Shopping and Busking

Stuck close to home yesterday. I was making buffalo wings, bbq beans and cole slaw for dinner, and so our most exotic trip was to Sainsbury's for food.

Today we ventured to Covent Gardens, which was perhaps one of the best days of the trip so far. As I was singing Zelda to sleep tonight, she interrupted me to ask if we could go to the place where we got spaghetti again some day and get strawberry ice cream this time.

I thought then of everything we did while we were in Covent Gardens. There was a great, fast lunch, Zelda saw maybe a half-dozen different buskers, I got to show her the toy and puppet shop I first experienced five years ago, Toni and I loaded up on bath products, and Z. and O. got new outfits for church on Sunday ... which will be the first time they ever go to church.

Toni was jonesing to have time alone on Charing Cross Rd., and I wanted to see the Shakespeare exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery, but it was already around three when we were finishing our ice cream. Toni figured we should get back instead, because the kids needed to sleep. I said they would sleep the minute I got Orson in the sling and Zelda into the stroller. She should go off on her own and Brenda, Henrik and I would be fine at the gallery.

I was right. The little ones knocked out shortly after we entered the musem. A bad habit to encourage, but there you are.

The Searching for Shakespeare exhibit was better than I thought it would be. They have six portraits formerly theorized to be life-portraits of the Bard - one is still under consideration as the real deal. I think they're all bogus. Regardless, they are historical paintings I have seen in reproduction for years, and it was fun to see them for real, up close.

Those - and famous, familiar portraits of Jonson, Marlowe, De Vere, Burbage, Stanley, and so on. More than I'd hoped for.

Dinner was pizza, and then the women went off for their night out. They saw a production of The Odyssey at the Lyric Hammersmith which you just need to ask Toni to describe. I'm envious, it sounds like it was an incredible production. The two of us will be seeing something on our own the last night here, or at least that's the plan, but The Odyssey closes tomorrow.

The day would have been perfect, except for this Cockney unicycle clown at the Gardens who called "all Americans are no-nothing dummy stupid-heads" and said that "Justin's favorite band sucks ass."

I thought that was uncalled for.