More Log Entries.

Blog is now up-to-date (tm). You may notice the updates are not as detailed/slightly different style now; that is because I have already turned in the assignment for BIC, so I don't have to spend as much time talking about culture now.

anyway, here you go:

Log Entry 44: Mary Poppins 8/3/2005 (Evening)

After our visit to the Kilns, we came back to Ch Ch and anxiously awaited the arrival of an email from our friend Patrick Rountree. He was in London, and was going to try an pick up theatre tickets for us.

At 4:45, we got the email saying that he got tickets for Mary Poppins. We raced to the station and caught the 5:06 train to London Paddington. We arrived at 6:45 (it was the slow train, but we weren’t sure if the fast one was going to be running on time) and got on the tube to Tottenham Court Road, where we made a mad dash to the Prince Edward Theatre. We met Patrick and ran up to our seats (about 3 rows from the back at the very top of the theatre) and had exactly one minute to spare before the Overture began. That, my friends, is what you call perfect timing.

It was the highest we had sat, but it wasn’t as far away as say, the back of the Lubbock Coliseum. All the theatres here go up, not out. We actually rented the opera glasses (50p for the whole time), and they made things good enough.

The show itself is one of those that will have to grow on me. The new music is not as catchy as the old favorites, though it is hard to compete with a classic. Some of the movie songs had been over-orchestrated, I felt. An example: “Feed the Birds (Tuppence a Bag)” used to be a lovely, simple little lullaby, but here it has been turned into a duet between Mary and the bird lady. And the bird lady sounds (appropriately, I guess) like an old hag. It just doesn’t really work. The other issue I had was that songs had been moved around. For the most part, this wasn’t a big deal, but when they started “Let’s go Fly a Kite” halfway through the second act, I knew the ending would be a bit weak, which it was.

The best part of the entire show—which was worth the money just for it—was the sets and choreography. These were some of the most complex that I have seen in musical theatre. The dance for “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” (Wow…Word has that in Spell check) was incredibly complicated and incredibly fast, with everyone doing the same moves in perfect rhythm and timing, even the children.

The sets were equally as mind-boggling. The front of 17 Cherry Tree lane was projected onto a screen (which moved left and right as people walked). When the action moved inside the house, the screen went up and you were treated to a doll-house like view of the household—it was one complete set. When the action would move into the bedroom, the bottom part of the house would move back, and the entire bedroom set (which had been sitting on top of the house) lowered down, as the roof of the house came up.

All the set pieces were on tracks, and this allowed for some neat movements, including some magical Mary Poppins fixing things moments. I can’t imagine a touring production of this. It would be insane. I don’t know if they have plans for one, but if they do, they will likely have to change some things.

Anyway, the show was fun, and we caught a train back to Oxford at 11:38. It was certainly a long day, but a productive one.

Log Entry 45: Arrival in York/York Minster 8/4 and 8/5/2005

This morning I finally did not have a class, so I could sleep in a little bit. I did, however, have to do laundry, which was annoying, but that chore was taken care of soon enough.

We left on the 13:34 train straight to York. We had made seat reservations earlier, but they didn’t actually show up on the scrolling marquee above the seats, which caused some arguments later in the trip as the first class coach filled up. Oh well. Didn’t cause any problems for me.

The ride to York is about four hours, during which I finished one of my BIC papers. Man, I love having a computer with a battery long enough that I can actually be productive with it away from a power outlet.

When we arrived, it was drizzling, so everyone got out his or her umbrellas and ponchos. Oddly enough, by the time we had reached the exit of the station, the rain had pretty much stopped, save the occasional sprinkle.

The walk to the hotel was pretty long, and we walked along the old city wall, which was a bit precarious as it had no guard-rail on the inside preventing you from falling to your doom. Needless to say, on the way back the next day, we stuck to the ground.

The hotel was very nice. The bed was large—though it oddly featured square pillows—and the bathrooms were nice. There was a swimming pool, but it was outdoors, and I don’t think anyone used it.

We took a walk down to the city centre, which features some of the oldest and most complete medieval streets in England. These were extremely narrow, and featured tall buildings. A claustrophobic would have problems navigating these streets for sure.

Next we looked around for a place to eat, and the entire group (save the professors) ate at a little pub. It was there quiz night, so we played the quiz game, but didn’t win anything due to UK focused questions and football stars. Oh well. We crashed after that.

After breakfast in the morning (provided by the hotel), we walked up to York Minster, the cathedral here in York. While it was certainly not the largest or most interesting cathedral I’ve been to this trip, it had its charm. The cathedral features the oldest and largest complete mediaeval stained glass window in England. Half of England’s mediaeval stained glass is contained at the Minster. This glass is much smaller than the later glass I’m used to, and it is much less colorful, though some of this can be attributed to fading.

The other interesting thing in the cathedral was the Chapter house, which like Salisbury’s was round. It had lots of little grotesque gargoyles and stone carving, and featured a magnificent roof.

Other than that, however, the Minster was basically just another cathedral. I much prefer Canterbury or Winchester, but it was interesting to see this Northern building, too.

Log Entry 46: National Railway Museum in York 8/5/2005 (afternoon)

Now we move on to the real attraction in York: the National Railway Museum, supposedly the largest museum in the world. Here is the home of the Mallard, which holds the record for fastest steam traction in the world: 126 m.p.h. The museum also had a working turntable, dozens of locomotives, and other tidbits.

The first thing we saw was the royal trains, from Queen Victoria to modern day. These were the height of luxury. Even the Victorian-era coaches looked like they would be extremely comfortable today.

In this same room were some examples of typical English freight cars: short and small. Absolutely miniscule compared to US cars. This theme is repeated throughout the entire museum.

Everything here is relatively tiny. The Mallard is only about º the size of a N&W Class J. One the locomotives in the collection was built in Britain for the Chinese National Railway. It was a 4-8-4 Northern design, based on American prototypes. It dwarfed the other British Locomotives in the hall. Cozad remarked that it was huge; I wish he could see a Class A or Y6b, which would dwarf that locomotive.

Another interesting thing I saw was the coupler system. Most locos had a hook and chain system, but surprisingly, many of the more modern locos and rolling stock had both the knuckle coupler and the hook. The knuckle simply swung down when not in use.

We got to see a turntable demonstration, which was really interesting. The table is electric, but has to be aligned by hand. In other words, you rotate to approximately where you want to go, and then turn a hand crank to line up the tracks. The crank was obviously very hard to turn.

Another interesting piece: a cut-away of a steam locomotive, with and interactive exhibit showing how it worked, complete with drive wheels turning. I’d never seen anything like that before.

The museum also had a replica of Stephenson’s ROCKET locomotive, which I had seen in its current state at the Science Museum in London. I was reminded just how revolutionary this design was at the time.

The final room at the rail museum was the Warehouse, which was just a Warehouse full of stuff not on permanent display. It was incredible. I can’t imagine that much railroad stuff anywhere else. The most interesting of these random objects was a model railroad from 1911 that was used as late as 1995 by a signaling school, where the railroad men learn about signals for everything on the line. I had never seen such an instructional tool.

On the way out, we stopped by the Japanese Bullet Train, which had a lot more luggage space than comparable European trains. Nearly 35 years of modern rail travel, and the English still don’t have adequate luggage space.

We left the museum and headed to the York Model Railway World, which was a small OO scale layout. The layout was quite well done, but English scenery still has a lot to learn from U.S. techniques. Or perhaps there simply isn’t much interesting scenery in England, modeling wise.

The shop (for it was also a hobby shop) also had an N gauge layout, which was a night scene. Every building was perfectly lit, which I though was marvelous.

After these two train-related events, we headed back into town and did a little shopping, before picking up our backs (which were at the hotel) and catching a train back to Oxford. We even got back early enough to get a Kebab for dinner.