After the FEUD: Bette and Joan – Where Are They Now?

By Mark Melville

Did you watch the Ryan Murphy FX series FEUD: Bette and Joan and idly wonder whatever happened to the real people behind the movie Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

Wonder no longer. We have tracked the players in the real life drama between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford all the way down to their absolutely final destinations.

Most of FEUD‘s characters ended their days in Los Angeles, and being locals, we were recently able to pay them personal visits.

Hal Le Sueur

As shown in FEUD, Joan Crawford’s rather shady brother Hal Le Sueur did indeed die in surgery. Whether or not he was really blackmailing his famous sister, we cannot say.

Hal was planted in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.

Known and satirized often as the “Disneyland of Death,” Forest Lawn Glendale was THE place to be caught dead for Hollywood luminaries from the 1920s forward. Clark Gable, George Burns, Jean Harlow, Sammy Davis Jr., Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Jackson and Walt Disney himself can be found there. Ronald Reagan was even married (to Jane Wyman) there for some reason. It was a thing.

By the 60s, however, the cemetery’s land in Glendale was filling up and it had lost much of its cachet.

Hal got a rather obscure grave location in this glamorous place, on a sloping hill near a wall, overlooking a now noisy freeway. It is an area that has been worryingly prone to rain-triggered landslides lately, but for now he seems secure.

Joan took care of him, but she didn’t exactly go all out with prime real estate.

Anna Le Sueur Cassin

Joan Crawford moved her mother to California in her declining years, and, according to FEUD, kept her at arms length in her own house, even restricting her to the service entrance.

Anna Le Sueur died in 1958 and was buried at Forest Lawn Glendale, but in much fancier surroundings than her son Hal received five years later.

Anna rests in the exclusive Garden of Memory, in the company of huge stars like Humphrey Bogart and Mary Pickford.

Her plot is overlooked by one of Forest Lawn’s many replicas of the Christus statue by Bertel Thorvaldsen, and, if you turn around, the naked butt of a replica of Michaelangelo’s David.

Joan might not have liked her mother, but she gave her a Hollywood ending, if only for appearance’s sake.

Jack Warner

The most powerful of the Warner brothers, “the last goddamn dinosaur,” studio head Jack Warner (brilliantly and nastily played by Stanley Tucci) rests in Home of Peace, a cemetery in East Los Angeles.

Once a luxurious memorial destination for the Jewish community of LA, local demographics shifted long ago. Home of Peace today is a largely forgotten, rarely visited place, far from the mind of today’s Hollywood.

Jack rests in sight of the rest of the other Warner brothers who are grouped together in two small family mausoleums a stone’s throw away. MGM head Louis B. Mayer and Universal Pictures’ founder Carl Laemmle are also buried nearby. Rivals in life, neighbors in death.

Warner bought what must have seemed a super fancy plot in 1978; it even had its own burbling water fountain. Now the fountain is broken and its pool lies dried up and crusty. What goes around comes around…

William Castle

William Castle was played with perfect cosmic justice in FEUD by his biggest fan, director John Waters.

Cult director/producer Castle (who progressed from cheap schlock pictures like The Tingler and Strait-Jacket to somewhat more respected fare like Rosemary’s Baby) rests inconspicuously, without a single gimmick, under a tree on a sunny slope in Forest Lawn Glendale.

George Cukor

In a definite case of strange bedfellows, the director of The Philadelphia Story and My Fair Lady, who had a long career of successful “women’s pictures” rests in a mysteriously unmarked private grave in the Garden of Honor at Forest Lawn Glendale.

George Cukor is buried together with studio mogul Samuel Goldwyn and Goldwyn’s wife, Frances. A gay man who had a simultaneous reputation for class, professionalism, and Sunday all-male pool parties, Cukor had been best friends with Frances Goldwyn since their youth in the New York theater scene.

So, in the end, with George dying single, Frances had her gay BFF join her and her husband in death, an ultimate awkward threesome.

What Sam Goldwyn, who predeceased them, would have thought about this arrangement, we don’t know. None of their names appear on their joint grave. Considering their impressive careers, we can’t fault them for vanity.

Victor Buono

Actor Victor Buono, a highly talented, classically trained actor, uncannily played by Dominic Burgess, ended up with a career that descended into mainly camp roles, like a telepathic mutant in Beneath the Planet of the Apes. He is now best known for playing King Tut (the silly supervillain, not the historical pharaoh) in the 1966 Batman series.

Buono sadly died at the age of 43 of a heart attack, and is buried in Greenwood Memorial Park in San Diego.

Victor Buono at Findagrave.com

Hedda Hopper

The notorious gossip columnist, played by Judy Davis, died in 1966. After a long career of scandal-wrangling, she was shipped back to be buried in Altoona, Pennsylvania, far from the reach of her friends, enemies, allies and victims.

Hedda Hopper at Findagrave.com

Robert Aldrich

“Bob” Aldrich, the struggling middle-aged director played by Alfred Molina, had a quite successful career in the end.

Robert Aldrich compensated for his campy “Hagsploitation” pictures like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane and Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte by moving on to macho testosterone-driven fare like The Dirty Dozen and The Flight of the Phoenix. He even established his own small movie studio on the back of these successes.

Aldrich didn’t completely leave “Hagsploitation” behind, however. He produced 1969’s Whatever Happened to Aunt Alice starring Ruth Gordon and Geraldine Page as clear Bette/Joan substitutes.

Robert Aldrich rests in Forest Lawn’s Hollywood Hills location, established as the Glendale facility was becoming full. Owner Hubert Eaton purchased a massive tract of land directly behind the famous Hollywood sign that allowed for expansion that continues today. Recent interments include Bill Paxton and Brittany Murphy.

Aldrich’s plot is unremarkable, but he has some nice views. Behind him lies the TV tower above the Hollywood sign. In the distance below him, you can make out the final resting place of… Bette Davis.

Joan Crawford

The former Lucille Fay Le Sueur, bravely played by Jessica Lange, died a recluse in New York.

She was cremated and her ashes were placed in a crypt in New York’s Ferncliffe Cemetery. Ironically, for someone who obsessed so much about eradicating dust, in the end, she became a box of it.

Crawford’s mausoleum neighbor used to be Judy Garland, but Garland’s family recently exhumed Judy’s body and moved it to Hollywood. Perhaps Joan is thrilled to finally be the biggest star in the joint now.

We haven’t been to visit her there, but we can have a look and pay respects virtually:

Joan Crawford at Findagrave

Bette Davis

Going by the fanciness of grave sites alone, it looks like Susan Sarandon’s Bette Davis won the real life game in the end. She rests in Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills in a magnificent white marble sarcophagus under a sculpture of a draped woman standing alone.

Colleagues in Bette’s final neighborhood include Charles Laughton, Liberace, Sandra Dee, Andy Gibb, Ronnie James Dio (!) and, most recently, Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher.

Davis’s epitaph is a phrase she used often in interviews late in her life, “She did it the hard way.”

Davis’s grave has a permanent view down onto a Burbank movie lot.

It’s not her old Warner Brothers stomping ground, though. Instead, Bette keeps eternal watch over the Animation building of Walt Disney Studios.

Postscript:

Olivia de Havilland

Played by Catherine Zeta-Jones, Gone With the Wind star de Havilland is not on this list of burial places of FEUD‘s main characters. That is because she is alive and well in Paris, and is 100 years old as of this writing in April 2017. The real FEUD winner. Now can we get a sequel series about her own lifelong feud with her sister Joan Fontaine?

London Dispatch, September 2014, Even More of It

I decided one morning to go for an aerial view of London that I’d never experienced before, the one from the relatively newish Emirates Air Line, a river-spanning cable car.

After a trip to Docklands via the DLR, the Air Line is a very tall air tram that runs from the west end of Victoria Dock across the dock areas and the Thames itself and deposits you in North Greenwich, home of the O2 Arena (former Millennium Dome).

It was built just before the London 2012 Olympics and was apparently meant to get people efficiently between the Olympic events in Greenwich and the ones at the ExCeL London Exhibition Centre (which I believe is not affiliated with the famed spreadsheet software of the same name).

Seemed like a nifty thing to do (although derided by local residents as the “Dangleway”), and I could board it cheaply with my Oyster Travelcard, so I was ready to get my “dangle” on.

There was a Breast Cancer run going on in front of the station, so I had to quickly dash through a long line of pink-clad joggers to get in. Sorry, folks!

Not many people were there to ride on the thing.

I gave the senior citizens behind me one of my usual unsociable glares and they seemed too scared to board my tram car with me, thank goodness, so I had it to myself.

Unfortunately it was a pretty grey morning. Marine layer, as they say in SoCal.

But you get a good view of all the colorful new buildings there. I took a cruise around Victoria Dock a few years back during London Open House weekend, and at least the north side of it has changed quite remarkably since then.

I was quite excited, I hadn’t been on one of these things since the old Disneyland Skyway, now long gone. This one wouldn’t be going through the Matterhorn, alas.

Instead of Tomorrowland and Fantasyland, you get an overhead tour of East London RedevelopmentLand.

Look to the front to see the old industrial wasteland, and look back to see the expensive fancy new stuff and a neighborhood where you already can’t afford to live.

The river isn’t exactly postcard-quality at this point of its journey, but you do get good O2 Arena views and the Canary Wharf financial district behind.

Looking the other way, though, it’s still rather “don’t look behind the curtain.” But you can catch a glimpse of the Frank Gehry-esque Thames Flood Barrier out in the distance.

All during the ride there was a promotional audio playing, which I recall was not terribly useful, insightful or entertaining, and which would be really annoying if you had to hear it daily during a commute. And from what I have read, NO ONE local uses it to commute to work.

But for me, the casual tourist and transport dork on a lark, it’s a pretty nifty thing, and way cheaper than a ticket to the London Eye or The Shard.

Soon, there you are, in “London’s Most Exciting New Neighborhood,” or so the sign said. Not entirely convinced yet. Seems to be mostly parking lots (aka “car parks”).

Apparently you can climb to the top of the O2 dome, but I was not in the mood for that. Maybe when I’m 10 years younger.

I poked my head inside.

But it was rather disappointing, pretty much just a standard mall around an arena, not very amazing. So I left.

This neighboring building has a nice exterior, though. I don’t know what it is.

I was then off via Thames Clipper boat to Greenwich proper. From air transit to water taxi, not bad. (Well, water bus would be more accurate.)

And, boarding the boat, the sun peeked out a little bit.

We motored up to Greenwich proper, and it was low tide.

Always a pleasure to see the Christopher Wren Royal Naval Hospital buildings.

I have previously visited the main historic Greenwich attractions like the Maritime Museum, Painted Chamber, Queens House, Observatory and Prime Meridian (where TIME BEGINS). None of these very nice attractions were on my agenda this day.

No, I only had eyes for the mud. This mud. Historic mud.

You see, this bit of Greenwich was once the royal palace of the Tudors, like Hampton Court Palace upriver. This, though, was the birthplace of Henry VIII, Mary I and Elizabeth I, and the site of many dramatic scandals and events besides.

And the river of course was once both the front porch and the garbage heap of the palace, so tons of Tudor trash ended up there.

There are even remnants of an old Tudor jetty rapidly eroding out of the mud. The river will wipe all those timbers out before too long.

So I stepped gingerly and had a look at what there was to see, mudlarking again.

It had been a very silty tide and much of the shore was indeed incredibly slippy. Did a bunch of ginger tippy-toeing while scanning the shore for whatever might be there.

I thought the oval rock at the center of the picture had strange symbols on it, but on picking it up it turned out to be… a pebble.

Mainly, in the section that used to be front of the palace, there were bones. Bones, bones bones.

Remember all those movies showing a fat Henry VIII eating giant limbs of roast beast? The detritus of those feasts probably all ended up tossed in the river. Not to mention all the meals from when the palace was replaced by a Naval hospital. Many, many bones.

Also heaps and heaps of oyster shells. I have read that oysters were the Doritos of the time; an easy, salty fast-food snack that came in a readymade, disposable package.

Mixed in with all of this were eroded fragments of red tile and pottery. I’m not able to make many dating judgements about when the tiles and pottery sherds were from, but I did find and identify a small fragment of a Bellarmine jar which probably dates to the 16 or 1700s.

Also found another clay tobacco pipe bowl fragment, not as nice and complete as the one I found at Bankside, but according to the style guide, it’s probably a couple of generations older than that one, from the early 1600s. The bowls were smaller in the early days, when tobacco was newer, rarer and more expensive.

There was also a fair bit of normal, modern river trash. Mudlarking is really just slightly upscale dumpster diving, to be perfectly honest.

When the tide turns, it really starts coming up fast, so I eventually scrambled back up the steps and had a rest in the majestic surroundings.

Shoes not too worse for the wear, considering.

Made a quick run to the Discover Greenwich Visitor Centre where they have a complete Bellarmine jar on display (actually, a fascinating witch bottle) that I could compare my small fragment to, and it matched nicely. Score.

I had been hoping to find something glamorous and clearly Tudor-y, (many ruff-fastening pins are found around there, maybe I’d luck out with a coin) but I mainly just saw bones, bones, bones. My mudlarking excursion for the day had been completed.

Looking to take the DLR back into town, I went past the Cutty Sark (yes, clipper ship of the Scotch whisky fame), newly displayed after years of restoration from a fire that nearly destroyed it. Hard to get a decent pic of it without a wide angle lens.

Also I was too cheap to go inside. Perhaps I should have, though, because soon after I was there, there was ANOTHER fire aboard her, so who knows how long it will be around.

Anyway, the DLR station was hiding itself from me still, and while trying to find it, I ran into a completely random troupe of Morris Dancers, as you do.

I love Morris Dancers. It’s dorky in a great way, like crossing square dancing with Jedi lightsaber training.

There will be more Morris Dancing later in this particular rambling Anglophiliac vacation narrative, my friends. Oh, much, much more.

But in the meanwhile, I finally found the train back into town, and on the way, fell a bit in love with these handsome and perfectly well-mannered service dogs on the Tube. A TubeCrush of a different kind, I guess.

Next up was an obligatory visit to the marvelous Museum of London. Not to be confused with the British Museum, this one is dedicated to the history of London alone.

I always go at least once during each trip, often twice to go back to their bookstore for additional heavy items to push my luggage to the absolute weight limit.

To my extreme grief, I was missing their upcoming comprehensive exhibition about Sherlock Holmes by just a couple of weeks.

Had a long look at their fantastic collection of stone age flint tools, some of them dating back hundreds of thousands of years, all found in the metropolitan London area. I formerly wasn’t much interested in prehistoric times and technologies, but over the past few years I have become quite fascinated indeed. It is quite a thing to try and imagine what the people who used these things were like.

And here’s what those old clay tobacco pipes that are often found on the Thames foreshore look like when found complete.

I love the display about Protein Man, a Twentieth Century London eccentric who believed that eating protein resulted in passion.

Passion is widely known to be an awful thing which eventually leads to horrors like lust and sex, and Protein Man wanted things of that nature stopped entirely. He carried signs and distributed literature to this effect for many years. In spite of all that evangelistic effort, I don’t think he had many takers.

Oh, and also, never sit down. NO SITTING. You have been warned.

A brand new exhibit is the amazing multi-part cauldron from the London 2012 Olympics.

It’s displayed cleverly in two halves, one half extended out in the initial “flower” configuration. The other half is upright, in the full “lit cauldron” position. A nifty backing mirror design lets both implementations look complete.

The original copper “flower petals” that each nation’s team carried into the stadium were given to those nations when the Olympics were over, so the cauldron is displayed with the rehearsal petals. Actually they look like fancy microphones.

And speaking of the London Olympics, a nearby display gave pride of place to Team GB diver Tom Daley’s Adidas swim briefs. I watched many people gather around to gawk intensely at them, after they had strolled blithely through the museum ignoring everything else.

And now we know Tom Daley had a 28-inch waist.

On the way out, I lusted at even more books in the lobby bookstore. Archaeological monographs galore, but I was already past my limit, alas. I wish I had them all sitting on my shelves.

Someday, maybe, like Burgess Meredith in The Twilight Zone, I hope there will be time for them… Good thing I take my glasses off to read.

London Dispatch, September 2014 Continued

Well, as the main purpose of my trip was to attend the Kate Bush concert (see rather exhaustive and/or exhausting details here), the day of the show I did not want to risk getting drowned in the Thames, or getting hit by a bus, or falling from a balcony, or getting trapped in a suburb, so I kept rather mellow for the day.

There has been a great deal of new construction and overall remaking of the whole Kings Cross area, which was quite seedy on my first London visit 15 years ago, but has now transformed into a modern slick cultural center.

And also maybe the future home of some kind of enormous mutant caged bird?

One change I noticed was the full-on commercialization of the famous Harry Potter Platform 9 3/4. Not sure exactly when it was first placed in Kings Cross station, but it is really just a half-luggage cart embedded into a random wall. It’s nowhere near an actual train platform, but out in the new main lobby of the station.

Over the years it has been moved various places, and due to the station remodel, it was even outside on the York Way street sidewalk (aka “pavement”) during my 2011 visit.

Now, however, it’s not just a random curiosity, but a monetized mini-attraction, with a neighboring gift shop (!), a branch of the official Warner Brothers Harry Potter attraction empire.

The “platform” is now “hosted” by official employees, who stage-manage official photographs with the, um, wall, and provide you with borrowed props, like owls, etc.

Tourists queue up excitedly of course, in roped-off, switchbacked order, but to me it’s rather less magical than when it was just a random odd thing you have to find for yourself and take your own picture with.

Anyway, it is now across from a Cornish pasty booth, it was late morning, and yes, I had to have one and it was pretty good.

A genuinely new and thrilling new Kings Cross feature (well, thrilling to me, I like boring things) is a new corridor. Yes, you know, one of those long spaces that exist to connect one area with another, different area.

Sometimes a corridor can be extremely exciting. Especially when you travel down a perfectly ordinary escalator like this:

Only to then be faced with the glory of THIS, perhaps the best corridor ever known to humankind.

Feels just like being in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Logan’s Run or Silent Running, that late 60s/early 70s vision of what the 2000’s were supposed to look like. One side is made up of light panels that slowly pulsate, fade and undulate with color. Sometimes bright and festive, sometimes monochromatic.

It’s hypnotic like ocean waves, but it’s not really intended for lingering or meditative gazing, as it’s just a business commuter tunnel that connects a new office building with the underground tunnel that joins Kings Cross Rail Station with St. Pancras International Station across the street.

It would make one hell of a fabulous underground lair.

Anyway, I was on my way to St. Pancras station as that is where the really good free WiFi is, so I could eat my huge and tasty pasty and upload photos much more quickly than at the hotel.

Aside from the WiFi, one of the many nice things about this very well restored and adapted old station is the presence of several public upright pianos. You can always find people playing them, not buskers with hats out for change, but just random passers by. And almost without exception they tend to be extremely good.

Train stations are usually chaotic, panic attack-inducing places, but this one really isn’t. It’s well designed and art is a vital part of the experience.

After this, I headed into the city to catch a matinee movie (enjoyable, but cinema was WAY expensive. I think with popcorn it ended up costing me £25! And I thought LA prices were bad).

Main takeaway from the afternoon, though, was this very brief view of part of Piccadilly Circus Underground Station free of people for about a second. Photo booths and telephone booths, both things that aren’t here any more.

So then disco nap, Kate Bush, and another day.

Off to the East End and Spitalfields Market for some shopping. It finally rained that morning, which was great.

The moistness enhanced this picturesque moment with a phallic bollard and statue of a goat. I don’t know what it was about.

Meanwhile I was shopping for a very specific Pakistani shemagh scarf (long story) which I entirely failed to find, but I did see many fine hats and coats that I would have bought were it not for the fact that I already have too many hats and I live in Los Angeles and wear a coat maybe five days a year.

In one part of the market, a 40s swing dance performance was set to begin, but I was not patient enough to wait for it. However, the glorious Pearly Queen of Islington was plenty early and had her front row seat claimed.

I love the Pearly Royalty of London. She had constant admirers, no surprise.

Across the street in Spitalfields, the Ten Bells pub (infamous for being a hangout for the prostitutes who were murdered by Jack the Ripper) was hiring, according to this sign in their window.

Qualifications were minimal but rather specific. Ah, the Ten Bells, keeping it classy since Victorian times.

One is only grateful that they didn’t use a Comic Sans font.

I found it funny that the old Jack the Ripper whore hangout is now next door to a walk-in Apple product repair shop.

Paid my respects just down the street at the lovely Fournier Street home of artists Gilbert & George. I adore them and hope to just run into them some day, without being stalker-ish about it, naturally.

From there I went to Tower Hill, pausing as usual at the old scaffold site, where those naughty people who were nobility but not royal, had the privilege of getting their heads chopped off in front of enormous cheering crowds. It’s more serene now.

Across the street at the Tower of London was the most remarkable thing. Called “Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red,” a memorial observing 100 years since the outbreak of World War I, which was particularly devastating to the young men of Britain, with 888,246 casualties.

For this memorial, over the period of several months, culminating on November 11, ceramic poppies for every one of those deaths were planted in the Tower moat, turning the usually well-manicured green grass lawn bit by bit into a startling sea of red.

Oh, and it had WiFi.

It was only late September at this point, but there were already substantial crowds there to see the memorial. Teams of volunteers were down in the moat planting the ceramic poppies.

The Chief Yeoman Warder of the Tower happened to visit the volunteers (I recognized him from TV documentaries, as you do) when I was there, and he posed for many pictures with them.

A remarkable and moving sight from whatever vantage point.

I took one of my favorite photos right next to the Traitor’s Gate, a lone guy with a weed whacker, edging a spot where the poppies were only an outline at the moment, but later would be entirely filled in.

But stunning sights everywhere, I took zillions of pics.

While I was in the neighborhood, I decided to visit nearby St. Katharine Docks, as I had never explored there before. You go under Tower Bridge via Dead Man’s Hole (it used to be where corpses turned up).

Then into the docks. The docks were excavated in the early 1800s. Before that, it was the site of the medieval St. Katharine Hospital, mainly treating the poor of East London.

Some recent genealogical poking I did revealed a distant ancestor who was born at St. Katharine’s Hospital in Tudor times.

Even more intriguing, he turned out to have been a second cousin of William Shakespeare (!). (Actually, he was even a double second cousin since Shakespeare’s grandmothers were sisters, but that’s another topic entirely.) Our branch seems to have been shunned from the dignified people of Stratford-on-Avon because we were descended from a knight’s pre-marriage oldest son. So, a bastard.

The bastard branch would have eeked out a living in London at around the same time as their famous cousin, but I would bet they never met.

So it turns out that this very dock was the start of our downward social spiral from posh knighthood/squire life in Stratford-on-Avon to a poor hospital in squalid East London, and after that, the only way was Essex.

Essex, as I gather from UK reality TV, seems to be considered the New Jersey of England. Eventually, this branch of the family fled Essex for the desert of Utah. Hmmm.

But squalid no longer, St. Katharine’s is now a nice luxury dock and business hotel complex; actually a really relaxing oasis of calm hiding right next to the seething tourist chaos of the Tower of London. Almost no tourists were around, just neighborhood residents and business people having an afternoon break.

And it’s home to the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee barge, Gloriana. As featured in that very rainy Jubilee river parade a couple years back. Fancy.

More relevant to my usual interests, however, was the majestic presence of The World’s Largest Block of Lucite. YES. I love Lucite. Could maybe use a bit of a hosedown, though.

And it is not only the world’s largest block of Lucite (or Perspex, as the Brits say), but a relic of the filming of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Notice the shape? Flip it upright.

This block of clear plastic was the original Monolith from the Stanley Kubrick film. In the mid-1960s an enormous amount of effort went into the creation of this perfectly clear Acrylic block, matching the script’s depiction of a mysterious crystal rectangle that guided the evolution and destiny of mankind.

Once it was done, there was a problem. Stanley didn’t like it. He realized that this huge hunk of plastic looked like, well, a huge hunk of plastic. It didn’t look cool or mysterious enough.

So it was back to the drawing board. What they ended up with was a simple wooden rectangle, painted flat black. Perfectly enigmatic.

That left this lonely, huge hunk of Lucite, taking up storage space somewhere, unemployed.

But then along came the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977. Someone had an “aha” moment. Carve a crown into it and give it to the Queen. Why the heck not? So they did.

It was originally mounted in a place of honor in a circular pillared temple kiosk of sorts. But our marvelous monolith was later kicked out for a Starbucks, which is a thing that tends to happen, and it now just serves as a signpost for an automatic teller machine.

Many thanks to the brilliant IanVisits blog for bringing the monolith to my attention. What a great random thing that most people will walk past without ever seeing.

Also in the docks, I saw this set of hotel windows that looked like a robot King Kong.

And it was just rather lovely to walk around.

From there it was back to Tower Hill tube station. Passed this truck, specializing in Ice Cream Hot Dogs?

And, further on, at the “Trader’s Gate” gift shop, there was this sign, proving that the “Keep Calm…” meme has now entirely run its course and should be banned immediately:

From there it was off to Sloane Square and the Saatchi Gallery of contemporary art in Chelsea.

A usual haunt of mine, most of the exhibits this time around didn’t grab my interest, with a few exceptions, like this room full of giant ants.

Skeptical students regard a brick ball, um, skeptically.

The nice book shop inside.

And my favorite bit of installation art, 20:50 by Richard Wilson. It is a room half filled with flawless black sump oil, so reflective that it is invisible. The only clue that you are not just looking at an empty room is the smell of petroleum, and one triangle of steps that goes down into the giant oil pool.

Heading back to Sloane Square tube station, threading my way through all manner of extremely posh, ultra skinny fashionista types lunching in cafes, I noticed this fellow who appeared to be monitoring the exit of the tube station. A paparazzo waiting for famous prey, I’d wager. The area was full of people who looked like may well have been famous were I only fashionable enough to know who they were.

Next up, continuing an art theme, was Tate Modern at Bankside. An enormous annex/addition is being constructed behind it.

And these colorful neighboring buildings now appear completed. I don’t know what they are, but suspect perhaps luxury condos that only Russian oligarchs can afford?

Buskers love to perform in front of this sign.

A huge piece was in the process of being assembled in the Turbine Hall, this is not how it is supposed to look (though it looks fine to me, actually).

There was a nice Joseph Beuys installation. A Fluxus artist (like Yoko Ono), I became familiar with his work when I was living in Germany. He almost always incorporates felt and tallow, as he claimed he was rescued in the Arctic Circle by natives who saved his life by wrapping him in reindeer fat and felt.

Did a bit of mudlarking on the Thames foreshore at low tide before going in, as I try to do every trip, and found a quite nice clay tobacco pipe bowl.

Finding pipe stem fragments is common, but the intact bowls are rather scarcer. It probably dates to the mid-1600s, according to the style guide I have.

That would mean this pipe, discarded by its (early adopter!) smoker without a care, had been sitting there at the bottom of the river since the time of the Great Fire of London and the Great Plague of 1666. All that while, just waiting for little old me to wander by and pick it out of the wet gravel in 2014.

London even has better trash than America.

On Attending Kate Bush, Before the Dawn, Live in London

Well, it was the reason I came.

Through a tremendous and really anomalous bit of luck, plus a fair bit of strategy, back in March I had scored tickets to Kate Bush’s once-thought-impossible return to live performance.

She had not performed live since 1979, long before producing her masterpiece album, “Hounds of Love.” In the meanwhile, she had withdrawn from public life (she never had pop star scandals or fame whore moments anyway), and was seen as a legendary recluse, who still put out an album every decade or so, when she felt like it, but did not play the usual fame/PR game.

The very notion of her performing in public again was so impossible that I don’t think most people had seriously considered that it could ever happen.

But, out of the blue, it did. She announced that she would be back with not a one-off, not a tour, but a 22 show residency at the Eventim Apollo theater in Hammersmith, London.

Music lovers of a certain vintage have absolutely heard of the venue involved, formerly known as the Hammersmith Odeon. An art deco medium-sized theater whose highest fame was being the scene of David Bowie’s infamous final Ziggy Stardust concert, where, after an amazing show, documented by D.A. Pennebaker in Ziggy Stardust: The Motion Picture, he retired the Ziggy character, and the band, at the end of the show, with no warning. “Not only is it the last show of the tour, it’s the last show we’ll ever do.”

Of course Bowie performed on and on (until disabled by a heart attack a decade ago), but not as Ziggy, and not with The Spiders from Mars. Similarly, Kate Bush’s first and only tour ended at the Hammersmith Odeon, and it looked like her own live performance retirement happened there in 1979 as well.

But not so.

Armed in the very early pre-dawn (hmm…) hours with many desktop open windows, as well as the same on mobile phone, I worked refresh buttons like mad, particularly targeting shows near the end of the 22 show run, and somehow, from one of the smaller ticket vendors (NOT Ticketmaster) got in. Not only that, but a dead center seat in the very front section.

I could not believe it, especially when the entire run of shows sold out in about ten minutes. Twitter was full of outraged British folks who were left disappointed, and here was I, sitting in the dark in Los Angeles, with a confirmed seat to the most anticipated concert of a generation or two. (At least among certain demographics.)

Big stuff for the former desert kid who remembers listening, utterly baffled, to that strange, impossibly high voice and her bizarrely themed songs on cassettes obtained on rare early 80s trips to Las Vegas or Salt Lake City malls, as there was no proper record store in my town then. Now I would hear that voice in person, in London, mere feet away. Life. It’s a strange thing.

Of course, there was the small problem of location, as I live on the other side of the world from London. Would I even be able to get over there? It had been a very complicated year, and as often as I have been there, you never know for sure if you can pull off a specific trip.

The tickets themselves were allegedly unscalpable, even though many were advertised very rapidly. Seats as good as mine were on eBay and other places at around £1,500. But the catch I suppose was that IDs are checked at the venue, and the name has to match the ticket. I imagine the scalper actually has to show up at the door to do the transfer. So if I couldn’t get to England, I would be out of luck, unless I networked with a nefarious scalper who happened to have the same name as myself.

Luckily, after a great deal of uncertainty, events over the next few months proved to favorable. I was able to book a flight, and the concert was at my favorite time to visit London anyway.

Time passed, I got there, the night came, and then it was just a stroll up to the corner at Kings Cross to catch the Piccadilly Line straight to the concert.

Right out of the Hammersmith Station exit, there it was, the Eventim Apollo (Hammersmith Odeon).

First surprise was that a big freeway overpass, the Hammersmith Flyover, runs smack dab in front of the place. I don’t remember seeing that in the footage of all the glam teens awaiting the Ziggy concert, I’ll have to go back to that movie and look again.

The attendees this time around were of course much more middle-aged and affluent, but no less vibrating with enthusiasm. There was a line for standby tickets, I guess to take last minute cancellations. They were much younger than the ticket holders, but no less enthusiastic. As each ticket holder went past them they turned heads in unison, like hungry coyotes, another opportunity to get in, lost.

The bouncer did indeed give a cursory ID ticket check, and it was into the Art Deco lobby, already seething with fans mobbing the merchandise stands as well as the bar.

I muscled into the queue get my own officially branded KB loot before finding my seat.

And good grief, my seat.

I knew I had a good one, at the dead center of the row, but since it was for row K, I thought I was 11 rows back. But it was much closer, row six! They had pushed the stage several rows out into the audience. The perfect seat, great view of the whole stage without craning your neck up as you do if you are in the front row. Yet close enough to see the Kate sweat, if she did. (SPOILER: She didn’t.)

There was no curtain, no opening bands, no entrance music. You just saw a big, fancy band setup, but no set, scenery or anything.

I was a bit surprised. Kate’s reputation is for theatricality, of course, and I figured the presentation would be more complicated. I had pretty much avoided all spoilers of the show, in spite of it being about a month into the run. Muted all the Twitter hashtags, only read the headlines of reviews, which in themselves were just jibbering praise.

So I really did not know what I would be seeing or which songs would be performed, but I knew I was in for something much more than a nostalgia jukebox act (like the David Bowie tribute act, Holy Holy, which I had seen and enjoyed the night before, or, for that matter, the Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney these days). Whatever she did would be a surprise, and that was exactly what I had wanted to preserve.

With no opening acts or intro music, the start was more like a play than a rockshow, starting with the dimming of lights, scramble of stragglers to seats and the cooing of anticipation. It began with the intro to the “Director’s Cut” improved arrangement of “Lily.” Just the (very large) band on their platform, straightforward, nothing edgy. The backup chorus singers chugged in across the stage in a conga line, and behind them, yes, was Kate.

Barefoot, resplendent, absolutely beaming. She took to the microphone and began the song, which is a belter, full-on. And that voice. Absolutely note perfect, powerful and LOUD, at times I could even hear her directly over the amplification, I was so close. Spine tingling, it was really her, really there, feet away, and that voice of hers is no technical Auto-Tune creation, but REAL SINGING. Her voice is mature now, not the screeching teenage girl of “Wuthering Heights,” but fuller, deeper, stronger.

Of course it was a standing ovation just for showing up, but man, she went on to earn it with a set of crowd pleasing, familiar songs. Nothing she had ever performed live before, mind you, but when you haven’t performed since 1979 that leaves you an enormous catalog that includes your best work. “Running up that Hill,” for example. One of my favorite things was watching the backup singers (including Kate’s 16 year-old son Bertie McIntosh) “arf arf arf arf-arf arf arf”-ing to “Hounds of Love.”

After a while, amazing as they were, I was a bit confused. I had of course expected a unique theatrical experience from her, and several songs in she was presenting a rather standard (though terrific) rock concert fronting a band, standard-looking rockshow lights behind them. Fun, but not exactly artistically groundbreaking, is it?

Oh me of little faith…

Kate was singing “King of the Mountain,” her simultaneous tribute to Citizen Kane and Elvis (as you do), and a theme of the song is wind. Wind noises rose and rose through the song and only increased as it reached its end; it was not stopping.

A percussionist came out in front of the band whirling a big, uh, whirly thing that made a whining, windy sound , getting more and more intense in its vortex, and then, DARK. CRACK. Flash, lightning, BOOM. Big cannons around the stage blew enormous confetti into the audience.

Clearly, the real show had just barely begun. Each piece of “confetti” was actually this parchment, with text from Tennyson’s poem “The Coming of Arthur.”

We were now in The Ninth Wave.

Projected on a scrim in front of the stage, an astronomer calls the authorities – he has witnessed some kind of shipwreck. Serious business, but as with most Kate Bush ventures, there is grim humor as he tries to relate what he has seen. This introduces the storyline – there has been a tragedy out at sea; and a search for possible survivors begins.

The stage is then re-revealed, a spooky, theatrical set framed by a sort-of ship skeleton. Reminded me of the Sutton Hoo ship burial. The connection is pretty obvious in retrospect.

Sheets of material form waves. Another film projection reveals Kate, floating in water with a life vest, beginning to sing “And Dream of Sheep,” the start of The Ninth Wave suite, (the 2nd side of 1985’s “Hounds of Love” album.

“Little light, shining…” It was a bit confusing, the vocals were clearly live, and amazing, but she was singing in perfect sync with prerecorded film of her in the water? I figured her lip-sync skills had just topped even the best drag queen. But a later reading of the concert program revealed that all the vocals were recorded by Kate live IN THE WATER in a huge film soundstage flotation tank, really floating for hours and hours. Remarkable, as the vocals were indeed just perfect.

To be honest, from here on out I can’t give a blow-by-blow description; I’m sure that can be found in many other places. I can just say that a chilly, delirious drama played out, in a dynamic between the filmed Kate in her life vest (representing the reality of a shipwrecked woman waiting for rescue), floating, and the “in person” Kate, acting and singing on the actual stage, representing the fears, hallucinations and delirium in the woman’s head.

Such things consisted of skeletal fish people dressed in netting much like the Sea Devils from early 70s Doctor Who. Intentional? I bet so.

There were zombie floater backup singers.

Witch hunters, Kate getting pulled down into ice on one side of the stage through a trap door, emerging up in another part of the stage, a domestic house set which appeared, with a teen son (played by Kate’s real life son Bertie McIntosh) and his dad (not Kate’s real life husband), unaware of what mom/wife was going through, so making jokes about watching QI on BBC 2.

Bertie looks and sounds nothing like Kate, and his speaking voice is uncannily like that of UK comedian David Mitchell (Peep Show, countless quiz shows, if you aren’t familiar with Mitchell, he has a whiny, angry, nasal voice; not a voice one would choose if you could from the genetic grab bag). Real-life Kate lurks behind them, singing but invisible to them as the house rocks back and forth on the ocean. Amazing.

Again, I forget exact order of events, as it was a completely immersive experience, but at one point enormous helicopter things flew out over the audience to a tremendous noise, throwing spotlights all around the audience, looking for survivors.

The skeletal fish people found the imaginary Kate (aka the on stage one, yes, the real Kate is imaginary and the film Kate is real, I know it seems confusing) and carried her unconscious form, still barefoot, out into the audience.

The floating Kate is finally found by rescuers and a hand reaches to pull her from the water. After this, the company sings the redemptive relief of “The Morning Fog.”

End Act 1, to a cacophonous ovation. Interval (or, as Americans say, intermission) time.

Brain filled and scrambled with strangeness, I rushed for the restroom and then a drink. A fellow in line at the bar with me summed it up as well as I could, “I thought absolutely anything could happen tonight, and that’s exactly what happened. And we’re only halfway.” Yep.

Kate had specifically requested no photography whatsoever during the show, and at least from the front where I was sitting, people complied. I assume people in the balcony were naughty, however. So I only really got the intermission pic. (Other show pics here are official press release photos and from the program.)

The second half of the show was also theatrical, but much more abstract. It was a live presentation of A Sky of Honey, the second half of Kate’s 2005 album, “Aerial.”

It began this time not with a bang, but etherially, with snow and giant doors, through which came a large featureless wooden puppet, operated by a black-clad puppeteer.

The band was more up front than during the Ninth Wave suite. The puppet explored and wandered about the stage quizzically, comically annoying the musicians.

The music is more laid back and less creepy, like a summer evening, and the stage set and lighting definitely reflected that. Themes are of sunsets and birds.

In several points Kate sang/spoke just in birdsong, and quite proficiently, too.

Her son Bertie was even more spotlighted in this one, playing the role of a painter (on the album this role was played by the now disturbingly imprisoned Rolf Harris) trying to capture sunset “Magic Hour” lighting.

The artist is distracted by the puppet creature, which he tells to “piss off.” Bertie got his own song, a newly written one called “Tawny Moon,” which accompanied amazing projected 3D moon footage (accurate, even the details on the far side, to my armchair astronomer’s eye). His singing voice can’t compete with his mom’s, but we clearly owe the whole concert to him, as his mother did it only with his encouragement and collaboration.

Again, the things that happened were abstract, and the music immersive, so I cannot provide specific details in the correct order. But let’s say that over the course of the suite we have a cranky painter, a childlike wooden puppet, and Kate as a bird-obsessed woman who suddenly begins to grow feathers on her arm and have it transform into a wing, and then she entirely transforms into an enormous blackbird and TAKES FLIGHT into the air.

Oh, and meanwhile a forest fell from the sky, trees impaling the stage and a piano. And the wooden puppet suddenly broke away from his puppeteer AND RAN FRANTICALLY AROUND THE STAGE ON HIS OWN. Thus was the climax of the show. Baffling and, once again, jawdropping.

For an encore, Kate came out alone and performed “Among Angels” from her most recent album, “50 Words for Snow,” solo on piano, fragile and magical.

She was absolutely beaming, shyly, and thanked the audience profusely, as if we did all the work that night. She also entreated us, maternally, to be absolutely sure we got home safely. “Really, I want you to be sure you are safe.” She knew many of us had come a very long way to be there.

For the final song, the entire band returned for “Cloudbusting,” the hit 1985 song about an eccentric scientist who believed the world was powered by orgasms, and who was arrested by the government for constructing a machine that could generate rain.

For Kate Bush, this sort of topic is pop music material. It was arranged as a triumphant march, and turned into an absolutely glorious singalong for the entire audience, many of whom rushed to the front of the stage. Again, spine tingling, thrilling.

And with that it was over.

A bold statement perhaps, but it was rather like being able to see Beethoven, “Ok, here I present my Fifth and Ninth Symphonies, and a few bonus themes you will probably recognize.” The real stuff, straight from the tap, as she sees it in her own head. More than music, theatre or dance. Was it what the Germans call a Gesamtkunstwerk? Yeah. I think so.

And it came to pass that in the end, we fragile humans, dazed by three hours of constant mental input, confusion, wonder and joy, were left to stumble outside, gaze once again in disbelief at the marquee out front (with requisite selfies), and grab the Tube home, to go to sleep.

But in this case, for a former small town desert boy, wandering stunned and thrilled through the London night, it was waking life that was the real dream.

London Dispatch, September 2014

In the beginning… I went to London for vacation yet again.

Fair disclosure, this is more Rick Steves than Christopher Isherwood.

This was the first time I had flown on the upper deck of a 747. Economy, mind you. I never knew there were cheap seats up there. It’s about 50/50 cheap and first class now. In the 70s I gather these upper decks were groovy smoking/drinking lounges with shag carpeting, but no more. There is a bit more room, though, so I recommend reserving one of those seats if you fly as cheap as me. The bonus is you board and exit the plane first, with the snooty people, above all of those nasty plebians, absolutely identical to yourself.

The main drawback was the fellow next to me, who, at the commencement of descent, started outgassing in a silent-but-deadly manner that lasted a full half-hour as the plane kept getting delayed and looped around. I prayed for the oxygen masks to drop, as surely there must not have been any left, but no.

Once finally free of the flying fart tube, it was into a hot and muggy Heathrow. I had left a Los Angeles of 100+ degrees hoping for chilly autumn, but no such luck.

Piccadilly Line took me into my usual Kings Cross abode, same room I stay in year after year. I there promptly collapsed, as I cannot sleep at all on flights and they do a number on my back and knees.

But after several hours sleep, thunder and lightning awoke me. Ah yes. Wonderful, and exactly what I was hoping for, coming from parched LA.

Coincidentally, it was time to turn on the TV as the results of the Scottish independence referendum were finally coming in. Thunderous doom tolling for the Union, or for Scots Nationalists? I can tell you that BBC news coverage is completely boring, and much the better for it.

No fancy touch screens and empty Fox/CNN blowhards, just the occasional sleepy-eyed elderly “expert” as district results were announced one by one, in person, reciting a prescribed script.

Union won the day, thankfully, and they won’t have to change all the British flags to remove the blue bits. If only America had been this sensible 200 years ago.

I stayed up most of the night both due to jet lag and to see the vote through to the official final projection.

Next day I ran a few errands. Came across this sign at a “healthy cafe” near Tottenham Court Road. I don’t know what September has to do with carbon-based molecules.

Yes, I am a scientific pedant still bitter about the misuse of the word “organic” by people who have never taken a Chemistry class. It does not mean what they think it means! Your plastic bag is just as organic as your paper one! Probably more! Petroleum is organic! Sorry, I digress.

Also visited the British Museum, as I do every time, sometimes twice. Had to say hello to the Sutton Hoo treasure in its new gallery.

Also poor, deflated leathery Lindow Man, the bog corpse.

Somebody spent good money on the bust of this man, and this was as flattering as they could make him, poor thing.

Mainly I wander around at random. All these years and I still stumble into whole wings I’ve somehow never seen before.

The place was full of young kids on school outings in hi-viz jackets. So jealous of them, seeing mummies and gold treasure in one of the best museums in the world. Growing up in small-town Utah we had exactly two field trips.

The walk in freezer at McDonalds. Brand new in town at the time. Somebody’s mom worked there.
The City Jail. An old-west bunker out of lava rock, still in use at that time. Located right behind JC Penney’s. We went inside in a long single-file snake. It was dark. After I had emerged back outside, one of the two prisoners apparently peed at a girl further back, and we were ushered out of there and marched back to school post-haste. At least gossip was that it was pee. I have doubts now. Probably a Clarise in Silence of the Lambs moment, anyway. They demolished the jail soon after.

What I’m saying, is that my school field trips were nothing like this.

Saturday was the start of London Open House weekend, where many places usually off limits are opened to public view, an event I enjoy very much, and which is the usual reason for my September visits.

This time I started with Marlborough House.

Across the street from St. James’s Palace, it was designed by Christopher Wren as the home of Winston Churchill’s quasi-lesbionic ancestor the Duchess of Marlborough and her successful warrior husband. The Duchess’s relationship with Queen Anne was rather, shall we say, “intense,” (though confusing, as Queen Anne gave birth 17 times, so must have liked her husband, too). The Duchess just had to have a house right next door to the primary London royal palace of that time, so was granted part of the palace’s land for Marlborough House.

It got later fame as a sort of “spare” royal residence, like Clarence House, where they put royals who were on the way up or on the way out. It was where Edward VII and Queen Alexandra lived until Queen Victoria died, as well as King George V as he similarly waited for his father to die. Queen Mary, current queen’s grandmother, moved in when Edward VIII came to the throne and she died there in the early 1950s.

After that, it was donated to serve as a conference center for the Commonwealth, so it’s where all manner of world ambassadors come to argue around tables, I imagine. It’s quite nice inside and full of murals of 17th century battle scenes, none of which you can photograph. Also very long tables.

You could finally take pictures once you emerged into the gardens, where you could pretty much wander at your leisure.

These gardens are where several years ago I had a close encounter with Prince Charles (later was INCHES from Camilla, who spurned chatting with me) when he opened the garden grounds of Clarence House, St. James’s Palace and Marlborough House for a big environmentalist booster thing.

That particular event was rather cool, but very sparsely attended. Pre-royal wedding-mania. I don’t think most casual people knew or cared about Clarence House or the St. James’s Palace complex before that.

Queen Alexandra, the present Queen’s great-grandmother, had a nice little pet cemetery there, when she was the Princess of Wales. It is still very well-kept. Even her “favourite” pet rabbit got a tombstone. I don’t doubt that the less favorite ones suffered a less pleasant fate. Maybe dinner.

Exiting the gardens I ran into the Changing of the Guard starting at Friary Court of St. James’s, and there were a zillion tourists lining the sidewalks (sorry,” pavements”) in waiting.

Crowds distress me so I got out of there fast, but could hear the band as I went through St. James’s Park to my next Open House tour, Her Majesty’s Treasury Building in Whitehall.

The Treasury is the building with the big round courtyard in the middle of it when you see aerial shots of Whitehall. Underneath one end of it are the famous Churchill War Rooms, but I’ve never seen the Treasury building itself open for tours before, so I went.

There was no queue at all to get in, which I always like. We were treated to a 30 minute (!) film, interestingly boring, about the restoration of the building to meet modern office standards while retaining the historical structure. I noticed that the average age of the other viewers in the screening room was about 75, so yes, I was with “my people.”

After 30 minutes of documentary about roofs and drainage, everybody got up arthritically, muttering “my, that was interesting,” and went on to see what little of the building was open.

We mainly just got to see the cafeteria and the big drum courtyard, but it is very nice, and cool to stand at the center of it. Also, a Fast and Furious movie was filmed there, a fact that no doubt will fascinate the baffling people who watch such things.

The speed limit in the drum courtyard is rather low, in spite of Fast and Furious having been filmed there.

This other government department is also based in the Treasury building. In my humble opinion, to quote Sesame Street, one of these things is not like the others.

I had several hours between then and my next formal Open House reserved booking, so I was a free agent. I decided to try the Benjamin Franklin House near Charing Cross and Embankment. On the way, just a few houses down the street, I saw a Blue Plaque for Herman Melville, apparently he lived there for a year.

Must have just been a brief lodger, as it is my understanding he was mainly broke, and I didn’t know he ever lived in London, but there it was. Never noticed it on previous walks down that street.

I got in line for the Benjamin Franklin House, newly interesting in the last few years as a heap of skeletons was discovered in its basement from around the time Franklin lived there. Apparently his housemate was dissecting stolen corpses for scientific observation, and I bet Ben knew about it.

But none of this I got to see for myself, as the line was not moving at all, they only admitted 15 people per half hour and there looked to be about 100 people in line.

I went off to Embankment Gardens to rest my already rebelling flat feet.

It was pleasant out, too pleasant for my taste. Too warm. Not wet. I had come enthusiastic to wear a long coat and scarf, not shirt-sleeves. Grrr.

In Embankment Gardens I stumbled onto a Yahoo!-sponsored ping-pong table.

No longer in brand compliance, alas, as it features the “old” serif-ed logo. I was surprised to see it get used as I sat there, trying vainly to get free WiFi. Some local lads produced a ball and paddles and went to battle.

Nearby at the entrance to Embankment Underground Station was a Tuba-playing busker who was oompah-ing along to recordings of 1930s and 40s pop, music hall songs, George Formby, Andrews Sisters, Vera Lynn and the like. It was quite pleasant to hear as I rested my feet, then I walked over to see him and his tuba expelled real flames on each oomph. A tip-worthy act for sure. I don’t know how it works.

I still had several hours until my next appointed tour, Churchill’s secret and partially flooded Paddock bunker in Neasden, North London, so I took a couple of Tube stops down to the Church of St. Magnus the Martyr, which used to be at the north entrance to Old London Bridge.

I’ve been by it many times and tried to get in; it was always shut, but today it was open for Open House. Inside it has a rather magnificent scale model of Old London Bridge as it was in Henry V’s day.

Old London Bridge was the medieval one which lasted for hundreds and hundreds of years before being replaced by a Victorian one which didn’t last long at all and is now improbably in Lake Havasu, Arizona. The current one is a bland concrete 70s nothing, unworthy of the name.

But Old London Bridge must have been an amazing sight, completely built over with houses and shops, it was a little city in itself, on top of the river.

The church is quite nice in spite of burning down multiple times and being bombed in WWII, and the atmosphere was thick, stale and hazy with candle smoke.

One of the other visitors was an eccentric and talkative young woman in hot pants and fishnet stockings with a furry tail.

A bit intimidating. She said she was a very serious Christian and in fact runs her own church elsewhere in town. OK.

I heard nothing that explained the fur tail. A ministry for Furries, perhaps?

Also, St. Magnus The Martyr’s church is home to the most unnecessarily verbose and, at the same time, most quintessentially British sign I have ever seen.

In America, this sign would say, “No Smoking.”

Outside behind the church I sat by the river, enjoying the view of the Shard, London Bridge, and several incredibly stupid pigeons.

Some cruel soul had dropped styrofoam fragments, and the pigeons, thinking they were breadcrumbs, would peck after them, taste them, realize they weren’t food, spit them out, and then go to the next one. Over and over again.

They never learned, they just went back picking at the same old non-food. And when I tried to get rid of the styrofoam bits to get them to move on, they attacked, jealous of me reaching for their precious icky styrofoam. I bet they’re still at it. Fools.

I had left myself a good two hours to get to the bunker site in a North London suburb and it was time to set off. I had a map and the journey planner on the phone, all seemed simple enough. Well, the tube train ended well short of the stop I needed, due to planned annoyance construction works.

There was a rail replacement bus, which I got on, but not knowing the neighborhoods, I did not know when to get off. They did not announce stops as the tube robot voices do.

I overshot, by quite a while, and had to get another one going the opposite direction. I was finally back at the tube station I originally wanted, and then had to somehow catch two separate buses to get to my destination.

There was no guide to how to walk to find those bus routes, and my trusty phone journey planner, not to mention Google maps, were no help either. It had already taken three tube lines and two buses to get me this far.

From the map it looked like my destination was just across a large park, so I set off to walk that way instead. I had about a half an hour. Again, I had booked the last tour of the day so I would have plenty of time to get there.

Turns out the park was not just a park, but an enormous hill. And as I had already walked in one day in London more than I do in an entire year in Los Angeles, I was huffing, puffing, and in pain trudging up the hill.

Nearing the top at last, my body gave me no choice but to sit on a bench and re-evaluate my life choices.

The street I needed was just about in sight, my appointment 10 minutes away, there was no way I could run for it in my decrepit shape, and it was getting dark. Crap. Who even knew London had big hills anyway? It’s crazy.

I realized that after an hour or so underground in a bunker, on the remote assumption I did make it in time, I would emerge into the complete dark, and face a dark park, or another try at those three separate buses, assuming I could find them, in the dark, in reverse, and then still two tube lines to get back home again.

I gave up. Anyway, Doctor Who was on that night. So I walked back, at least it was downhill.

I have long wanted to tour that bunker, I’ve seen it in several Underground London-type documentaries. It defeated Hitler and it defeated me. Man, I need to spend more time on the exercise bike.

Oh, and don’t kiss anyone in that neighborhood. This herpes creme was on the pavement near a bus stop.

And on the way home, I can’t deny there is always a slight thrill when I have to change tube lines at Baker Street Station.

Next morning brought sore legs, feet and spine, and another day of Open House London tours. First up was no problem to find, thankfully, as it was a tour of the recently renovated St. Pancras Station Hotel. It’s run by the Marriotts now. Isn’t everything?

Ironically, the original hotel failed and closed right after being built because it had no indoor plumbing, right as indoor plumbing and electricity were becoming an expected thing.

Nice to finally see the interior of the main building, rather than just the international train station attached in back, which is stunning on its own.

The hotel portion, actually only one wing of the building, I was surprised to discover, is quite lush indeed, especially the Grand Staircase, which I gather is famous because of a Spice Girls video. We didn’t see much of that wing other than the staircase because the Marriotts are stingy and charge for their own tour.

We got to march up the only slightly less spectacular old service stairs into the main part of the building, now luxury condo apartments.

Quite lovely, in a The Shining sort of way, I guess.

Biggest treat was getting to go all the way up into the famous St. Pancras Station clock tower, seen in everything from Harry Potter movies (they pretend that St. Pancras is the exterior of the more drab Kings Cross station in the movies), to one of my favorites, the Ealing comedy The Ladykillers.

The clock tower chamber itself is now a luxury apartment, and a pretty swinging pad. Envious.

Next appointment was to Middle Temple, ancient Thames-side home of the London Knights Templar, now famous because of the Da Vinci Code and all of those annoying History Channel Da Vinci Code ripoff shows before they moved on to Alien Astronaut conspiracy shows. Anyway, back to real history.

On the Circle Line to my destination, more and more people got on at every stop, mostly young whippersnappers carrying protest signs about carbon emissions. I was even more distressed when I got to Temple station and they all got off with me. And the assembly point for the entire protest, a global one, I gather, was outside Temple Station itself. The horror. My way was completely blocked by eco-warriors.

I like a clean planet as much as the next human, but I had a schedule to keep, and needed to take a long detour to get into the rather labyrinthine complex of the Inner and Middle Temples.

First up was Middle Temple Hall, a lovely Tudor era building, mostly intact from that time, in spite of a World War II bomb or so.

The rose gardens in back are famed for being where the two sides of the Wars of the Roses, Lancaster and York, chose their symbols of the white and red roses. Allegedly.

To English-major types, it is significant because it is the only surviving venue in London where a Shakespeare play is sure to have been performed in his lifetime, as Twelfth Night had its premiere there.

It’s full of interesting stuff, including a desk made from a hatch from Sir Francis Drake’s ship, the Golden Hind, and a gigantic head table donated by Elizabeth I, made from a single tall tree.

The hammer-beam roof is gorgeous, and everywhere is lamb symbolism.

Middle Temple Hall generally serves as the site for lawyers having formal meals, getting drunk and dressing in impractical clothing. I have only seen it from outside before, and it is generally closed to people who aren’t bewigged attorneys. A cool survival, outlasting both the Great Fire of London and the Blitz.

After finishing the tour of the hall, there was a tour of the adjoining and lovely Temple Gardens given by the gardener herself. It was interesting for a while as she revealed a bit about the history of the place, but when she progressed to specific gardening techniques, I moved on. However, a huge crowd of English Garden enthusiasts remained completely enraptured so I could slip away without guilt or embarrassment.

From Middle Temple Hall I proceeded to Temple Church, built 900 years ago by the Templars, thus the name, naturally, and which I say again you may have seen in the Da Vinci Code movie with Ian McKellen and that Hanks fellow.

It is open to the public, but they charge money to exploit the Dan Brown fans, more than I was willing to pay on previous visits, so I refused to pony up the fee. But today, free! Whee!

It turned out to be quite worth a visit, and has many quirky details, like strange grotesque carvings, several seemed to be of cats eating people’s ears. Apparently a very common problem when the place was built in the 1100s.

Outside I saw this lovely sign for Falcon Chambers nearby. Falcon Chambers. Hm. Sounds like a James Bond character.

And with that, my Open House endurance flagged and I fled home to soak in the tub.

Monday it was back to one of my favorite places, the National Portrait Gallery. They just opened a new arrangement of contemporary Tudor portraits and artifacts. Always interesting to me. Also home to dozens of my old retrocrushes. Odd to find yourself attracted to people who have been gone for hundreds of years, but there you are. It’s always the unavailable ones…

Dashed through the National Gallery next door to say hello to old favorites.

Hi Vincent.

Also discovered that Tilda Swindon really is a gender swapping immortal entity, as she was clearly present in the 1600s as an unconvincingly bearded androgynous man.

Oh, and outside in Trafalgar Square, a giant blue cock looms above everyone from its perch on the Fourth Plinth, home to temporary and usually eccentric sculptures.

The evening’s entertainment was over in Shepherd’s Bush, where David Bowie’s album The Man Who Sold The World was being performed by Bowie’s old band members, Woody Woodmansey and Tony Visconti, along with many other Bowie-veteran musicians, family members (Mick Ronson’s sister and daughters), and 80s vocalists Glenn Gregory, Marc Almond, Gary Kemp and Steve Norman, among others.

It was a really terrific evening, hearing songs I never thought I’d hear performed live, (Saviour Machine, Black Country Rock, Width of a Circle, etc,) a really crunching, guitar-heavy evening that was invigorating, even though I had gotten to the venue way too early and had to stand painfully through tedious opening acts since there were no seats.

But very, very fun. After the album portion, the band ran through most of the Ziggy Stardust/Aladdin Sane era Bowie songs, just superbly. At least as well as you can do without Bowie himself, I guess.

But the next night, the concert of a lifetime. The whole reason I had come. After a 35 year hiatus, Kate Bush.