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Sunday, 10 November 2002
In London ::
B and I arrived in London late Saturday afternoon (with a trio of British Airways snafus: their entire checkin computer system in San Francisco was down; somehow the flight plan didn’t get filed correctly; at Heathrow there was no gate for us to park at. And the passport control officer, after I told him that “s/w” preceding “engineer” on my immigration paper meant “software,” blamed their computers having been down all afternoon on me :-)
I found myself very quickly saying “sorry?” instead of “what?” when asking B to repeat himself.
Outside the restaurant I saw posters: Michael Moore, maker of Bowling for Columbine is performing here, “MM takes on George W. Bush.” I’d like to see that.
After an Indian dinner (highly recommended: Chowki on Denman St. near Picadilly Circus) we walked around for a bit. In Leicester Square we heard something raucously musical which B immediately identified as Hare Krishnas. Indeed, a small parade of them soon passed us, chanting and dancing. The next music we heard, perhaps 15 minutes later, was in Covent Garden, where a busker was playing guitar and singing George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord.”
I saw but didn’t get to photograph posters for the forthcoming Star Trek movie, which featured the phrase: Fear Your Dark Side. No thanks.
This morning we found the street in Finchley I lived on when I was 6 years old. We had trouble finding my old school. I had had only a vague idea of where it was, and only knew that it was named after a saint. We found a schoolyard full of Orthodox Jewish children and asked a man on his way in. He reminded me that my school was probably St. Mary’s, and pointed us back in the direction where buried memories had been vaguely stirring. I saw a very faintly familiar wall, but nothing more. B saw an old man getting out of a car and asked him. He told us how the school had been torn down and replaced by a courthouse, the play yard by a car park, though one small old building—and the yellow brick wall I had vaguely recognized—remained.
The above-ground portion of the Underground ride back into central London very much reminded me of a Mike Leigh film whose name I couldn’t place. B pointed out a picture of Mike Leigh in front of the National Arts & Entertainment Centres.
More photos when I get home.
References:
Michael Moore (27 December 2002)
| << The Dark Side | 2002 > November | In the mail >> |