…to say goodbye.
On Tuesday Imo was alive enough to come downstairs, but I didn’t want her going to school for just one class when she still wasn’t 100%, so we brought downstairs her sudoko and a book of postcards she wanted to show Dad, and all her schoolwork she already had downstairs.
We left Imogen at the house while Rosie was working downstairs, and headed quickly into Leicester Square to get discount tickets – we got tickets to Stomp for 20 pounds each when they were worth 45. We stopped in at Sainsburys on the way back to get some things for lunch. We had scotch eggs and pastys and sausage rolls and Dad and I were still full at dinner time. Vanessa was a bit late because she had been told the wrong place and time, but she got there and we headed off to meet Lija in the city.
We ended up finding this nice Indian restaurant, Dad and I just shared a bit of tandoori chicken and naan and rice. The theatre was right around the corner, down this back alley. I think it’s because it’s so loud. It was also a small theatre, and very much underground.
We had really good seats and from the beginning Stomp was just this adrenalin building, heart thumping, foot stomping silent masterpiece. None of them spoke, it just began with this guy walking on stage with a broom, and he began tapping it with a beat, and then another two walked on stage and began tapping their brooms with different beats. All of a sudden they had this rhythmic beat going, building up, and then just like that it petered out again.
There were eight performers, and they got this rhythm going with the most inanimate objects – matchstick boxes, newspapers, a bag of rubbish, the brooms, dustpan and brushes, slinky piping, oh it was amazing – just any random object. Of course it was all choreographed but they looked funky in their street/worker clothes. I loved the Aussie movie Bootmen, with Andy Garcia, where these miners put on an alternative tap show putting the tap steel on their boots and using corrugated iron and other working materials to perform.
In the audience was this awful lady that just couldn’t stop laughing and it was an awful hurping laugh. During one of the acts one of the guys was working this rhythm as if it was on the computer and it almost sounded like he had touretts with the way he was repeating his words and movements. Well, he began mimicking her, and she wouldn’t shut up, and the other performers cracked up laughing, and then he mimicked a shot gun at her and she kept laughing.
But I didn’t realise until I read some of the history in the program from Stomp, that the two guys began it all in Bristol in the late eightees. It was picked up at the Edinburgh fringe festival and debuted in Australia, America, etc. The UK crew travelled to many places, and so there are shows simultaneously with a different cast. Anyway, I won’t tell you anything else, but it’s definitely recommended, a whole new experience.
We went and had coffees after in Cafe Nero, which I’ve never actually been to, but they aren’t bad. I think the guy was being slack though because it was nearly closing time, so he wouldn’t make them in mugs just paper cups and still had the gall to charge me sit in price (ten pence more) I didn’t realise till after. Dad and I got the same, and mine was half empty so I asked the guy to put more milk in, told him I paid for coffee not froth!
Anyway, I left them at Tottenham Crt Rd so they could take the Central Line east and I went south on the Northern Line. Yeah, confudling! I had a great talk to Vanessa when I got back though. She comes back and forth to London, has done for the last nine years. She leaves this week for Melbourne and says she’s not coming back for twelve months at least.
She just sent home 14 boxes, her bike, a fish bowl and something else ridiculous. To me it’s easier to sell the stuff and get the money to take home and double! Well she wants to do something totally different to working as a carer, said she was looking at jobs to drive trucks for the mining industry – now that’s a change!
On Wednesday Imogen went to school for the morning, of course her lecturer was still away but she went and did some work at the library. Dad and I went into the city to climb up the post office tower and have lunch at the revolving restaurant. Several problems there. It’s no longer called the post office tower, it’s the BT Tower. Secondly, there’s no public access anymore to the building. But do you want to hear the clincher?
When I went into the building to ask the receptionist how long it’s been closed to the public, he said “Oh, since 1979, when the IRA tried to bomb it.” I’m just like, riiiiiighhht. Okay then. That plan is quashed. So we went on an adventure to King’s Cross to find Platform 9 3/4. We took a bus and walked through the old station past the first eight platforms, and there it was, the sign on the wall with a trolley half way between this world and that one.
But we toddled back to Clapham just in time to get Imogen and stop off at Starbucks for coffees. Dad had a decent bath/shower after putting up with hours for several days, and then we left Imo with all that she needed as we headed off to the airport. We had checked in in the morning, so we just had to drop the bags in and wait. Dad had to go through two hours before, so I left him at the security gates at twenty to eight. There was a couple saying goodbye to their daughter who was going traveling in Oz and NZ for several months and asked if I was going for long, and I’m like, “I’m not going, I’m an Aussie living here and Dad’s going home”, but they were nice. Had a chat after Dad and their daughter went through.
It was lonely catching the train back to Clapham, but Imogen gave me a big hug when I got back.
Don’t worry, I’ll be home soon. I’m going to pack so much into this year it’ll fly and I’ll see the world then I’ll come home. Soon.
Tags: Travel
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