My long weekend in London started on a slightly sour note in that I missed my train thanks to writing down the wrong departure time in my diary. So I had to buy a new single ticket on the spot at a price not much less than the return ticket I had bought a month or so before.
But as the Bard said all's well that ends well. The train that took me south started late and arrived even later qualifying me for total reimbursment. Isn't that just a fairytale ending.
So in London we (three chums and I) enjoyed food, drink, drama, dance, music and more sometimes together and sometimes separately. We also enjoyed the company of a number of friends and relations.
In my case I spent a day with my brother and sister-in-law, my niece, her husband and my two great nieces. They are 10 years old now and I hadn't seen them since they were about four so it was super to see them again. They are actually part of the reason for my interest in Japan and Japanese because their dad is Japanese. Not much Japanese was spoken at the weekend though.
That evening David, Sally and I went to Pizza Express to hear some jazz. You may not know that Pizza Express's founder was a jazz fan and his Dean Street restaurant's basement has been a jazz venue since the 60s. The group who played that night were led by a saxophonist called Binker Golding. His playing varied from the soft and gentle tone of his low tempo compositions to the high energy and speed with which he raced through the sax's range.
The following night Claire and I were at Ronnie Scott's with Phil's daughter Molly and her partner Neil to hear a group called George Simmonds and The Squintet. George, who is a trombonist, didn't make it. The poor man was taken ill but the rest of the band were brilliant. This was very different to Binker Golding. It was New Orleans style standards delivered with amazing skill and energy and I have to say at top volume. Like George, Ross and Siobhan didn't make it but that from disinclination rather than illness.
Earlier in the day we'd all eaten at Barge East, which is an actual barge, moored near where the London Olympics took place in 2012. Lunch was Sunday Roast with beef, pork, lamb or a slice of all three on offer. I had the lamb. A huge portion with the usual trimmings. No evening meal was called for after that.
The first night we all went to the Almeida to see an Irish play called Portia Coughlan. It was dark and bleak but I liked it. This review gives a bit of background to the genesis of the play as well as reviewing the production. Before the show we ate at Ottolenghi's. I'd never heard of the man but then I'm from the Fanny Cradock era. Mr Ottolenghi is a modern cook and food writer though has not always been a cook. See Wikipedia for his unusual CV. His food was very good but his prices were as high as his portions were small.
We ate one day at Carluccio's where the style is less elaborate. It doesn't aspire to be quite as high up the fancy dining tree so its portions are larger and the prices smaller (a bit). I knew of them as a Glasgow restaurant where I'm sure I've eaten rather than a UK wide chain but it seems their Glasgow restaurant closed five years ago. Time flies and all that.
Other delights included the Diva exhibition at the V&A who situate the first to bear that description in the 16th century. But it's a couple of hundred years later that names with which I'm familiar are attached to the exhibits; like Jenny Lind from the world of opera, Sarah Bernhardt in theatre, Marie Lloyd in the music hall. The exhibition takes us right up to today where I have to confess a number of names were completely unknown to me, though fortunately many were so I didn't feel that I was entirely an old fogey. It's a fascinating show with a great selection of music delivered to headsets as you go round.
The Young V&A at Bethnal Green had an exhibition called From Myth to Manga charting all things Japanese in the line of folk tales and fairy stories up to, as the title suggests, today's amazing anime films and manga comics that are popular outside Japan as well as in. It's not a huge exhibition but I found it very interesting. The only other time I've been in this area was to a jazz event in 2018 in a church just across the green from the museum and that was to hear a Japanese group of ten baritone saxes. A slightly strange coincidence.
The one dance show I saw was a jazzed up version of The Nutcracker at a pop-up venue at the South Bank Centre. I loved it as did The Guardian.
Having said that there was a deal of dancing in Guys and Dolls at the Bridge theatre. We walked by the Tower of London and over Tower Bridge to get there in company with Claire's aunt Barbara who'd been at Diva with us and met up with Molly and Neil at the theatre. It's a terrific space with superb technical facilities that allow them to raise up sections of the floor and fly stuff everywhere. From all four sides the view is perfect for the 900 people who'd make up a full house though in this show there were more because there were audience members milling around the performance space. I say milling around but in fact they were very carefully and adroitly marshalled by stage crew as the various scenes were set and struck.
The show was marvellous. First class performances, excellent music, tremendous staging all combining to present the story woven from Damon Runyon's writings and his characters to great effect. The show burst into life and continued at pace after the final curtain as cast and audience danced joyously together. There's an article about the creation of the show here. Although The Guardian's critic gave it four stars she didn't seem to like it as much as I did.
Our AirB&B was in Hackney so we did a fair bit of travel in and out of central London, mostly by bus. I came away full of admiration for the London bus service. We like to think we have a good bus service in Edinburgh, and we do, but London's is miles better.
