Day 13 plus -- The Importance of Being Khaled
So this is where I've got to confess that I didn't keep a full journal for the last couple of days of the trip, and am relying on a few scribbled notes and memory.
Kind of a bummer that when I stayed at the Falconry, I arrived too late to see the falcons, and had to leave too early before they were out.
I remember very little of this day, driving back to London, except that it rained and rained and rained. The one place I got to was the Wookey Hole Caves, which turned out to be a) way cheesy and b) with a huge wait in line. I found I could live without the Wookey Hole Caves.
Delivered the Audi back to the airport and got back into the Celtic. First trip in the underground revealed that they hadn't yet removed the giant Gordon's Gin advertisements featuring Gordon Ramsay. I'm not saying that a 30-foot-high close-up of Gordon Ramsay's face doesn't make you think of gin, I just think it doesn't make you think of gin in the way they want you to think of gin.
"A Midsummer's Night Dream" at Shakespeare's Globe in the evening -- another great, great show. I'm sorry that I wasn't able to find a picture of Michael Jibson, playing Puck as Elton John on a three day drunk, in what one review called a turquoise technicolor dreamcoat. The same actor played Theseus and Oberon, the same actress Hippolyta and Titiana -- the human rulers with BBC toff accents, the fairies with thick Scottish brogues.
In the morning, a pleasant chug up the river to Greenwich and the Fan Museum, housed in a lovely Georgian house... with a collection exactly as charming and frilly as you'd expect. Nice luncheon in a pub, then plenty of time to noodle around the National Gallery's medieval collection before the night's theater.
Well, not exactly medieval, but check out the Queen of Sheba departing from her lagoon... which pairs with Rebekah and Isaac frolicking around the mill at their wedding.
Completely fabulous Muse by Cosimo Tura. Belshazzar looking quite startled -- as well he might. And not to miss Christ wearing a coy little chiffon and gold beach wrap for his baptism by John the Baptist.
And zoom in on this version of the mystical marriage of St. Catherine, to appreciate the dream-like quality of the sepia tones. Very enigmatic.
Final thespian experience of the trip -- a National Theatre production of "The Revenger's Tragedy," delivered with lugubrious gusto by a top-knotch cast, clad in easy-to-wipe-clean shiny 80's suits, gamboling loutishly around an industrial set centering on a red pleather banquette that will also need a good going over with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser after the activities of the evening.
And if you're going to drop your iPod into a hotel toilet, best to do it on the last day of your trip rather than the first.
Pack and ready to go -- the nice ladies of the Celtic get me a taxi to Heathrow. I chat desultorily with the driver, as one does... Turns out he's Egyptian. "Oh, I was married to an Egyptian cab driver for a while..."
"What was his name?"
"Khaled."
Driver almost doubles over with laughter. "My name is Khaled!" He wants to give me his phone number, to call him when I'm back in the States. I politely evade taking his card once we reach the airport. To paraphrase Wilde, "To get involved with one Egyptian taxi driver named Khaled may be viewed as a misfortune; two begins to look like carelessness..."
Home again, home again, jiggety jig.