Today we did a little exploring of our immediate locality in Haymarket, Piccadilly Circus and Piccadilly. It's a lively spot! There are tourist places in your face, buskers, and the traffic is just constant. There's seldom a gap in the continuous queue of buses and taxis!
But before we went out, we went online and booked tickets for The Book of Mormon for the matinee on Wednesday, the day before we fly out.
Just opposite our apartment, 35 Haymarket, is a well-known statue of The Horses of Helios, and just round the corner is Eros, the famous statue in the middle of Piccadilly Circus.
We walked back up Coventry Street to the Prince of Wales Theatre to pick up our tickets from the box office. It's only a short block away!
We walked down Piccadilly to St James's Church. This is a lovely church, designed by Sir Christopher Wren. According to what we heard, it was Wren's favourite amongst all of his works — and that's amazing when you remember that Wren was the architect of St Paul's!
St James's is the location of the Piccadilly Market, a really delightful craft market. We were after a couple of specific things, and we were totally successful! The market runs in the forecourt of the church for six days of the week — and is completely dismantled and removed for Sunday!
While we were there, we noticed that they were having a free lunchtime concert. (I say free, but they do suggest a donation of £3.50 to support the concert programme.) We decided to go along. Another good decision! The Dominic Alldis Trio are a jazz group who rework some of the popular classics in a most delightful way. Dominic Alldis, the pianist and leader, is a well-known jazz educator here. We are pleased that the trio has put some of its works up on the internet, so you can enjoy them yourselves. In this site you will find some of the works they performed — Bach's Prelude No. One, Fauré's Pavane, Dvořak's Largo from his New World Symphony.
As we were coming out, we noticed a poster advertising a chamber arrangement of Brahms' Ein deutsches Requiem, one of Warren's favourite works, so he went back into the market, where the essential oils stall was selling tickets. The performance is tomorrow night at 7.30pm! By the way, the stall-holder insisted on getting into a conversation — they do here! — and revealed that he gets a lot of his best oils — ti-tree, sandalwood and others — from Australia.
On the way back up to our apartment we dropped in to a shop to get some food — and had to show a little restraint when confronted with a magnificent display of macaroons and chocolates!
A delightful day, with the unexpected bonus of the performance by the Dominic Alldis Trio!
So right. What a place London is. Watch out forf ye damned terrorists the way we do won't you? I'm afraid I take life a day at a time. Bought Astral's Chiristmas Pressie today (thanks) Got her a lovely colourful squsaky rattly little Lamaze doll (she has teddies) and a Very Hungry Caterpillar cloth book. Colourful and simple-a bit dear but wonderful and I'm going to wrap it up and get Jay to help HER unwrap it. Got Sophie and David some summer clothes. Got me a hairbrush and some sunscreen! Don't know what to get Meredith. At all. She's in her up and down mood at present and quite Mary Mary. All that lovely food and the Brits are worried because they are getting more obese! Oh well, take care and I hope the elevator is working b y the time you have to get out! Love Cathy and crew. I said to David he could start being reckless by decidding which things in the shed fro twenty yearsas' agom he could bear to part with and to chuck it out. Then I said we'll look at 19 years' ago and go from there. i read the meaning of reckless to him from the dictionary and it was a new language, dear man. XXX
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