However. The day started with the coach company that is coming to pick us up tomorrow to go to Stratford-upon-Avon emailing to say they'd be here at 11 and it's a 2 or 2 1/2 hour trip, depending on traffic. The play begins at 1. I did the math. We talked on the phone and I was told there was no driver AND no refund -- not less than 24 hours before. I pointed out that at that moment it wasn't less than 24 hours. In the end, after a couple calls, they got us a driver for 9 o'clock instead, but who needs the stress?
Class was languid, with few japes worthy of repetition. However (the word of the day), M did readings of Shylock's "are we not flesh?" speech, to rave reviews. More, more! So much for ageist jokes.
Then we ventured to Portobello Road Market (I am still surprised there aren't more large mushroom stands) and found reasonably priced hats. This continues a tradition going back to New Orleans in '13 (NB -- we spent MUCH more money on those than today's). He went for the straw panama style and I went for the larger brim Fedora. As pictured:
I won't repeat M's comments comparing this trip to Portobello Market with last weekend's, but only will say, according to him, the group had stopped at four souvenir shops BEFORE I stopped outside the Tube station for a Starbucks (M is not prone to exaggeration).
We came back, I had a short "lay down" as they say here, and then we went for drinks with our landlord and staff (who I've known now for 10 years, through his cancer, now my "event," and hundreds of students).
But, of course, I screwed up the cab thing, again. We hailed a cab outside the flat and said "take us to the Barley Mow." The driver didn't know it. He looked it up and asked "the one across Oxford Street on Duke Street" and I shrugged and said, M says too knowingly, "yes." A mile and a fare later, we are out on the curb at the Barley Mow and I look around. I had been there before, in 2004 with the two other faculty members that year, and I admit it was not our first pub of the evening (nor first pint), so I only had an indistinct idea of where it was. To M's credit, he said "isn't that a bit far for them to go for a pint?" But, I trusted Google.
Immediately I knew it was the wrong pub. The one in Marylebone, which says it is the oldest in the village, has a large round red sign on the corner -- quite distinctive. After some consternation, some discussion on the sidewalk about who had data service (M finally did), we determined there was another Barley Mow (who knew?) blocks from our flat. Like I said "who knew?" (as he reads this, I can hear M saying "I did, I did.") We catch another cab (and another fare) and he says "Oh, Barley Mow is a popular name for a pub in this country" (WTF?!?!) and drops us back, within four blocks of our flat, after another fare. SMN.
Now, for "drinks." Clearly, M and I were strangers in a strange land. Or rather unpracticed in a land of professionals. Our landlord, McG, bought us one round, M had a cider, I had a pint of Frontier (not American, from Fuller's, a brewery in London) & the others had pints. Then McG's nephew, who works in the firm, offered another round. I took a half and M nursed his cider. Then McG's daughter appeared and offered a round, but I ended up buying it as our turn.
There was much banter, stories, remembrance of famed students, including the two who got married a weekend ago, and, of course MC stories. But P fed us this tidbit: the second biggest consumers of Guinness in the world are Nigerians and he claimed (no one confirmed on Google, yet) there's a brewery there. (the nephew was drinking Guinness and two of our students visited the brewery in Dublin last weekend on a visit). We discussed the strangeness of this "fact."
Then McG got to telling grandson stories. He's five. The story goes that grandpa was helping him dress and scraped him with a fingernail as he tucked in the shirt; then he went to pull up his fly and he said "grandpa, watch my beanbag!" We laughed and laughed at this, in part because we've spent two days on The Merchant of Venice with the footnote in the commentary that the famed "pound of flesh" would have meant the Biblical flesh to Shakespeare's audience. "Beanbag" seems to go well with that notion.
We finished with a bunch of old codger stories, of days before bathrooms, and what a "grinder" is -- the answer is both a device that turns toilet flow into slurry (think about it) OR (and P says this is somewhat unfortunate) the phone app for same sex hook ups -- the parallel to Tinder. Ugh.
We shook hands and adjourned to M and I stumbled slightly up the alley to Zizzi's Italian restaurant -- or, as my daughter would identify it, "mediocre Italian." The waitress snickered repeatedly at M (at 78, and P asked M how he was retiring at 39!!!! I might as well be invisible) and he gave her a big tip. Here's HIS dinner, which he could only point to the Italian name in the menu, which is far more photogenic than my mushroom risotto (no, not a predictable order at all).
Now back to the flat to rest up for tomorrow's trip, first to Stratford and Merchant, then stopping "only for dinner" to quote J in Oxford. Then back to rest for Friday at 5:30 AM when we head for Paris.
The good news tomorrow is I don't foresee any cabs to get into and go the wrong way when I could walk. But maybe I'll get lucky. #
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