CHAPTER 12: LONDON, ENGLAND
Monday, October 4

We finally own the Range Rover. What a mess that whole deal was. By sheer perseverance we got all the money transferred, paperwork signed, and now it's ours. Pretty neat car. It's ten years old but in good shape. It's my first with a V8 (and this in a country where gas is $4.70 a gallon ... am I stupid or what?), second with an automatic, and my fourth British car. I don't really know what that says about me, except that I'm not exactly in the mainstream of American car buyers.

I wanted to change the oil and otherwise do a little fix-up on the Rover, so I called an auto hobby shop at a small Navy support base to find out when they were open. I asked the guy "Can you tell me what your hours are?" He answered, "Well, I only work part-time, so on Mondays I work from noon to five .... " Maybe I should have asked him for his bank account number and PIN as well!

Even though we now have a car, we still use the train to go into the city. I mean, would you drive into Manhattan if you didn't have to?? One of the most entertaining things about the train is the number of wackos you run into. The other night a drunk got onto the train just ahead of us and my blood alcohol content went up two points just from breathing his fumes. A few minutes later he made an unwanted pass at a young lady, so a couple of other guys and I "helped" him off the train. Tons of fun! Another time, a drunk sat down right behind me and babbled away for fifteen minutes. Evidently he had built a highway bridge from start to finish that day, all by himself, and he invited everybody in our railroad car to drive across it the next day. Everybody in the car, of course, was immediately and deeply engrossed in a book, one of the ads, the map, something outside the window, ANYthing but the drunk. Since we were a bunch of ungrateful wretches, he eventually left us to go enlighten the heathens in the next car. Somehow, I still haven't found the bridge he built. I guess I'll just have to keep looking.

At the other extreme was the gent I ran into in an art exhibit. He must've had "Baron" or "Lord" attached to his name, obviously uppah-crust and from a VEDDY old family, went to Oxford, you know; was fabulously fond of abstract aht, quite lovely, what? Simply smahshing!

For her birthday, Janis decided she wanted to see Hampton Court Palace. Holy moly, what a place. Henry VIII (yes, that guy) basically swiped it from one of his uppity underlings, then started a building program that his successors continued for several centuries. It's huge. Rambles all over the place. There are 15th century halls right next to 19th century gardens. It has a centuries-old grapevine that produces 800 pounds of grapes a year (from one grapevine). Inside there are quite a number of wood carvings from the 16th century that are incredibly finely carved. The tour guide told us that one quarter of the building budget at that time went to the wood carver and his men, and that there is nobody in the world today who can do such work. I certainly believe it. When was the last time you saw a carved wooden leaf that was as thin and finely detailed as the real thing? Then multiply that by literally thousands of such leaves and you'll get a feeling for the extent of the work. We walked through Hampton Court's small chapel that is jaw-dropping beautiful, and we saw many beautiful old Flemish tapestries and old master paintings. We spent all afternoon there and could easily have spent several days.

On Friday, we went to see our second live theater show. It was “An Inspector Calls” at Garrick Theater. This is an old play that has been revived and done in a film-noir style. The play itself was good, the actors were excellent, and the theater was small, old, and cozy. Quite a change from the bluster of “Les Miserables” and very enjoyable.

We're trying to figure out where to go once we leave London. We're looking for what they call a "self-catering apartment", like what we're in now, somewhere along the border between the Netherlands and Belgium. We should find something this week and will finalize our plans after that.

Summer is definitely over. It's getting rather chilly during the day now. The long dry spell is also over and we're getting much more of London rain. Interestingly, the trees have not yet started to change color. Wonder when that'll happen?

British TV continues to be interesting. A popular theme is to put people in unusual circumstances and then film them as they deal with it. One example is "Living With the Enemy", in which two small groups of people, usually opposed to each other, have to live together for a week or so. The first one we saw was on artists, appropriately enough: one couple was in their early 20's and were conceptual artists, who do some really odd things in the name of "art". The other couple was 60-ish and were veddy Establishment: former presidents of Royal Societies of this and that, doing really BORing work. These two couples were at each other's throats in no time flat. Very entertaining. The show coming up next week will put a group of construction workers together with some feminists. Now that ought to be exciting!

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