It was
yet another Bank Holiday weekend in England so we were once again faced with a
long-weekend. Unlike Easter Weekend, however, we found ourselves in the
position of actually having things to do every day.
Friday
marked our one month anniversary of being in London. Things haven’t worked out
exactly as planned. We are both still unemployed. Contrary to everyone’s
opinions in Canada, it isn’t because there are no jobs available. There are
thousands of new jobs listed every day. The issue is that the competition is
fierce and we lack experience. Who knew that getting a university degree would
actually hurt your employment chances? But Friday was also the day of Sarah’s
first job interview. I am still an unemployed couch hobo so I went down to Kew
with her. We left ridiculously early but it was a good thing because there was
a lot more walking involved than we had originally thought. I can now say I’ve
walked the entire exterior of Kew Gardens. Originally I was just going to hang
out at a pub while Sarah had her hour-long interview, but the pub next door was
closed. Fortunately there was a shop across the street called Ceramic Café. It’s one of those shops
where you can paint pottery. I love doing that so I painted a butterfly jewelry
box while I waited.
On
Saturday we planned to see the new Seth Rogen movie, Bad Neighbours. We originally meant to attend the 1:00pm showing
but we were bequeathed with the delightful news the trains weren’t running. We
were instructed to wait at a bus stop for a replacement service. After about
ten minutes of waiting with a growing crowd but no sign of the bus, I
remembered there was a neighborhood bus that took us exactly where we needed to
go. The only problem? It would take an hour to get there, which meant we would
be seeing a later screening. Then the bus wouldn’t go past the second last stop
as the driver had gone over their allowed driving time. Fortunately, the very
first time we’d seen a movie there we had taken the tube to Canada Water, so we
knew the walk. Had we not, though? We would have been super lost and definitely
would have missed the movie. For the record, Bad Neighbours was hilarious. We then had to take another hour-long
bus ride back. Doing two hour-long bus rides really makes me appreciate the ten
minute train rides it usually is. Never not work again, trains.
Of
course, that wasn’t going to happen. At least I knew in advance the trains
would be down on Sunday. We planned to go to
Shake Shack and take pictures of us crying over burgers. Because we
love this actor Dane Dehaan and he was on
The
Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon telling a story about a time when he hadn’t
had a burger in four months and then started crying in a restaurant. So, with
Sarah and I being as weird as we are, we were totally going to replicate that.
The bus was only supposed to take thirty minutes to get to Covent Garden but it
took more like an hour. Once again, the driver was going over their time. It
didn’t affect us at all but there were people on the bus absolutely freaking
out, saying it was because she was driving too slow. The bus ride was slow,
yes, but from what I could tell it was because there was loads of traffic, not
anything to do with her. So we had our delicious burgers from
Shake Shack and we took our crying
pictures nobody understands and then we went to the
British Museum (
www.britishmuseum.org).
It was a quick walk there from Covent Garden. We didn’t stay there very long.
The museum is huge and it was a weekend, which meant tourists everywhere.
Especially Asian tourists who just stand around in huge groups taking pictures
of literally everything. We definitely went around the back side of the Rosetta
Stone and made funny faces as people were taking pictures. Photobombing is fun.
We kind of sped-walked through the museum. We saw the Egyptian, Mexico and
mummy exhibits and some cool exhibit about money. But ultimately we decided to
leave. We had a quick drink at a pub before hopping back on the bus to head
back to the flat.
Monday
was an unexpectedly awesome day. Last week when we were in Liverpool I saw on
Facebook that one of my favorite music artists, Ed Sheeran, was playing secret
shows on Monday. I had made a joke to Sarah about how wouldn’t it be cool if we
could go but there’s no way we will get tickets. Then I kind of forgot about
the whole thing. Friday afternoon Sarah was sleeping on the couch when my phone
went off: a twitter notification with the link to the tickets. I clicked it and
saw they were only £6. Without even asking Sarah I grabbed two tickets. When
she woke up twenty minutes later I told her she owed me money…because we were
going to an Ed Sheeran secret show Monday afternoon.
So
Monday arrived. The secret show is to promote his new album, Multiply. The premise of his secret
shows was exactly that. He played a thirty minute gig in Ipswich at 11:30am,
followed by an hour long show in London at 4:00pm, followed by a full concert
in Dublin at 9:30pm. The doors for the venue, Koko, were to open at 2:00pm. Sarah and I headed down there early
to grab some Nando’s before the show.
We got to the venue around 1:30pm and the line was huge. This was my fifth time seeing Ed Sheeran and every time has
been completely different. The first show was in Phoenix last February. He was
just starting to get famous but had already announced his tour and ticket
prices. I figured paying $25 to see him in a smallish venue was fair. The next
two times were in Edmonton where he opened for Taylor Swift. I met him at the
second concert, which was amazing. The most recent show was in New York, when
he played to a sell-out crowd at Madison
Square Gardens. I’d gone to that one because I thought it was really cool
to be able to say I saw him for $25 at the beginning of the year and at MSG at
the end of it. And now here I was, having paid £6 to see him play in front of
about 500 people. It was insane. I have now seen him more than any other
musical artist with the exception of Alexisonfire.
He’s catching up to them. But what was really cool was the crowd. For Phoenix
and New York City it was 80% people who like The A-Team and nothing else and for the Taylor Swift shows it was
all girls who liked Taylor Swift. But this crowd was different. It was 80% diehard
fans, like myself. Lots of us had t-shirts from the different shows we had
attended all over the world. People were sharing stories about the different
concerts. It was really cool to be surrounded by people as passionate about the
music as myself.
The
doors were supposed to be opened at 2:00pm but we actually didn’t get in until
more like 2:45pm. We grabbed some drinks and checked out the t-shirts, which
were disappointing. I definitely would have picked one up if it had the date on
it. But I really could care less about a generic t-shirt. I’m only shelling out
money if it’s got the actual event on it. We could have been halfway to the
stage but I like to be able to move, so we found a pole in the middle of the
room and hung out there. It worked out perfectly because nobody tried to take
our spot, we could take turns leaving to grab drinks, and we had a perfect view
of the stage. We also know where to look in all the pictures his manager posts
of the audience.
Ed came
on promptly at 4:00pm with a shortened version of my absolute favorite song of
his, You Need Me I Don’t Need You.
You want to appreciate his talent? Watch a live version of that song. I’ve seen
him play a twenty minute version before but obviously that wasn’t going to
happen if he only had an hour. He then moved on to Lego House followed by one of his new songs. He then played I See Fire from The Hobbit movie, which I was really hoping he would play. I
recorded it on my phone because artists don’t tend to play their movie songs
very often in concert. He then played what is so far my favorite song on his
new album, One (the album drops June
23rd). Sarah had run to grab drinks during that song and all of a
sudden he started playing her favorite song, Drunk. This was Sarah’s third time seeing him live, but the first
by himself (she came to the Taylor Swift shows with me). He never played that
song with Taylor. I started freaking out and she made it back just in time. He
then played Give Me Love, which he
always used to open his shows with. I love hearing that live because he changes
the way he sings the course and it’s just heaven in my ears. He next played The A-Team, obviously, and finished the
hour with his first single from the new album, Sing. I don’t really like that song. It sounds very Justin
Timberlake-y and like he’s trying to get his music played at nightclubs. He’s
still crazy talented, though. He is probably the best artist to see live. His
albums are great but him live is just insane and indescribable.
The
show took exactly one hour, just as Ed said it would. It was still definitely
worth £6. I’d pay twice that just for one song. He’s playing the O2 arena in
October so I’ll definitely see one of those shows. Or all four. We’ll see. After
the show we went to a pub to grab some food but the kitchen closed at 6:00pm.
How is that a thing? The kitchen should be opening at that time, not closing. Ultimately
we ended up back at Nando’s because
we have a problem.
After a
lazy Tuesday morning we had to head back to Kew to pick up my pottery. It’s not
the greatest work of art in the history of the universe but it will do for
something I hadn’t been planning on doing in the first place. The walk was a
lot hotter than anticipated and I ended up getting heat exhaustion because I’m
awesome like that. It was actually kind of freaky. I thought I was just hungry
but when I tried to get off the train at Waterloo I had the shakes. We ran in
to a Costa Coffee at the station and
I sat in the shade and had a drink and a muffin. It worked and we were able to
continue on with our day.
We were
seeing a play at The Globe that night so we decided to kill the hours before
then exploring the South Bank. We first walked through the Royal Festival Hall.
It was very posh and I bet it’s gorgeous when there are events. There are six
levels to explore but it was quite intimidating. We couldn’t really tell where
we were allowed to be. Also, there are bars literally every few feet, which I
found amusing. Then we found the greatest place ever, the
British Film Institute (
www.bfi.org.uk).
I am seriously considering a membership, because it’s only £40 and you can go
to all sorts of screenings and get tickets to the London Film Festival in the
fall and they have all sorts of monthly members-only events. For example, next
month there is someone coming in to do a lecture before a screening of
2001: A Spacey Odyssey. The second I
have a job and am making money I am getting this membership. The building is
really cool. There’s a couple bars and several screening rooms. There is a library
full of film literature. I really want to check it out and see how much of it I
had to read in school. It’s free! There’s also their mediatheque room. They
have thousands of film titles from the National Archive that you can watch. FOR
FREE. You can go every single day but you can’t stay longer than two hours. It’s
pretty much become my goal to watch every single title. We got a ticket for
half an hour so we could check it out and I put on
24 Hour Party People for Sarah to watch while I checked out the
different titles available. It’s pretty cool. We definitely don’t have stuff
like that in Canada.
After
our movie ended we continued walking down the South Bank before eventually
reaching the Globe shortly after 5:00pm. Our show wasn’t until 7:30pm but we
were both fairly hungry so we started looking around for a place to eat. We
first checked the menu at
The Swan (
www.loveswan.co.uk), which is the restaurant
attached to The Globe. It looked pretty tasty and smelled delicious but we had
time to debate our options so we continued down the sidewalk. We didn’t find
anything that seemed as appetizing as
The
Swan so we quickly returned. We were a little disappointed initially to
find that the menu they had shown us was not available if you were attending
the play. We had to order off of a pre-set three course pre-theater menu. We
decided to just go for it and definitely did not regret it! For our starters
Sarah had pea soup (which I did not try because ew) and I had some salmon with
bread and pickles. I don’t usually eat salmon but I thought it sounded the best
out of the options. For our main Sarah picked her selection solely based on the
fact she felt like eating broccoli. It ended up being served alongside some
kind of fish. I tried a piece of it and it was actually really good! I had
macaroni and cheese, which sounds childish but I have found that macaroni over
here is delicious. It was served alongside a salad that was bitter and somehow
very addicting. For desert Sarah had a strawberry something and I had chocolate
mousse. It was such a large serving of something so rich it made it a little
less enjoyable than the rest of the meal had been.
Overall
dinner was amazing, though, and we had a great time. The restaurant is situated
right on the Thames and from my seat I could see St. Paul’s Cathedral and the
bridge from Harry Potter. I ordered a
half-bottle serving of wine so as to avoid having to order by the glass and
save some money and Sarah and I laughed at how the waiter poured two glasses.
Because I am so Canadian I didn’t want to bother him so I just took turns
drinking out of both. It was pretty funny. We also enjoyed eavesdropping on our
table neighbor, who we nicknamed Dr. Shakespeare. He decided to give a complete
synopsis of the play we were about to see to his dinner companions while adding
his own personal tidbits of (false) information. Seriously, I studied
Shakespeare. He was so wrong.
We
still had some time before the show so we went and grabbed our tickets from the
box office before it got busy and had a drink outside while we watched the sun
go down. For our drink we went to the outdoor section of The Swan, which is only for ticketholders, as it has direct access
to the theatre. It was a really cool set up in the courtyard. They have it
themed like the theatre would be in Shakespeare’s day, with cleverly named substitutes
for burgers and beer. It kind of reminded me of A Knight’s Tale, to be honest.
Ten
minutes before the show they opened the doors and let us in. The show we were
seeing (Sarah’s first at the venue) was Titus
Andronicus. It is one of the few Shakespeare plays I have not read or seen
some version of. We always knew we wanted to see a show at The Globe, sooner
rather than later. When posters advertising the production made comparisons to
Quentin Tarantino films, it peaked out interest. We still neglected to buy
tickets, however, until after the show opened last weekend and it made the news
because audience members kept fainting. Because that is what seals the deal for
us. I have seen a play here before, Henry
VIII, several years ago. I got standing tickets for that show. It’s a cool
idea. Basically, because poor people in Shakespeare’s day stood in the center
of the theater, they sell really cheap tickets if you feel like standing. I’ve
done it once and I really don’t need to do it again. Standing for three hours
or more is hard work and even if you can do it, it’s still in the back of your
mind that your legs are getting cramped and tired. For a sold out show they put
nine hundred people in the standing area. Sorry, but I will pay the extra £10
to sit. Which is what we did. We were right on the side of the stage, in seats
referred to as ‘restricted view’. The thing about The Globe, though, is that all
the seats are restricted view in some way or another, because it’s almost a
complete circle. You will never be able to see the full action. In our case,
there was a pole holding up the roof of the stage that was in our way
sometimes. Not a big deal.
The
story of Titus Andronicus is not one
of Shakespeare’s best. I like my tragedies with some substance, personally. Titus
Andronicus returns from war with a former queen who marries the Roman emperor. She’s
basically the devil and her sons rape Titus Andronicus’ daughter and cut off
her hands and cut out her tongue. Titus Andronicus decides to get revenge but
cuts off his hand because that’s apparently helpful. There’s also a black guy
who is having an affair with the psycho queen. And a bunch of people die at the
end in a scene that definitely can be described as Tarantino-esque. Mostly
because there’s dancing involved in the murder. All it really needed was Stuck in the Middle With You. That’s
what I would have done. But we weren’t really expecting substance (I’ll save
that for Hamlet). We did have four
people faint in the audience so we got what we came for. I think North Americans
must be really desensitized to violence, though, because Sarah and I didn’t
even bat an eye at the parts that made people faint. I didn’t even realize
people had fainted because it seemed so tame compared to what I was expecting.
Side Note: When the show ends all the
dead people get up and do a dance. Seriously. Slumdog Millionaire style. Fortunately Sarah and I knew about it
because they told us on our tour of the Globe last month. Apparently it is done
because, in olden times, people were really upset. And if people were upset
they wouldn’t recommend the play to their friends. So it had to end on a happy
note, even if everyone was dead.
It was still a fun experience, though. I think this is when it finally hit us how
awesome London is. Where else in the world can you see an Ed Sheeran Secret
Show for £6 on a Monday afternoon and the next evening see Titus Andronicus performed in an exact replica of Shakespeare’s
Globe?
