I am at the airport right now. The number of hours early I am for my flight is twice the number of hours I slept last night. Predictably, the jury is still out on whether any of this will make any sense.

1. Two more for my sister. First in Stratford, and then in Lille.
   

   

2. Saturday I engaged in perhaps the goofiest activity of which I have ever been a part. And we broke a world record doing it. Something something largest number of people dancing an unrehearsed choreographed dance something. In Trafalgar Square. Our group’s dancing prowess was unrivaled at this event, in my humble opinion. We’re cool like that.
3. Sunday, K and I went to the farm. Apparently (though I was unaware) East London is full of urban farms. It was so awesome that I wanted to put it in my pocket and then lie to customs (I have pictures, but my Automator seems to have died when I upgraded my operating system. Perhaps I will come back and fix this later. Or perhaps I will forget. Your guess is as good as mine).
4. Then we went to the Tate Modern. I should note that I’ve tried to see the exhibits at the Tate at each of my last two or three visits to London, and failed in each instance…until now.
   • I saw a woman with TOTALLY British teeth. I will try to explain, but you should all note that no matter how honed my narrative skills, you will never feel the horror in your gut like I did (it was much the same feeling I had when I wandered into the gallery with the performance video of a man having relations with a jar of mayonnaise). This woman’s front teeth were literally (just to be clear, not the literally where you try to impress people by calling it literally when you really mean ‘it seemed as if’, but the literally that means ‘what I am about to say is a literal accounting of The Truth’) the size of two chicklets of gum spaced about 3mm apart. Literally. ::Shudder::
   • I am aware I am going to hell due to the above.
   • You are not allowed to take photographs in the galleries and I was oh-so-bummed. Not because there were any pieces of art I wanted to preserve, but because there were two shots of museum patrons that would have been amazing.
     • The first was a rotund young man wearing shorts with a sweatshirt tied around his waist. He was standing as far back as the room allowed from a piece that was a large square canvas of blue and then an adjoining large rectangular canvas of red. And he was squinting and concentrating and looking very knowing. And, you know, just generally really analyzing this piece of art that, one would have thought from his expression, was intensely complicated.
     • The second was far better. There was a piece of art that was three large, 3-D shapes on the ground in a line. A cube, a pyramid, and a sphere (or something). Standing centered right in front of the pieces was an incredibly tall and incredibly slender man dressed stylishly with his highwaters and loafers, blazer and scarf. He had an umbrella with a curved handle and was leaning on it, standing sort of askew with one leg bent. And there were two girls who looked to be around seven years of age. Both girls were dressed in Sunday dresses and had matching denim jackets. They had perfectly straight cornrows and perfectly polite British accents. And they were sprawled on either side of the man with notebooks, meticulously drawing their renditions of the piece of art. It was precious.
5. I take back everything I ever said about British food being nasty because on Sunday night we had the most amazing Sunday roast dinners. I had a vegetarian rendition of toad in the hole with Yorkshire pudding and roasted potatoes and all things good and holy. It was so good I don’t have words.
6. Spending these past weeks sleeping next to a bass drum that rumbles ominously in response to the resonance of my every hum or sneeze has imbued me with a sense of awesome power.
7. I am starting to stray from cohesive thought.
8. Goodbye, London. ‘Til next time.

(Caveat: This post is the most hastily written and sloppy of all my posts so far, and all pictures taken in France were hurried, blurry and a bit crap. My trip is rapidly coming to an end and I haven’t the time to put this together nicely, so my apologies…)

D, K, and I went on a two day road trip last week. Destination: Lille. Route: London to Dover, ferry to Dunkerque, Dunkerque to Lille, and then back again the next day.

Our overall impression of Lille was this:

Day 1: Lille sucks.

It is gross and rainy.
We have learned the following things about this town:
1. There are approximately 12 people in the whole of the town. Fortunately, all 12 of these people are incredibly cordial*.
2. There are no crepes.
3. There are a plethora of hair salons, pharmacies (all with competitively unique and siezure-inducing neon signs), and dog crap on the sidewalks.

And our favorite Frenglish for the day: Nous sommes awesome.

*Day 1 confusions all take place at the supermarket and include:
1. Almost buying table wine to drink but being told that was not wise by a fellow patron.
2. Me peeking in the side doors along the perimeter of the store to see if I can spot a bathroom, being subsequently followed by a security guard because I look suspicious, thinking the best way to avoid giving him a heart attack is to just ask, having this conversation (I don’t remember genders or how to spell in French, so bear with me here as I make it up):
Me: Avez-vous un sal du ban?
Him: Une toilette?
Me: Oui.
Him: Vous ette malade?
Me: Non.
But he either misunderstood, didn’t believe me, or decided to be nice anyway because he proceeded to usher me through 10 minutes-worth of behind the scenes store until we reached staff bathrooms where he waited and then escorted me back.
3. K not realizing that to buy loose fruit you have to get it weighed and stickered before checking out, the woman at the register trying to explain this to us for five minutes, us finally understanding, K running back to get stickers, and D and I trying to pay for the rest (and then stand in line again later for fruit) but the register woman kindly and stubbornly refusing, therefore holding up the whole line (containing the remaining residents of the town) waiting for K to return.

On the endless drive from the ferry to Lille.

Multicolored curtains in the buildings across from our hotel.

Dog crap (please note that, in the grand scheme, this is actually quite a nice picture of dog poop, since most piles had at some point been stepped in, smeared, and tracked for at least the next 10 feet – and lest you think “there’s always dog poop on grass!” note that I chose this photo op because of the stunning composition, and that most piles were indeed right smack dab in the middle of the sidewalk).

Wine in a plastic cup. An important component of our hotel picnic.

Day 2: Lille est awesome.

Realizations about plethoras hold firm, but realizations about a dearth of crepes and people are both shot down as we find the bustling city center full of creperies. Shrill pitched excitement ensues.

We decided to avoid the traffic nightmare the second time around and so left incredibly early to get back to Dunkerque. We were early. Hours early. So we spent some time in the industrial area by the ferry, then went on to the town of Dunkerque and wandered down to the docks.

Eventually we returned and boarded the ferry where K bought a Cosmo, and we took some quizzes, and learned some very insightful things about our makeup habits.

Day 2 confusions all take place at the ferry dock and include:
1. Me almost not being allowed back into the country by customs because I don’t have a copy of my return ticket (out of the UK). I would like to take this opportunity to note that a. the customs agents at Heathrow have never looked at my return ticket and b. I thought there was this thing called the EU?
2. Us holding up our entire line of cars getting on the ferry because they made no announcement about boarding: we were crammed in the back seat of the car watching the West Wing on a laptop, somehow the car in front of us made no noise when it started up, and when D finally noticed, he couldn’t find the car keys (though to our credit, there were a lot of people who had wandered from their cars and not noticed the boarding so several lines were held up).

Palais du Beaux Arts

Dass right.

People!

Doors of the Opera House:

Ok. Probably the coolest part of the whole trip was wandering into this little courtyard full of people with stands of used books. There were French magazines from the 70′s, leather bound volumes of Moliere, stamp collections, comic book anthologies, and more. I should have bought something but was too busy drooling and being confused as to where to start:

Plus it had amazing gutters:

Near the ferry.

Wind farm! You can’t tell from this photograph, but I never realized just how HYOOJ these things are.

Cemetery in Dunkerque:

with scary chains.

A juvenile Thinker?

Back on the ferry.

While we snacked, the sun started to set. This would have been gorgeous if it weren’t for all the salt crystals on the window:

I ran up to the deck to take less obstructed pictures. It had already set. But still…

(It is almost ten p.m. and I am sitting inside with no lights on and – even before the computer screen was on – have been donning sunglasses. Migraines are magically glamorous.)

Today’s lesson:
press: cupboard
torch: flashlight

I could not find the sultanas in the press so I enlisted the help of a torch.

Happy Fourth, Americans.

On Wednesday, we went to Stratford. I guess my camera is done being broken because I had no problems taking pictures.

There were farms

with black sheep

and spliff-smoking ewes.

Flowers

and rain

and more rain.

Keyholes

in heavily latched doors

concealing secret garden parties.

There were crooked tombstones

and menacing pipe organs.

There were knockers,

faces in doors,

long-since carved trusses,

and bottles of wine.

We went to see an amazing production of Midsummer. I could go on forever about it, theater person that I am. But I will limit myself to three comments.

It was a production without pretense. There were no lessons tied to current events nor any themes other than those originally intended. Which is not to say that I don’t enjoy modern twists, just that it is so rare I see a Shakespeare piece acted straight that is concurrently accessible and good. The audience literally roared with laughter. I normally don’t have a taste for overacting, and this was definitely overacted, but it was done so smartly, clearly, precisely, and deliberately that it served to truly convey the meaning of every word spoken. Which is what actors are always striving to do with Shakespeare and, in my humble opinion, rarely ever actually achieving. To boot, the director (a Gregory Doran) must be a genius because the background actions he chose to augment and compliment the text were spot on in almost every instance.

Technically, the show was a lot of fun for me. Titania’s Indian boy was played by a naked puppet, using up to three fairy manipulators at a time. His exaggerated doll-like joints and awe-filled play were completely engrossing. Having worked a show with puppets and knowing the arduous process that is rehearsing them, I was mucho impressed.

The Courtyard Theater is very tall, with three levels of seating and a light op and SM booth on the fourth. As such there is a lot of “sky” to play with. It was filled with a bunch of instruments – specifically bare bulbs with smaller bulbs inside – hanging at different levels that served to shine the starlight. It was so amazing I’ve been unable to sleep the past two nights because I get so excited daydreaming about the endless possibilities.

If you are in Stratford anytime soon (I’m just saying…), go see it.