Hall Place

HOLEEE SHIT you guys. I'm in England again!

Why?

Because potato!

Also I moved here.

AAAANYWAY,

Today I went on a field trip! Down to Hall Place, in Bexley.

Yeeeeah. Check this shit out! All fancy, right?

This was, I think, the primary entrance to the house. But because of things, it now faces a major roadway, so we all go in the back door. (Heh. Back door.)

The original house (which is what you're seeing here; it extends quite far in the back) was built in 1540, by a dude with a lot of money. He reused a lot of stones from a nearby abbey ruin, and you can see bits a piece of it still (like old monastic tilework, and some gargoyle faces; there's not much though).

I like taking pictures of windows. It may be a problem.

After a while, it was sold again, to one Sir Austen (not THAT family of Austens).

He took one look at this shabby old dump and said: "NOPE! I'mma double this shiat!"

And proceeded to build a wing onto the house, that pretty much doubled it's size.

He also didn't give a whole lot of thought to the whole 'making the styles harmonious', and just built whatever the fuck he wanted.

He (or one of his lineage who lived in the place) also installed (I believe) this 'fine plaster ceiling' in one of the upstairs bedrooms.

Take a look:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!11!11!

Or if that one isn't letting you sleep, there's one of these in each corner:

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!1!11

Seriously. I don't know how anyone could sleep in this room. I can only assume there were canopy beds with monster proof curtains.

Nnnnggg. Picture of a window through a window. The best.

Be warned, though. If you come here, it's apparently a pretty popular venue for weddings and special 

events, and when something comes in, they close off the feast hall, the minstrel gallery, and the old Tudor kitchen. 

We did not get to see the Tudor kitchen, but we did see a bit of the feast hall and the minstrel gallery.

Also, if you come, try to hit it in summer when all the flowers are blooming. The gardens are quite lovely, but the flowers were well on their way out (since it is now October, and well and truly autumn). 

HOWEVER!

Check these guys out:

A mere umbrella away from Totoro.

These are the best topiaries, in my opinion, but there were quite a few more. And they're BIG. Well taller than I.

So this house got sold and inherited down the line for a long time, until the early 20th century, when Lady Limerick came to live here.

I'm not even shitting you. That was her name.

DIGNITY. ALWAYS DIGNITY.

She was apparently quite loved by the village, and also a little on the batty side.

DISCLAIMER: Not actually Henry Vlll. Or his court ladies.

 Later on in her life, the house (which actually belonged to her son? her nephew? I can't remember) got sold (I think) to the local council, with the understanding that she could live out her days there.

Well! Lady Limerick didn't like that very much, and apparently went on a letter writing feud with the council. The council couldn't kick her out, and she didn't have anywhere else to go, so she lived there until she died.

As a final middle finger to the council, she stated in her will that every goddamned stick of furniture in the place was to be auctioned off, and the proceeds to go to a church she liked. 

Which happened. And the council received nothing but the shell of a house.

Later on, it was used as a boys school, a girls school, and during WW2, an American communications centre (which, apparently, the local men didn't like at all, because the American GI's were all "over paid, over sexed, and over here").

Those bits are all boring though.

What IS interesting, is there are quite a few displays on things found in and around the grounds, including some Roman and Norse artifacts (brooches! glass vessels! pottery!), and arrowheads and stone axes and things. This place was apparently quite a popular place to live and/or die.

And that's all from me, folks.

Hall Place. Check it out. 

Today I went to the National Portait Gallery! But they don't allow pictures. So NO SOUP FOR YOU.

Then I went to meet up with one Mr. Gideon Defoe for coffee!

I (rather embarassingly) talked him into a photo to prove I haven't been shitting you guys all this time:

He's the one on the right. I know we look so much alike.

Don't let his not-smiling fool you. He is a very friendly and smiley sort of person. Except if you bring up the movie Space Chimps. Or Alpha and Omega. Or any mention of the Incredibles, in Russian. Then he tears up a little bit.

But you need to read his books. They are all listed on his Wikipedia page, including the new one (!!!!!) which hasn't quite come out yet but is getting very, very close.

Also, that movie that just came out? Pirates! Band of Misfits? (Or in some places: Pirates! in and Adventure With Scientists.)

Yeah, he wrote that. It's based off his first and second book. You should go see it. There's some quite contraversial bits about lepers and fat female dodo birds that parallel the oppression of women in today's society. I encourage you to go, get terribly offended (though you ought to choose your own bit to get offended by; there's more than enough for everybody), and write colourful letters to the editor that whip the public into a frenzy.

Go see it. It's funnier than Jesus. I promise you this.

After forcing my camera upon poor Mr. Defoe I went to see Matilda (which was written by Tim Minchin).

It's FABULOUS. Technically brilliant, very well cast, designed exceptionally well. And by exceptionally well, I REALLY mean it. The cast (which includes nine kids of probably about ten years old) was fantastic. I can't believe how talented those kids are. And NINE of them! Undoubtably it was double cast as well, because of child labour laws or whatever. I can't believe there are that many kids that are THAT talented singing and dancing.

Makes my brain spin.

Then Miriam caught me outside the theatre and we popped around to the New Zealand store (THEY ARE OUT OF MARMITE; THERE IS A MARMITE SHORTAGE IN THE WORLD BECAUSE THE NEW ZEALAND FACTORY GOT DAMAGED IN THE EARTHQUAKES EVERYBODY PAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANIC!!!!) and then to a New Zealand restaurant, at which I ate more pig than I think any human has any right to.

It was very delicious, even if the pavlova was a bit odd.

Then Miriam and I saw The Duchess of Malfi, an early 17th century play where everybody hates each other, sleeps with each other, schemes against each other, and intentionally (or unintentionally) kills each other (that outta teach him for borrowing a cloak!).

I think it was meant to shock people but I found I was just bored. It was a pretty play, very atmospheric, but it just failed to move me. I didn't cry when one of the characters got strangled at length. When the little boy got hung, I only thought: "Gosh! That little boy actor is very well behaved! He's not even twitching! I hope that's a comfortable harness..." I was a bit sad when the nice fellow got murdered by accident, but considering almost his entire family had already been murdered and he didn't know it, I thought it might be for the best.

Yeah. Kinda boring. Pretty, though, even if most of the ladies were wearing the wrong undergarments.

I think I've seen too much theatre...

Oh well. Tomorrow I fly home, and then on to see Sweeney Todd with James, one of my favorites!

WELL SHIT. I forgot to tell you two stories from yesterday.

FIRST.

The ruins of Hailes Abbey...yes. The vial of Christ's blood.

Well, along comes old Henry VIII. He wants a couple of things to happen:

He wants to dissolve major, faithful religious groups so he can get all Anglican up there.

He wants more money.

So what does he do?

He says: "HEY MONK-DUDES. Can I see that vial for just a minute?"

Imagine this with more walls, and more floor, and more irate monks.

So what are monks who are sworn to poverty and largely silence supposed to do when faced with their king? And a king who is all swollen with man-lust for Anne Boelyn, and hot-to-trot to set up his own tailored religion.

They hand over the vial.

It goes to 'judgement', what ever that means. In my imagination it was a bunch of dudes in long rediculous robes, in a room somewhere, drinking and laughing their asses off over how much money the king is giving them.

Anyway, the vial was opened and it was decided that 'Christ's blood' was none other than honey coloured with saffron and/or duck's blood that the monks regularly changed. It was not entirely clear which one it was decided it was. I'm leaning towards the honey (though I'd like to know how they decided that one..."Hey, so, do you mind if I give Christ's blood a little lick, then?").

Rather unceremoniously, the vial was thrown on a fire and that was that.

And Henry VIII went to the monks and said: "So...I guess you won't be needing all this money and all these treasures then, soooo....YOINK."


I'm not entirely sure when the abbey was abandoned and fell down. I suspect it was sometime thereafter. It didn't help that the Black Death had decimated their ranks already and they were running at a pretty low capacity.

"Fuckit. Let's just abandon this shit."

Yes. That was story number one.

Story number two happened on the tube back to Miriam and David's place. I happened to overhear the phrase:

"What do they expect me to do, sit at home and eat rice?"

This caught my attention because I often used the phrase: "Sit at home and eat rice." It is often how I describe the period of time between jobs.

So I started listening to the two guys who were standing next to me. Or kind of listening. I couldn't figure out what they were talking about, really.

Finally one of them said: "I wish I could find a job that kept me interested. I have such a short attention span."

This is another of my laments, so I poked my head between the two fellows (aided by some liquid courage from hanging around with Scott) and said: "Be a props maker."

And the three of us got to talking a little, and I asked what they did, and they told me, in unison: "Musical theatre actors."

HILARIOUS TO ME. A whole train full of people and I get to talking to the other theatre people.

We chatted a bit about Singing in the Rain and how awesome and terrible theatre work is and the usual theatre-y stuff.

It was nice to talk to theatre people about theatre things.

And that brings us to today's adventures!

I wanted to go shopping. I found a market on the map and started heading there.

I found this guy.

"Laaaaaaaaaaaadies."

 I wish it was sunny out when I took this picture. I bet this guy looks great in the sun. He had lots of mirrored bits.

I found the market, eventually. It was okay. I realized after I got there that I'd been there before, with Scott, the previous time I was in town. On the bright side, the market was in full swing, instead of when Scott and I were there when it was only half up.

I went nuts and bought TWO postcards. TWO.

Then I headed back down to the waterfront.

My impressively long and colourful history brings all the boys to the yard, and they're like, it's actually a former moat that was filled in due to being a cesspool of filth and horror. So yeah. Milkshakes!

Oh hai! It's the Tower(s) of London!

I thought: I've been here twice now. Maybe, just MAYBE I should do the Tower of London thing.

So I did.

These dudes were marching around with their very not-comical machine guns.

"Make fun of my hat. I DARE you."

I also just noticed the guy in the middle has a sword. He's probably the meanest.

There were a lot of ravens around, as per tradition.

Obligatory Bird Picture.

There were animals made out of chicken wire everywhere. I particularely liked the monkeys. Baboons. Y'know. Whatever.

"YOU ATE MY POCKY! THAT WAS *MY* POCKY! WHAT AM I GOING TO EAT AT GAMING TONIGHT?!!"

I would show you pictures of the Crown Jewels, but alas, it was Not Allowed.

Instead you get:

THE WHITE TOWER!

Complete with easily removable staircase, in case of attack by guys without ladders.

Also, in the vicinity of the Tower of London, we have:

TOWER BRIDGE!

You can buy greasy bags of salty nuts on the bridge. True story.

Then I walked across that bridge and got a little lost.

I took this picture on the way:

I swear this isn't a doctored photo. I tried to catch it again, to center it better, but the moment was gone and the sun was behind the cloud.

I like that photo, though.

Anyway, tomorrow is a matinee of Matilda, then in the evening, the Duchess of Malfi, and then one sleeps until Canada again...

*sigh*

See you all soon, my fine and feathered friends.

Still here, I see?

Yes, well, so am I.

Today I did not take any pictures, so you will get another post full of Unrelated Photographs.

Today I woke up late-ish. Tottered around. Made my way towards Angel's Costumier. They provide costumes for film, television and theatre (and what ever you want to pay them for) for a LOT of people.

Their credits include such little known films as Titanic, Hugo, Harry Potter, Dr. Who, Shakespeare in Love, Memoirs of a Geisha, and Gigi (yes, they're that old, and older).

AND NOW IT'S TIME FOR UNRELATED PICTURE!!

HOLY CRAP IT'S A MOTHERFUCKIN' HERON.

That's what I said when I saw that, until I realized that it's really only BLUE herons that are rare to see, and this park was COVERED in herons. Literally. Like a carpet.

Stupid heron.

Anyway. Costumes. I found the place with relative ease. Had the worst cup of vending machine tea I think I've ever had.

Our tour guide was a small grey and pink sort of man with a neatly pressed blue shirt and glasses made entirely out of clear plastic perched upon his nose. He was very funny, but made me stop answering the questions he posed to the group because I knew all the answers and ruined the surprise. (In my defense, he WAS posing a question...)

The warehouse was AMAZING. Seriously. I thought of all my theatre friends and thought how envious they would be of their eight kilometers of costume rails. They have a whole ROOM of badges, patches, and buttons, and a separate room for all their military uniforms. Amazing.

TIME FOR ANOTHER UNRELATED PHOTO!

Don't worry. They're not real horses. Just statues. (At Camden Markets, what used to be a stable, or so I'm told. Strangely, there were horse statues EVERYWHERE.)

So if you can get in to do a tour at the Angels Costumier, I would definitely suggest it. They have some pretty cool stuff.

Our guide told us a secret about the Titanic flick.

Apparently they had made all these jumpsuits with the Titanic crew logo/words/whatever on the front, for the 'crew' of the Titanic to wear. So they wore them, ran madly around the starboard side of the ship.

Then they changed into ones with backward text, ran around again, and they flipped the film in editting and pretended it was the port side of the ship.

MAGIC.

So as the tour was coming to a close, I got to chatting with the only New Zealander in the group. She also happened to work in theatre, as a costumer, and confessed to me, rather embarassed, that her real passion was reenactment.

"Hey, I do that too!" I confessed.

"What time period?" she asks.

"Early 16th century Florence," I say.

"ME TOO!" she says.

Turns out she was a SCAdian from down under. Needless to say we rode back into London together and exchanged email addresses. (Lookit me. Overcoming my fear of strangers.)

UNRELATED PICTURE! (By luck of the draw you get an 'artistic' picture of a pigeon.)

After that I headed to Paddington Station (yes, there is a statue of Paddington Bear) and met up with Miriam and David and we took a train out of London and now we are in a town called Cheltenham Spa. There are apparently roman baths here.

Why do I always forget my bathing suit?

Today I woke up late. Again. But at least it wasn't noon this time!

No, a mere respectable 10am. (I can hear my mother groaning from here.)

I did some chores about the flat, set the laundry to go, and decided to go find me a play to see.

Also breakfast. I keep forgetting to eat breakfast until I'm halfway to the tube.

Silly Rosemart.

Anyhoo.

To keep all you non-readers interested, I will inject a non-related picture here:

British Museum. Kinda makes a girl want to replicate it...

ANYWAY. Where was I?

Right. Morning. Show.

Went down. Found the theatre playing Matilda. Booked a ticket for next week. Found the theatre playing Singing in the Rain. Booked a ticket for next week.

Wanted to find something to watch that afternoon.

Found the theatre playing Les Mis, but no matinee. BASTARDS. Who only does a matinee two days a week? Really.

Oh. Right. Three hour play. I forget.

The helpful box office fellow at Les Mis gave me a pamphlet with all the shows and all the show times (HOW HAD I NEVER GOTTEN THIS BEFORE) and I noticed War Horse was playing in...forty-five minutes.

It's been having a sold-out run. But I thought I'd try my luck.

I lurked by the box office like some sort of haunt until some fellow popped up with a couple non-returnable tickets his co-worker couldn't use. Hooray! Me and a very nice, very old English man got seats. We also got a deal! The ticket was originally for fifty pounds, but the man sold it to me for thirty. We had ground floor seats, a bit towards the back, but near the center. Much better than I could have afforded on my own.

The show was good. I can see why it was gently mind-fucking everybody. The puppetry was really excellent. I got a bit frustrated with the birds on long poles, because the birds were so tiny and the poles were so huge. The crows landing on the corpses, and the goose in the farmyard were done really well, though. And the horses, naturally.

I got a bit frustrated with the acting. Or maybe it was the writing.

I find that the more people REALLY REALLY REALLY want me to care, the less I do. And the more chest beating they do, the more face palming *I* do.

So there was a bit of scene chewing, but overall, I thought it was a good production. Perhaps I've seen too much theatre to really get my mind blown anymore.

 

And to keep your interest...ANOTHER UNASSOCIATED PICTURE! :D:D:D:D

This was the only half-decent photo I took today, since I spent so much of my time inside theatres. (War Horse is THREE HOURS LONG. It didn't really feel like it, except around the middle of the second act when I was beating my forehead against the seat in front of me.)

After that I had to book it down to the National Theatre to meet up with Miriam and David. We had a very nice sushi dinner that was very artfully done, very expensive, and very sparse. (It WAS good, though. Very good quality fishes.)

And then we saw...Travelling Light! Yes, that was it. It had an interested forced perspective stage with a curved cyc. It looked like a pain in the butt to put up and take down (they change plays every five days), and according to the woman who hosted the backstage tour, it very much was.

Travelling Light was pretty good. I found myself getting bored in the second half again, and thinking about yogurt and cheese instead, but then, I might be a bit jaded. Overall I liked it better than Moon on a Rainbow Shawl.

Oh. Travelling Light had a man with THE WORST Bronx accent I have EVER HEARD. Ever. It was somewhere between Bronx and Australian and general bad American. That was hilarious for the first thirty seconds, and then made my ears start to bleed a little bit.

Awful. But otherwise a pretty good play.

And with that noise, I'm going to sleep so maybe I don't sleep in until noon...hmm....

Tomorrow is a tour of the Angels Costumier, some massive costume construction place just outside of London.

Ta!

I haven't been able to find an internet connection that's fast enough to upload photos, so youse gets an entry without 'em.

Friday I woke up feeling more or less complete, but Amber was feeling worse, so we ended up having a really low key day just wandering around. We took a tour through a really amazing church from the late 19th century. I took a lot of pictures, which I will post at some point.

Saturday was travelling, travelling. Took a train into Glasgow Prestwick airport, then took a plane to London Stansted (which is about halfway between London and Cambridge). Took a train up to Cambridge, took a bus to the B&B where I was staying.

The woman running the B&B was a proper sort which I didn't approve of at all. She had all sorts of semi-religious, inner power sort of books on her shelves, like 'The Secret' and 'Unlocking Your Inner Angel' and shit like that. I almost rather she'd've had one fuck-off big bible. At least then I'd know how to behave.

The 'continental breakfast' she served was all days old goods. When I reached for a banana to cut into my cereal, a cloud of fruit flies flew up. (I politely ignored them.)

Cambridge was so much more than I ever expected. I mean, somewhere in the back of my skull I was aware that Cambridge was an amazing place steeped in history. However, much like Hollywood, it had been described and described and described so often that it was akin to a mythical place in my head, right next to Narnia.

After breakfast I decided to walk back into town. Things are so much closer to each other here than I ever expected. When you see a 'city block' on a map in Calgary, you'll be walking a long time . A 'city block' here is barely noticeable. I'll have passed four without even realizing I crossed a street.

So I walked into Cambridge. The road I was on took me right through the main drag, through all the colleges.

HOLY CRAP.

If pomp and circumstance was masturbation, I'd have drowned.

The Fitzwilliam Museum (the only reason I went to Cambridge) did not open until noon, and I have left the B&B precisely at ten (read: fled), and since everything was so bloody close together, I hit the downtown no later than half past ten. So I just wandered.

A lot of the colleges had open doors, and for a small fee you could go in and wander around. I passed one attached to a really amazing church, and if it's one thing I cannot resist, it's seeing the lengths man will go to for an invisible man. (Plus, I like the stained glass.)

Needless to say, it was bloody well amazing. The grounds and the buildings and the chapel. The stained glass was absolutly glorious. They had some sort of saint, perhaps, tombed up in the middle of the room. You weren't supposed to take pictures, but I snuck one picture of some of the stained glass because it was so amazing.

And there were Canada geese on the grass behind the college! I said hello. They said WAAAAAAANNGHK.

Even though it was a sunday, the streets were solid with people. I do not like the press of so many people, especially when I'm unfamiliar with the area, it's hot, and I'm wearing a large backpack. Ergo, after a brief detour into a smaller college to take a look at the archetecture, I pressed on to the Fitzwilliam museum.

I ate an early lunch on the benches in front of the museum and searched in vain for an unprotected internet connection. Alas, no luck.

The Fitzwilliam Museum was bloody well fantastic. I heartily suggest it. It contained many pieces which I was familiar with, but had no idea they owned. I mainly went to see their collection of illuminated manuscripts, and was a little disappointed.

I mean, I had heard they had the second largest collection of manuscripts outside the Vatican. The Vatican musn't have many, or the museum just didn't display much of their collection. I suppose it is rather a specialized interest, but still, there was only ten, at the most. They were still beautiful.

They also had an enormous collection of 17th and 18th century china and silver, a really extensive collection of Chinese and Japanese pottery, and an impressive collection of rennaissance paintings (lots of French and Italian). They had a whole room of Victorian portraits, and I gotta say, I just love the style of Victorian portraits. I wish I could paint that realistically.

Anyway. After the museum I hopped a train down to London, staggered around lost for a while, and found my hostel. Everything went pretty smoothly.

It's very hot in my room, though, and there's a Greek (maybe?) guy on the bunk below and across from me who must think there's no one else in the room, because he turned on the light at midnight last night to make his bed, and talked to himself the whole time. Then this morning, woke up at the crack of dawn and started applying spray-deoderant.

Bleagh.

Anyway, it's stifflingly hot in my room. Getting to sleep was no biggy, as I just wetted my towel and laid it on my back, but this morning it was dry and I was hot and the garbage truck and self-talking-Greek-guy woke me up.

Ergo, I am awake at hell-o-clock, and gonna go out where it's cool.

Rock on, peeps. Today is my first full day in London.