Usually

Usually I don’t mind not living in London. I mean, I never have, so why miss it?

But then I read Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, or Un Lun Dun by China Mieville or I hear that David Tennant is playing Hamlet against Patrick Stewart’s Claudius and I really REALLY want to go and see it.

And then I read this kind of thing (a review of the top 10 performances of Hamlet by the Guardian’s critic) and start to look at jobs advertised online … More on it here.

Gillian took me on a journalist’s tour of London in 48 hours that started with Fleet Street, long after the media had departed.

We visited a traditional journalist’s pub where, she said, ink ran in the beer, there were old chaps who’d stood their ground against Murdoch’s men and who hadn’t worked since and where I could get a real English pint without any of the fuss.

However, it was Waitangi Day in New Zealand and all the ex-pat Kiwis on their big OE were charging round on the tube wearing t-shirts with the map of the Underground but with the place names crossed out and places like Johnsonville, Geraldine, Te Awamutu, Cambridge etched on instead.

The pub was showing Classic All Blacks’ matches and serving Steinlager and was full youths in black shirts “talking loud in a Kiwi accent” including, but not limited to, a couple of guys I’m sure I remember from Waikato.

It was quite surreal and perhaps the best way to visit London.

But I would like to see Tennant’s Hamlet. I very much would.

Hat tip: Neil Gaiman for his very funny take on the photos.

The Piano

Well it’s in, it fits and thanks to Pete and his crew who moved it from Henderson to Three Kings for only slightly more than I paid for it in the first instance!

The piano itself is great. It goes (well, apart from two sticky keys but they’re at the extremes of the keyboard and frankly, I don’t play so what do I care), it’s got a good tone to it (although I’ll be glad to get it on small carpet squares as the casters it rolls on vibrate when the girls pound away at the keys) and I for one am going to learn how to play. There’s a website with free lessons which I’ve bookmarked (clearly the first step) and we’ll see about lessons for the girls at some point too.

We’ve also plonked a number of family photos on top of the piano and they seem well at home up there, although currently they’re a collection of photos of us rather than the rest of the family so we’ll change that post haste lest any visitor think we have some kind of mirror fetish going on.

All told I’m delighted with the purchase. Best $101 I’ve spent, although we don’t have a stool to sit on and we still have no room for a piano and frankly it should be at the other end of the house so we can watch TV while someone plays elsewhere. Details, mere details.

There’s something about owning a piano that I find quite satisfying. I can only assume I need a pipe and slippers and to have a small dog with amusingly big ears bring me my evening paper each day to complete the picture, but I’ll settle for the piano itself.

Many years ago I remember hearing someone on the radio talking about why it was so difficult for Polish citizens to flee ahead of the incoming Nazi tide. Why didn’t they run for it before the German Army arrived? He replied that Polish people, and the Polish Jewish community in particular, had pianos and it’s hard to flee when you have a piano to consider.

It seemed a bit flippant at the time but I think I start to see what he was saying.

This weekend’s task (along with fixing the lawn mower AND the weed eater and then tackling the lawn and weeds) is to finish cleaning the piano and to give it a good polish with my beeswax pot that came with the bed. The piano appears to be walnut, although IANAA (I am not an arborist), so it should come up well. There’s some bora in the front panel but not in the main body so that’s a plus. There’s a note stamped inside saying the piano had been fumigated in Palmerston North in 1975 and was good for up to seven years… which is fair enough.

The piano is apparently a “Fredk Monk of London” about which I can find nothing. Well, nothing useful. Anyone know anything about Fredk?

There’s a plaque saying it was provided by a music shop in Palmerston North so I’ll investigate that next I think.

Happiness is a $101 piano.