Literary London, pigeons, and an "inconceivable" play.

I’ve heard the word “penis” entirely too much today. But I’ll get to that later. First of all let me begin where the day did. We had class again today—it’s going to be our Tuesday and Thursday routine—and today we discussed the meaning(s) of the Waiting for Godot that we saw last night and then we had a guest speaker. Before we left we were given some textbooks and one of them was Black Britian by Paul Gilroy. He came and spoke to us today about the struggle for citizenship and how he feels that Britain is behind America with it’s overall acceptance of the black population. Very interesting stuff. I would have liked it more had I gotten more sleep last night though…

We also had another walking tour today of “Literary London.” We saw the squares, gardens, and homes of great authors like Charles Dickens and Virginia Woolf. It was really interesting to get the back stories of these authors. The Bloomsbury group of writers that Virginia Woolf was in had men and women in sordid, scandalous, intertwined, and homosexual relationships and affairs. It was like hearing a soap opera!

Before we went on our tour though, we went to Starbucks (a little taste of home, only the banana nut muffin just tasted like a nut muffin…) where my roommate found out that she lost her debit card. We decided to call Tiger Tiger (where we went out to last night) to see if they had it. She talked to two ladies that were not nice at all so we resolved to go after our tour. We sat in the grass and ate lunch in Bloomsbury Square, which was really nice and relaxing—except for the pigeons. They come right up to you and sometimes don’t move out of your way! I swear I’m going to catch one before I leave…

Anyway…we went back to Tiger Tiger ready to raise hell, if need be, but we were met with a smiling male bartender who checked the lost and found. Her card was there and she was so relieved…I would have been so freaked out if my only source of money was lost in a foreign country, but she handled it like a champ. After that we were in Piccadilly Circus again, which is the equivalent to Times Square in New York here. There are tons of tacky souvenir shops all over the place, so of course we went in one! I bought post cards to send home to the family and international stamps and I should hopefully get them in the mailbox tomorrow.

We had some free time when we got until we had to be at the Royal Court Theatre by 7:45 so we just went back to our flats and rested. We left at 6:15 to go to the theatre because the seats were first come first served and we wanted better seats tonight than we had last night. Well out of the six of us that were traveling together, none of us brought our maps telling us where to get off of the tube and where the place was. We got off of the tube at Covent Garden because we remembered seeing the Royal Theatre next to the station. Wrong—it’s the Royal Opera House next to the Covent Garden Station! So after walking around the area attempting to get directions we had to walk 5 blocks to another tube station and ride over a dozen stops to get there. Needless to say, we did not make it on time. We got there at 8:15—half an hour after it started, but thankfully we weren’t the only ones who got there late. One of our professors and a couple of students were late too and we got to sit with them and watch the first act on a TV outside of the actual theatre so we wouldn’t miss anything before we got seated during the first intermission. The play we went to see was called Grasses of a Thousand Colours by Wallace Shawn, the guy in Princess Bride that kidnaps Princess Buttercup and says, “inconceivable” a lot. He was the lead actor, of course, and the other main characters were played by Jennifer Tilley (the voice of The Rugrats among other things) and Miranda Richardson, who was in the first Harry Potter movie. Interesting lineup, but it was seriously strange and I mean SERIOUSLY. The whole play was about sex and sexuality and the characters discussed sex and genitalia the entire time. That’s why I mentioned that I had heard the word, “penis” too many times today. Other subjects included, but were not limited to, masturbation, bestiality, and incest. There was attempted murder, a woman painted like a cat with a bell around her neck; there were video projections and hidden doors. I can’t even begin to describe it to you, but it was three hours and fifteen minutes of my brain being all sorts of disturbed. I’ll say though, that it was really funny in an awkward sort of way. Here’s a link for a review from a London paper: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/theatre/show-23605614details/Wallace+Shawn+Season:+Grasses+Of+A+Thousand+Colours/showReview.do?reviewId=23694510&expand=true

The tube rides home are always fun, and luckily we made it back before they stopped running at around midnight. Some late night ice cream and filling out a few postcards round out the night. Tired again…I think this week is pretty much like London Boot Camp. I love that we’re doing all of these things but I’m SO exhausted at the end of the day. Tomorrow won’t be any different—Oxford at 8:00am!

Maybe less vulgar tomorrow,
Whitney