Da Vinci Code Day

Christ Church Greyfriars

The ruins were visible when we got off the St. Paul’s Tube station. It was built and ruined off and on between the 1200s and 1500s, bombed in WWII. Now it consists of two walls and a tall stone tower and contains a rose garden arranged like the original floor plan, with rows representing the previous locations of pews. Some arched windows are still intact, with metal frames that originally held separate panes, but no glass. (I took a picture.)

Many business people wear black suits, some even pin striped. On the Tube this morning, a woman near me wore a velveteen black pinstriped jacket, and I refrained from petting her. Something to keep in mind next time I'm in a fabric store . . . . .

The Houses of Parliament are across the street from the back of Westminster Abbey—this is something I just didn’t know until we stepped out of the Tube station. I was not expecting to see Big Ben looming overhead. On the wrought iron railing of the pedestrian meridian thingy in the center of the street, big handmade signs faced the Parliament building, put up by people who opposed the attack on Iraq and Tony Blair’s participation. The words “peace” and “Tony Blair” were rather prominent on these signs. Cool. Brits supporting the monstrosity are a very small minority, unlike in the Idiot Country across the pond.

Westminster Abbey

Poets corner includes a floor plaque for Lewis Carroll and one for Dickens, the impressive old tomb of Chaucer (built into the wall, it looks like a sarcophagus with him lying on it, and with an arch over him), small wall plaques for the Bronte’s (except Branwell) and for Jane Austen. The Abbey is a sort of museum for sculpture, all these old sculptures somewhat crowded together. Quite lovely—lots of really old architectural details, worn out, and all these very old tombs of royalty. Paint and gold places worn away, faded.

I didn’t notice Sir Isaac Newton’s tomb—it plays a part in The Da Vinci Code by Don Brown--but there were so many other statues to see, I could have walked right past it. Goofy.

St. Paul's Cathedral

We’re up in the Whispering Gallery—we climbed the several hundred steps up. It’s sweaty up here, but despite the scaffolding the view is stunning. Paintings on the domes (murals) and down below is the alter and many amazing mosaics that include gold and silver. And of course the carved stone arches connected to something similar to Corinthian columns.

From the Stone Gallery, a high outdoor balcony, I took two pictures of the view: my photos included the glass pinecone, which I heard a local call “the Gherkin,” and they also included the New Globe and the Thames.

Going up to the Stone Gallery, my claustrophobia got the better of me. I didn’t panic really, but I was gasping and had to rest—fortunately there were little alcoves with benches, and we stopped and watched people from behind us wind up the narrow, curving, stone steps. Going back down from the Stone Gallery, my acrophobia got the better of me, because I was looking down while descending a narrow spiral staircase of one hundred nineteen steps.

After seeing altar cloths, covered in appliqué and embroidery, on display, I decided that I want to do a similar altar cloth, except of course it will be a pentacle rather than a cross. In any case, for the altar cloths, they’re in some cases—well, put it this way: I’d like to make one that’s at least 2 feet by 2 feet; the altar cloths at St. Paul’s had lots of gold embroidery and maybe gold fabric. I don’t know that I necessarily want to do that—I’m more likely to go with bright colors representing the different elements—bit of tradition in there—and in the proper order. I’ve drawn out a diagram that I had in mind for a pentacle quilt, but as an altar cloth it’s if anything more appropriate. Though the altar table I’ve been using seems small in comparison to those altar cloths—but I can always get another table.

We got lunch from Boots, which is a lot like 7-11 in the U.S.A., and we ate on a bench at Greyfriars—I’ve noticed a Da Vinci Code theme today. We went to Westminster Abbey, which is in the book, and we passed Temple Station and considered going to the Temple Church, although it would at this point be closed by the time we got there (it’s after three now, and it closes to the public at 3:45). I have seen two people today reading a paperback edition of The Da Vinci Code: one woman on the Tube, and one on the next bench here at Greyfriars.

Sitting here on a bench, I can smell the roses. Now that I’ve eaten a salad (goat cheese and roast vegetables with romaine lettuce) and chips—oddly this salt and vinegar flavor—I’m rather comfortable. It’s amazing how many steps we climbed up and down. But I’m OK, really. It was good exercise—I wish I’d walk so much on a normal basis, not just while visiting foreign countries.

Just a moment ago a Muslim couple walked past—the woman actually wore a black cloth covering her entire head and face, with just a slit for her eyes. And she wore this with a single full-length, off-white gown, with long sleeves. Part of me wants to say, “Hey, you can take the shroud off in this country, and you won’t get stoned for it!” But part of me realizes that if you’re used to wearing a mask, it’s hard to take it off, and it becomes a shield.

Clouds have shifted, and it feels—at least for the moment—cooler than it did with the sun beaming on me. The temp feels like about seventy degrees. Sunny, bright blue sky, that sort of thing. The weather hasn’t been what I expected, based on London’s reputation, but of course it is summer.

Royal National Theatre

“Am I frightened by all the people in the bathroom? Yes, I am.” A patron said this as he sat down behind us at the Lyttleton Theatre, Royal National Theatre.

We went to the Lyttleton Buffet for dinner—it’s the same building as the theatre, and all the tables were full, so we wandered around, carrying our trays full of food and also with lidless bottles of fruit juice—the cashier used a bottle opener on them—and a waiter told us there were more tables upstairs. As we slowly went up the wide carpeted stairs, carrying these trays with the tall, skinny, glass bottles of fruit juice precariously sitting on them, I said, “Imagine if we were carrying these while going up the narrow spiral stairs at St. Paul’s.”

Iphegenia at Aulis

I took off my shoes—after climbing all those stairs, what do you expect—and also have a bag of books from the National Theatre bookstore, and I also have my purse. Here I am at the theatre, in the middle of the audience, and I have all this baggage. (Note: instead of calling the first floor seats Orchestra, here they’re called Stalls. And instead of wait in line or stand in line, you queue.) When some people started moving down the row, I realized I had all this stuff piled up in front of me, and they had to wait while I frantically pushed all this stuff under my seat and finally stood up and backed up while still holding a boot. It was all quite comical.

11:00 pm—At the hostel, now a guitar is playing on the balcony below us. It’s rather pleasant to hear, even accompanied by chatting and giggling voices.

Before the above-mentioned dinner, and right after we bought our Iphegenia tickets, we went into the bookshop that is to the left of the box office and part of the huge complex that is the Royal National Theatre. We did this because my so-called sister wanted a copy of The History Boys, the book version that is, since the play is sold out till August and we won’t be seeing it (hardly surprising, since it stars Richard Griffiths and another famous actor). Someone out on the balcony just said, “Excuse me, but can you sing as well?” I discovered a whole bunch of books by the English playwright Alan Aykeburn, author of Woman in Mind, which I’ve seen as three entirely different productions.

I'm thinking I'd like to use a particular building in a work of fiction: Harley House, the yellow stone building just around the corner from the hostel. (When I said to the brat that I want to use this building in a story, she said, “You don’t even know what it looks like inside.” Whatever. I’m writing fiction.) The building has black wrought iron fences and gates in front (or at least on the side view), and the alley in back has an archway with a pretty curved wrought iron gate. Bright gold doorknobs are right in the center of each door, and the doors also have lion-face knockers (“Scrooge!”), and the doors themselves are paneled, shiny black wood. The building has some large bay windows. On the side street, cars are parked, some facing each other as if to totally disregard which side of the street they’re parked on. The building is, I think, three stories tall, plus one attic with dorm windows and elaborate windows on the top floor. A big honeysuckle vine spreads on one of the fences, at an apartment toward the back, and I get a whiff of the flowers as I walk by. Steps lead down to basement apartments, and about five or six steps lead up to ground floor apartments.

In the hostel, we got onto the topic of Brat’s atheism, and I have previously hoped she’d become a Neopagan like our brother and me (we both did in college), but it sounds like she’s determined to remain atheist. She goes into these old Christian churches, such as Westminster Abbey, and is awed by her surroundings and says that if she had lived back then she could have been religious, but I get the impression that she’s saying that just because of the décor, the reverence and awe that the artists for the churches have created, not because of the actual beliefs. Ascetics are not the same thing as aestheticism, although that sounds funny coming from me—the art I create is very much connected to my spirituality and philosophy. In any case, although I have an aesthetic appreciation for Christian churches, they don’t move me the way Goddess art, Pagan art, and Buddhist art do. That evening in the hostel, Brat talked about how in college she had a tendency to talk as if she assumed everyone else was an atheist. I certainly was briefly out of the broom closet after I graduated, but I didn’t assume everyone was Pagan—I more like assumed that everyone was tolerant of other religions. I quickly learned otherwise and climbed back into the broom closet.