Half term trip to London

Just before Christmas, Phil spotted an offer for rooms at a new Premier Inn opening in London, close to Tower Bridge. He booked for us to take the grandsons at half term. We quite keen on Premier Inns – they make a big point of the comfort of their beds, and they are actually wonderfully comfortable: and they make a point of keeping the corridors quiet, too, so you do get a really good night’s sleep.  We’re not very keen on B & B; at the risk of sounding a pair of miseries, we don’t like having to make the effort to be friendly and pleasant to the owners and prefer the anonymity of a budget hotel.

When we got to the hotel it became obvious that lots of parents had also picked up on the offer and the place was packed with kids on half term. The boys really enjoyed staying on a hotel, especially the breakfast!  Thomas, the older grandson is more or less permanently hungry, and the younger one, Marc, had a massive breakfast and then no lunch to speak of, which was fine with us.

We toured Tower Bridge and its workings, and then Marc was tired, so I took him back to the hotel while Thomas and granddad went round the cruiser Belfast. They were shattered with going up and down so many companion ways, but I think it was the highlight of the whole trip for Thomas.

Looking through the glass walkway high on Tower bridge

H.M.S. Belfast

Next day we rushed them out and to the Tower, which they understood later, because we walked straight in to see the Crown Jewels, and by eleven o’clock the queue was all the way back to the gate into the Tower. Thomas liked seeing Elizabeth I’s pearl earrings on the crown, because he did the Tudors last year in school. They also liked the fact that the jewels have a history; they weren’t as impressed as us by the Stars of Africa. Perhaps they have less to compare them with.
There is so much to see at the Tower, too much really for Marc, and it got very busy indeed, so we gave up in the end. 

Welsh Guardsman. When the guard changed, the corporal
kept having to call out "Make way for the Queen's Guard" - and
dopey tourists still stood bang in the way.

Raven - this one seemed to like the tourists, but they have a wicked
beak on them - everyone had the sense to be cautious.

The next day was brilliant. We got the Docklands Light Railway to the Excel, and the took the cable car across the Thames, which  I highly recommend. It was a beautiful clear sunny day and the views were amazing, and the water in the docks was sparkling – it was wonderful. Then we had a quick look at the Dome, and then took a bus to Greenwich. Greenwich was great. You can’t fail to be impressed with Cutty Sark and the Naval Hospital, and the tide was right in and the river was so choppy that waves were splashing people on the pavement. That’s bound to be a success with boys. And on top of all that there was filming going on – a Michael Caine film, a follow up to Now You See It, apparently.

Canary Wharf

The Millennium Dome

Royal Victoria dock

 Then we walked through the tunnel under the Thames and got the DLR back.

We had time to pop in to King’s Cross to see platform nine and threequarters, or whatever it is – the Harry Potter thing. We would have taken photos for the boys, but there was a queue of about a hundred adults. I simply don’t get the Harry Potter thing in adults. Kids, yes – anything that gets them reading with pleasure – but really, not adults. And I speak as one who likes quite a lot of SF and enjoys many superhero films.

I have to say the boys were perfectly behaved and extremely good company, and that's not just because I'm their granny.

Stratford and nuclear physics

We were booked in to see two plays this month. One was The Shoemakers’ Holiday, by Thomas Dekker, and the other was Oppenheimer by Tom Morton-Smith.

The Shoemaker’s Holiday was very well produced and acted, with David Troughton as the shoemaker who ascends to be Lord Mayor of London, and a young man called Joel McCormack, who seemed to be pretty fresh out of drama school, as one of his cheeky and determined journeymen. I shall watch out for him in future. 

Oppenheimer is a new play written specially for the RSC, and we were beginning to wonder if we had made the right choice between that and a good concert in Nottingham on the same night.

Well, it was brilliant. It set out the technical, logistical,  (do you know that 10% of the total electricity generated in the U.S. was supplying the Manhattan Project?) and moral problems of the Manhattan Project so clearly, and the issue of surveillance, distrust and government control is so deeply relevant today. We were gripped. John Heffernan as J. Robert Oppenheimer, was wonderful, but there wasn't a weak link in the cast.

I’ve been down to the library and got a biography of Oppenheimer, which I fear may be like a Brief History of Time; while I was actually reading it, I understood it perfectly, but as soon as I closed the book, it sort of slipped away. So I read it again, with exactly the same result.

The play has also provided us with after school activities with the grandsons, who were fascinated by exponential mathematics, and how exactly the bomb was built and detonated, and why there wasn’t a crater at Hiroshima. Some of our google searches may look dodgy if GCHQ is watching us. 

January

I’ve been surprisingly busy for the last month or so, and I haven’t been keeping up with the blog. So this is a kind of update.

We had a few days in Edinburgh, which we enjoyed, although the weather was grim. But we didn’t expect anything else. It’s been grim every time we’ve been to Edinburgh, even in the summer. There was nothing on at any theatre – post Hogmanay hangover, I suppose – but we did have some excellent dinners. We stayed in a budget hotel, but it was right on Princes Street, with a terrific view of the castle, and very well placed for restaurants in the New Town. 

View from the hotel.

Apparently there is a modern Scottish cuisine which uses cheaper cuts of meat and local ingredients, and very good it is. We really had to force ourselves back out of the hotel and into the freezing wind to go out for our dinners, but it was always worth it.

A "mortsafe" in Greyfriars churchyard. There were lots of them
to stop graverobbers digging up the bodies and selling them to
Edinburgh University anatomy school. 

There was a fantastic show of Turner watercolours at the Scottish National gallery, which are only ever on show in January, to preserve them from fading, and we walked down the Royal Mile, where all the tartan shops are now run by Sikhs, and went round the Scottish Parliament.

 I had mixed feelings; I like clean lines, and there were a lot of very cluttered bits, especially the ceiling of the debating chamber, and the roof lights. One bit I really disliked was the offices; they all have a window seat as “space for contemplation”; it was obvious that the block had come out as a rectangular building, but the architect thought that was too boring, so he’d stuck these pods on. And then each of these window seats had an external fence of wooden poles across them, blocking the view. That is simply stupid. 

Idiotic fence over the window.

And there was a long screed about democracy and women where Mary Queen of Scots, that well known champion of freedom, the rights of women, and democracy, was cited. But the building seems to work well, and the debating chamber, with its modern layout and modern systems, did rather put to shame the bear pit of the Westminster Parliament.

Leith - there are some massive oil rig supply vessels in dock.

We also went to Leith, which is still in the process of coming up, and visited Britannia. It was much more interesting than we expected, to be honest: between the fifties classic understated design, the crew accommodation, the artefacts presented on the Queen’s tour of various Pacific islands, and the complete contrast with the overwhelming bling of modern yachts of oligarchs, it was a fascinating tour. The thing that really impressed us may sound funny, but it was the laundry. It was massive, as a proportion of the ship’s size, and fully equipped with extremely solid fifties laundry equipment, because on tours in the Pacific, the crew got through so many changes – the crew of the launch might get through five sets of whites in a day.

The other thing I should update you on is Nottingham’s naughtiest dog. I’m glad to say, the title is no longer remotely appropriate. I mean, he’s not Nottingham’s best behaved dog, but he is much much better. A great many treats and a great deal of patience have had to be expended, but at least he has calmed down enough for treats to work. If he won’t come back for a treat, a squeaky toy is the weapon to deploy. It’s difficult, as you do have to let him play with it for a minute or two, and he can destroy a squeaky toy in a few seconds; but we try to regard it as natural wastage. 

Doing his best imitation of a greyhound - BUT returning to owner!

He has to be tired out to give you any peace in the house, but he has stopped bounding over the furniture like a berserk kangaroo. And now he’s keen on licking your hands or ears rather than nibbling them. I’m quite willing to have my ears licked if it keeps him happy, although my daughter thinks it’s awful. I tell her our dog washed all of their ears as babies and toddlers, and it never did them any harm, but I think I lost mothering points for having allowed it. 

Durham, Doddington, and cheese

Yesterday we went to Doddington Hall for a pre-Christmas outing. Doddington is near Lincoln, and is a Smythson house. For many years we lived in Wollaton, and Wollaton Hall is  very famous and elaborate Smythson house, although quite spoiled internally. Hardwick hall, just up the A1 is Smythson, and a wonderful survival, with most of the original furnishings. Smythson is buried in St Leonard’s, Wollaton, and his monument actually calls him “architect”, which must be a very early usage of the term, if not the first.

Doddington, front, with sculpture by Andrew Smith,
last summer

Doddington, rear, with frost

Doddington is smaller and simpler than Hardwick or Wollaton, but it is lovely. We went in the summer for the biennial sculpture exhibition; it must have been at least twenty years since we last visited, and the next generation of the family have succeeded. The gardens are improved and the produce of the enormous kitchen gardens are sold in a shop, along with high quality meats, cheeses, pies, cakes, bread etc. It’s jolly good. And there’s an excellent café and restaurant.

So this weekend we have friends staying, and saw that Doddington is open for a brief period in winter, with the house decorated for Christmas. So we booked the restaurant for lunch and went off.

It was a cold and frosty morning, (though way past three o’ clock) so we didn’t spend as much time in the gardens as they deserve, although we did make sure to do the turf maze. Can’t resist a maze or a labyrinth.

Trying the maze

At the centre

The house decorations were just gorgeous, and perfectly in keeping. There were huge displays of dried hydrangea heads, holly, ivy and white stalks and seed heads. There were ivy leaves made from cut up sheet music, origami flowers, and paper bells. A group of wicker work angels, whom we had seen in the gardens during the sculpture exhibition, were suspended from the ceiling. One room, which contains a wonderful decorated Egyptian tent, brought back to the house by a previous owner, had paper silhouettes of the three kings. A choir sang carols in the main hall.

Choir in the hall

But the piece de resistance was the long gallery at the top of the house. You opened the door into near darkness, and walked into a softly lit forest (and I mean forest – there were countless trees). The pine smell, and the cold and the subtle lighting, made it feel just like going in to Narnia. There were wickerwork angels here, too, standing so their shadows were cast on the ceiling. You followed the meandering path through the forest, and reached a large tree, decorated with white lights and “icicles”. It was brilliant.

The forest, in the gallery

Then we had an excellent lunch, with crackers and mince pies.

The best thing about the decorations was the imagination and work that had gone into them, not expensive or showy ingredients.

Last weekend we went to see friends and family in the north east, which was delightful in itself, and as a bonus we went to a short, informal carol concert in Durham Cathedral. The choir wasn’t singing, unfortunately, but it was lovely. After the service we visited the Venerable Bede, and St Cuthbert. Durham may well be my favourite cathedral in the whole world. 

 I do like singing carols, and know nearly all the words of nearly all the carols, because for about twelve years the children and I, and any friends we could persuade, sang carols on a Saturday before Christmas outside the shops in Wollaton, just by the pedestrian crossing and outside the post office, and collected for Save the Children. We used to get about £100, so it was very well worthwhile, although sometimes we were frozen by the end.

On the way back to Nottingham we stopped off at a farm shop and got a beautiful small whole Coverdale cheese, to eat with the Christmas cake. Once back, we went out to Long Clawson and bought the Christmas half Stilton. So now I feel madly Christmassy, and almost organised.

Theatre feast

We’ve been having a very busy time theatre going. We’ve seen five plays in less than two weeks. It’s been brilliant.

Last week, we went to Stratford to see The Witch of Edmonton and The White Devil. They aren’t Shakespeare, of course; The White Devil is written by Webster, and The Witch of Edmonton is written by a consortium of Ford, Dekker and Rowley.

The eponymous witch is played by Dame Eileen Atkins. She is a shrewd, lonely, somewhat embittered individual, and has quite daring speeches to make, which are withering to the men who run things. The interplay between her and her familiar, a black dog, athletically played by an actor equipped with a flexible skeletal tail, was excellent. The subplot was also very well played, particularly when the murder victim’s sister realises her brother in law was the murderer. I was on the edge of my seat then. The writers were pretty ambiguous about the existence of witchcraft and magic, and surprisingly on the side of the women – the sensibility was more modern that I expected, I think.  

The same was true of The White Devil. In that play, women were used by men. They are not better than the men, but they are made to take the responsibility which the men can avoid. Of course the director may bring out this, because it chimes with modern ideas, but they can’t put in something that isn’t there to start with.

It was quite gruesome. It ended with three women murdered on stage – remember we are in the front row – and then one of the murderers cut his own throat. By this time, I was so involved that I clapped my hands over my eyes. I bet the actor found that satisfying, if he happened to notice.

The next day, we went to see Arcadia at the Nottingham Playhouse. We used to have a bit of a thing about Stoppard, but Arcadia came out during the long gap in theatre going occasioned by children. So we were really looking forward to it, and it didn’t disappoint. The cast was mostly young, with a couple straight out of drama school, excellent, and Ilan Goodman,  the actor who had to explain chaos theory and the mathematics, did it very well indeed. Stoppard does make you work, though. But there’s plenty of emotion too.

This week, we’ve had another trip to Stratford, to see Love’s Labours Lost and Love’s Labours Won, as the RSC is calling Much Ado About Nothing. (They have historical justifications for this, if you’re interested.) Well, it was just superb. The plays have been set either side of the Great War – Lost, just before, so the idea of the lovers deciding to wait a year became terribly sad; and Won, just after, so the more mature and serious atmosphere made sense. The whole company were tremendous, although two such wordy plays must be exhausting – and the same company is doing a new play, The Christmas Truce.

The set and costumes were spectacularly good, and both plays were scored by Nigel Hess. The music was integral and wonderfully effective – marches, Ivor Novello type songs, and incidental music which scored the action superbly.

There was a Q & A with the cast after the second play, which we found enlightening. Most of the audience seemed to have seen both plays – only a small minority had only see Much Ado. So most of us had done the marathon – although, of course, it was the cast who had really done the work, the emotions generated take it out of the audience too!

If you can, go and see both plays. They are wonderful.

Seeing Love’s Labours Lost means we are now in search of only three plays, and then we have seen the whole accepted canon. We still need Cymbeline, Pericles and Henry VIII. They aren’t very often performed. But Greg Doran has promised to do all the plays during his tenure – so we just have to live long enough. And there are plenty of plays we’d like to see again, so we’ll be driving a groove to Stratford for as long as we can, I think. 

The Walk- In Centre

Recently I went deaf after swimming (my own fault, diving and underwater swimming in sea water not maybe the best idea). Then after a miserable day or two of continually saying “What?” to everyone and driving people mad, my right ear became seriously painful. This was over a weekend, and, as it was all too obvious what was the problem, and there was no need to turn up at A & E and be a nuisance,  I decided to go to the NHS walk in centre nearby on the Monday morning.

It’s about five minute’s walk away, and I was quite prepared to wait to be seen. In fact, I was seen quite quickly, but the waiting time was quite an experience.

The NHS walk in centres are mainly for people who can’t get to their own doctor (so people not in their home town), or for minor emergencies (a nasty cut, for example) or for people who aren’t registered with a GP.

The sort of people who can’t get themselves organised to register with a GP tend to be the sort of people who really need medical services. So, in the waiting area were a lot of people waiting for a special clinic, and I think, judging by the clientele, it had to be a drugs clinic. A young man was continually and loudly complaining about having to wait, convinced that he had been in some way discriminated against. He was telling everyone he’d come about his feet, alleging that they were causing him agony,  but he kept getting up to dance to music on his headphones; and of course, when he was called through, he couldn’t hear because of the headphones, and the staff had to go over and get him. And he wasn’t polite, even then.

Then, the automatic doors opened, admitting a blast of stale beer smell, and in them stood an elderly and very disreputable man, swaying, and bellowing at the top of his voice:

“This is the best f**ing walk in centre in Nottingham! I’m telling you, you’re all marvellous! You’re the best in Nottingham! You’re f**ing great, I’m telling you! Do you hear, this is the best f**ing walk in centre in Nottingham!”

Then he tottered off down the street, the doors closed, and I was left feeling great admiration for the staff, who aren’t paid enough, however much they are paid, and a genuine sense of pride in and gratitude for the NHS. I’m so glad it looks after everyone, even people who don’t “deserve” looking after. I don’t mind paying through my taxes for it at all, and I bet that feeling is true of the vast majority of the British.

To finish the story – I saw a nurse practitioner and got a prescription of antibiotic drops for my ear, and can hear again, thank God. 

The Halle

Last night we went to the Royal Concert Hall to hear the Halle Orchestra, and I just have to write about it.

The programme was Brahms’ 1^st Piano Concerto, the overture to The Flying Dutchman and Sibelius 5^th Symphony, so all quite big works. Sir Mark Elder did a preconcert talk, and he’s just great. He’s been doing these talks for a bit now – I don’t know how it started but the concert hall management emailed ticket holders, a long time ago now, and asked us how we felt about a talk he’d done. I’m sure the response was overwhelmingly positive, and so it seems to be becoming a tradition.

He explains the background to the works, and what was happening in the composers’ lives, and the significance of the key signature, and points out relationships between pieces of music and between movements of a piece, so you can listen much more intelligently and get much more out of the music. It’s brilliant. It also makes me wonder why so many concerts involve no one saying anything at all. Youngest son says classical music is elitist, and I don’t think that should be true, but when all the musicians are in white tie and nobody speaks, you do wonder how attractive it is to anyone who’s not already a seasoned concert goer.

In Nottingham the Halle and Mark Elder have got it right; they’ve built up a following and the hall was packed, hardly any spare seats. The BBC were there, thanks to the concert hall’s excellent acoustics, and we noticed the hall has had a bit of a facelift. It wasn’t shabby before, maybe a bit worn here and there, but the city council is looking after it well.

Paul Lewis was the soloist for the Brahms, and it was terrific, sparkling playing; the Flying Dutchman was wonderful; but the Sibelius! – it blew my socks off. It was just amazing, every moment so clear and precise, and with a charge of energy that left me feeling simultaneously invigorated and drained – catharsis, I suppose.  Sir Mark looked drained – it made me feel ever so slightly guilty that he’d done the preconcert talk, when the conducting takes it out of him to that extent.

It was broadcast live on Radio 3, so if you have iPlayer, you can listen and see what you think.