JULY 10

This is a long one.

Yesterday was an incredible day. I have so much to write about! We spent the day in London, and I was SO glad to be back in the city. I think it brings out the best in me. I don't know why, but it's so easy for me to make new friends in London and in Oxford I have trouble being social. Maybe it's because everybody is already in little groups here in Oxford.

Anyway, the bus ride there was a little rough. I wish I had brought earplugs or Xanax with me, because I felt really claustrophobic. Apparently I wasn't the only one, because when we got off in London, one of the other girls tossed her cookies in a garbage can.

Things got significantly better after that. We went first to the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, which I did not see when I was in London on my own because I guessed we'd go see it as a group. The guards were all on the correct foot. I got bored after ten minutes or so of watching the guards march and sometimes play music, and the crowd of tourists that we were a part of was very pushy, so I hightailed it to St. James' Park when I got a chance. A British police officer was trying to get people to keep moving along the sidewalk instead of stopping and blocking everybody. He told me to sneeze on the people in front of me if I wanted them to move faster.

I was originally much closer than this, but didn't bother trying to take a picture.

Knobby tree.

At St. James' Park, I sat on a bench and ate a brownie and took pictures of pigeons. (St. James' Park is really pretty, there are knobby-looking trees there. It's the park that John and Sherlock are in before going to the Guardsmen's barracks in the "Bloody Guardsman" case.) Then I went and sat on a wall with some German tourists and people-watched, then when I realized I was not at the statue that Professor Connery had told us to meet at, I jumped down (which wasn't super smart given my knee tenderness, but it turned out okay) and went to meet the group which was, of course, looking for me.

I don't make the best choices with the camera, obviously.

Then we walked past the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, which was indeed big, and we split up to eat lunch and go the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. I wasn't hungry, so I went straight to the National Gallery which was, unexpectedly, closed for a special event. This left me as the only person with this information since the rest of the group had gone to get food. I was going to tell them, but then I got distracted by 4 fantastic Beatles impersonators playing on an open-topped bus that was advertising the touring Beatles show "Let It Be." They were really convincing, and I was immediately hooked - even more so when I walked over and they started playing "Twist and Shout," which is like a weird Ferris Bueller-related fantasy of mine, but I didn't want to dance because it was raining and nobody else was dancing, so

Beatles impersonators.

I went and sat down near these 3 young adults who were sitting on the curb near the National Gallery.

Which is when my magical friend-making abilities kicked in and I met Tom, Ian, and a lovely curly-haired blonde woman who never introduced herself. Ian offered me some wine and then went wandering off, so I chatted with Tom and the blonde girl until a woman working for a promotion company approached us and asked if she could have a picture of us sampling some Starbucks products. (I knew that she had picked us because Tom was very cute and had a guitar, which are two things that advertising companies love. My suspicions were confirmed when she asked me to take the picture.) We did get a free chilled coffee out of it. Then, after she had left, a guy from BBC news approached us because shortly after I had sat down, a protest of some sort had begun forming in the square. He wanted to know if we knew about the protest, presumably for an interview on radio or television, but did not have any luck seeing as I was an American tourist, Tom and the blonde girl were unaware of the subject of the protest, and Ian had just returned and was saying "I want to be on the BBC!" over and over again, slightly louder than was appropriate because he was obviously a little buzzed.

Ian sat down next to me then, and we had a very entertaining conversation during which the rest of the girls from OU and Professor Connery showed up and discovered that the Gallery was closed and, I can only assume, marveled at my superior social skills. They went off to use the toilet or something and Tom and the blonde girl went to buy more wine so Ian and I sat on the curb and talked. He was wearing a silly hat and a blazer with elbow patches. Eventually my group came back again and I said goodbye to my new friends and went with the girls to Westminster Abbey. When we were leaving, Tom and the blonde girl were playing their guitars and Ian told me that I looked spectacular. I doubt he remembers saying that, but it was very sweet all the same.

At Westminster, I saw the tombs of a ton of people including (but not limited to):

• George Frederick Handel
• Edward Elgar (composer)
• T.S. Eliot
• Lord Byron
• Tennyson
• Charles Darwin
• Isaac Newton
• Lawrence Olivier
• A ton of Henrys and Elizabeths

I didn't take pictures at Westminster, so here's the London Eye.

Awesome graffiti-ed skate park on South Bank.

AND, the tomb I purposefully went off the track that my audio-guide had me following to see, Mary Queen of Scots. I sat down and listened to the whole blurb about her because I figured it was the closest I could get to paying my respects to a possible ancestor. She was held prisoner by the rival English queen for 19 years! And then the rival queen had her executed for treason, but the ironic ending is that the rival queen did not have any children and so when she died, Mary Queen of Scots' son took the throne anyway. She hadn't originally been buried at Westminster, but when he took the throne he moved her remains and made sure that her tomb was at least as lavish and over-the-top as the rival queen's tomb. 

I finished seeing Westminster before the other OU kids, and I waited around for about ten minutes but then figured I might as well cross the Thames and explore the South Bank on my own because Shakespeare's Globe is over there anyway and I'd be sure to get there before the play started. 

So I crossed the Thames and then walked along the South Bank where there was the "Festival of Love" going on, but that was mostly in the South Bank Centre. There were a lot of buskers and as a rule I only give change to buskers who impress me, but there was a little drum circle and then a man playing the accordion who were both very good, so I gave change to both of them. I went out onto one of the piers on the Thames and asked a woman to take a picture of me - it's a great view.

Me on the Thames.

Around that time I got a call from Jenny saying that they're outside by the hot dog stand (meaning outside of Westminster) and I said that I was actually on the other side of the Thames and she said that Professor Connery wanted to give me my ticket before the performance, so I told her I was heading to the Tate Modern and that I would find him. 

The Tate Modern was super cool, and after about an hour of browsing the exhibits I stumbled across this:

On my way out of an exhibit, I spotted 3 of the girls from my group on their way in and startled them by showing up and saying hello. They said that Professor Connery had arrived with them, and I spotted him on my way to the next exhibit startled him even more because when I popped up next to him, he had been in the middle of sending me a text message. My personal favorite piece of art was called "Dancing Star," and it was a little starfish mounted in a shadow box with a Barbie doll's high-heeled shoe stuck on the end of one of it's legs. 

WHEW. I can't believe I'm just now getting to the Globe - there's SO MUCH to say about it! The show was one of the best experiences of my life. I don't even know where to start.

I grabbed a sandwich from a coffee shop and went to sit in the queue that had formed outside the gate to "the yard" at the Globe. The Yard is the dirt floor where the groundlings (me) stand for the whole play. We were basically the equivalent of peasants in Shakespeare's time, because our tickets were only 5 pounds which is CRAZY cheap for how fantastic the show was. The people who got actual seats went in the front entrance, but there were some double doors that the groundlings go into like a herd of cattle and once the doormen check your ticket, it's just a free-for-all scramble to the stage to try and get as close as possible. I was the first of my group to get in line, I was behind a pair of young men eating pre-packaged food out of their bicycle helmets. (I fit right in.) I took off as soon as my ticket was checked and grabbed the edge of the stage and didn't let go for the next 3 hours. It was worth it in every possible way. 

I had my reservations about seeing a live show of "Titus Andronicus," given how brutal and difficult-to-stage it is, but the incredible cast totally blew my mind and I was extraordinarily impressed with the director's choices. (Afterwards I read about the director - she's a woman named Lucy Bailey and I'm officially a fan. She graduated from Oxford with a degree in English.) We weren't allowed to take photos, but I found some of the cast that we saw online.

Bassianus

Probably the most bad-ass moment of the whole show was Titus' entrance, and since I don't have the time or energy to describe all of the mind-blowing acting and effects and audience-involvement, that's a good moment to give you a sense of the energy of the show.

We groundlings were effectively crowd extras in the play - characters entered rolling out on carts into the crowd, Roman soldiers ran through us to get to the ramps, Goths holding torches and chanting marched between us to the stage. We were basically the Romans. I got to be about a foot away from the actors onstage because I was at the edge, and then when an actor would deliver lines from a crowd, he or she was standing among us like they were one of us. Anyway, Titus doesn't enter immediately. Saturninus and Bassianus, the sons of the recently deceased Roman emperor, both come out and announce their candidacy for emperor of Rome and then Titus' brother Marcus enters as a mediator and then announces the return of the rest of the Andronici from the war against the Goths. At which point it was all drum-beating and horn blowing and chanting and a fog machine is fogging up the yard and the double doors open and four burly tattooed guys who are chained

This doesn't even do it justice. I was actually right about in the area
of the yard that this was taken from.

together at the neck carry in a wooden frame on their shoulders and on top of it stands Titus Andronicus in his full battle armor, a spear in each hand, and one of those helmets with a Spartan-style mohawk down the middle and he stands there surveying his people (us) with this warrior-like gaze as the prisoners carry him through the crowd, and some extras in the top tiers of the audience shower silver confetti down on him through the fog and the drumming and chanting and he just stares each of us down with this crazy confidence and calm that made me feel excited and exhilarated and proud and patriotic all at the same time, like I was basically ready to follow this guy into battle without a second thought. He had such a powerful presence and good GOD, could he act. 

William Houston

The actor who played Titus is named William Houston and he blew my mind. At 7am that morning I had handed in a paper to Professor Connery about how the conventional "villain" of Titus Andronicus is not the villain, the characters are all just ignorant idiots, Titus in particular... it's amazing what a difference it makes to see him in person. Houston was fantastic - I couldn't have cast it better myself. Lavinia was fantastic, too - that's always a tricky role to play since for most of the show she doesn't have a tongue. Tamora was incredible and looked familiar to me, so when I got home I looked her up on IMDB and she was in Season 4 of Game of Thrones! I remember her character and I remember being impressed by her! Saturninus and Aaron were both hilarious and Tamora's sons Chiron and Demetrius were even likable despite all of the raping and murdering they did. The special effects were super well done and very realistically gory - I read an interview with Bailey and she said that she opted to use the more theatre sophisticated gore effects that we have now because present society is so used to experiencing profound film violence that trying to regress back to the ritualistic "red ribbons" and such would not communicate as effectively. I have to agree with her on that one. 

Tamora pleading for her son's life. (No such luck.)

All in all, it was 3 of the greatest hours of my life seeing a play that I had not expected to be fun to see and was proven ridiculously wrong. Jenny and I stood next to each other and laughed our asses off - the actors were hilarious, it had to be one of the funniest tragedies I've ever seen. I need to go back as soon as I possibly can to see another production. Once "Titus" is over, "Julius Cesar" and "Antony and Cleopatra" will be showing and I'm going to get a ticket to stand in the yard for one or both of those. The Globe was so authentic on the inside. (and the outside) I felt like a time traveler. 

We got home at 1 in the morning and I feel like it's pretty clear that I belong in London.