Mind the Gap

Well, I really think this picture speaks for itself. I’m really a witch and I’m going to Hogwarts now. Goodbye!



This past weekend was my first excursion to London. It will probably be quite a bit of fun in my memory once I start looking back on it, but right now, I’m just tired and have tons of homework to finish.

We started out really early in the morning to get to the bus station and got on the Oxford Tube, which took us London in about 1 1/2 hours. Our first stop was the Globe Theatre, which is really amazing. I got some great pictures. It’s a round theatre with an open top so, rain or shine, the play goes on. It’s about as real to Shakespeare’s time as you can get and I hope I can see a play there sometime soon, but not standing in the courtyard. I think I would faint.

Our next stop was British Library, full of different artifacts, mainly related to literature, though there was also music. They had tons of illuminated manuscripts, which were really something, and the Magna Carta, a handwritten copy of Jane Eyre, the original, handwritten score for Mendelssohn’s Wedding March, the lyrics to different Beatles songs on the backs of napkins and envelopes. It was really amazing.

After that, we concluded our tour of London’s many museums with the British Museum. This, my friends, was the mother lode. They have a room in there as big as the Parthenon was, with all of the marble decorations (Elgin Marbles, I believe they’re called) that went around the outside, and many of the statues that were inside. They’re all crumbling to bits, of course, because of the modern pollution and vandalism that happened to them in Athens. It was still, of course, magnificent. Apparently, Athens really wants them back, and I thought, Well, maybe if you took better care of your national artifacts, they wouldn’t have to be taken away. I also fervently enjoyed the Egyptian mummy section. They were all really beautiful and, at the same time, incredibly creepy. Especially the cat mummies.

After our turn about the museum, we were on our own for the weekend, to go around London or go back to Oxford as we pleased, so long as we were back before the Sunday night church service the Morgans put on in Number 9 at 9:00 pm. I was with Michael Swindle and Emily Rankin and we had decided yesterday to spend two nights in London and see a few plays. It turned out to be harder than we thought it would be.

Negotiating the subways is an interesting thing. It’s called the Tube in London. There are about 10 different lines and it’s a bit confusing at first, but we soon mastered it. At certain stations, the train is a long way from the platform (well, about a foot), so we are told to “Mind the Gap” as we exit. Emily, Michael, and I went to see The 39 Steps on Friday night. We found it just beyond the Picadilly Circus Tube Station and were delighted. We found tickets for only £15 (though they had a restricted view) and laughed our heads off at the antics of the people on stage. The 39 Steps is a play, not a musical. It’s very minimalistic, and better for being so. There are only four actors and only one of them plays one role. Two of them switch back and forth between about 120 different roles throughout the entire production. They hardly use any set, besides a few tables and chairs and whatnot and put on a splendid Hitchcockian production that was also hilarious.

Our hostel was out in the boonies of London in a place called West Croydon. It took us about an hour and a half to get there from the play, but the room was nice and we had our own shower, so we fell into bed gratefully. The next day we tried to make it back for a show at the Globe, but didn’t quite make it because London is doing construction on the Tube and the line we needed to get to the Globe on time was closed that day. What a bummer! I will have to go see a show in the Globe at some point, because it would be utterly amazing. So, we twiddled our thumbs around London (dropping by King’s Cross station at least! - as you can see by the picture) until that night and went to see The Lord of the Rings musical. I bet many of you didn’t know there was a musical version. Well, there is, but it’s closing in a week due to bad reviews, so of course we had to go see it! I will give it to them. The set was amazing, even if the acting and story adaptation was sub-par. It was a revolving, circular stage that had sections which rose and fell, giving you the impression that the heros and villains actually were traveling across different kinds of country and entering massive towers and castles. The costumes for the orcs and ents were also pretty amazing as well. Gollum, before the second act, climbed headfirst down the curtain (which was covered in tangled tree branches) and, try as I might, I couldn’t seem to find a harness. How neat is that?

After the show, however, we ran into more trouble. We had a new hostel to find and we couldn’t! We searched up and down the road it was supposed to be on (witnessing a spectacular cat fight between these two girls in front of the cinema - we think one of the girls’ boyfriends was caught with the other!) and eventually had to call Emily’s dad to get better directions. All in all, it was one in the morning when we finally got in our rooms. We woke up and came back and now I’m trying to finish all my homework due on Monday! I think I’ll be alright, though, because lots of other people haven’t finished theirs yet either, and they were at the houses longer. At least I have a better work ethic than that!

Well, I’m sorry you’ve had to get so many entries at once. My blog service provider (.Mac) has been down doing scheduled maintenance, and then I was in London for the weekend. Do know that I have extremely painful blisters on my feet that don’t look like they’ll be going away any time soon.

Also, I’ve now discovered that on top of problems with publishing, I now can’t seem to get my comments to come up online. If this problem persists tomorrow, I’m going to move the entire thing over to blogspot.com. I mean, your comments are what keep me going!