Day 9.5

I wanted to add a sidenote here about getting food after the tour. I ate at the tavern.

Englishman have the most attractive bar snacks ever!

And they really know how to do a warming, wonderful, chicken curry.

Day 9 Place 21: Lord's Cricket Ground

Lord's Cricket ground has nothing to do with titled fellows. It is called that because Mr. Lord was a shark at real estate, and the chaps wanted someone business savvy to take care of the arrangements, so they would have a place to play ball.

The approach to Lord's starts at St. John's  tube station which is copper-covered, and therefore a little bit steampunky.

I walked from the tube station through St. John's Wood to approach Lord's. Like many of the parks in London, it's not exactly clear which bits are a park, versus a graveyard. And that's not bad. Just quintessentially un-American.

Even as you walk towards the cricket ground, it becomes immediately apparent where DNA might have gotten the odd idea that space ships could somehow be involved in the game of cricket.

"It was a charming and delightful day at Lord’s as Ford and Arthur tumbled haphazardly out of a space-time anomaly and hit the immaculate turf rather hard. The applause of the crowd was tremendous. It wasn’t for them, but instinctively they bowed anyway, which was fortunate because the small red heavy ball that the crowd actually had been applauding whistled mere inches over Arthur’s head. They threw themselves back to the ground that seemed to spin hideously around them."

I was lucky enough to be in time for a full tour of Lord's. Even though I was running late, had to catch a train to Cambridge, and starving, I was intrigued enough by the "spaceship" and tour description, to sign up for 105 minutes of information about cricket. A game I believe I have never seen played. Yeah I'm not sure why I took the tour either. It was there.

The tour began in the museum.

Where I learned the actual history of the ashes. The actual ashes are the reputed remains of cricket bails gathered and burned as a joke by the ladies of the Australian governor's household. The story goes that the governor's wife dumped the perfume from her terra cotta glazed scent bottle and filled the urn to present as a joke gift to the English cricket team. To be clear, in the late 1800s, for the English cricket team to go for a re-match in Australia, we are talking weeks and weeks of travel via boat. For honor! For the ashes! All a little cuckoo if you ask me. The sort of intense sportsmanship that cannot readily be explained. Sort of like the attitude of those nice chaps on the planet Krikkit.

There's a lot more to it than that, if you actually care deeply about English cricket. Approximately 90 minutes more. But for our purposes, what amused me greatly is hoping that Douglas Adams had found out that someone - a clever lady, in fact - had made a very funny joke, and he would further riff on that theme.

"He fretted as he heard it explained that the Ashes were about to be presented to the captain of the English team out there on the pitch, fumed when told that this was because they had now won it for the nth time, positively barked with annoyance at the information that the Ashes were the remains of a cricket stump, and when, further to this, he was asked to contend with the fact that the cricket stump in question had been burnt in Melbourne, Australia, in 1882, to signify the “death of English cricket,” he rounded on Slartibartfast, took a deep breath, but didn’t have a chance to say anything because the old man wasn’t there. He was marching out onto the pitch with terrible purpose in his gait; his hair, beard and robes swept behind him, looking very much as Moses would have looked if Sinai had been a well- cut lawn instead of, as it is more usually represented, a fiery smoking mountain."

"They tried not to listen, but could not help noticing that Slartibartfast was querulously demanding that he be given the silver urn containing the Ashes, as they were, he said, “vitally important for the past, present and future safety of the Galaxy,” and that this was causing wild hilarity. They resolved to ignore it. What happened next they could not ignore. With a noise like a hundred thousand people saying “whop,” a steely white spaceship suddenly seemed to create itself out of nothing in the air directly above the cricket pitch and hung there with infinite menace and a slight hum. Then for a while it did nothing, as if it expected everybody to go about their normal business and not mind its just hanging there. Then it did something quite extraordinary. Or rather, it opened up and let something quite extraordinary come out of it, eleven quite extraordinary things. They were robots, white robots. What was most extraordinary about them was that they appeared to have come dressed for the occasion. Not only were they white, but they carried what appeared to be cricket bats, and not only that but they also carried what appeared to be cricket balls, and not only that but they wore white ribbing pads around the lower parts of their legs. These last were extraordinary because they appeared to contain jets that allowed these curiously civilized robots to fly down from their hovering spaceship and start to kill people, which is what they did."

The big white spaceship is actually the modern day press box. It was included in the tour.

The insides are painted sky blue and look like the interior of a submarine: all the doors have rounded corners, porthole windows, and everything is curved.

From the press box is an incredible view of the historical home of cricket.

And if you take the tour you get to see the beautiful interiors.

The grounds include father time and "The Bowler" statue.

"Arthur felt happy. He was terribly pleased that the day was for once working out so much according to plan. Only twenty minutes ago he had decided he would go mad, and now here he was already chasing a Chesterfield sofa across the fields of prehistoric Earth. The sofa bobbed this way and that and seemed simultaneously to be as solid as the trees as it drifted past some of them and hazy as a billowing dream as it floated like a ghost through others. Ford and Arthur pounded chaotically after it, but it dodged and weaved as if following its own complex mathematical topography, which it was. Still they pursued, still it danced and spun, and suddenly turned and dipped as if crossing the lip of a catastrophe graph, and they were practically on top of it. With a heave and a shout they leaped on it, the sun winked out, they fell through a sickening nothingness and emerged unexpectedly in the middle of the pitch at Lord’s Cricket Ground, St. John’s Wood, London, toward the end of the last Test Match of the Australian series in the year 198- , with England only needing twenty- eight runs to win."

My route was more direct, but at times didn't feel any less mad. The tour also goes into the player's dressing rooms, which have an amazing view of the pitch.

Even though I had never seen cricket played, and had no idea what I was getting into, everyone on the tour was very kind. Once I fessed up as to why I was there, we all had a good laugh and a certain measure of respect for one another. Watch the video that I made below to hear more about geeks geeking out together - even when their interests are extremely far apart and appear to have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with each other. It is a selfie video, and I took it on the way to check out of our flat in Islington and jump a train to Cambridge:

https://youtu.be/9KnS8aNnBzM

Day 5 No Place

Our 5th day was the 1st day that we did not go to any of the 42 places. On Mark's list of things to do in London was the British Museum. So off we went to Tottenham Court Road, where I lost my 42 hat in a giant gust of wind on the station platform. It blew off my head, hit Mark in the face, and landed on the tube tracks.

I left my contact information with a very kindly station staff member, and we went off to the museum. We spent a few hours looking at ancient Egyptian artifacts, Grecian marbles, and the Rosetta Stone.

We tried to find a recommended place for tea but it was a wild goose chase.

Finally we set off to have dinner with B. and L. Shepherd at The Bonneville, in Hackney: http://thebonneville.co.uk/m.html

The trip was exciting because we took two new forms of transport: the overground rail and our first London bus! 

Dinner was beyond incredible, and in an amazing venue - highly recommended, and do not skip a trip to the loo, my darlins, it's fun down there.

It was an early-to-bed night because the next day held a full day tour out into Somerset.

Day 4 Part 1 Richard's Walk: Place 14 Camden Passage

"Richard crossed the road...The day was cold and bright, which he liked. He walked across the top of Islington Green, where winos get beaten up, past the site of the old Collins Music Hall which had got burned down, and through Camden Passage where American tourists get ripped off."

Here I am in Camden Passage, Islington Green behind me.

Below is the shop Mark and I went into, and yes, probably got ripped off in, but the store is called "Smug." How could we NOT buy a hilarious tea towel with an adorable critter on it? Also let's all make an effort to go back to the 1588 usage of this word, shall we?

We stopped in at the chocolatiers with Mark picking out several kinds of truffles, brownie bites covered in chocolate with red glitter on them, and dairy free hot chocolate: literally melted chocolate in a cup. The chocolatier asked Mark whether he wanted any additional spices in his chocolate. In true Mark form he said, "Yes!"

"To which?"

"Everything except the cardamom." 

I definitely remember that he got cinnamon, a spicy pepper, and...three other spices that I don't recall. He found it veeeery tasty, but I could only handle one teensy tinsy small sip.  Much too rich for me.

A bit further down the passage we looked at all of the fun antiques. A lovely French woman would not take no for an answer, and forced us to allow her to take our photograph. 

Then I needed tea, so we sat and rested a little in the beautiful Camden Head to fortify us for a long walk in the footsteps of Dirk Gently, searching for cigarettes in the middle of the night.

Day 2 and Places 2, 3 & 4: Harrods, Knightsbridge, Hyde Park

Last night there were naps, then midnight snacks, and an accidental alarm for regular non-vacation-days at 7:30AM. GAH. Then I burned the pretty almond croissants trying to figure out the toaster oven. Sad breakfast.

Still, we tried to handle our jet lag with "Ooooh!-Ahhhhhs!" and forced marches. First, a bit of a Rick Steves' walking tour that began on the Westminster bridge and encompassed all the sights of Whitehall until we were so hungry we could walk no more.

Then off on the pilgrimage, to Place #2 where,  "The flying saucer in which Ford Prefect had stowed away had stunned the world. Finally there was no doubt, no possibility of mistake...It had come down with a wonderful disregard for anything beneath it and crushed a large area of some of the most expensive real estate in the world, including much of Harrods."

Don't worry, it has been perfectly restored:

We walked all the way to Harrods from Trafalgar Square, some of that along Hyde park, where, "for a total of three days and nights the giant silver robot stood in stunned amazement straddling the remains of Knightsbridge, swaying slightly and trying to work out a number of things." 

As a result, there are still particularly out of place looking buildings in Knightsbridge, Place #3, that may in fact be repurposed bits of giant straddling robots. "Bits" that even the people of England "voted number eight in a Country Life poll of Britain's "top ten eyesores"" and wish would go away (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyde_Park_Barracks,_London) because it just spoils the fact that "Hyde Park is stunning. Everything about it is stunning except for the rubbish on Monday mornings."

In early March, Place #4 was windy and cold. Our brisk walking allowed us to ignore any litter and instead focus on the budding crocuses, daffodils, and this:

The memorial was created for Albert, Prince Consort, in the spirit of appreciating all great men who serve. For me, it was a quiet moment to reflect on the burial of Leonard Nimoy, and all the great people who have seen their last sunset, and will never again have an opportunity to serve their fellow humans in small ways, let alone be beloved of a queen and gilded for posterity.

And with that, the memorial in Hyde Park was a reminder that whether to entertain, teach, or govern; whether to make art, be a patron, or simply listen, we can all find ways to serve ourselves and our fellow humans. 

Even if it's silly, get out and find your way. It's Monday. Pretend you're covered in gold and the glow of a setting sun. Go make the world a bit better.