Sunday in the Park

I spent last night in Swiss Cottage watching the second year acting students at Central School performing a production of Sunday In The Park With George, a Sondheim show I didn't know at all. It's a very good musical, but it's surprisingly "low stakes." There's no student uprising or world war providing the show with a back drop, and very little actually happens. It tells the story - or at least provides the audience with vignettes about the life - of Georges Seurat, the pointillist painter, who sadly never sold a painting in his lifetime! I wonder if God has created any mechanism for these penniless creative geniuses to look down from heaven and see their legacy on earth!

The actors did a great job. I was there to watch Ruby and Oscar, who are both in the cast of Brass, but young Ben was also there. He's a first year student at the drama school.

I spent the afternoon at the Palace of Westminster seeing a man about a dog, or rather a woman about an installation. That place is so remarkable. I actually used to be a tour guide there, but the security has increased massively. I turned a corner out of central lobby and found myself face to face with a machine-gun wielding policeman.

They were preparing the building for the state opening of Parliament, and we found ourselves inadvertently walking the route that the dear Queen will take next week.

Bits of my tour guide training came back to me as I wandered around. I realised I'd remembered half facts. I remembered that Westminster Hall was built in 1099 under William Rufus, but that it's hammer beam roof had been added later under Richard the something... Or was it the other way around? 

I remembered details about certain paintings, but couldn't remember who the paintings were of! It was, in fairness, twenty years since I'd last set foot in some of those chambers.

I came home and spent the night baking lasagnes. As you do.