London Tuesday
Feb. 3rd, 2009 10:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solipsistnationThings were slightly more open today. We took the tube to the V&A, which I'm sad to say I drastically underestimated. That's about a solid week's worth of museum there, and I get the feeling that by the time you reached the end they'd have rearranged some of the exhibits and moved pieces of the collection in and out and you'd have to start over again from the beginning. Dang. Got some nice postcards, anyway.
Then to Harrod's, where I looked over some watches that cost more than I make in a year but have really exciting little tiny moving parts-- a couple of tourbillons, you know. If only I didn't have to eat or drive a car or pay rent or, you know, anything for the next year or so... I would be living in a cardboard box on the sidewalk, but I'd know what time it was! For some reason Nikki says this is not a good idea.
Then we came back to the hotel, checked some times, and headed off to Soho. We acquired last-minute returned tickets (10 pounds each) to Derek ("CLAVDIVS") Jacobi (and a bunch of other BBC people we recognized from Spooks and Torchwood, of all things) in "Twelfth Night," my favorite of Shakespeare's comedies, and then got cheap Indian food (not really ideal, but fast and pretty tasty), and then headed to the theatre to see the play. We say 3 rows from the toppest toppy-top of the top balcony (1 row from the front of the balcony), which was really a pretty good view. It was a great production and loads of fun. They didn't do anything particularly silly with it or try to play any distracting po-mo games with it-- it was set in some vaguely-defined time in, oh, the 30's or so, so no tights and ruffs, but suits and the occasional dress.
We're still doing the weird thing where we wake up in the middle of the night feeling totally rested, sit around for a couple of hours, and then fall asleep until noon. Tonight we're going to set up a wake-up call for 9:30 so we can get an earlyish start and check out the Tower of London, Tate Modern, and the Millennium Bridge (which Nikki has seen in many BBC TV shows. I expect it will be full of MI5 agents passing messages back and forth and taking important coded phone calls and secretly murdering one another and so on).
Then we will try to meet people here:
http://www.theartichoke.net
...at 6:30, assuming that anyone can make it since I managed not to try to make any plans until the day before. :/
EDITED TO ADD:
This invite is open to any London-area folks who want to hang out! It'd be nice if you could reply saying you'll show up so I can know to watch for you. We'll be hanging out in there somewhere staring openly at everyone who comes in and trying to look like we're the people you're looking for.
Then to Harrod's, where I looked over some watches that cost more than I make in a year but have really exciting little tiny moving parts-- a couple of tourbillons, you know. If only I didn't have to eat or drive a car or pay rent or, you know, anything for the next year or so... I would be living in a cardboard box on the sidewalk, but I'd know what time it was! For some reason Nikki says this is not a good idea.
Then we came back to the hotel, checked some times, and headed off to Soho. We acquired last-minute returned tickets (10 pounds each) to Derek ("CLAVDIVS") Jacobi (and a bunch of other BBC people we recognized from Spooks and Torchwood, of all things) in "Twelfth Night," my favorite of Shakespeare's comedies, and then got cheap Indian food (not really ideal, but fast and pretty tasty), and then headed to the theatre to see the play. We say 3 rows from the toppest toppy-top of the top balcony (1 row from the front of the balcony), which was really a pretty good view. It was a great production and loads of fun. They didn't do anything particularly silly with it or try to play any distracting po-mo games with it-- it was set in some vaguely-defined time in, oh, the 30's or so, so no tights and ruffs, but suits and the occasional dress.
We're still doing the weird thing where we wake up in the middle of the night feeling totally rested, sit around for a couple of hours, and then fall asleep until noon. Tonight we're going to set up a wake-up call for 9:30 so we can get an earlyish start and check out the Tower of London, Tate Modern, and the Millennium Bridge (which Nikki has seen in many BBC TV shows. I expect it will be full of MI5 agents passing messages back and forth and taking important coded phone calls and secretly murdering one another and so on).
Then we will try to meet people here:
http://www.theartichoke.net
...at 6:30, assuming that anyone can make it since I managed not to try to make any plans until the day before. :/
EDITED TO ADD:
This invite is open to any London-area folks who want to hang out! It'd be nice if you could reply saying you'll show up so I can know to watch for you. We'll be hanging out in there somewhere staring openly at everyone who comes in and trying to look like we're the people you're looking for.
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-03 11:01 pm (UTC)That's true of many museums in London :)
Then we will try to meet people here:
Was that a general invite or were you making plans with specific people?
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-03 11:16 pm (UTC)If you'd like to show up, we'd be happy to see you. It might be a little less crowded and more conducive to conversation than the Thursday night thing, too...
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-03 11:22 pm (UTC)I'm convinced we're not solitary creatures because we need at least one other person in the world to tell us not to do the dumb shit we really want to do. I say person, because most of the other creatures we hang out with would want to see us do the dumb shit anyway, just so they could have a laugh out our expense. (another reason monkeys don't make good pets).
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-03 11:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-03 11:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 04:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 09:32 am (UTC)Orange juice and pseudoephedrine are cheap here!
Also, we can recommend a very nice and relatively inexpensive hotel in London.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 12:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 05:13 pm (UTC)It probably won't be a terribly late night for us either, for various reasons I'll go into if you show up. One is obvious from my recent posts. The other we'll tell you if you show up (unless Nikki has already revealed it somewhere). How's that for incentive? 8)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 05:46 pm (UTC)Are you going to be in London for much longer?
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-05 08:54 am (UTC)You're welcome to come for drinks in Cardiff sometime, but I understand if that's a little out of the way for you... 8)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-05 02:12 am (UTC)"SoHo" is in New York. It's "South of Houston" and stuff. But the district in London is just "Soho", with no errant mid-capitalisation.
That said: I'm really pleased that you got to see Twelfth Night, and more pleased still that you got to see Derek Jacobi, who's an utter national treasure and who provoked one of my favourite reviews (for the first episode of Cadfael): "The words 'easy', 'falling', and 'log' spring to mind..."
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-05 08:56 am (UTC)And yes, Derek Jacobi was fantastic. The theatre was kind of like watching a play from the top of a cliff, but well worth it anyway.