-getters who go out for full, action-packed days. The accident lay purely in the hands of the pass-holder, not with the Pass itself.)

The first half of Christmas Eve was wonderful, and will be covered in the next entry. The second half not so much. We were concerned that since so much was closed in London on Dec. 24-25-26 that we would find ourselves with nothing to do.  So we planned ahead as much as possible.  Our Christmas Eve evening was spent in Hyde Park at the Winter Wonderland -- kind of a British version of a US State Fair, with carnival rides, food stalls, craft booths, and a few other attractions.  The ice sculpture house was amazing. The VIP ride we reserved on the giant Ferris wheel was a complete ripoff.  It was cold, brief and generally left such a bad taste in our mouths that we could scarcely enjoy the rest of the evening. There was an amazing circus we had pre-ordered tickets for, the Cirque Berzerk -- think Cirque du Soleil with an Aztec slant -- that mostly made up for the wheel earlier, but I think we tried to fit in too much that day, and we were just too tired and cranky by then.

(Hyde Park Winter Wonderland.  You can keep it.  Especially the Giant Wheel.)

Christmas Day in London there is no public transportation, and a fifteen minute cab ride (assuming you can even find one to hire) costs triple, about £15.00 ($25.00 US).  We had made reservations at a swanky hotel in our district for Christmas Dinner and it was totally worth it, so I will cover it later. It was too fab to go into here in Complaint Central.

One last gripe: hours as advertised cannot be trusted, at least not during Christmas Week. We had to eat a couple of meals at the flat -- thank goodness for the mini-mart up the street -- because kitchen hours at the local eateries were simply not accurately advertised. We would look up a pub or a restaurant and find that they were closed, or that, if yesterday they were serving food from 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM, why, TODAY the kitchen closed at 6:30 PM. Or a museum or gallery that was supposed to be open until 8:00 PM and had a sign on the door saying so had inexplicably closed at 4:00 PM. We had more than one frustrating afternoon either looking for a place to eat, or finding that a gallery or exhibit that was supposed to be open...wasn't

Everything else was pretty good.  Yes, Boxing Day shopping was the unholy child of Black Friday and New Year's Eve in Times Square, but we knew that. The crowds were pretty impressive. And the flight home was just as painful and cramped as the flight over, plus an hour longer thanks to the headwinds. But I was expecting that as well. The rest of the trip was a whole lot more fun, and I'll tell y'all more about it next time!

London Holiday, 1

December 25, London:

I haven't been posting much about this since I didn't want to come home to a looted shell, but it's now safe to say we're spending the Christmas holidays in London, England. Like most trips, it has already had its ups and downs. The plane was too small and had no fewer than five screaming infants. The flat we rented is much tinier than advertised, and is an unadvertised fourth floor walk-up. And there have been the usual invariable tensions between different members of our party at times. Family; whatcha gonna do...?

The weather certainly has not been cooperative. We did realize that England in late December was risky. We were not expecting the worst winter gale and flooding in 127 years. The umbrellas were all inside-out within seconds upon arrival at the Tower of London on December 23rd. Hundreds of thousands in Kent and Surrey are without power and thousands more are homeless this Christmas morning as the Rivers Mole and Medway have burst their banks. It's a national tragedy here as this nation experiences its most solemn Christmas in a long, long time.

There have also been moments of transcendent grace and beauty. The day before the gale, the weather was stunningly gorgeous. I was standing in front of the National Gallery on December 22nd as a shaft of sunlight appeared and struck Nelson's Column. It looked like a special effect in a film, honestly. I turned and looked down the long avenue of Whitehall and saw the same sunlight shining on the clock tower of Parliament. It was a sight I never thought I'd see for myself. I was moved to tears. (Fun Fact: Big Ben is the name of the bell, not the clock. Hence my description of "clock tower.")

(The painting that needs no introduction.)

A few minutes later I walked into the Van Gogh room in the National Gallery and had The Sunflowers all to myself. The tears came again. (If you have never seen the British show "Doctor Who," you could have no finer introduction than the episode "Vincent," in which the time-traveling Doctor takes Van Gogh to our present where he overhears actor Bill Nighy explain why Vincent is not only perhaps the greatest artist who ever lived, but also one of the greatest human beings who ever lived, because of his extraordinary ability to transform his inner torment into transcendent beauty. And if you have seen "Vincent" you will understand why tears were my only possible reaction.)

("Keeper," the guardian of the top floor of the White Tower at the Tower of London.)

The Tower of London, on December 23rd -- the beginning of the gale -- was cold, wet, windy and utterly wonderful.  The Yeoman Guards are all fantastic, both the men and the women.  They are all decorated military, and know absolutely everything you might care to ask. They were, to an individual, funny, wise and completely joyful about their work.  It was a real treat despite the weather.  An absolute do-not-miss place for anyone visiting London.

(A detail from the Hogwarts model dressed for winter.)

Yesterday, Christmas Eve, my wife wanted to tour the sets from the Harry Potter films. She has loved the books and films tremendously since she discovered them over 17 years ago. As the tour ends, you suddenly find yourself in a huge soundstage...with the model of Hogwarts Castle. It's about one-twelfth scale--one inch equals one foot. And it's still HUGE. It was "dressed" for winter, with lots of snow. And it was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. I was not expecting a physical rendition of a fictional place to move me so strongly. Up until then, I was okay, although walking into the set for the Great Hall of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, all set up for Christmas, was pretty damned great all by itself.

(The Hogwarts Great Hall all decked out for the Christmas Feast.)

I think that's enough for this first entry. More as it gels in my mind and I'm able to make sense of it for all of you!  

And every now and then...

And every now and then, a day when death would, honestly, be a blessing.  Y'know, like today.

Kennedy, 50 Years After

Today is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.  In 1963 I was ten years old, and in the Fifth Grade class at Washington School in Raritan, New Jersey.  When the first news reports of shots being fired at the President in Dallas made it onto the transistor radio in the school office, I think everybody was caught completely flat-footed and off-guard.  Remember that this was in a time before the many mass shootings we all have to live through now -- nothing like this had happened before.  It was before King, before Bobby Kennedy, before any of the other notable assassinations of the 1960's.  There had been nothing like this in people's memories since the attack on Pearl Harbor some 22 years earlier.  There are occasions where the journalists inevitably ask us where we were and what we were doing.  These were not common occasions in 1963.  I guess they still aren't; the Pearl Harbor remembrances are mostly over as most of those living then have passed.  Today we talk about when the Twin Towers fell and maybe a couple of other things.  Kennedy's assassination was the first time anything like this had happened to a society that I was a part of, or to anybody I knew.

Dallas in in Central Time; we lived in Eastern Standard Time.  So the first reports that so paralyzed our school staff came in just after 11:30 in the morning.  It was around 12:40 PM, during lunch at the school, that Walter Cronkite announced that the President was dead.

The school staff had no idea what to do.  There were no counselors, no grief experts or PTSD consultants, not in 1963 small-town New Jersey.  So they sent us home.

My kid sister and I walked to school, probably about a mile, a distance that would be considered unsafe or unconscionable now, not for five- and six-year-old children.  So we got home a little after 1:00 PM.  My father was at work, of course, and my stay-at-home mom was doing household chores.  She was not expecting us for at least another couple of hours, and, sadly for us, she was not listening to the radio or watching our tiny-screen black-and-white television.  She asked us, with some alarm, what in Hell were we doing home so early?  We told her the school had sent all the kids home because the President had been shot.  I received the beating of my life for "telling such an awful, awful lie."

No kidding.

Finally, when through our tears we kept sticking to our "story," my mother turned on the radio.  It was a tube radio and it took a few minutes to warm up.  I remember she kept looking at us like, "This better not be true, because if it isn't, the beating you just got is nothing compared to what you're going to get" coupled with a confusing measured leavening of "You'd better not be lying."

And when the radio warmed up, WOR 710 out of New York City, the station my family had on that morning for "Rambling with Gambling" and Bob and Ray, reported that the President was dead.  At this point my mother didn't know what to do either, I guess.  So she sent us to our rooms.

Over the next few days we watched the news reports, the funeral cortege proceeding to the cemetery, the horse-drawn coffin, little John-John's salute, all of it.  We were watching live TV when Lee Harvey Oswald was being transferred to a different holding facility and Jack Ruby shot him in the stomach.  It was the first time I had ever seen anybody actually killed.  And on live television.  I wouldn't see anything like that again until the second plane crashed into the World Trade Center live in 2001while I was watching.  I would go on to see a lot of people die on live television that day, as the towers collapsed one by one.  We all saw it on the news that night, and in the days to follow, ad nauseam, but there was something awful and traumatic for me when I saw it happen on live television.  I don't think I've ever gotten over it, and I still have nightmares of the towers falling intertwined with Oswald being shot.

My daughter was in the fourth grade when the towers fell.  Her school staff did not tell the kids much.  They did not send them home early.  I was waiting for her bus at the usual time and we walked home together during those first eerily silent hours when nothing man-made flew in the skies.  She was nine.  We talked a little about what had happened, and how a lot of people had been hurt and worse, and things were going to be a little strange for a while.  We were careful about what we watched on the news when she was around.

The only good that I can see to have come out of all this tragedy is that I learned from mine how not to handle my daughter's.  As we seem fated to ride this same merry-go-round over and over through history, I have no doubt that someday my daughter may have to deal with her own "where were you?" tragedy.  At least she has a decent example of how to cope.

Godot

This past weekend I took my wife to New York City for an early birthday gift: we had orchestra seats on the aisle for a a performance of Beckett's Waiting for Godot starring Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Patrick Stewart.  Yup. Vladimir and Estragon were played by Gandalf and Picard.  Or, if you prefer, by Magneto and Professor X.

It was a revelation.  The play has a terrible reputation for being bleak and depressing, but Beckett himself described it as a comedy.  And that's how these two brilliant actors played it.  It was like a two hour Monty Python sketch.  Moving, heartbreaking, and hysterically, hilariously funny.  The two supporting actors, Billy Crudup as Lucky and Shuler Hensley as Pozzo, might have been forgiven for not quite measuring up to the two leads...but no forgiveness was necessary; they were both brilliant.  Hensley's Pozzo in particular was a revelation, giving it as he did a deep Southern American accent, and Billy Crudup as Lucky had to perform not only a difficult physical role but probably the single most demanding soliloquy in the theatre.  Lucky only has one line in the entire show, but it goes on at length when he is ordered to "Think!"  More than the two leads, it's Lucky's speech for me that shows Beckett's mastery of the language.

Godot is being performed in alternating repertory with Harold Pinter's No Man's Land, and I only wish we had been able to stay in the city long enough to catch both shows.  The show we saw was technically a preview, since the official opening isn't until later this month, but it had the smooth, expertly executed feel of a play that's been running for a while.  Which is no surprise since both Stewart and McKellen performed the play together in London in 2007.

Tickets are going fast, but there are always a few cheap (and excellent!) seats to be had on the day of the performance if you can be at the box office of the Cort Theatre when it opens at 10:00 AM.  Or you can hope to get lucky, as we did, when we picked up two superb seats within seconds of a cancellation for an otherwise sold-out performance.  If you have the means, do whatever it takes, but see this show.  You will never look at Godot, Beckett, or either of these two actors in quite the same way, ever again.

[Didi and Gogo, waiting.]

Long Overdue!

Sorry to be gone for a month.  Things have been happening, thick and fast, and there simply hasn't been time even to process my thoughts, much less blog about them.

On the home front, we've been struggling with some unexpected now-that-she's-out-of-the-nest issues with my daughter.  I won't go into any details; she would be mortified and horrified if I did.  Suffice it to say that I have taken serious issue with some choices she recently made, and a rift I never expected to experience has developed between us.  I hope it can be healed -- no bridges have been burned on either side, and hope springs eternal.

On the health front, my Crohn's Disease has been really awful lately.  At first I thought it might be the usual fall allergies -- fall and spring hold horror for every sufferer of autoimmune disease, but things usually settle down once the pollens go away.  This year for me, they did not, and my Crohn's has seriously affected my quality of life in a very, very short period of time.  I have, quite literally, been spending at least 75% of my waking time in or near the bathroom since early September.  My doctor's initial response was not unexpected:  up the dose of the immunosuppressant I take and add Prednisone, a corticosteroid, to "put out the fire."  What was unexpected was the depth of feeling in my refusal to do either.  The immunosuppressant is already at the level that a heart transplant patient would have to take -- much more has its own set of toxic side effects, at least for me.  And Prednisone, quite simply, makes me nuts.  Yes, short-term it puts out the inflammation and takes me back to normal, but the side effects are unbelievable and they kick in faster every time I have to use the drug.  The side effects for me include but are not limited to vastly increased appetite, weight gain, change in the shape of my face (Prednisone can give long-term users a "moon" face) and worst of all, personality changes.  Including rage and depression.

So I said, "no, thanks."

My doctor agreed with my reasons and admitted that there simply aren't too many bullets left in the proverbial gun to try.  The most successful drug for Crohn's Disease, Remicade, is the gold standard for treatment, with something like a 30% remission rate.  It also destroyed my nervous system.  In some folks there are neurological side effects from the drug; I was one.  Biopsies of my nerves show a degradation similar to ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) in my nerves, but so far, thank the Universe, only in my sensory nerves.  I still have most of my motor functions, but my arms and legs and face feel things that aren't real, including heat, cold, pain, electricity, wet gravel, insects, etc., etc.  It's a crap shoot; every day is different and nothing lasts long enough to get used to it.  It may not have turned me into a Stephen Hawking, at least not yet, but it has most certainly affected my quality of life.

So Remicade and its cousin Humira are out.  However (and I had never known this, in spite of my pride of knowledge about Crohn's and its treatments) these drugs are harvested from genetically engineered mouse tissues.  There is another version of the drug which does not come from mice, called Cimzia, which is created in the laboratory using recombinant DNA technology.  Cimzia is self-administered injections, two per month given simultaneously.  The drug is viscous and the administration of it is quite painful.  It is also not covered by our insurance, which is even more painful. I am trying to get myself enrolled in a program administered by the manufacturer which would cover $3000 for the first injection, $2500 for the second, and $2000 for the third.  (Each set of injections costs just shy of $5000.)  And my doctor may be able to cover the first injection with a sample.  If the drug works, I have some fast dancing to do financially, but if it works...my life will change dramatically.

So that's what's been going on, and where my brain has been for the past month.  Fun stuff, no?

[Two of these in the belly every month.  I can't wait.]