April 5 & 6: Back in London

I write this from the 11:43 from Euston Station, on the way to Liverpool for a visit with our friends, Andy and Foxy. We have fancy baguettes, some hot cross buns piled on our tray tables. Carey has his airpods in, in podcast reverie. I have my laptop open on my lap (tray table full, see above).

Our trip back from Santiago was uneventful, the best kind of purely-functional trip. Our Vueling plane rattled a lot, which set the tween school group in the back 8 rows aquiver. Rather sweetly, they gave much collective gasping, quite a few shrieks as/when we hit turbulence, and a heartfelt round of applause on our successful landing. We left our hotel in Santiago at 9am on Saturday and arrived, complete with luggage and most of our marbles, in our Central London hotel around 3:30pm.

We spent Saturday evening with Gareth, sipping white port on his front step in the evening sun, which was every bit as idyllic as it sounds. It seemed like every person who passed along the street greeted him and paused for a chat. I guess that’s what living somewhere for a couple of decades will get you, at least, if you are as pleasant, open and welcoming as is Gareth (I’m a big fan, as you know).

Our hotel was in our old stomping ground of Earls Court, so we spent Sunday afternoon, strolling through the Royal Parks to Piccadilly and back, like the old days, marveling at the way spring had not so much sprung as ricocheted into being in leaves, tulips, primulas, blossoms, goslings, squirrels and crowds.

On Sunday evening we had tickets for SIX. The conceit is historical girlband, comprised of Henry VIII’s 6 wives.

For fogies, like me, it gave insight into how musical theatre is trying to connect with a new generation/demographic. It’s tagged as “The West End’s Sleeper Hit”. The theatre was full of families with daughters and younger sons, genuinely excited to be there. Not being close to “young people” often, I was surprised at how much innuendo is now appropriate for a PG audience. They delivered power vocals, harmony and dance routines, at pace. It’s a 75 minute one-act performance, for which they are all on stage, and all “on”, all the time.

The actual play failed to “stick the landing”, not really convincing in its “girl power happy ending”, but I’m asking for a reach it just didn’t want to make. The family audience was certainly uplifted, even inspired, as they spilled out onto the street at the end, (daughters in their sparkly commemorative hair bows). We were greeted by opportunistic entrepreneurs in fairy-lit, pastel rickshaws offering lifts to the station.

In fact, the only “sadness” of Sunday was that our formerly-local doner place/greasy spoon, has succumbed to the gentrification of Gloucester Road and is now a Paul’s (the French pastry and cappuccino chain). We ate in our fallback “posh-doner” on the Earls Court Road, such are the times...