In search of a Smile

“I know why women have facelifts,” I shouted at the Long Suffering Husband from the bathroom. The woman looking back at me while I cleaned my teeth was starting to look like a Bassett hound with less drool. My eye bags have reached my not very high cheekbones and my jowls are beginning to cover up my windplayer’s double chin.

“It’s just that you’ve stopped smiling,” he assured me.

I looked at the miserable Bassett hound and tried to make her smile but it felt all wrong.

“I used to be a smiley person,” I told my friend, explaining the problem later, “and now all I can think about is how someone searching for their lost smile would make a good children’s book.”

The LSH had a plan. He thought my smile might be in London. We queued for day seats to see Young Frankenstein, ate breakfast at the Ivy, walked to Kensington through St James’, Green and Hyde Parks, looked at beautiful things in the V&A, had a drink in a pub, and laughed our way through most of the musical. I thought I’d found my smile, particularly in the pub. For a non drinker, I find a proper pub surprisingly comforting. The bar always looks warm and welcoming, with the different coloured liquids reflected by a good bar mirror. It is also the perfect height for leaning, while listening to conversations. 

A brief return of the smile 

Young Frankenstein has a fantastic cast. It’s based on the Mel Brooks film and so it is impossible not to laugh. Lesley Joseph gives a masterclass in comic timing. Diane Pilkington, Patrick Clancy, Nic Greenshields and Hadley Fraser are amazing musical theatre stars with stunning voices. Summer Strallen stands out for her gymnastic ability, not only with her body but I have never heard yodelling quite that good. The LSH was shocked by how much she seemed to enjoy showing her pants, which 

reminded me of the frilly waterproof over-nappy knickers that my sister wore as a baby. Even the 

ensemble were stunning.

I should have found my smile but a couple of things were bothering me. I wasn’t quite sure what until the interval when the LSH said, “I’m not sure I like the way Mel Brooks thinks of women.”

Then in the second half the Monster drags Frankenstein’s girlfriend into a cave and rapes her with his extra large body part, which makes her sing about deep love and declare her undying love for him. It was both funny and disturbing, like the way we all laughed at Benny Hill before we knew any better. Why Elizabeth and the creature couldn’t have just fallen in love I can’t comprehend. 

When we got home there was a puddle of water on the floor. I apologised to the dog for being out so long but he looked at the puddle, growled, looked at the ceiling, growled a bit more and backed away. The ball thing on the heating tank had broken off and water was coming over the top of the tank and dripping through the floor. We have a gas contract so I rang them (after turning off the water and scooping out the extra water). An automated message said, “There are no operators available to take your call. This may be because our building has had to be evacuated or our systems are down.”

This seemed a bit overly dramatic and as I rushed around with buckets and towels I passed the mirror and noticed that if I had found my smile in London, I had definitely left it there. 

I need to go back again soon.

Man Woman Woman Man

Yesterday was the perfect day; a day in London.

 I can't tell you how good London is for me. Don't get me wrong, I love being a country bumpkin, walking along the sea wall with the dog, digging the allotment and living at a slightly slower pace but the moment I step off the tube I feel energised. The bustle of people, the tall buildings, the things to look at, the choices to make all make me smile. 

We were in early. We joined the queue for day ticket sales of Kinky Boots at 9.30 and were 6th in the queue. Front row tickets for £25 - brilliant! Followed by brunch at Bills, a walk around Covent Garden, Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square and Trafalgar Square, all punctuated with several stops for coffee.

Once at Trafalgar Square I find that I am unable to resist the National Portrait gallery. Somehow, all those people, their lives , their stories call to me. My son humoured me although he did point out that it creeps him out, "all those people looking at you!" several times. 

I am always fascinated by the women. Maybe it's because there are fewer of them, or maybe their stories are more interesting and not so often told. On this visit, I had trouble distinguishing between the genders. Was the fact I was about to see a show about drag queens influencing how I saw these paintings?

Two of these are men and two are women. Top left is George IV (1780), top right is called The Ugly Dutchess (1513), bottom left is Radclyffe Hall (1913) famous lesbian poet and bottom right The Chevalier d'Eon (1792). The Chevalier is particularly interesting as for years it was thought that this was just another 'ugly woman' painting. He was however a famous French  soldier, spy and transvestite and accepted easily by London society as a woman. The feminists of the day such as Mary Wollstonecraft, who thought men and women were really the same and had a daughter who went on to write Frankenstein, embraced him as an icon and he offered to lead armies of Amazonian women against France's enemies.  Without defining clothes, make up and hair styles would we really be able to tell the difference between the sexes unless we examined their genitals? 

Then there was Kinky Boots. Never have I seen a musical where the whole theatre is standing at the end. It is such a feel-good show. The Angels were totally amazing and so likeable that even the most entrenched homophobe would have found it difficult not not be shouting "Oh Yeah!" at the end of the first half. My daughter and I have serious body envy. Those men have the best legs and bottoms I have ever seen and with front row seats we were possibly the only people having no doubts that they were actually men. 

The cast was amazing. Matt Henry's voice is just divine and Amy Lennox has absolutely brilliant comic timing. I don't think the songs will be ones you leave the theatre humming and some of the lyrics were a bit clunky but the energy of them left you in no doubt of Cyndi Lauper's rock God status. No matter how good the rest of the cast were it was the Angels that stole the show. (Marcus Collins an X-factor runner up showing just how little of a singer's talents the X-factor actually shows).

"Three days left.  St Paul's Cathedral and the Millennium bridge tomorrow," said the Chinese girl sitting next to me checking her maps and itinerary in the interval."
I was curious. "What's been the best thing so far?"
"This! This!  It has to be this!"

I've come away with a sore jaw from smiling too much and a curiosity about whether a woman can get away with that fabulous lipstick. 

Glitter kisses all round. 

Open House

Whenever I go to London, I wonder why I don't go more often.  I love a city and we have one of the best in the world virtually on our doorstep.  This weekend London has a free event called Open House, which is a sort of Heritage weekend, where you can look round lots of buildings.  There are 856 buildings that you could look round if it weren't for the queues.

Luckily, I quite like queueing. When in a queue you can, in a very British way, find out a lot about people.  You can listen to their conversations, make assumptions about them and even make notes without having to engage more than with a polite smile if they catch you staring.

We started our day by deciding not to join the 2 hour queue for the Bank of England.  We had been in the museum before.  We also decided that the Cheese Grater building queue was too long but we did wait behind a very excited Italian, who was going to get an i-phone 6 next week because, "Why shouldn't I?  I have to spend my money on something," and his mates for the Lloyds of London building.  He seemed inappropriately excited to explain how his mother had died on the only weekend she had ever been alone.  The building appealed to the Long Suffering Husband because it looks like it's made from exhaust pipes.

It's a building I'm pretty sure I've been in before, when it was new and I did a week of temping, while a student, for a ship insurer.  I think I remember the bell and the funny escalators but I'm sure there were less desks and filing cabinets.

Then we spent a little time in the queue for the Gherkin building, until a man told us that the queue was so long that we were not going to get in before it closed and suggested we came back at 8am on Sunday.  It's a building that I'd like to look in but maybe not that much.  It's quite nice from the outside, though and looks very different to the Baltic Exchange that I used to walk past before the IRA blew it up. 

We were getting a bit bored of the queueing so we went to see the poppys at the Tower. Stupidly, from other people's photos I thought they were real poppies but they are even better for being sculptures.

Next, it was City Hall, egg, honeypot, woodlouse or glass gonad (as Boris calls it:  I am a bit concerned about Boris' testicles and think he should probably see a doctor!).  This was a fantastic queue to stand in.  The Southbank is a great place, where you can see people hanging out.  Couples propose on Tower Bridge, street performers sit for hours pretending to be the invisible man, dads climb on top of large black ball sculptures to impress their children.  This weekend also coincides with when many parents are dropping their children at University.  Behind us in the queue were a family, with a daughter wearing a freshers wristband.  The daughter was explaining to her mum's friend how embarrassing her mum had been, as she was the only one crying, which set the mum off all over again. The Dad was trying to keep things pleasant by telling what he thought were funny stories about his sister's roots that everyone ignored and clearly thought were less than funny.

In front of us was a couple with a very smiley baby, who were fretting about their daughter's food getting radiated in the x-ray machine.  She scolded him for being stupid about something by saying, "And you're a teacher."  If she hadn't said that I would have known because we saw him later asking about visiting at other times and I could tell he was planning a school trip.  They asked the two young volunteers at the door if they worked there.  They did.  They were apprentices.  Their job was cool because they got to work on events and exciting things like that.  They only met Boris in the lift, where he said random things that they didn't know how to respond to.  

I liked this building but it was a bit strange.  There was a selection of piped music playing including the Archer's and Blue Peter theme tune and lots of people felt compelled to lay on the floor, maybe it's the extra large steps.

On the lower ground floor there is a map on the floor.  I found Essex on the map, it appears to be the escape hatch!

We ended our day with a visit to St Paul's and some food nearby. I did a lot of temp work in an office next to St Paul's in the eighties and never noticed the nail before.

Open House is a great idea.  Next year I will go early and apply for the ballot for some of the appointment only buildings like 10 Downing Street.