.....Continued

This post is a continuation from here.

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It had dodgy idea written all over it. Who would even contemplate going to an alfresco performance on a grey English afternoon? But, the current season of performances was coming to an end in two days. What is to say that the weather would improve later?

I was not going to be put off by a light but steady drizzle. But, it had turned into a heavy downpour by the time I reached ‘Blackfrairs’ tube station. I was looking out, standing at the edge of an exit, wondering how anyone, even a tourist, could have been so foolish as to have left home without an umbrella on day like that. It looked like I would have to abandon the plan after all when I heard a thickly accented voice screaming 'free umbrella’ with the 'Evening Standard'. That looked like a sign from God that I should carry on.

I bought the newspaper and got my free umbrella. Now, I did not expect anything that I got free with a purchase of 50P to last me years; fifteen minutes would have been good but it lasted me just till the end of the millennium bridge before folding in like a cheap umbrella, which of course is what it was.

I was soaked to the skin in the three further minutes that it took me to get to the Shakespeare’s globe. I was cold, wet and shivering slightly and the sensible thing would have been to go home. But, I had not come that far to be sensible. I only briefly hesitated before buying a ticket for five pounds that would allow me to stand through a staging of ‘Anthony & Cleopatra’.

The Shakespeare’s Globe is a meticulous reconstruction of the original Globe theatre- that Shakespeare helped found in 1599-which was burnt, rebuilt and subsequently closed down and destroyed.

'The building has been painstakingly reconstructed with 600 oak pegs (there’s not a nail or screw in the house), specially fired Tudor bricks and thatching reeds from Norfolk; even the plaster contains goat hair, lime and sand as it did in Shakespeare’s time',I read from my lonely planet guide. The present day re-creation is located just 200 metres from the original and is the first thatched roof building to be permitted in the city since the Great Fire of London in 1666.

In all its authenticity, there is a central arena with no roofing as in the original theater, where the ‘groundlings’ can stand and watch the show. If it is raining, the groundlings in the present day, can buy a plastic mac for 2 pounds to protect themselves and stand through the performance, in the rain.

When the show started, it was pouring so heavily that it was a little bit hard to hear the dialogues even. The rain eases up in 45 minutes but I was cold and wet the entire time. Further, they are extremely strict about the standing. The alert marshalls tap anyone who gets down on their haunches to give their poor aching feet a break (you can leave and return though).

But I did not mind, as standing through a play in the pouring rain is quite the experience. It is not easy to stay focussed through the discomfort though. I notice that Frances Barber as Cleopatra was a dead ringer for Elizabeth Taylor and she was probably the same age but is otherwise well cast. It is just as well that 'Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale / Her infinite variety'. But, I lose track of things off and on.

Authentic, the whole setting undoubtedly is, except for the occasional planes that are distinctly non-Shakespearean and the fashions of fellow groundlings was far too Denim and 21st century. Perhaps, they should make the audiences wear costumes as well. That would help.

Three hours later, I tried not to think of the incipient pneumonia and the imminent knee replacement surgery; I had experienced something that I would not forget. The season of performances runs from May to October at the Shakespeare’s Globe. It is well worth catching, rain or sun.

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Sometimes I would buy the newspaper and at others I would see it for the extravagance that it was. In any case, two free newspapers had been launched in early September this year and were competing fiercely for readership. It is not clear how that is going to play out because there is little to differentiate between the two of them. They are distributed everywhere from early afternoon with purple jacket clad people handing out the purple themed free ‘The London paper’ and there was the relatively unsemiotic free ‘London Lite’.

Their coverage revolves largely around celebrity gossip and sightings, style tips, sudoku and the occasional surprising detours to North Korea and Iraq. But, they were not too bad to the extent that they had comprehensive entertainment listings and reviews, both very useful, and then they can be used to line shelves and cupboards once you are done (probably a very Indian thing). They also had the important merit of being free.

Broadly speaking of local journalism, I liked the happily direct and robust way in which a tourist attraction was called 'Piss weak', the desire to dismiss Tracey Emin’s childhood recollections in 'Strangeland' as codswallop and a film review that exclaimed 'What a crock of mock doc rock'.

But, the tendency to latch on to some issue and debate on it ad nauseam was irksome. I read about Madonna’s baby adoption, the veil controversy and the debate on the ban of size zero models, with every Tom, Dick and Harry tossing in his two pence, till I felt like screaming if I ever looked at anything related to these stories. All these issues are still in circulation and I can feel the effect of that early overdose even now.

And then there is the excessive obsession with celebrities; I believe that all local media houses employ a full time Kate Moss correspondent whose job is to just follow her around, regardless of what she is doing and report it regardless how excruciatingly dull it may be. Jude Law, Sienna Miller and Madonna, Posh and Becks correspondents do a fair amount of work as well. You are also constantly assaulted by the useless celebrity of reality show rejects, Kimberly Stewart and Peaches Geldof, the latter always in the news for reasons that I am yet to figure out.

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My kind host (my sister), the global traveler, is home only on weekends, mainly to do the laundry, or when am there, supervise me doing it while she languidly sips her coffee, also prepared by me. Once we are done with the domesticity she goes for a run in nearby Holland Park or slightly further down Kensington Gardens. She runs while I studiously avoid all physical activity and read The Guardian.

We then go have an English breakfast, or as English as the vegetarian version can be, at the lovely ‘The lazy daisy café’-veg sausage, eggs, beans, toast, mushrooms, tomatoes and coffee, always swapping the tomatoes and eggs because I don’t eat eggs and she hates tomatoes. We then wander slowly and aimlessly on Portobello road, which claims to be the world’s largest antique market. It looks like a questionable claim; but as there is probably no reasonable way of measuring the size of an antique market, they can make it and get away with it.

It is a beautiful street market with wide ranging wares and I discover the pleasures of checking out the items without worrying about having to make any purchase decisions; nothing was retailing for the 1.50 Pounds that I could spare for something unnecessary like shopping. In many ways, shopping was just like visiting a museum or an art gallery. I look at the objets d'art and admire them. This developed into our weekend morning routine, and not surprisingly, because it was idyllic and perfect.

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I wake up one fine day and get this bright idea that I should visit literary addresses and by that I mean the made up ones made famous by books.

It all started with father telling me to visit '221B Baker Street' just as I was leaving home for the airport. He could have said many things but this what he says. I have no idea what he thought I would find at some fictitious address. Neither did I and there was only one thing to do. No, not google, but to go there and see for myself.

This was the only time that I misread the directions from the ‘Baker Street' underground station. But, I don't care that much, I am happy to just wander, I see 'Harley Street' and it as full of doctors' chambers as I have heard, the ones that may cure you of other ailments but will leave you an arm and a leg short. I walk past a house where Charles Dickens wrote six of his major works and it has a nice mural of the characters from these works. I eventually get to Baker Street, and there is this quaint little house that very conspicuously announces itself as ‘221B, Baker Street’. This is jarringly incongruous because it really is number 239, which is obvious from the numbering of properties on either side.

The 'Sherlock Holmes museum' was opened in 1990 at this location. This surprises me given how popular the uber detective has always been. How come no one thought of extracting six quid from the many misguided fans who must have been thronging Baker Street all these years?

The museum itself is a bit of a letdown. There were very few but excited visitors wandering around. The first floor is an attempt at a detailed re-creation of the living quarters of Sherlock Holmes based on the description from the books. This floor is designed to look as it would be from desuetude since August 5 th 1898 (a copy of ‘The Times’ of that date lies outside). Yet some items like the mirror have been cleaned and it stands out from the rest of the setup that is full of moldy and worn out stuff.

On the second and third floors there are displays of (presumably famous) scenes from the books using wax dummies. You have a depiction of 'The blackmailer Charles Augustus Milverton being shot dead by one of his victims' and 'Holmes and Watson with their grotesque discovery in the church vault at Shoscombe old place'. If it sounds a bit ghastly, I can assure you that it is. I heard that actors playing various parts roam around the museum in costume and I thank my good fortune that I did not run into any of them.

There is a souvenir store on the ground floor. Throughout the museum, and in the store in particular, the pipe and deerstalker hat motif are done to death, brought back to life and then done to death some more. Given the inventive brilliance of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s works, it looks like the museum has missed the opportunity to do something creative and interesting. I would say that it is only for the die-hard fans but that is already the case.

And to finish, I walk through the length of the street checking the numbers; there is no 221, B or any other alphabet. There is a huge property occupying several numbers that is currently a construction site where the number could lie.

My next stop is platform nine and three quarters. I get off at King’s Cross station. I walk around the station but find only six platforms. I was standing in the midst of nowhere after some time, wondering if I was missing something when I have this unbelievably Homer Simpsonish Doh moment. It hits me that mystical wizard lands cannot be reached from a mere underground station! There must a railway station, possibly just outside, as indeed it was. I could not believe how stupid I had been. I get out and go to the railway station.

I don’t know if Harry was excited by King’s Cross station but I know I was. There was the pleasant unhurriedness of a lazy Tuesday afternoon as was the vague promise of interesting journeys. I begin to get into the pleasure of looking for something fictitious; you don’t really know what you are looking for or what you are going to find.

I walk past platforms 6, 7 and 8 and I am crossing over to platform 9, 10 and 11 when I see a board against the wall that says ‘PLATFORM 9 ¾’ and below it is a trolley-Property of network rail King’s Cross. Do not remove it from this station- that is chained to the wall. I take some time to grasp the significance of this. I think the idea is that by pushing the trolley through the wall you can reach the magical platform. But, then I reason that it should be between platforms 9 and 10 and not 8 and 9 as it is now. But then I think some more and figure that the logic is that once you push past eight you can reach platforms 9 to 11 and any fractions thereof. Besides, there is no convenient way of placing that trolley and board between numbers 9 and 10. I suppose this is the best that they could have done.

In any case, there are few people who are interested in it; a group of very bizarrely dressed young men and women stand there, taking their pictures in front of the trolley. I am surprised that it is not a bigger tourist attraction given how popular the series is. Even as I stand there, hoping I did not look like a campy Harry Potter loving tourist (not that anyone cared) millions were thronging Madam Tussaud’s; but platform 9.75 was not attracting people. The modern young literature fan, it would appear, has no interest in chasing literary holy grails.

Helene Hanff’s '84 Charing cross Road' is a book based on the author’s actual correspondence with an employee of the real life bookshop 'Marks & Co' located at that address. So, this a genuine address. The store later became an 'All Bar One' and is now a construction site. But, there are many other lovely bookshops on Charing Cross road, so it is impossible to care. The Drones club, from P.G.Wodehouse, is supposed to be located on Dover Street, but I don’t recollect any precise address. Besides, I am tired and ready to go home.

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I am alone for a lot of time during my three week trip as my host is travelling. I may have friends in London but I have been able to contact just one; I have no mobile phone, Internet connection or a television. I am so happy to get away from the things that my life usually revolves around. I have never lived alone in a long time and it felt like my own Walden (of course with a seriously massive stretch of the imagination). Somehow, the best part of being away was not so much doing anything as doing nothing at home, where I would turn up the blinds on the window by two feet to let in just that perfect amount of sunshine into my beautiful little room.