Tag Archive | Rowan Atkinson

Free Lecture at Gresham College.

May5

Tuesday, May 5, 2009
London

The city limped slowly back to life today after the three-day weekend and by 10 am. it was business as usual on High Holborn–and I mean that literally. So many shops that had stayed closed through three long days opened their shutters noisily this morning and got on with their week.

I spent the morning, after an early breakfast (cereal–yes!! after ages with a cup of strawberry yogurt) transcribing an interview I did with Ashley Jacob. It went really quickly as his responses had been brief. With an hour on my hands, I sat to write a commissioned essay for a new forthcoming anthology on The Anglo-Indian Woman to be published by my friend and mentor Blair Williams of New Jersey. It also progressed rapidly. Ideas came fast and furious and I put them down quickly, editing as I went along. So engrossed was I in my task that I did not realize it was already 12 .15 and I just about had the time for a quick shower before I set of for Gresham College that is just across the street from my building.

It was only this past Sunday when I went to mass that I picked up a booklet in St. Etheldreda’s Church listing a series of Free Public Lectures run by Gresham College and given by leading experts in a variety of fields. I so wish I had found out about this earlier as the location is so convenient to reach and the topics so fascinating, There was, for instance, a whole series of talks on American politics and, in particular, on the significance of some recent presidents to the history of the nation. I know I would have dearly loved to attend those.

Well, this afternoon at 1 pm, the lecturer was Tom Korner of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and his talk was intriguingly entitled “Mathematics and Smallpox”. I arrived at Gresham College’s St. Barnard’s Hall about five minutes before it began. This gave me the opportunity to scrutinize my surroundings and take in the lofty timbered ceiling, the oil painted portraits on the wall–Thomas Gresham’s portrait was nearest my seat–and the air of intellectual antiquity that the space exuded. Ah, it did feel good to be in the presence of so many eggheads–about a hundred in all, all math whizzes I would bet…which ought to have made me feel completely out of place!

Except that I did not. In fact, I felt fully in my element. Tim Korner’s lecture was obviously prepared a long long time ago and was being quite cleverly recycled–having become rather apropos in the frenzy surrounding the global outbreak of swine flu! It was delivered through a series of OUP projections–now how long ago did that device become defunct??!! Time he got acquainted with Powerpoint, I thought to myself as he began to describe the pattern of occurrence and symptoms of smallpox with reference to Dickens’ Bleak House and the unnamed disease that Esther Summerson has (which rendered her temporarily blind and scarred for life).

Korner’s lecture focused on mathematical theories of probability and their effectiveness in predicting outbreaks of the disease as well as the efficacy of inoculations in curtailing them. I found it deeply interestingly despite the fact that I knew little about mathematics and less about smallpox at the beginning of it! The talk lasted exactly 50 minutes which left 10 minutes for questions. Within an hour, I was out of there and in five minutes, I was back home–now how fabulous is that?

Back at my laptop, I continued writing my article, all the while keeping an eye on the word count. By about 5 pm, I was pleased with the first draft and decided to email it to Blair for his initial feedback. During the next couple of days, I shall fine tune it and will, hopefully, have it ready before Chriselle gets here. God knows I will not have a second to breathe once she is here with me as we want to squeeze so much into our very limited time together.

At 5pm, I decided to set out for some fresh air, this time to the Senate House Library where I had to return a book I had borrowed (Alison Blunt’s Domicile and Diaspora–a book about Anglo-Indian women in their domestic milieu) and used the opportunity to get to my office at NYU to print a number of documents on which I have been working this past week as well as photocopy some parts of Blunt’s book. I also needed to pick up a stack of papers left for me for grading on ‘Topics in Contemporary British Politics and Culture’ and I needed to empty out the shelves of books in my office as I would now like to start shipping my books back home to the States. When I vacate this flat at the end of the month and move to my new place in Farringdon, I want to take just two suitcases with me filled only with the clothes I will need for the months of June and July.

Ticking all these items off my To-Do List once I got to our Bedford Square campus took me more than 2 hours. So it was only after 8pm, that I left my office to return home with my strolley filled with all my books, files and other paraphernalia that I have accumulated in 8 months’ use of that basement office space! It left me time to check email again, then have my dinner (a piece of fried cod and a small salad) while watching a special on the Gold channel–a series of extracts from the TV show Blackadder that all my new English friends have been telling me I should make certain I watch. Did you know that there is a group on Facebook that calls itself “The Everything I Know about British History I learned from Blackadder Group”? I discovered that some of my favorite British actors are a part of the cast (Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie and, of course, Rowan Atkinson, for instance). I also discovered that one of my favorite British writers–Richard Curtis–was involved with the script from the very beginning. How marvelous, I thought. I really ought to buy the series and take it back to the States with me to watch at my leisure at home.

It was about 10.30 before I dragged myself to my bathroom to brush and floss my teeth, write this blog and get ready for bed because I suddenly found myself feeling sleepy and rather exhausted–and this though I had decided not to continue on the Julbilee Walk but to give my feet a day’s rest !!!

As they would say in Brooklyn, ‘Go figure’!

Good Friday Observed and Dinner with the Ullals

Apr11

Good Friday, April 10, 2009
London

Good Friday dawned cloudy in London as we decided to start our day of fast and abstinence from meat with hot cross buns for breakfast–a tradition that both Llew and I had observed when growing up in Bombay and Karachi respectively. While I showered, I sent Llew on a mission to “our larder” (which is how my next-door neighbors Barbara and Tim describe the Marks and Spencer Simply Foods shop that’s right opposite our building). He returned, disappointed that the store opened only at 10 am on Good Friday. With Jordan’s Crunchy Muesli to egg us on as a substitute, our rather hectic day began.

As Llew turned to the sorting out of his baggage in preparation for his return to the States on Easter Monday, I made a quick pasta with all the bits and bobs that were in my fridge. I froze a whole load of it in small Tupperware containers (Thanks, Sylvia, they’re coming in soooo handy here), then cleaned my kitchen and decided to take Llew off on one of my self-guided Frommer walks in London entitled “Ghosts in Covent Garden”. Only Holborn was like a ghost-town itself what with the closure of all shops along the street and the absence of people–it felt like a Saturday or Sunday usually does in these parts. Being accustomed to the concept of ‘separation of Church and State’ in the United States, Llew and I are astonished at the fact that both Good Friday and Easter Monday are Bank Holidays (what we call Federal holidays) out here in Anglican England. We realize how many wonderful religious holidays we miss out on in the USA where not only do we get, on an average, just two weeks of paid privilege leave but a total of no more than six holidays during the year–no wonder the country is plagued by coronary thrombosis and other stress-related illnesses!

Our walk began at Holborn Tube station, so across Kingsway we went to Great Queen Street and into Drury Lane where we visited two old theaters–the Royal Theater (London’s oldest and one I have visited at least thrice, most recently to see Rowan Atkinson as Fagin in Oliver which is currently on) and the Lyceum Theater (currently staging The Lion King and which I have never seen except in passing). Both have their fair share of resident ghosts. In the former, I posed by a sculpture of a very dapper Noel Coward in the lobby. The streets all around Covent Garden were empty and it was a rare pleasure to feel as if we had the city entirely to ourselves. We also paused in a children’s playground that was once the burial ground of the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Field.

On to Somerset House in Aldwych we went, across the spurting fountains in the courtyard to the Stamp Office and down the spiral staircase into the basement that took us to the Victoria Embankment and into Temple Place and Strand Lane where we saw the remains of what were once Roman Baths, now maintained by the National Trust. A great sunken bath is all that is left of what was once a spring-fed bath that passed into the possession of the Earls of Arundel who once owned a house where a network of streets now stands.

Along the Embankment, we posed in the paws of the Sphinx at Cleopatra’s Needle, the hieroglyphic-clad obelisk, which allowed us to learn a bit of its rather checkered history. Then the drizzles began and we were grateful for our Umbrella for Two (a Nautica gift from our English friends in Connecticut, Jonathan and Diana Thomson) as we crossed the street and entered the Embankment Gardens. We marveled anew at the genius of Victorian engineering that pushed the Thames so far back from its original course–its waters once lapped the York Gateway in the garden –by creating the Embankment. In the Gardens a treat awaited us as thousands of tulips are on the verge of bursting into glorious bloom and my camera worked overtime as it tried to capture some of the awesome color on the parrot tulips whose petals have already unfurled themselves. Give it another few days and this little gem will be a riot of color as spring flings itself victorious over the city. I cannot wait to return from Belgium next week and throw myself into the joys of Spring madness.

Our walk ended at this point–so Llew and I crossed the Strand and walked towards the National Gallery where I wanted to introduce him to a Renaissance painter whose acquaintance I have only recently made–Carlo Crivelli, who has a whole room devoted to his work at the National. Yet, I had never heard of or seen any of his work in all my travels in Italy and all of my reading into Renaissance Art History. Where had this totally brilliant artist been hiding? He has become one of my favorites and I simply had to share his astounding work with Llew.

The National was mobbed on this holiday weekend as so many Easter travelers have descended upon the city. I realized afresh how fortunate I was to have had the galleries almost entirely to myself during those cold winter weeks when I did the bulk of my study of its peerless collection. As we jostled our way inside, we realized that in keeping with the solemnity of the day, the Gallery had organized a special talk on Eugene Delacroix’s painting Christ on the Cross and we headed towards Gallery 41 for this lecture. A group of about sixty people had already set up their chairs at the painting and in a few minutes, the rather small but deeply stirring canvas was introduced to us by one of the curators. This was followed by a talk by one of the members of the Education Department. He, unfortunately, was so soft that though we were seated only in the third row, we barely heard a word he said and, in disappointment, we left and headed towards the Sainsbury Wing to see the Crivelli Gallery.

As I expected, Llew was as blown away as I was by Crivelli’s work, most of which are altar pieces that he was commissioned to create for churches in Italy. The detail, the compositions, the expressions on the faces of his saints are all so exquisite that it is impossible to hurry away from any of his works. It was Llew, who on reading the curatorial notes in the gallery, pointed out to me that the reason this Venetian is so little-known is probably because he was banished from Venice by the Church “for adultery”. This probably finished his painting career and prevented his altar pieces from actually being placed in the churches that commissioned them. It was baffling to us how powerful the Church was during the Renaissance and how much of an artist’s career rode upon the patronage of the Popes. This had certainly come home to us during our recent travels in Rome and we were struck anew by this phenomenon while studying Crivelli’s work.

Then, we were out on the streets left slick by all the rain and walking along Charing Cross Road to Foyle’s, London’s most famous bookshop, where Llew wanted to browse through some of the recent fiction titles. I left him to his perusal while I went in search of a rest room as the one at the National had a queue a mile long! After we had spent a while looking through books–a pass time we mutually enjoy–we picked our steps towards New Oxford Street from where we took the bus home.

Simply Food had opened and we were able to get our hands on some hot cross buns (one a penny, two a penny..if you have no daughters, give them to your sons!) and had ourselves a light lunch with a bun each and some asparagus soup. Then, it was time to inform Cynthia and Michael that we would be at the 5 pm service at St. Paul’s Cathedral and off we went for a short and well-deserved siesta.

Awaking in an hour, we readied ourselves for Church, taking the bus to the Cathedral where Cynthia had reserved seats for us right in the very front. As usual, the choir and the clergy made it memorable indeed and I heard, for the very first time, a sung account of the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was rather wonderful indeed. The Veneration of the Cross was done in a rather novel way with a large cross set up in the center of the church and a circle of kneelers placed around it. The congregation was invited to go up to the kneelers and worship individually at the cross for a few minutes. This was possible, I suppose, since the congregation was rather thin. I don’t think it would be possible in the Catholic churches we have attended over the years on Good Friday where the churches are filled to capacity and such individual worship would be impossible.

Within an hour, we were out on the pavement saying Hullo to Bishop Michael Colclough, Canon-Pastor of St.Paul’s, who was pleased to see Llew again, even if briefly. After bidding the Colcloughs goodbye, we got on to the Tube for the next part of our agenda–a ride to Harrow to the home of our friends Bina and Navin Ullal who had invited us to dinner. I had called Bina and left a message with her daughter Alisha to let her know that we would not be eating meat. Llew and I carried Easter eggs from Thornton’s for Alisha and Dhiren (their kids) and after about an hour and a half, we were seated in their living room enjoying Bina’s appetisers–hot potato croquettes with mint chutney and a variety of nibbles–olives, cheddar cheese, cashew nuts, potato crisps (all well chosen for our day of vegetarianism). Bina is a very good cook indeed as I know from all the times I have stayed with them while traveling up and down from the States to India. We were high school friends and neighbors in the Reserve Bank Colony in Byculla in Bombay where our fathers were once bankers, and our growing years are filled with the most marvelous memories that we still recall and giggle over.

Over Bina’s generous spread of hot chapatis (which I was eating after ages) and mushroom curry, potato bhaji, pea curry and a huge salad with hot gulab jamuns for dessert, we spent a truly fun evening. The Ullals other guests included Amulya Barooah and his family–wife Lily and son Jasper and their adorable golden cocker spaniel named Daisy. The evening was spent in peals of laughter as we recalled, as we often do, the wonderful food we grew up with in Bombay’s long-gone Irani restaurants. It is a pity that the dhansak and vindaloo that passes as authentic Indian food in Indian restaurants today all over the world is not a patch on the true specimens produced in Parsi and Goan kitchens in India and, being foodies all, we lamented this fact in unison! Amulya is off to Madras but had suggested we get back together again at their place in Crickelwood upon his return.

The Barooahs dropped us off to Baker Street Tube station at the end of a really great evening and Llew and I were home after midnight, when quite exhausted by the events of Good Friday, we tumbled into bed.

‘Tons of Money’ in Richmond, A Piano Recital at the National Gallery and ‘Oliver’ at the West End

Jan21

Wednesday, January 22, 2009
London

White I adore London for its long and colorful history, there is a downside to this aspect of its charm. Road works! Ever since I can remember taking possession of this flat at High Holborn, there have been ‘road works’ at some point or the other along its length from Chancery Lane Tube Station to High Holborn Tube station. This plays havoc with the smooth flow of traffic along one of London’s main arterial roads. This also means that you can never really time a journey by bus as it all depends on the vagaries of the road workers and their whims–they hold up buses while their construction vehicles are given priority and when one sits on the upper deck as I always do and have a view of all proceedings beneath me, it is often frustrating and infuriating. But then I have to remember that when you live in a city that has been a work-in-progress since the Medieval Age, you cannot complain.

I don’t know whether this is purely psychological, but after my visit to Paul, the specialist physiotherapist, at Euston Hospital (my name for the University of London’s Hospital at Euston), my legs feel much better. His exercises are more challenging and one of then requires me to lie down on a bed when performing it–which means that I cannot do it three times a day as I am invariably out and about in the afternoon–but they seem to be working already although he told me that I would not feel their effects for weeks. I have also resolved to be good and not walk for leisure anymore. If I take foot rest, the homeopathic treatment, perform the exercises and pray, I should hope to see a complete cure by May–when I hope to start walking the Jubilee Walkway in little spurts.

Awaking at 5 am, I spent an hour reading Bombay Tiger which has a completely different style from the rest of Kamala Markandaya’s novels–though the content bears similarity to The Coffer Dams. After doing my exercises, spending a while blogging, having breakfast and taking a shower, I headed out the door for a long bus ride to Richmond that involved changing three buses.

It was a most unusual winter’s days in London for it was bathed in golden sunlight under clear blue skies. I actually left the house today without an umbrella and just a small bag (though I did carry my camera) so as to avoid the load on my back. Changing buses wasn’t a problem at all and I was actually able to ride in one of the historic Number 9 buses from Piccadilly to the Royal Albert Hall. I now have the hang of changing buses at Hammersmith Broadway Bus Station (at which point you walk through a shopping mall which always makes me feel as if I am back in Connecticut!). I arrived in Richmond at 12. 15 pm, recognized the shops on The Quadrant just past the main railway station and hopped off.

I walked quickly to the Tesco Metro to buy what has become a favorite sandwich (The Cheddar Cheese and Onion) and though it costs a mere pound, it is truly delicious. I also found a pack of four chocolate eclairs for a pound and with this lunch in the bag, I started on a short self-guided walk in Richmond from my book 24 Great Walks in London with the promise to myself that I would take long and frequent breaks and stop as soon as my feet felt strained.

It was such a perfect days for walking. In fact it was a perfect day, period. This is the very first time that I saw Barnes Bridge on a sunlit day and while I recognized it immediately from the bus, I wish I could have gotten off and taken a few pictures of it as the ones I have taken before on rainy days make it look so dour and forbidding. Once in Richmond, I found myself walking along short Duke Street towards The Green which was once a sheep pasture but is used today for a variety of sporting activities including cricket. I could not believe that just a few yards ahead of me were the remains of Old Richmond Palace from which the Tudor King Henry VII had reigned, where his son Henry VIII had been born and where his grand-daughter Elizabeth I had died. Destroyed, but for a small portion of it, by Oliver Cromwell, the seal of Henry VII is still embedded in one of the Palace Gates that marks the entry into a lovely evocative old Tudor Yard that contains the Royal Wardrobe Building.

Enchanted by this hidden treasure and moved by the fact that the remaining shreds of this building have seen so much bloody history (before Henry moved his court to Hampton Court Palace which he seized from Cardinal Wolsey–I can understand now why the egotistical Henry would never tolerate the fact that his lowly prelate owned a dwelling that was so much more magnificent than his own!) I walked along a delightful street with old attached ‘cottages’ that took me to the Thames riverfront where twin bridges stood right in front of me. The promenade along the river was just delightful and many people were out walking despite the wind and the rather chilly temperatures. I read up on the history of the Old Deer Park (which has no deer in it), then ate a sandwich and an eclair on a bench overlooking the water.

A little later, I found myself walking under the beautiful Richmond Bridge which is made of Portland stone and climbing the steps into O’Higgins Square to start a short climb along Hill Rise towards what my book describes as the only protected view in the UK–protected by a 1906 Act of Parliament. Personalities from Turner to Reynolds to Walter Scott have described it as ‘the most unrivalled view in the country’ and William Byrd, the founder of Richmond, Virginia, is said to have named the new colony in the New World because the view of his territory across the Potomac reminded him of just this view of London across the Thames at this site. Be that as it may, one of the ‘owners’ of this unsullied view today is none other than rock idol, Mick Jagger, who owns a house in The Ashburton, a block of grand terraced housing that overlooks the bend in the Thames at this vantage point.

I decided to cut short my rambles at this point as my pedometer (that I am now wearing constantly) reminded me that I had already walked more than a mile. I took a bus back to the center of town and from there found my way to the famous Richmond Theater for my 2. 30 show–but not before I popped into the Cancer Research Charity shop and found myself a lovely English bone china cup and saucer to add to my collection at home. It caught my eye because it was so unusual–a matt black background suddenly opens up to a white glazed border on both cup and saucer that sports the Greek key design. It was these differences in texture that so fascinated me and at 3. 50 pounds, I could not go wrong.

The reason I was at Richmond Theater was to see Alan Ackybourne’s Tons of Money which stars Christopher Timothy whom I have grown to love so much in the TV series from the 70s and 80s called All Creatures Great and Small in which Timothy plays the role of Yorkshire vet James Herriott. I have to say that I was sorely disappointed, first of all, to discover that he had rather a small role (he played the Butler Spruze) and, second, that age has taken its toll on him so that he looks most unlike his younger self. He has filled out considerably, his hair has long abandoned him and his features too have changed. But for his voice (one can never change one’s voice), there is little resemblance to the actor of old who so stole my heart away.

One of the many surprises of this afternoon was the presence in the cast of Janet Henfrey (who plays Mrs. Bale in the BBC TV series As Time Goes By). This is the second time I have seen her on stage–she was present in The Importance of Being Ernest starring Penelope Keith that I saw at the Vaudeville Theater at the Strand last March with my friend Amy Tobin). The play was entertaining but not worth the long hike to Richmond unless one combines it with a walk as I did. At any rate, the theater was only half full, but I swear I was the youngest person in the audience! Everyone around me was silver haired and was no doubt there out of nostalgia for the good old days of the telly when Christopher Timothy made evening viewing special.

Then, I was on the bus again headed back to the city because, unwittingly, I had booked tickets for two plays on the same day (not having my calendar with me when I had booked a ticket for Tons of Money in December when I had gone to see Peter Pan, the Christmas pantomime at Richmond Theater). I knew that I would arrive in the city rather early–my next show (Oliver starring Rowan Atkinson in the role of Fagin) was not until 7. 30 pm at the Royal Theater on Drury Lane (this is the third show I am seeing there after French and Saunders Live and another one whose name I cannot now recall).

Having about an hour to kill, I hopped off at Trafalgar Square hoping that the National Gallery would have a late evening closing–and how right I was. A quick look at “Today’s Program” at the Sainsbury Entrance informed me that there was a free piano recital starting at 6 pm in Gallery 18. So off I went to take my place on a chair right in front of the baby grand piano that graced the gallery on a lovely Oriental carpet. The two performers of the evening were Kentaro Nagai and David Malusa, both from the Royal College of Music who kept me enthralled with an hour long program that included a fantastia and fugue by Bach, an unbelievable Ballad by Chopin, Iberian music from Spanish composes Mompou and Albeniz and a stunning work by Schumann. I could not have asked for a better way to spend an hour. This is what I most love about living in London. I come upon these cultural surprises in the most unexpected of ways and because I have so few commitments here, I can seize the opportunity to enjoy them as and when they present themselves.

Then, I was off on the bus again heading towards Aldwych where at Drury Lane, I hopped off to get to the Theater Royal. I keep forgetting how gorgeous the interior of these theaters are. This one is splendid–with fat putti adorning its walls in the lavish plasterwork along the ceiling and outside the boxes. The only horrid thing about this theater is that the balcony is about seven floors high–you feel as if you have scaled Mount Everest by the time you get to your seat–and being a ‘graded’ building, they cannot install elevators inside.

The auditorium was packed to capacity (as the play won some terrific reviews when it opened a couple of weeks ago). All around me were American college students, one of whom informed me that they were from Long Island’s Hofstra University studying British Drama for a month during their winter break. They were fidgety and noisy (as American students usually are), made inane comments during the interval (“That scene with Bumble was so sexual. She wasn’t supposed to hit on him like that” and “We were sitting at the worst possible angle for that scene”–it happened to be one in which Beadle’s wife bared her cleavage in a seduction scene!). I enjoyed these comments but the very proper English lady sitting besides me was besides herself with outrage at the behavior of the sprightly Americans and at the fact that she had to “get up and down and up and down” to accommodate their frequent passage to and from their seats!

Oliver was superb. I did not realize that some of the songs I have known since my childhood (Oom-Pah-Pah, I’d Do Anything) are from this musical. Apart from the stars (Rowan Atkinson whom I first got to know as Mr. Bean is unforgettable as Fagin and he can sing!–as is Jodi Prenger as Nancy), the little guy who played the Artful Dodger was amazing. Sets were truly stunning and the recreation of Victorian England so appealing visually that for a while I seemed to have transported myself to a different world altogether. It was truly one of the finest shows I have seen since arriving in London in September and I could understand why the critics have been raving about it.

Two plays in the same day, a musical concert, a sunny walk in Richmond…truly it was a day packed with pleasurable activity and by the time I was riding the bus back home, I felt culturally saturated. I could only talk to Llew for a few minutes before I called it a night.