London Borough Market at Southwark

London January 2010

I'm hopelessly behind on my blog. I went to London to participate in the Son-Rise start-up program, which is a program that is highly effective in recovering individuals from autism, and teaches parents how to run their own program. More about that in a separate post. London was awesome; busy, loud, overwhelming sensory overload in every square inch, shops, shops, and more shops, delicious foods, amazing restaurants, musicals, shows, plays, packed with history, museums and stuff to do...exactly the kind of place that makes you feel like you lead a hopelessly provincial life and has you wishing you were without kids and had all the time in the world to just feast on all the entertainment. And after the week was over I was just as happy to return to my kids and my provincial town out in the midst of green fields and forests. I do wish we lived closer to a city like London though so I could have the best of both worlds.
I got to stay with my dear friend Kerryn. She lives only a 20 min tube ride away from London Bridge in a nice neighborhood, north of the main downtown. Although her neighborhood had rows and rows of houses, I did in fact spot a fox when I was walking to catch the 4 am bus to Stansted. A fox in urban London!
Kerryn and I have been friends for about 8 years now, without ever having spent more than 4 hours in each other's presence. It was so fun after all this time to actually spend time together. Kerryn kindly agreed to go see WICKED with me although she had seen it three times, a musical that I had been wanting to see for five years, but never got tickets to in all the times I was in Manhattan. It was fantastic. At first I thought it didn't really compare to my favorites like Miss Saigon and Les Mis, because the music is less catchy and diverse, more "homogenous" for lack of better description, having only two lead roles, but it is the kind of show where while watching you think, this is fun but honestly what's the big deal. And then you come out of the theatre and the more you think about it the more awesome it becomes. So now I'm just as in love with WICKED as everyone else seems to be, and have "Changed for Good" in my head for two weeks now.
Whenever I go to a musical, I have to ask myself why I chose opera over musical. It is so much more fun to watch and listen to. I don't think that is really opera's fault though. When a musical is produced everything is set and doesn't change. The wishes of those producing it are respected and whether you see it in London or NYC or on a tour, it is pretty much the same from costume to set. An opera production with a great set, well staged and acted out is really entertaining too, not to mention impressive because the singers sing without amplification. Most opera composers wrote similarly explicit directions for their productions which today are largely ignored, perhaps on account of them being dead, and so you will find that instead of being an Ethiopian Princess enslaved to an jealous royalty in Egypt, Aida is now suddenly a cleaning lady with a russian accent in Brooklyn. Instead of Pyramids on set, sky scrapers, as represented by the chair on stage left. While you're at it might as well imagine the costumes too. And then, if you can find opera singers who can act, which there are plenty by the way, you first have to find the director who allows them to, without asking them to produce the sounds the audience paid to hear them sing, while standing on their head and juggling a vacuum cleaner and mop in their underwear. OK, so I might have exaggerated this, but I bet that if I opened up the discussion here to my friends on the ridiculous things they had to do on stage, you would see it's not far from the truth.

Anyway, back to London. The best thing was eating out every meal. There were 171 participants in the course, and I'm a bit ashamed to admit that I relished eating in a restaurant all by myself instead of mingling. I love silence, and being able to finish my meal without having to get up 20 times to get the kids a different plate/salt/drink/cup/glas whatever was awesome and then to explore the boroughs market after. I felt free as a bird. I never understood why my mom liked to eat out alone, thinking it lonely and sad. Now that I have my own kids I understand that eating out alone is a celebration of liberty and silence, and I loved it.

Look for more updates on Son-Rise program soon.