london.

I’ve done London a few times in the past and I admit I’ve never found my stride with this city.  I owed her another chance and thanks to our worldwide economic collapse I found a great deal on a sweet hotel.

You may have surmised that I have not stayed in a “sweet” hotel in quite some time, mostly because people using “sweet” as adjectives are typically both utterly uneducated and financially famished.  My naiveté worked in this hotel’s favor and proves this point, as I tore into the bar candy without realizing it would cost me $8 for a bag of M&Ms dumped into a glass jar.  At least I didn’t have any pounds sterling on me when the bellhop showed me my room, otherwise I could have done something rash - like tipped him.

Today I was hell-bent on either getting properly cultured or getting out of Zone 1.  I ended up with a half-price ticket to Blood and Gifts, a play surrounding the CIA’s involvement in Afghanistan back in the 1980s.  Needing to spend a few hours prior had me drinking a pint-as-lunch at an old firehouse and getting lost in South London.  Once I hit a housing project I knew I should find a classic, dubious pub.

The Bell had a tiny black cat owning the doorway, staring right up at me.  Wondering if the entire establishment was run by felines I stepped in and the handful of people watching the game nodded back.

The bartender was putting together her plastic stair-climber she was excited about paying only 20 pounds for, admitting the QVC box probably “fell” off a truck and/or doorstep.  She poured me a perfect Guinness and made me feel right at home.  The sporty guy in sweatpants continued to ignore his girlfriend, transfixed on the projected men punting.  Beside me the man in the denim jacket continued drinking while his young son smiled eagerly at anything that moved.

Eventually I made my way back to the theater, and quite the performance it was.  Focusing on a CIA agent working out of Pakistan, it walked the line nicely between the testosterone of war and the individual stories of being so far from home.  The nemesis here was a Soviet agent, connecting to the American as both being men living lonely lives (sons and wives) on opposite sides of the fence during a time of back-and-forth slaughter.  The humor was welcome and fit in with the story - resistance fighters demanding the latest Duran Duran and Olivia Newton John  in exchange for information.  Very well done, great use of directional sound, and a brisk, biting pace.

“You know what is funny?  Absolute power corrupts abso…”

“Yeah yeah yeah, everyone knows that phrase.”

“No, what people don’t know is the line that follows it.  Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”

It all ended with crispy pork in Chinatown, sliced in cross-sections of half meat and half fat sitting between edges of crunch.  Insultingly simple and deliciously so.

Tomorrow: off to Leeds for Grinderman, then TALLY-HO BIRMINGHAM!