Leaving Ballygowan doesn’t quite have the same ring as leaving Las Vegas. There’s no fear and loathing for a start, just a sense of departing mediocrity and an anticipation of entering the wider world. Leaving Ballygowan at 7 minutes to 5 on Thursday morning, we found ourselves back in Ballygowan at 2 minutes past 5, with Ollie having forgot his all important controllers for his X Box game. The boat from Dublin was due to leave at 8.20a.m. and on the face of it, given the new and improved links with our southern cousins, making the quayside would be a doddle.
I hadn’t anticipated a stop at McDonald’s in Newry called by the female leadership and the one lane dual carriageway thereafter which was dominated by a Kingspan lorry loaded with insulation and struggling to power its way into lashing rain and a headwind at a steady if unedifying sub 40mph. I apologise to the driver for the verbal inanities aimed his way, fortunately he was beyond reasonable listening distance. Such is life, we made the ferry with a few minutes to spare on the gate closing time and rock n’ rolled our way to Holyhead.
Alive on Arrival
The much anticipated M6 logjam turned out to be rather benign and probably induced a false sense of optimism ahead of the orbital and notoriously gridlocked M25. I had experienced the old North circular route round London and the dreaded Dartford tunnel in a previous reincarnation as a motorcyclist.
Suitably armed with prior knowledge and armoured with self confidence I entered the M25 only to find myself lapping at a steady 2mph. Four planes took off from a distant Heathrow whilst I struggled to travel a mile, I know Heathrow is busy but this was ridiculous. As I passed a Czech lorry in the next lane and it passed me for the umpteenth time I began to hallucinate that I was filling in a Quality Assurance form on project management. It was a doddle, literally, from junction 15 to J10 on the M25 and as I entered the A3 for Esher I was beginning to feel like Michael Douglas in Gridlock, ready to shoot someone. Finally with the help of GPS via an IPod we reached our destination, secluded apartments in Kingston on Thames belonging to the brother in law.
Coffee the new addiction?
I once counted 13 coffee shops on Holywood’s main street and Church Road. That’s just Holywood County Down by the way and since that token effort at categorising the Holywood social experience, there have been more added to that total.
Kingston on Thames was a an altogether new and more addictive experience with a coffee shop seemingly every other building. How do these places survive in the coffee shop jungle? Simple, a cup of coffee that could be categorised as a cup of filter coffee is now known as an Americano with a price tag to match such a grand sounding name. Coffee is clearly the new addiction, supplanting alcohol which is an old hat addiction reserved for old hats and beards sitting on park benches.
Sporting Injustace
Watched Uruguay v Ghana in a pub nearby on Friday night and marvelled at the injustice of it all, as Ghana were denied a place in the semi finals by yet another hand of cynicism. I actually learned from this morning’s newspaper that the ball handler was actually calling it the ‘new hand of god’. Not that I was ever enthralled by the original Maradonna ‘hand of god’ explanation, as despite his undoubted skill as a footballer, he simply cheated, rather than display any spiritual or holistic tendencies on the field of sport.
The laws of the game couldn’t be faulted this time but you had to wonder how football can go on tolerating the kind of deed executed by Uruguay. To cap it all the miscreant had the nerve to be paraded round the field of play afterwards on the shoulders of his teammates. So much for sporting tolerance and understanding.
Injustace 2
Kingston has a riverbank which has two sides to it, as most rivers do. In this instance one side contains motor boats and baroque looking houses with riverside access whilst the other side boasts a public park with a cycle path and shaded paths through leafy woods. Being of the commoner kind, I found myself on the shaded side gazing wistfully across to the folk on the other bank sitting in the sun at their private tables drinking the afternoon hours away and me marvelling at the injustice of it all.
Still Sunday afternoon in the park and listening to the Kingston Youth Orchestra play Schuman was some compensation especially with a bottle of rose wine and two glasses, one for the missus, it was a pleasant afternoon and a window unto life in on the riverside in Britain.
The Human Apes
I am keen observer of people without the psychological baggage that sometimes accompanies the ‘Dessie Morris’ school of human ape watcher, therefore my observations of my fellow concert attendees is extremely dispassionate and without rancour. For the record, there was the father of a young child with his missus and a female friend, the dad consuming an entire bottle of red wine during the hour and a half long concert and supplementing it with a pint from a nearby pub.
There was the woman and her mother with a child in a pushchair and she smoked some 10 metres or so from the child‘s pram whilst the mother looked after the kid and vice versa. Nice to see the parents not pass on the smoking game to the kids too early but its little consolation if the parents burn out with cancer. Finally there was the far eastern lady with her dog in tow, who arrived late and sat on the grass atop her shoes which she had taken off and placed under her behind. Very neat and the affection twixt her and dog was something to behold.
Holocaust Days
The Imperial War Museum in London was the destination on Saturday and not having been to London since the mid 80’s it was ‘fantastic’ to reacquaint myself with the helter skelter of Tube transport, London’s frenetic vehicular transport and rampaging tourist hordes.
The War Museum is peculiarly even handed in its presentation on the two world wars, where one might have expected a more slanted viewpoint since it is the bastion of all things British and Imperial to boot. It is hard though to escape the utterly depressing scenario it presents on the Holocaust and viewing it in all its unflinching horror, it is difficult not to avoid a certain underwhelming feeling for the German nation and its allies who perpetrated the annihilation of a culture and people.
The numbers of those exterminated are hard to grasp given the enormity and scale of the slaughter, let alone the cruel and callous manner in which human beings where dispatched from this life. I was relieved to escape into the sunlight after dutifully trawling my way through the Holocaust, it’s origins and it’s disastrous impact on a whole races of people.
These Sandals Weren’t Made for Walking
Following youth proms in the park on Sunday, it was decided after eating out at Strada, an Italian restaurant, it was reckoned that a trip to Hampton Court Palace would make a pleasant Monday.
I don’t like Mondays and after walking 2 mile plus to Hampton Court Palace trying to keep in the shade, I found the Court Palace dumbed down, as are it turns out, so many other of London’s tourist attractions. Yes I do recall the gravity of museums in my youth and whilst I may not have liked the so called ‘academia’ atmosphere of them, I do appreciate that it required mind and body to be focussed to pick up the desired thirst for information.
Now every tourist attraction seems set up for the lowest common denominator of intelligence with everything spelt out in BIG LETTERS and GRAPHICS TO MATCH.
Hampton Court was home to Henry VIII, the bloke with all the wives as you all might know him and despite the commercialisation of the Hampton Court experience it was difficult if next to impossible to escape the grandeur of the Tudor Court. There was a huge Dutch influence at the Court , courtesy of William III, whom most Norn Ironers will know as Prince of Orange. What shines through the grandeur and the rampant trivialisation is Henry’s all consuming desire for a successor, i.e. a male, who would be king and carry forth the Tudor dynasty. This finite and all consuming quest for a successor led to destroyed lives, vanquished ambition and ultimately the death of the Tudor dynasty. Was history the worse for it’s demise I ask?
History, or it’s re-portrayal showed Roman soldiers walking in sandals, trekking for hours and arriving none the worse for the experience. Suitably invigorated I decided I’d take the riverside walk back from Hampton Court. The Thames riverside is undoubtedly a pleasant walking experience with its riverside houses, boats moored and barges jostling for space outside every house. It was hot and the path a good 3 and half miles and by the time a few of those miles had passed under my feet, I’d already stopped 4 or 5 times to empty the grit from my sandals. By the time I’d reached Kingston I was ready for jumping in the Thames to cool off and soothe my aching and by now very dirty feet. Walking in sandals as Roman soldiers of yore have done may look a great idea on the screen but in practice I think I’ll stick to my guddies for those long riverside strolls through the grit and leafy shadowy pathways.
London Again Does Anyone Speak English Here
Back into London for another visit to the Museums. The train service is good but I wonder why they can’t go a mile without making some announcement or other. If it wasn’t about leaving unattended baggage and how someone will transport your left alone bags away to dispose of them, it was repeated requests to mind jumping on to the platform or this train is going to Shepperton or wherever. At least that last one was reassuring as you knew you were on the right train for Kingston and not heading west towards Portsmouth.
The tubes were as crowded as I remembered them but you rarely waited more than a few minutes and it didn’t take long to adopt the stare into the distance bored look in response to everyone else’s, stare into the distance bored look. Eye contact was as scarce as water in the Kalahari. One new innovation is lifts in the tubes to save those long treks up stairs. However coming into Covent Garden the missus turned left into the stairs whilst almost everyone else run on to another destination, which it transpired were the lifts. It soon transpired why, 193 steps later up a spiral staircase, that the majority of passengers had their heads screwed on and voted with their feet to take a lift.
The architecture and the stonework inside the Natural History Museum is almost as spectacular as is the dumbing down of the exhibits. In part at least, though it has to be said there were parts of the museum, not the best attended, it must be said, that contained pure science. Exiting the History museum, we took to the area of the Albert Memorial, a somewhat overblown memorial by Queen Victoria to her husband Prince Albert and were able to take in the Royal Albert Hall, presumably part of her tribute to the late husband and a spectacular architectural edifice. As I said to Ollie, when you perform in there, you’ll know you’ve made it in whatever performing art you decide to adopt.
Covent Garden is now a giant eatery and tacky clothes market and I had to take in some culture by heading for the National Gallery. Recalling an earlier near death by painting visit to the Gallery, when I tried to take in the whole gallery in one foul visit, I am now far more savvy. As usual the Van Gogh section is choc a bloc, whilst I was able to study Vermeer and Rembrandts in relative peace, save for the flotillas of Japanese trawling through the gallery. The Japanese do pay the paintings proper respect as befits people who appear to have an insatiable desire to learn about European culture and art, just as ironically western artists of the impressionist era learnt from Japanese woodcut prints.
I wonder how many Japanese visitors realise when looking at the Van Gogh picture of the chair and pipe would realise the awkward angles of drawings are inspired by Japanese prints.
The question remains though can anyone here speak Queen’s English?
Part 2’s when I get home on he 11th night!!
Corrections, comments or questions?