Winter trip to London and Ireland
February 11, 2003 – February 19, 2003
JJF, Kelly and JPF
This is our fourth trip together – four winter trips,
five for Kelly and Jimmy.
We have developed a custom – a planning trip at Ruland’s Restaurant
in Kelly’s neighborhood to set things up. Talk about what we’ll do, where
we’ll go and stay. Part of the fun of it all is the anticipation, the getting
ready. So, at the beginning of February, we met, had lunch, planned,
had a bit of Jameson to ask for good luck.
February 11, 2003
To Temple U. pick up Danny, who will take Kelly and I as far as
Princeton. We pick up Kelly in Fox Chase, he is outside waiting on the corner
for us. He has only two suitcases – a record low for Kelly. But he is lost
in an immense coat that he has on, better said, he is inundated in polar wear
that Ernest Shackleton, Amundsen, and Scott would have died for. 
He can’t
fit in the car with it on. It goes to the trunk. As I help him take it off,
it pulls my arms down – it is a Pullman suitcase disguised as a coat – Kel
has every pocket (twelve of them) full of what he used to carry in his baggage
before the airlines declared war on the steamer trunk crowd. On to
Princeton to Jimmy’s, we have an Irish whiskey to ask for luck on our
trip. Dan returns home in the car.
The three of us drive to Newark airport, check in with Virgin Airlines, then
go off to Spanish Restaurant in Newark for dinner. We drink a bottle of Sangria
to ask for luck on our trip.
Tight seats on the Airbus we fly on, Jimmy scores an exit row seat.
Interesting high tech personal entertainment system does not make the trip
in these small seats go faster. But travel is not supposed to be too easy – the
destination needs some achievement in the getting to it, or else how would
one know that the ordinary has been left.
February 12, 2003
8:55 am land at
Heathrow outside of London; smooth exit. Jimmy and I, with our Irish
passports, enter as ‘European Nation passport holders’ with
no delay. Small delay for Kel who has to get his USA passport stamped. On
the tube into London, we read that the airport is under the security and protection
of the British Army – tanks and armed rangers surrounding airport because
of worries of increased terrorist risk – we see nothing in our landing,
customs, baggage pick up, and departure from the airport. We only read
about it in the papers as we take the Picadilly Line of the Underground
to Knightsbridge.
Jimmy has us set up at Knightsbridge Sheraton Tower – a first class
hotel. We stay in the Executive rooms, with fluffy duvets, marble bathroom,
thick towels, attentive staff – Jimmy’s frequent flyer miles
pays for all.
Tea, Cappuccino in hotel lounge, a walk around town – Westminster,
over to Hyde Park, up and down narrow streets, Brompton Oratory,
tea with a cosmopolitan
mix of young students, brown and white skinned, other visitors. Jimmy
chats up a parking ticket guy named Williams, from near Glasgow – who
tells us the Westminster parking authority profited over 119 million
pounds just
last year – ticketing cars that are parked overtime or illegally.
Soon the price of a ticket will go from 40 pound to 50 pound – double
if you don’t
pay within two weeks.
Strikes me that London is a place English people
come to as visitors, like nearly everyone else here. I would have called
it ‘cosmopolitan’ previously,
but now it has about it an international market/people place, not a global
village – more a planetopolis, but a place where you can
get really good tea. Is it any longer a British PLACE? Or is it a bazaar
with no defining
ethnicity or nationality., It is nobody’s place, where everyone
belongs
– or maybe nobody belongs, it is used by every kind willing to abide within
the rules of post- rmodern strangerville. Maybe big cities have always
been like this, Maybe it is only because I am in an odd location here
in London – shopping district, embassy district, hotel used by international
businessmen, staffed by servants migrating to here from faraway there,
because here is where a job is.
I cork off late in afternoon, Kel and JJF go out to get me some ‘cold
medicine’. We work on the bottle of scotch they bring back, with Carephilly
cheese and crackers, then go out to have vegetable soup and a pasta platter,
served by pretty Hungarian girl, at a restaurant called Stockpot – both
good and cheap at 20 quid for the three of us. Back to hotel, jet-lagged
trio early
to bed.
Thursday, Feb 13, 2003.
Up and out early – back to Stockpot for breakfast. Kel plans
to go up to Hampstead Heath to visit Nuala, and then return to East
End this evening
with her, meeting JJF and myself for dinner and theatre
.
Went to Greenwich on catamaran ferry with JJF after we had walked
to Blackfriars Bridge beside Big Ben and Parliament. At Greenwich saw Gypsy
Moth IV, the boat in which Sir Francis Chichester had circumnavigated,
and Cutty Sark, fastest of the clipper ships that circled the world, bringing
wool from Australia back to England. Chichester had sailed on that ‘clipper
ship route’ going south of the 5 great capes, sailing eastabout the
world. Both vessels now lie still at dry-dock adjacent the Thames, at Greenwich.
Lunched on fish and chips at Spanish Galleon Pub, then to Maritime
Museum. I had hoped to see “Suhaili” the 32 foot boat that Robin Knox Johnson sailed
non-stop, single-handedly around the world in 1968 – when asked “Port of
departure, Sir” by customs official at his return to Plymouth after 260
days at sea, he said only, “Plymouth.” - no need for customs inspections
then, since he had been “to no place else than Britain”. I was
told that Sir Robin had taken his boat off exhibit, brought it home, to ready
it again
for sea.
Back on the Piccadilly Line tube to Leicester Square. Coffee, and then
Kel and Nuala met us – Kel had gone up to Nuala’s and brought her back
to East End. We all went to Tasca – a tapas place – great seafood paella.
Then on to the theatre. We saw “Stones in His Pocket” a play about American
moviemakers, coming to an Irish village and requiring the villagers, as
extras, to perform as “Irish people” while a real tragedy happened in the
village. The tragedy was that one of the young men of the town walked into
the loch with stones in his pocket – an offstage suicide brought on by
a recognition that hopes and dreams would never come to pass. The performance
– of 14 or 15 different characters – was accomplished by just two actors,
playing all the different roles, differentiating their characters with
variations in accent, posture, body movement, gesture. It was great acting.
The acting tour-de-force captured my interest more than the plot and drama
of the play. Amazing how each actor in the space of an hour was able
to project 7 different persona.
After play we had tea with Nuala. I got her to post a video message
to mom and Mary. Kel accompanied her home and Jimmy and I headed back to
hotel on tube.
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