August | 2015 | berowne.com

Archive for August, 2015

Encountering Jimmy Page

Posted in Music, Travel with tags Jimmy Page, led zeppelin, soho london on August 29, 2015 by David McInerny

One nice thing about an impromptu trip is that little can go wrong with one’s plans, since there isn’t enough time to make any of complexity. As I flew to London to finish a book and enjoy a few days of walking the city, I was content in the knowledge that I had secured a ticket to a Shakespeare play at the Globe Theatre. Beyond that, if I happened to see Abbey Road Studios, or view the Magna Carta or a Shakespeare first folio at the British Library, those would be nice add to the itinerary. Mostly though, the book needed to get completed.

Any traveler learns that the best memories are the unplanned ones, because they can’t be planned. They’re gifted. They occur when one moves about with eyes open and a willingness to deviate from the plan.

And so there I was wandering up Charing Cross road on my way to hear Jazz at a small Soho club when I saw a string of used book stores. Deciding I could be a little late to the show, I started browsing the books in search of first editions I might need.

Coming out of the last shop I turned right, and Jimmy Page was on the sidewalk sauntering my direction from 50 fifty feet away. How many thoughts can be launched from one mind in the space of time it takes two men to cover 50 feet walking toward each other? I don’t know, but I set a personal best. My first notion was that he was wearing the same all black outfit, including scarf, that he dons in all his recent pictures.

Then, scrambled thoughts! ‘Don’t bother him!’ ‘Maybe he’d love to be recognized – it’s not 1975 anymore.’ ‘I want to tell him he did a marvelous job with the new Coda companion disc!’ And so on.

We locked eyes. I smiled. Jimmy returned the smile and puffed his lips like he does on a downstroke power chord. He continued on, and I turned and watched him continue on for another block.

It was enough.

And the show at the jazz club was great.

1 Comment »

1598 – Shakespeare’s Risk

Posted in Books, Travel with tags original globe theatre, richard II, Shakespeare, the globe london, the rose on August 26, 2015 by David McInerny

After becoming weary of languishing negotiations to renew the lease on the theatre his troupe was using on the north side of the Thames, Shakespeare made the fateful decision to disassemble his theatre in the night (so legend has it) and rebuild it on the other side of the river.

The Southwark district at the end of the sixteenth century was a dubious area teeming with brothels and bear-baiting houses, but acting was then itself a less-than-respectable profession so, The Globe was an instant success. It was such a hit, due to Shakespeare’s growing reputation as a playwright, that it forced London’s original play house, The Rose, to move to another part of London to survive.

The Globe we enjoy today is not the original, though it was built in 1989 to what is believed to be the approximate dimensions and materials of it’s progenitor that was located down the street and around the corner. It’s only through great fortune that we know what the Globe looked like. A visitor to London in the early 1600’s with an ability to sketch made a panorama of London from the southeast side, in which the Globe, with its polytagonal shape, wood sides, thatched roof and brick staircase, features prominently in the foreground.

The original space of the Globe is now marked, but easy to miss, as I almost did last night while I wandered the neighborhood around the new Globe waiting for the start of the Bard’s Richard II. A bronze plaque barely draws the eye to a vacant car park. A decade ago, researchers dug and found the foundation for the original Globe’s brick staircase. They took measurements and photos and then flooded the structure to preserve it, and replaced the parking lot. In the photo below, the dark cobblestones mark the spot of the Globe’s foundation.

Why didn’t the researches excavate the rest of the site? Well, it happens that a modern, swanky apartment complex sits lucratively on top of it. Imagine living in a home directly above the stage where William Shakespeare performed in his own plays: Hamlet, Macbeth, Midsummer Night’s Dream! I’d be constantly on the lookout for the ghost of Yorick.

International Travel Gets Easier

Posted in Family, Travel with tags family european travel, travel with kids on August 7, 2015 by David McInerny

Anne Frank House – Amsterdam

When we took our first family trip outside of the country in 2001, the preparations were so very different than the trip we are planning for this Fall. Fourteen years ago the kids were 10, 8 and 7 years old, and you’d have thought we were trying to smuggle them out of the country with everything the school required to pull them out of class for a week. All three needed their first passports, and we weren’t sure our youngest really understood what we meant by the fact that we were leaving the country. What if the kids got airsick, picked up a bug, or simply hated being in a foreign country? What if we couldn’t find food that they liked? Would they need a break during the day with all the walking we planned? And the big question everyone asked – why Amsterdam?

The last question was the easiest – KLM had a cheap fare to Holland that made it possible to afford to take the entire family. Also, Amsterdam was a city I knew well from previous personal and business trips, so I wouldn’t need to worry about maps and navigation. I mean let’s face it, a dad takes his family on a great trip to establish himself as a hero, and it can be a bit scary to the tots if he shrugs his shoulders at some point and admits he is hopelessly lost. My wife is used to this admission from me, but it seemed something to avoid when carting around the whole family.

I got very lucky on one point. The elementary school the kids were attending was focusing on the art of Van Gogh that year (unbeknownst to me when I booked the trip), and it gave them a purpose to cling to when they realized that we would see the Van Gogh museum. Beyond that, I felt canals and windmills would be exciting and different for kids of all ages. As long as I skirted the red light district during our wanderings and avoided stumbling into a gay bar for a family lunch, I figured little could go wrong.

The trip went off smashingly, and Amsterdam was the first of several more trips overseas with the kids. Whenever we saved enough money to buy a new car, my wife and I would often decide to coax another year or two out of the beater and book flights. Each trip was different in terms of planning to keep the kids interested, but each journey got easier as the kids got older and appreciated the adventures more readily. One trip incorporated the new Harry Potter movie, another incorporated Christmas on the Mediterranean. Incorporating the familiar with the foreign seemed to help the kids adjust to a new culture quickly and have more fun.

Now the “kids” are 24, 23 and 21, and this time my wife and I gave them the budget and told them to pick the place and plan the agenda. They not only loved the idea, but it looks like the trip will come in under budget. They have set up their own frequent flier profiles with the airline, and we’ll be flying into L.A from all over the country to meet for the long haul to Tokyo. After years of doing all the planning, dad is just going along for the ride. I’m told we’ll be seeing the Imperial Palace, Mount Fuji and Disney Tokyo. We’ll be dining on lots of raw fish and exploring the legendarily busy Tokyo subway system. This time I get to be just another baby duck following the leaders, and I’m looking forward to it.