December 2012 – Page 3 – Teachable Moments

London Chronicles #5: Rehearsal

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Dec 082012

After our adventures in Greenwich, we dashed back to the hotel and grabbed our gear for rehearsal: my music and Hubby’s camera. Hubby was along to document the choir’s trip and this would be his first chance to photograph us all in one place. We strolled up Tottenham Court Rd at a Londonish pace and were buzzed in through the back entrance of the American Church in London.

Here we combined with the rest of the choir – some professional, some amateur – that would be singing in St. Paul’s Cathedral for the Thanksgiving service. We also met the conductor/arranger/composer Scott Stroman for the first time.

It was great to be part of a larger choir and really feel the music how it would be performed in St. Paul’s.

Scott began by warming us up and taking us through each of the five pieces (3 spirituals, an original Gloria in Latin, and a Samuel Barber setting of a James Agee poem).

It was kind of like being conducted by Severus Snapein a good way. You could feel him pulling the music from you.

The spirituals were supposed to be memorized and now I know why. We didn’t sing a single one as written: he led us from chorus to verse and unison to harmony as the Spirit moved. It was an exercise in trust and our ability to watch and follow. Quite a wild ride!

London Chronicles #4: Lost in Greenwich Meantime

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Dec 042012

A few days before we left for London, there was some chatter going around about visiting a brewery while we were there. A member of the choir had some restaurant connections and wanted to go check out one brewery in particular. As it turned out, this was a private tour for just four people, and Hubby and I were two of the four. I’m not sure how that happened, but this afternoon was one of the highlights of our trip.

We set out from our hotel on a rainy afternoon to catch the tube into an area of town we hadn’t yet been: Greenwich, home of the Greenwich Royal Observatory, namesake of Greenwich Meantime. We were headed south of the Thames and East of the Isle of Dogs. Yikes! The first part was easy: take the Northern Line South to Waterloo and then take the Jubilee Line East to North Greenwich. We soon discovered that the Jubilee line was slick and gorgeous compared to the trains we’d been on before. As it dumped us off at the North Greenwich hub, we could see the dome of O2, aka the Millennium Dome, hovering nearby. Ah, well, another time.

Here was the tricky part of the trip: the bus. Not for lack of planning, though. We had two maps, we knew which two busses would get us nearest the brewery and we even knew what stop to get off. The tricky part was navigating the bus drivers. Tourists that we were, we checked with the driver when we boarded, “Does this bus stop at Blackwall Lane?”. “Yes.” “Can you tell us which one that is?” “Just listen, you’ll hear it.” Um, ok. We sat as close to the driver as we could and listened closely to the announcements for Blackwall Lane. After a half dozen stops, it felt like we had gone too far, so our fearless leader stepped forward to ask “Is this Blackwall Lane?” “That was a few stops back.” We bolted off the bus onto a nameless street.

We found ourselves in front of the East Greenwich Library with a plaque on the front that read “A gift of Andrew Carnegie.” It was dark and shuttered and looked as forlorn as we felt.

Now what?

We crossed the soggy street with a gang of school boys in their uniforms to wait for the bus going back the other way. At this point, the rain and wind picked up to remind us of our orphan status. Bus after bus passed us, none of them the right one. If it hadn’t been miserable weather, we might have abandoned the bus altogether. It couldn’t be too far, right? Then we saw our bus coming. Hallelujah! Sort of. The bus pulled up and let everyone off through the back doors and refused to open the front doors so we could board. Our leader shouted through the window to find out what was happening and got stoney silence in return. Finally, one of the disgorging passengers explained that the bus terminated here and we would have to wait to catch the next one in about 15 minutes. Arrrrgh!

Did I mention we had an appointment for this private tour? And we needed to be back at the hotel right afterwards in order to make it to rehearsal with a director we had never met? And we were warned not to be late? As the minutes ticked uselessly by, we decided to give walking a go and trudged on to the next bus stop. It may not have gotten us to the brewery any faster, but it made use of the adrenaline we were producing. We did catch the right bus and jumped off a stop early because we were nervous about going past it again.

When we arrived at the brewery, Joe, our tour guide, commiserated with us over the Greenwich bus drivers.

The tour was fabulous as Joe regaled us with stories of the different beers and their origins: London Lager, London Porter, and India Pale Ale. This brewery focusses on creating craft brews based on the historical recipes and characteristics of London’s heritage.

Instead of pasteurizing their beers, they employ two microbiologists who monitor a filtering process that uses the skeletons of microscopic sea creatures. This means that the Lager is hoppy and carbonated. Yum. The Porter is dark and thick, brewed from an 18th century recipe. Porter gets it’s name from the men who used to hang out on the street corners waiting to be hired to carry heavy items throughout the city. These porters would stop at pubs along their route to fortify themselves with a strong malty pint, thus the name. The India Pale Ale was brewed in the classic style with more alcohol in order to survive the long journey to India. My least favorite of the three, it was still a very drinkable beer.

As Joe guided us around the brewery, the tour got more an more technical. I was impressed by their commitment to quality and their facility was gorgeous. Stainless steel is very sexy.

It would have been wonderful to stay and sample some more. Their tasting room was filled with beers from someone famous’ collection (just another detail I’ve forgotten already) including some one of a kind commemorative bottles. It was an art gallery of beers. I’m still on the lookout for Meantime in L.A. I’ll certainly let you know when I track some down.

*Our trip back to the hotel was extremely uneventful and smooth. Not very exciting to blog about, but we were due for some boring bits right about then.

London Chronicles #3a: Walking Through Euston

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Dec 022012

Euston Fire Station

Random beautiful building on our walk.

You can rent bikes in London! These are on the campus of University College London.

Here are the rates if you’re interested!

Church of Christ the King just off the campus of U. College London. (See that phone booth on the left?)

That’s me ‘in’ the phone booth trying not to puke from the smell. I don’t think anyone would use this to make an actual phone call. Oy!

A statue in the park on the campus of University College London.

This monument said “To Our Glorious Dead” on one side and then “Remember the Men and Women of the London Midland and Scottish Railway” on the other. Since they had just observed “The Day of Remembrance” (like our Veteran’s Day), there were wreaths laid at the foot of the monument.

They were made of plastic discs riveted together – kinda’ cool.

On our way back, we found ourselves feeling close to home at the corner of Keppel (the kids’ elementary school) and Gower (a street in Hollywood).

London Chronicles #3: So Much More Than a Library

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Dec 022012

First morning in London and I was wide awake at 4 a.m. Considering that was Noon in California, I did a pretty good job of sleeping in. I managed to get back to sleep and woke just after the London sunrise at 7:45 a.m. We successfully navigated the electrical outlets and shower head (Brits don’t believe in water pressure?) and had our first English Breakfast in the hotel. I stuck to cottage cheese, yogurt, fruit and a croissant each day as Hubby sampled the various hot food items.

It will come as no surprise to any of you that a trip to the Library was first on my list of things to do. I have to say that the British Library is no ordinary Library. I was not surprised to find out that it’s free, but I was surprised to find out it had exhibits. Since we weren’t in a hurry, we checked our map and set out to walk up to the Euston area of London to check it out. You can look at the pictures from that walk here.

In the Piazza just inside the gates of the library is a giant scupture of Issac Newton measuring out the universe. It was done by a Scottish sculptor, Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, who also did a lot of the mosaic work in the tube station near our hotel.

The British Library is home to more than 14 million books, 58 million patents and 3 million sound recordings. It’s a major research library with reading rooms for different academic subjects where you can do research if you have a Reader Pass (free as long as you have a permanent address). It prides itself on making it’s collection accessible.

Inside the library is a model of the entire complex showing how and where the books are housed.

Up the center of the building is a six story glass tower that encloses the King’s Library: printed books, pamphlets, and maps that King George III collected between 1763 and 1820!

I’ve buried the lead a bit here since there’s an amazing gallery that’s open to the public every day for absolutely free that holds some of the most magnificent books and manuscripts I have ever seen. We strolled through room containing The Magna Carta, Lindisfarne Gospels, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and, my very favorite, the original manuscript of Handel’s Messiah. (Handel lived in London for much of his life and the Messiah was performed at Covent Garden). We felt echoes of home looking at the temporary collection of Armenian scriptures. I wish I could include images here so you’d get a sense of the beauty of these books. Of course, we couldn’t take any pictures inside the Gallery, but, trust me, it was breathtaking.

As we walked back towards the hotel to meet some friends for an afternoon adventure, we stopped at a little place called Eve’s Cafe for lunch. We both had delicious hot paninis which we ate at the little table out front. As we munched, I noticed that we were across from the Bloomsbury Hotel which meant we were in Bloomsbury, which meant we were in Virginia Woolf’s ‘hood, which meant literary tingles with my goat cheese panini.

London Chronicles #2: A Night to Remember

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Dec 012012

Arriving in a foreign city in the dark is a bit of a challenge. Everything seems a bit more eerie and surreal than in daylight. I have now realized that it’s pretty much dark, getting dark, or gonna’ be dark soon when you’re in London in November.

The tour guide from the airport was great, she guided us into the hotel and checked us all in – no queueing for us! As she passed out our room keys, she promised to return in just 6 short days to shepherd us back to Heathrow for our return flight.

We chatted for a bit with some of our group that had arrived a few days before us and promised to meet up with them soon. Hubby and I schlepped our bags up to the 8th floor using one of the 4 lifts (aka elevators) available to guests of the hotel. They seemed to be either cavernously empty or full to the gills. Thankfully, we found they were equipped with sensors that would alert you if the lift was full, “FL”, or over the limit, “OL”, which happened more often that you’d think.

Arriving in our room, my heart leapt for joy at the open window. I’m a nut for fresh air and we didn’t close that window more than a few times in the week we were there. Since there was no screen (!), hubby was able to get his camera out the window and take a pic of our ‘neighborhood’ once it was daylight.

I was anxious to get out of our room and experience London that first night. Fortunately, we had a plan. We had been invited to the manse of the Pastor of the American Church in London for a ‘drinks party.’ The trick was, we need to navigate the Underground (Tube) in order to get there.

There was some loose discussion about going to the party as a group, but since only one or two in the group had working cell phones and we didn’t know anyone’s room number, communication was a bit limited. No one was in the lobby when we descended from our room so, not wanting to squander a minute and feeling rather cheeky, Hubby and I set of for the manse on our own. The tube stop was right around the corner and we plunged down the stairs with abandon.

Honestly, I think we were just trying to keep up with the flow of pedestrians: Londoners walk really fast, especially in the tube stations. Thanks to our hosts and some seasoned travelers in the bunch, our Oyster Cards (refillable Tube/Bus passes) were ready and waiting for us at the hotel so we sailed right through the first set of gates into THE UNDERGROUND.

When they say Underground, they really mean UNDER-ground. Each station seemed to have it’s own particular scheme to get you down to the trains- straight staircases, curved staircases, escalators, lifts, moving sidewalks, mazes, and tunnels. That first night, I was shocked at how deep we were going to catch the Northern Line to our destination. I totally understand why Londoners took shelter in the Tube stations during the Blitz.

All the tunnels and pathways are well-marked and there are digital displays at each platform so you know when to expect the next train and where exactly it’s headed. Unfortunately, we were just a little overwhelmed by everything that first night and jumped on the wrong spur of the Northern Line. When we figured it out, we just hopped off at Camden Town, switched trains, and sailed on to our destination.

I must say, I felt giddy and triumphant when we arrived at the manse in one piece.

The party was wonderful and it was great to gather with friends old and new to chat over what we’d been up to and what we planned to do with our free time.

We walked back to the Tube through the rain and arrived back at the hotel with no difficulty at all. I watched Hubby sleep soundly in his twin bed as I wrote feverishly in mine, trying not to miss one detail of the trip so far. I fell asleep calculating how much we could jam in to the next day.

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