27.1.2020 – Nokisuu

and the world’s your oyster.

See what I did there? A terrible earworm but wrong city. So our trip to London was quick but very efficient.

On Friday we landed at 9 am to Heathrow and then took the tube to our hotel near Tottenham Court Road. A lovely hotel I might add. We got our room right away and took a little respite to think about what to do.

Since my friend M wanted to go shopping music we took the tube to Shepherd’s Bush and found HMV in Westfield shopping centre. Oh my. I’ve never seen such a huge shopping centre and believe me I’ve seen some pretty huge ones in USA too. I was awed. It was beautiful and nice and there wasn’t the horrible background music everywhere (or at least I didn’t hear it).

In HMV I left M roam free the cd’s and browsed some BR’s and other stuff. I found Doctor Who 11th season and Prince collector’s CD box and when I had paid for them I also found the book about Prince I’ve been looking for.

After HMV was searched through we went for late lunch and then did a quick round in H&M and M&S since they were close by. On our way back to the tube we bought some nice supply of delicacies to our hotel room to eat before the theater. We had thought about meeting some other fans (R) but decided not to and rested instead.

After the play we came back to the hotel and collapsed. In the morning we had a wonderful breakfast (I’ve never had such beautiful breakfast in any hotel). Then we went shopping to Foyles and Forbidden Planet and Primark. I bought (only) six books and found some nice t-shirts and we had nice coffee break too. On our way to hotel we found another music shop and I bought two movies. Afterwards we had some fun times trying to fit all our shopping into our bags..

We had nice late lunch at TAS next to our hotel and then collected our bags and left to Heathrow. In the tube we got so sleepy we tried to find the owls in the ad (below).

We had just enough time to do some quick airport shopping and sit a while until boarding and arrived to Helsinki around midnight. Hubby was waiting for us and we drove my friend M to her parents house and then came home and I went straight to bed.

A nice little trip to London, it felt like I had been there longer and I’m quite happy now. I’ve always loved London, when I was 17 and visited it for the first time I felt like coming home.

Yes, that’s Uncle Vanya in Finnish. I always find it weird that English doesn’t have own word for different relatives since in Finland we have many words for different relatives, i.e. ”eno” is mother’s brother ( my sons have three eno’s :D) .

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On Friday me and my friend M saw Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya in Harold Pinter Theater and it was just as good as people have said. Toby Jones was awesome as Vanya, Cieran Hinds was perfect as narcissist Professor and the ladies were great too, especially Aimee Lou Wood and Rosalind Eleazar. Richard was of course quite perfect as the melancholy and given up Dr. Astrov. The play was very Russian and also quite universally applicable just like Chekhov has meant his plays to be, showing the humanity through his characters.

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A word of the theater itself too. HP was a bit claustrophobic imo, old house with small interiors and steep stands, even the stage was quite small but it’s an old theater so we’ll forgive all that. I’m glad the play wasn’t any longer because the rows of seats were quite cramped and I felt sorry for anyone taller than me (I’m of average height and even I had trouble with my legs).

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After the play we went outside to the stage door to wait for Richard. We had a small gift for him: some Finnish chocolate and a contemporary Finnish novel “My Cat Yugoslavia” by Pajtim Statovci which is pretty good. First out came Rosalind Eleazar who was very sweet and thanked all us fans as we praised her performance (she looked a bit overwhelmed). Then came Ciaran Hinds ready to sign the hand programmes and he was very nice also. While we waited for RA to show up we noticed Anna Calder-Marshall to go to the other way not wanting to walk through the fans and other people waiting there. Then came Richard and he started from the back of the line which was really nice of him. He was very quick and we barely managed to thrust our gift bag to him but we got autographs and it was all good.

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We had agreed with R to meet afterwards and we saw them in the queue after RA left and went to a nearby pizza place to sit and talk (and to eat late dinner). I felt like I had known R for years instead of just reading her tweets. It was so much fun but in the end we really had to go get some sleep.

I’ll write another entry about what else we did on our trip to London.

Päivä: 27.1.2020

One night in London

Vanja-eno