Sept. 12
I slept almost around the clock Sunday night. I think it was
close to 11 when I fell into bed and I stayed there till 10 Monday morning.
When I finally got into gear a little past noon, I took the Underground to the Embankment station, and walked across the Golden Jubilee Bridge.
This takes you to the Southwark side of the river near the National Theater, way west of where I was headed. But that’s more than all right.
I find the walk along the Bankside, as they call the southern bank of the Thames, to be among of the most interesting in the world.
It ranks up there with Nathan Road in Kowloon, the Champs-Elysees, Fifth Avenue, the Rambla in Barcelona, the ancient Forum in Rome.
You see the dome of St. Paul’s, spires of countless other churches, many designed by Christopher Wren. You see the tops of fanciful towers in the financial district. Ancient buildings stand beside the river on the north side.
You walk on a pedestrian thoroughfare that takes you past the Tate Modern, the New Globe, Bear Gardens (which leads to the site of the old Rose Theater), the Anchor Bankside pub, the Clink prison, Southwark Cathedral, and a replica of the Golden Hind (Sir Francis Drake’s pirate ship). And they are just highlights of all that is going on.
At the Globe, they had tickets for a Wednesday night performance of Macbeth, so I bought one.
On the way out of the Globe, I turned right and went to Park Street. A left brought me to Bear Gardens and a few steps more to the door of the Rose. I couldn’t believe it. The door was unlocked. So I went in.
A man in the ticket booth said the theater was in use for rehearsals. They were, however, staging a series of readings of Restoration plays written by women. I got a ticket for a performance Monday night.
So, after signing up for culture, it was time for gangsters.
But first, I had to stop at the Anchor Bankside (like talking about the Ship, or Wellington, you have to say where it is, to distinguish it from all the other London bars with the same name) for a couple of ales. Last time I was there, I stood shoulder to shoulder with the crowd, and had to fight to get a drink. It felt like New York.
This time it was empty, even emptier than the first time I went there 20 years ago.
I started with a Punk IPA, which bills itself as “post-modern.” This was not a cask ale. It was floral and full of hops, nice and sharp.
Greene King London Glory was the second, a bitter that was perhaps the best cask ale I’ve had so far. It felt soft rather than flat. It had a sweet malt fragrance but the flavor was well balanced by the bitterness of hops.
I got directions to the nearest Underground station (London Bridge), which it so happens, has a train for the Northern Line that would take me to Hampstead.
I had read about Hampstead Heath and Dick Turpin the highwayman. He is said to have hung out at the Spaniard’s Inn at the village there. This is my fourth time in London and I still haven’t had a beer where Dick Turpin drank.
Google told me how to get there. I knew it was steep. In the old days, there was a toll road (I believe charged by the bishops of somewhere or other). It involved a significant climb, and drovers used to rest their horses in the village.
The climb from the Underground station wasn’t too bad, although there is a heat wave here. The temperature rose almost to 80, and with the humidity, it had me sweating. I had to take my hat off. The Underground map in my shirt pocket was stained with sweat.
But I found the Spaniard’s. It was tricky getting across the road at the top of an even steeper hill, on a sharp curve. But as you can tell from this e-mail, I made it.
I had a few good ales there, but the hit of the place was the Cumberland sausage and mash, which has some kind of wine gravy.
I asked the bartender about the term “bangers and mash.” (That’s how you order it at Egan’s in Montclair, and at several Irish style pubs in New York.)
Is that an Americanism?
The lady who brought it asked if I wanted mustard. Sure, why not? Never had bangers and mash with mustard.
Wow. Or maybe whoa. It was like the runny mustard in a Chinese restaurant.
I dipped a bit of sausage into the mustard and it nearly blinded me. My sinuses burned open and my eyes teared. It was that good.
The time was pushing five when I finished eating so I headed back toward the hotel.
Instead of following the road, I took a trail through Hampstead Heath, which is an extensive wooded park. I was in little danger of getting lost because the trail followed the road and I could see the traffic through the trees.
Nonetheless, the place had a strange feel. There were large spreading trees standing by themselves on clear patches of ground. On either side of the trail, there was a tangle of underbrush. It felt almost like something out of Tolkien.
On the way down the hill, on Heath Street, I ran into Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill sitting on a bench. They were cast in bronze, but looked chummy enough.
At the hotel, I called Joanna and left a message. It was 6 in London and 1 in Montclair.
Then I had to head to Bankside again.
It was cooling off, but still warm. So I waited outside the Rose for the performance to start. They told me it would take about two hours, with a short break.
I don’t know where they got that idea. The show started about on time, maybe a few minutes late. But hey, I fly out of Newark. I expect times to be approximate.
I think it ran at least two hours before the intermission. I desperately needed the break. I was in pain from sitting so long.
And I had to behave. I was one of maybe two or three dozen people in the audience. And everybody, including the performers, could see everybody.
I didn’t want to be rude. I want to go back to that place. You sit on a folding chair on a wooden stage. Next to the stage there is a pond of water in the dark.
When the building was under construction, they discovered something that nobody expected to exist. There were the wooden pilings of the foundation of the Rose Theather.
They had been preserved for 400 years in the watery ground. They were studied and sampled, and then covered again with water to preserve them.
The building was raised around the ruins, with a huge ground-level space that protects the site, and where the preservation group holds performances.
This is the theater that Henslowe owned. It’s the theater represented in an ingenious movie called “Shakespeare in Love,” which I recommend to anyone who is a Shakespeare fan.
The play for the reading was “The Feigned Courtesans” by Aphra Behn, a Restoration gender bender, a highly independent woman who was among the first to make a living as a writer.
It had an all-woman cast. Women played men’s roles with a red sash over their shoulders. Women playing women tied the sash around their waists. Characters showed up in disguise, some women posing as men with the sash signifying it, and once with a false moustache.
The basic idea is that a woman, accompanied by her sister, has run away from her small-town home to Rome to avoid an arranged marriage. For some reason, the two women pose as courtesans to protect their true identities.
They are wooed by fools, ruffians, braggarts, the man one of them wants to marry, and their own brother. None of them recognize who the two women are.
Needless to say, it was a bit exhausting, but fun, too.
Anyhow, the two-hour reading lasted more than three hours. I got back to the Anchor seven minutes before closing, just in time to get another Greene King.
I found the subway station without too much trouble, although I did have to walk through a meat and produce market that I had never noticed before.
I got to Russell Square station with no trouble.
When I was walking past the Friend at Hand on the way to the President, there was a group of kids (German, I think) looking confused because all the chairs inside were on top of all the tables.
I stepped among them and said, “The Night and Day Bar in the Imperial Hotel is open till one.”
I mean, that’s where I am now when I’m writing this down. Why not share?
Love to all and to all a good night. Also, remember when your bars close.
Harry
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