DAY 6–Tuesday, June 30

Speaking of cool air, there isn’t any in London right now during the day. Temperatures are at record highs. My Wimbledon seat–although close to the action–was on the sunny side of Centre Court. Grown men wilted in the heat with great patches of sweat dripping down the sides of their button-down long-sleeved shirts. We weren’t allowed to put up umbrellas except during the break, but I fanned myself constantly with a postcard. I left after the first set of the Safina vs. Licsicki match to head for the Debenture Lounge–air-conditioned, where I could watch on TV. Okay, that wasn’t why I bought tickets, to watch the match on TV, but the Lounge has other attractions, including lobster and roast beef and salads and strawberries and cream–and all the champagne (you can get a bottle in a bucket) or wine or beer you want (as long as you’re willing to pay for it).

Wimbledon & my MIRA bag!

I woke up late today because I thought quarterfinal women’s play in Centre Court–for which I have a debenture ticket I bought from an online sports site–didn’t start till 2:00 p.m. Wrong. Play started at 1:00. I’d slept late because my son Blake wasn’t sure of the time difference and called me at 3:00 to say he was out of surgery and his gall bladder had been removed, and again at 5:00 to let me know he was getting out of the hospital. Wonderful news, but it didn’t make for a very restful sleep–complicated by the fact that the eye cover I’m using to keep out the light came off. I can always hear the birds singing around 4:00 a.m., because all the windows are open to let in the cool air, easily as effective as a rooster for waking you up. Interesting note: despite the heat of the day, it’s cool enough at night to sleep comfortably under a feather comforter. 

I headed back down to my seat for the end of the Safina match (she won) and was able to sit in an empty seat in the shade for a few sets. But when Serena Williams and Victoria Azarenka’s match began, the seats filled back up and I headed back into the sun. It was impossible to really enjoy the tennis because it was stifling hot. I did my best to watch each woman’s serve. They hit the ball so hard I can’t imagine trying to hit it back.

Okay, I admit I’ve complained that on TV Serena looks big, and I’ve noticed Dinara Safina’s pooch belly. In person, those girls are ripped. Safina is incredibly tall, and Serena looked really slim. By the way, Safina had no trouble with Licsicki’s serve–she just stepped back a foot farther than Wozniacki did to return it.

It was a short day of tennis, because it was only those two matches. When I left Centre Court there was a wonderful breeze outside and I realized I’d missed being on Murray Mount with the crowd. I had a chance to watch the #1 Men’s Doubles players, the Bryan Brothers, on Centre Court, too, but skipped it because of the heat. Everyone else skipped it too. . . left like lemmings heading into the sea.

Veronica (who’s here at Liz’s house with me) and I took advantage of the early night to go out to dinner at a restaurant that combined Indian and Chinese food. I had some lamb curry that was so hot I needed yogurt to cool it off, some BBQ lamb ribs and some rice and nan. Wonderful meal with wonderful company. Veronica showed me the enormous redbrick 6-bedroom house she used to own, where she would often host junior Wimbledon tennis players, and the lovely downsized redbrick 3-bedroom row house she’s been remodeling, which is why she’s staying at Liz’s right now along with me.

DAY 7–Wednesday, July 1

This was supposed to be a day of rest, followed by dinner with Humphrey and Jonie, but Humphrey is still editing a documentary on the situation in Sierra Leone (or it might be Liberia). I can identify so well with having to cancel plans to finish an artistic project which just doesn’t follow a schedule. We’re hoping to find another time to meet.

The Brindians I met in line at Wimbledon have emailed to give me a couple of recommendations of bars where I can go to watch the Wimbledon final, since I don’t have tickets. I’m checking them out and will let you know where I’m going to end up.

I decided I needed to clean up my upstairs room today and sorted through my clothes enough to discover that everything needed to be washed–so I did laundry today. No dryer, so I hung everything outside on a drying rack. Then I headed into London for a movie and a play. I bought an Underground “day pass” for £6.30 that took me everywhere I wanted to go all day long in London.

I knew I wanted to see a movie called KATYN, which was playing in an art theatre near Russell Square at 3:30. I also wanted to see a show on the West End. I decided on SISTER ACT, the stage play of the movie by the same name with Whoopi Goldberg. I didn’t have a map with me, but I got directions to Oxford Circus and bought my ticket for the play at the Palladium Theatre around 2:00 for the 7:30 p.m. show (and got an eighth row center orchestra seat at a discounted price).

Then I got back on the Underground and headed for the Renoir Theatre in Brunswick Square near the Russell Square stop. I had enough time to go to Carluccio’s restaurant; sat outdoors and had gnocchi with gorgonzola cheese sauce and spinach. Truly delicious! I treated myself to some pistachio gelato from a nearby vendor, then bought my ticket for KATYN and still had time to do some clothes shopping. The prices were definitely right, but I didn’t find anything I loved. 

 I ended up grabbing a sandwich and some strawberry water at a deli across from the Russell Square station before I headed back to Oxford Circus. I ended up buying a drink at a restaurant near the theater so I could sit down outside and eat my sandwich. No one has more flavors of fruit drinks than the Brits!

Movie or Play: Love Both!

KATYN is a movie about the murder (hands tied and shot in the back of the head) of 20,000 Polish POWs in early 1940, and their burial in mass graves in the forest of Katyn by the Soviets during WWII, done in Polish with subtitles. It was obviously a difficult subject, but I’ve been fascinated by war novels/movies for quite some time, and the incident at KATYN forest has played a part in several of those novels. The problem KATYN created for the Poles was, the Soviets tried to blame what they’d done on the Germans, and the Germans wanted to get the word out to the world that it was the Soviets; the Poles were caught in the middle, living in a Soviet controlled Poland after the war where the truth wasn’t allowed to be told. The movie is told through the lives of the wives and families of the soldiers who were killed, along with showing the lives and conditions of the POWs. It was a terrible tragedy, and more evidence of man’s inhumanity to man, especially with war as an excuse to ignore personal conscience.  

I’m not sure how many stairs I climbed today but it was a LOT. The underground has stairs up and down at every stop, and I had to change trains from the District to the Picadilly line, then to the Bakerloo Line to buy my tickets in the afternoon, and then back again to the Picadilly line to get off at Russell Square–and then do it in reverse to get back home. Of course, because I didn’t have a map, I’d gotten off at Leicester Square first and had to go back down and go back one stop to Picadilly Circus to connect to the Bakerloo Line. The Underground is easy to follow. You just need to be willing to do a lot of walking and manage a lot of stairs. By the way, the paper said a lot of the Underground cars were at 33C–which is more than a hundred degrees. I didn’t find the cars as crowded or as hot today as I did yesterday.

I loved SISTER ACT! The black woman in the lead was wonderful, the staging was truly impressive, the music and dancing uplifting and delightful, and there’s one costume change that’s a killer. A “shy cop” starts his vocal and dance number wearing a cop uniform, has the velcroed costume ripped off him to reveal a Saturday Night Fever white suit and vest with a red shirt and tie for the middle part of the number (where he wishes he could be less shy) and then has THAT white suit and white vest and red shirt velcroed costume ripped off him to reveal another cop uniform (because he’s really just a shy cop). Wow! It was done so quickly I missed the third change–just looked up and he was in a cop uniform again. I thoroughly enjoyed the show and would highly recommend it. Flashy and fun!

I forgot to mention one of the things I did shop for today: mascara. Okay, that doesn’t sound significant, but you have no idea how many girls I’ve seen on the bus and the train with REALLY LONG EYELASHES. So I asked a couple of girls today what they were using. Turns out there’s a local British company called Rimmel that makes mascara. I went to a drugstore to buy some, and believe it or not, there were six or seven different varieties of Rimmel mascara. So I got five of them. I’ll let you know whether I get longer eyelashes. . .

I didn’t get off the train until 11:00 tonight and the bus didn’t come till 11:20–then only 4 minutes to get to Liz’s house. It’s 1:30 a.m. and I have tickets for the Wimbledon semi-final matches at 1:00 p.m. tomorrow. Looking forward to the tennis (but not the heat).