Monday, January 28, 2008

Ruth and Sarah and Karen. Yes!

Today I completely oversleep.

Well, technically Penny and her adorable entourage wake me at 7:30am, as per our agreement, but I am feeling so poorly I go back to sleep and don't get up until noon. I still feel icky but I have plans to meet Ruth in London for high tea today so I force myself to get up.

After much phone hoopla attempting to arrange things with Ruth, Clara agrees to drop me at a train station, after we retrieve Chloe and Ben from school. Their school is absolutely precious, I snap a few photos and then try to get a funny photo of the kids in front of the school. And my camera dies a horrible death just as I frame the shot. Noooooooooooooooooooooo! The kids think it's really funny but I am devastated. No more pictures! No Fair!


I pull myself together, pack up my frozen-open camera and Clara, Chloe & Ben take me to the High Wycombe Train Station. As we approach, Ben points and shouts "The train!!!! There's a Train!!!" and Clara immediately begins to negotiate with him about the parameters of their train seeing for the day. Apparently, Ben is a train connaisseur. "It's so hard" Clara explains, in her priceless German accent, "he just wants to watch the trains go by. He'll do it for hours if he can!"

I bid them goodbye, hop on a train to london and meet Ruth, Sarah and Karen at the National Gallery. It's basically too late for a real tea service so we opt for dinner and a show instead. About my new travelmates, for those who do not know them already: Ruth is the one I know best, she is part of a social group that parties every week, primarily (it seems to me) in the South Bay. She has, what, 27 advanced degrees (?) so it is super fun to talk to her about STUFF. And she's just Cool. Karen (likewise Cool) I know through Ruth and (of all things) She Works for BART! And went to England! And rode the Tube! And took photos of the trains tracks and everything! (I am not excited. Really.) There is hope for the human race! At least as relates to Public Transit Systems! Sarah I have only met today. She is a Real English Native. Well, Ex-Native. Now she works for NASA in Mountain View (?) but she did her Post-Grad in God-Knows-What at Cambridge. Rockin'. Anyhow we now have plans to all band together and Do Things while we are here.

Discussion and a tkts visit ensue. Show chosen: Absurd Person Singular. Reasons: Karen's not much of a musical girl, we all feel like comedy, and it's Jane Horrocks starring in a play by Alan Ayckbourn. What could be funnier? (Or more British?).

As she is our native guide, Sarah chooses dinner a mere five minutes walk from the theatre, opulent Chinese Feast-of-Death! Sweet! I have never heard of Prawn toast: They take huge prawns, season them, split them open, smash them onto buttery-toasty-toast, cover them in sesame seeds and bake them! This is what Chinese food is in England? Bloody Brilliant! We eat until we can barely move and then limp over to the show.

We have chosen well. Those who prefer realism should not see this show. But over-the-top insanity suits us.

After the show we stand outside in front of the show billboard, Ruth snapping pictures (my camera is still broken...pout), but I want Ruth IN the shot so I search the crowd for someone unstuck-up enough to be roped into playing photographer. I spot a man in a very small kilt and decide he's my guy. Oh man can I pick'em. I've just got a knack, I guess. He wields the camera while holding a lit cigarette in one hand, is afraid to push the button down hard enough to make it go, and all the while all WE can think is that he must be freezing to death, when he finally shoots the picture. He's gone before it occurs to us that we should have gotten a picture WITH him but oh well. The picture is a gem: every one of us is mid-"you just push it down all the way" and so we all look singularly absurd. How fitting.

I'll post the pic when Ruth sends me a copy. Watch this space for hysterically-awesome-four-person-London-photo-op!

Coming Soon: Three England Cities: A sketch!


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Ummmm... so Becca, as usual, you are the recipe for awesome. Miss you horridly! Just returned tonight to Planet Texas from a blissful 6 day tour of Boston - how perfectly brilliant it is! You will love the photos of the T stop closest to my new apartment (I'm moving March 15th), maybe not quite as cute as your English train stations, but cute just the same. And silly BART will never hold a candle to the T.

Love!

Suzanne