Ah the weekend. A day off. On Saturday I slept and slept some more… When I finally emerged still tired I walked down the river to Boots to pick up a few necessities such as shampoo and conditioned because the little travel bottles I brought weren’t doing the job. I had to sit outside the shop for a while because unlike the 24 hour convenience of the major US cities, the shops in London open up at their leisure and are often closed by 7pm. Finally at 10:35 someone idled up to the door and let me in… After a quick shop I took the stairs to the top side of London Bridge for the London Bridge festival. The bridge was lined with vendors and shops etc. In its heyday, (before- like the nursery rhyme says London Bridge started to fall down and was eventually replaced and sold to some American and replaced again) London Bridge had tons of shops and homes etc built on top of it lining the bridge itself. I had just begun to browse the shops when the skies opened and the rain London is famous for came pouring down on us. So I quickly scrambled back down along the river to my room, where slightly damp and still tired I headed back to bed for the remained of the day. With the sound of the rain, looking out my window at the poor folks caught in the downpour, I made a cup of English tea, put on my pj’s, and read a book, cover to cover. I use to read voraciously. It seems in this past year or so with the puppy and work and the new business I have stopped reading anything I wasn’t teaching. Hmmm. “Change Priorities Ahead…” In the evening I stepped back out into the rain manned with umbrella and slicker and headed to the nearest bookstore for another book! I stopped to get some dinner and returned to read…
However one can only spend so much time in bed so on Sunday when I woke up at the crack of dawn to hear the dumpsters being emptied in the street bellow me, and I saw the shining sun in my window I knew this was to be a good day on the town! Allison and I met up at a café and headed out to see the sights. We walked around Victoria and went to St. James Park (off of Buckingham Palace)and got a few glimpses of the changing of the guard. Waled past Big Ben, goofed off in a telephone box, and even saw some creative Simpsons sand carvings. (See pictures) We met up with another Winona friend, also called Laura, in Victoria. We walked everywhere it was such a beautiful day. In the afternoon we walked back to our side of the river and headed up to Southwark Center, near the London Eye. On the green there is a giant upside down purple cow. It’s a summer comedy venue called “Underbelly.” This is its first summer in London before the bovine heads up to Edinburgh for the comedy festival that it has been a part of for years. Allison used to work with Second City so she was very interested, and I of course like to laugh so I was game. We got tickets for the next show Katy Bond and Friends. Katy Bond is very up and coming right now in the UK. She has done several TV specials and has a bit of a following I guess. We were a little early so we sat in the “pasture” and had a pint before the show. The pasture was full of giant games of connect four and hopscotch. Very clever. And now the show. Hmm, well we got fantastic seats (inside a cow, go figure) because it was first come first serve. Katy is known for parodying celebrities so I wasn’t surprised when she came out in a 50s style dress and a ratted up beehive wig on her head and took the piss out (one of my favorite British expressions meaning to make fun of) of Amy Winehouse. She sang a parody song about her divorce. Amusing I guess. However every time she came onstage she simply donned a different wig to mock a different celebrity. Same voice, same character, some slovenliness, same crap. She played Lily Allen as well as Kate Winslet- seriously were it not for the wig change I would not know the difference. The other sketch comedians were in fact better than her with a few funny bits. And I did see one cool sketch with a member of the cast miming every word (every word not the story) to the 90’s pop song Torn. I actually think it might be a cool exercise for my advanced class to help with precise movement, tension etc.
After the show we headed back out to pasture… ha ha, cow jokes… and tried to get tickets to the next show which we were informed by one of the stage hands was much better. Of course this show was sold out, so we decided to wait until show time to see if there were any returns. In the meantime we ran into some of the company members of the show we had just seen and got to talking to them, as is apparently our new tradition to have drinks with all the performers we see here in London. I do like how accessible everyone is! I have really enjoyed discussing the performances with the actual performers. It was interesting and a bit sad because they could tell they had bombed. To be honest I felt for them. How hard to continue for the entire hour when you aren’t getting any response in the first half. He told us that Katy had called him just a week or two before about doing the show and that they hadn’t performed together for some time so they had hastily revived some old material- making a lot of sense with what I saw. One of the guys suggested that he thought that the cow might have been the problem. It’s a big blow up cow so all of the noise and music from outside was heard clearly in the show. I vehemently agreed because I am sure that it would have been hard to hear it in the back rows and I wanted to bolster some of their confidence. However what I didn’t tell them was that even if it were in a sound proof studio I still wouldn’t have laughed as Katy trotted out the same tired character in different wigs for an hour. At 7:30 we realized we were not going to get any returns so we headed to Wagamama’s for an awesome dinner and home to bed to prepare for our long day on Monday.
It was nice to spend some time this past weekend reflecting on the classes of the week. When we all sit together and talk about how we are going to use this experience in our teaching everyone gets excited and speaks at once. I can see lots of things, but truly I think I will need some more reflection. So much of what we are doing here is learning and/or relearning to see through a different perspective.
However one can only spend so much time in bed so on Sunday when I woke up at the crack of dawn to hear the dumpsters being emptied in the street bellow me, and I saw the shining sun in my window I knew this was to be a good day on the town! Allison and I met up at a café and headed out to see the sights. We walked around Victoria and went to St. James Park (off of Buckingham Palace)and got a few glimpses of the changing of the guard. Waled past Big Ben, goofed off in a telephone box, and even saw some creative Simpsons sand carvings. (See pictures) We met up with another Winona friend, also called Laura, in Victoria. We walked everywhere it was such a beautiful day. In the afternoon we walked back to our side of the river and headed up to Southwark Center, near the London Eye. On the green there is a giant upside down purple cow. It’s a summer comedy venue called “Underbelly.” This is its first summer in London before the bovine heads up to Edinburgh for the comedy festival that it has been a part of for years. Allison used to work with Second City so she was very interested, and I of course like to laugh so I was game. We got tickets for the next show Katy Bond and Friends. Katy Bond is very up and coming right now in the UK. She has done several TV specials and has a bit of a following I guess. We were a little early so we sat in the “pasture” and had a pint before the show. The pasture was full of giant games of connect four and hopscotch. Very clever. And now the show. Hmm, well we got fantastic seats (inside a cow, go figure) because it was first come first serve. Katy is known for parodying celebrities so I wasn’t surprised when she came out in a 50s style dress and a ratted up beehive wig on her head and took the piss out (one of my favorite British expressions meaning to make fun of) of Amy Winehouse. She sang a parody song about her divorce. Amusing I guess. However every time she came onstage she simply donned a different wig to mock a different celebrity. Same voice, same character, some slovenliness, same crap. She played Lily Allen as well as Kate Winslet- seriously were it not for the wig change I would not know the difference. The other sketch comedians were in fact better than her with a few funny bits. And I did see one cool sketch with a member of the cast miming every word (every word not the story) to the 90’s pop song Torn. I actually think it might be a cool exercise for my advanced class to help with precise movement, tension etc.
After the show we headed back out to pasture… ha ha, cow jokes… and tried to get tickets to the next show which we were informed by one of the stage hands was much better. Of course this show was sold out, so we decided to wait until show time to see if there were any returns. In the meantime we ran into some of the company members of the show we had just seen and got to talking to them, as is apparently our new tradition to have drinks with all the performers we see here in London. I do like how accessible everyone is! I have really enjoyed discussing the performances with the actual performers. It was interesting and a bit sad because they could tell they had bombed. To be honest I felt for them. How hard to continue for the entire hour when you aren’t getting any response in the first half. He told us that Katy had called him just a week or two before about doing the show and that they hadn’t performed together for some time so they had hastily revived some old material- making a lot of sense with what I saw. One of the guys suggested that he thought that the cow might have been the problem. It’s a big blow up cow so all of the noise and music from outside was heard clearly in the show. I vehemently agreed because I am sure that it would have been hard to hear it in the back rows and I wanted to bolster some of their confidence. However what I didn’t tell them was that even if it were in a sound proof studio I still wouldn’t have laughed as Katy trotted out the same tired character in different wigs for an hour. At 7:30 we realized we were not going to get any returns so we headed to Wagamama’s for an awesome dinner and home to bed to prepare for our long day on Monday.
It was nice to spend some time this past weekend reflecting on the classes of the week. When we all sit together and talk about how we are going to use this experience in our teaching everyone gets excited and speaks at once. I can see lots of things, but truly I think I will need some more reflection. So much of what we are doing here is learning and/or relearning to see through a different perspective.
No comments:
Post a Comment