On the kindness of Londoners

The new V&A East Storehouse

For Ann's birthday last month, Edwin and Andre had treated us to tickets to the new production of Evita at the London Palladium, which we saw on Friday. The weekend coincided with the end of Andre's parents tour of Italy and Switzerland and a week staying in Bury St Edmund's (The Brazilians come to Europe), so we came up in two cars. 

We always park in the Westfield shopping centre at Stratford, and Edwin was keen to see the new V&A extension gallery in the new warehouse complex just outside the centre. He parked and walked back in a weltering 30+degrees of sun having thoughtfully dropped us at the door for a coffee. The exhibition is an eclectic mixture of the world's odds and ends, of which the V&A has over two million items, mostly stored in basements and off-site; so this was a good example of what to do with undisplayed stock which most museums have in abundance. The objects were stacked for view on great girdered shelving reminiscent of garage shelving, most still mounted and strapped to palettes for ease of transport.

Enjoying London Vegan Cuisine

One thing we have noticed about London recently is how polite and helpful young people seem to be. This started at the warehouse museum, where all bags must be locked away before admission. I was fumbling with the code lock when an attendant kindly stepped up to help, holding down a small code key while I entered an incorrect code I would never remember - but she simply wrote the locker number and the true code on a slip of paper and handed it to me with a smile. Later, on the Elizabeth line, a young man stood to offer me his seat, even though there were many seats free to either side. Generally, it is reported that the young are resentful at the privilages of we oldies, forgetting how little we too had at their age, and how hard we worked to get what we have, and certainly in supermarkets we notice the impatience of some as we oldies fumble with our cards or packing. But Annie thinks the politeness in London is linked to the high influx of newcomers who still hold a modicum of respect for age. 

We finally met up at a crowded vegan restaurant in Soho for a delicious mix of delicacies, then on to the theatre. There were long queues waiting to go through a couple of entrances, but seeing me with my stick, another young man fetched me from the queue and took Annie and I weaving through the queues to a side door which he opened with his pass, then ushered us to a lift to avoid the stairs. At the top, another attendant met us to usher us to our seats, even waiting for us while Annie went to the toilet.

The performance is amazingly innovative, especially in using live multimedia projection of Rachel Zegler's balcony performance singing Don't Cry for me, Argentina, sung on the outside balcony to the inevitable London crowd but screened to us on stage. Unfortunately, I was my usual ignorant self, not having known any of this, so I thought for some reason it must all have been pre-recorded rather than live external camera work, so the wonderful innovation was a little wasted on me. Everyone else seemed to know though, so I couldn't understand why the audience went so wild with applause for a filmed sequence! Only afterwards did Edwin explain what had been going on. Not withstanding my ignorance, it was a brilliant show and thoroughly deserving of its plaudits.

Saturday had us enjoying one of Annie's speciality cream teas, a special English treat for the Brazilian visitors, before the boys took them back to Heathrow on Sunday, via an afternoon at Kew Gardens, unfortunately in the rain as the hot spell has now broken.