6 May: Holiday on Ice
Well, this Bank Holiday has been pretty much a complete waste of time. I don’t know what was the matter with me, I was so tired this morning. I went back upstairs after breakfast for a quick lie-down before starting the day – struggled back to consciousness around noon. So, so much for going back to Somerset House, but I still thought I should be able to get to Highgate Cemetery for the 2pm tour.
However, I did not figure in my bloody inability to navigate. I checked my London A-Z before heading out – it looked like the nearest station was Archway, but my spreadsheet said Highgate, so Highgate was where I got off – completely lost and with no way to get down to Archway, where the cemetery is, in time for the tour. Damn and blast, damn and blast. I know they don’t let anybody into the historic part of the cemetery without being part of the tour, and I was feeling too tired and groggy still to wait two hours for the next tour. A shame, because I liked the little I saw of Hampstead and would have liked to explore if I’d been feeling decent. Instead, I trudged back to Russell Square and after a few small errands, went back to the hotel to get ready for the evening’s outing – music at St. Martins in the Fields.
(May I just mention the one thing I hate about St Margaret’s? In the shower portion of the facilities, there is a heated towel rack that goes into operation automatically whenever you lock the door. The towel rack is about as hot as the outside of a boiling tea kettle, and when you are naked in a small space, such things are a matter of grave concern. “Carol, my god, were you in a horrible boiler explosion?” “No, just a run-in with a towel rack in Bloomsbury.”)
(I also finally saw a Nissan Micra, the brand of car I’ll be picking up and in theory driving the day after tomorrow. Oh my word. It is the tiniest car I have ever seen without a bumpersticker of “Ages 5-8. For novelty use only.” It makes my Civic look like a Humvee. The Micra could travel carry-on.)
Anyway, back to our story. I got to St. Martin’s in the Fields in good time and was ushered up a flight of creaky stairs to the gallery seats, where one looked down onto the musicians, a young-looking bunch. One girl in green, a cellist, caught my eye – for most of the first piece, she had this big goofy grin on her face. She was clearly doing the thing she loves best in the whole wide world, and when she wasn’t playing, she sat alert and relaxed, lit by a light from within. Oh, how long it’s been since I’ve felt that light, and how I miss it! The program wasn’t very exotic – Bach, Vivaldi, Palchelbel – but done with love and energy. They had put lit candles in all the windows and turned off all the other lights except those over the musicians. It was enchanting. And what a marvelous space for music – it filled the chamber effortlessly.
By the time it was over, I was unexpectedly hungry and knew what that meant – the Day and Night Internet Café Bar, which had been exercising an unholy fascination over me since I’d arrived. I knew it was going to be awful, I just knew it – but it was the only place near the hotel where you could get food after theatre. So I gingerly stepped in and was ushered by a fully-suited maitre d’hotel into the miniscule no-smoking section.
The walls are of a brilliant dyspeptic yellow, with unprepossessing globe lights and acidly brasstone-and-green leather chairs. I timidly ordered a baked potato and a salad, with a bottle of cider. And against all odds, it was marvelous – the baked potato had obviously been baking all day and fell apart at a glance… smothered in good, gooey English cheese. The salad was unimaginative – cucumber, red pepper and tomato on lettuce – but every bite of it was crunchy fresh. And including the cider, the bill came to less than five pounds. I was stunned.