Just back from a 10 day jaunt through southwestern England and London. Mostly dry weather in the high 60s, low 70s.
Where better than London to partake of that quintessentially Tony and Olivier Awards-winning farce “Oh, Mary!,” hearing Brits laugh at the bawdy, irreverent treatment of arguably our greatest president, Abraham Lincoln, and his oft-misunderstood wife, Mary Todd Lincoln.
Honest Abe as a deeply closeted homosexual. Mary as a sexually frustrated alcoholic. Perhaps in a Trumpian-era recounting of history it’s an amusing reassessment. But my patriotic sensibilities found few instances of acceptable humor.
I am obviously in the minority. “Oh, Mary!” is not for the faint-hearted. It is not in the same league as “Springtime For Hitler in Germany,” Mel Brooks’ sendup of Adolph Hitler via his skewering of Broadway producers. I’m all for skewing the mighty. But I found little in “Oh, Mary!” to make me laugh.
English Observations: Gilda and I have been to England and Scotland about 10 times over the last 40 years, but never to the southwest region of Devon and Cornwall. So, prior to the main reason for this trip to attend the London bar mitzvah of our grandnephew Harry, we prevailed upon our dear friend Gemma to be our designated left-side-of-the-road driver as we toured the countryside.
With Exeter as our base, we, mostly I, marveled at the ubiquity of Englishmen wearing t-shirts and shorts in weather that had me wearing a jacket to stay comfortable in the seacoast breeze. What their bare appendages revealed, among men and women, was a proclivity to enhance their skin with elaborate tattoos.
Particularly in Cornwall, the English fashion single car lanes made all the more daring by building up shrubbery six to seven feet high on both sides of a narrow pathway. One cannot see cars coming around a curve, requiring quick footwork shifting from accelerator to brake pedal. Every 300 yards or so a small cutout provides enough room for an oncoming car to pass, but if you’re encounter happens midway between cutouts, you are forced to engage in a game of chicken to determine which driver will back up to the cutout, all the while hoping a third vehicle doesn’t appear as you’re backing up. It’s also fortunate that most cars in England are smaller than those deployed in America.
To my surprise, Exeter had never been top of mind. But the city of some 140,000 in Devon has a rich history and magnificent Gothic cathedral. It has the longest uninterrupted vaulted ceiling in the world.
Exeter also has a fun tourist exhibit, a hardhat-wearing trek through underground tunnels constructed in the Middle Ages that brought water into the city.
Southwest of Exeter is Plymouth, the jumping off point for the Pilgrims sailing in the Mayflower in 1620. Thirty-two years earlier, Sir Francis Drake and the English fleet embarked from Plymouth to challenge the Spanish Armada.
Along the Barbican walkway, the city has posted numerous factoids. Here’s my favorite: ”John Howland fell overboard during the Mayflower voyage during a storm and was almost lost at sea, but managed to grab a rope giving the crew enough time to save him. His descendants include Franklin D Roosevelt, George HW Bush, George Bush, Ralph Waldo (the placard inconveniently failed to include his last name, Emerson) and Humphrey Bogart.”
Space also did not permit listing some of his other notable offspring: Entertainers Alec Baldwin and his brothers, John Lithgow, Chevy Chase, William H. Macy, Lillian Russell, Christopher Lloyd, Mary Chapin Carpenter; Politicians Jeb Bush, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., Sarah Palin, Sam Ervin; Authors Jane Austin, Dr. Benjamin Spock, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; and Joseph Smith Jr., founder of the Church of Latter Day Saints.
Notable along our ride back to London days later was a view from the road of Stonehenge. As many sheep appeared to be grazing nearby as there were tourists gazing at the stone monument.
London has notable, modern architecture for many of its skyscrapers that complement the heritage buildings of the last two centuries. Giant cranes abound as the city continues to build upward.
London traffic in the central part of town is as intense if not more so than that of Manhattan as New York has more one way main avenues and London red buses seem to be everywhere. Strolling along the southern side of the Thames is a treat with a picture perfect view of Big Ben and Parliament. Though London is a spread out city of 611 square miles, the City of London is just over one square mile, making it very walkable, as long as the weather cooperates.
During our 10 days in England we rarely had to pop open an umbrella.
This trip to London also differed for me from previous visits as I no longer felt an obligation as editor and publisher of Chain Store Age to seek out new and interesting retail stores. Indeed, except for food and refreshments, I didn’t, nor did Gilda, buy anything.
