Continued

The topic of a dozen conversations around us turned to what to do instead.  Mom and I had our own.  It was too late to think of heading to another show, so we poked out into the now almost rainless night to look for a restaurant.  Just a few blocks away, we found a cozy looking place called the Troubadour.  We had a nice meal, in the course of which Mom noticed that there was to be live music later in their downstairs bar.  We got hold of a brochure that announced “The Great Un-Published.”  From the description, it seemed as though it lived on the margin between open mike night and a talent show.  Multiple acts would do short sets, but there was an implication that extensive screening would have gone on.  We decided that as we had arrived in this place on this night by such a bizarre set of circumstances, we had to go see the show.  We thought it would probably be awful (and to spare you any suspense, it mostly was) but it seemed like it would be fighting fate to skip it altogether. 

 

We walked downstairs and bought tickets from a Byronic American in his northerly forties.  His name was Robert, and he was the promoter and MC for the evening.  The brochure had said the event started at 9:00 sharpish.  It was about 8:55, so we pulled out our books and settled down for a nice long wait.  I don’t go to much live music, but I know no one involved with it can tell time. 

 

Robert was videotaping the event in the hope of distributing the recordings as a way topromote some of the acts.  The camera was balanced precariously on a table just across from the stage, and there was a lot of lively yelling at performers to stay on the mark on the stage where the camera could see them and not to walk between the camera and the stage.  I’m going to charitably say that all this fuss put a few of the performers off, because the notion that about three of them would ever get on stage if we saw them at their best is just too frightening.  It was almost a perfect parody of an open mike night. 

 

Robert himself opened the first set with a performance poem that involved some guitar accompaniment called Karaoke Cowboy.  To the best of my shattered memory, he was followed by a comic who didn’t even seem to get his own jokes and who broke off his act in disgust at the audience for not being more amused.  A woman then sang a few songs with impenetrable lyrics while almost randomly plucking strings on her guitar.  I’ve given you the sense of the evening by now, so I will pass lightly over the rest merely reassuring you that there was, indeed, a slender blond poetess in a butt skimming pale scarf who self identified as the evenings purveyor of unrequited love.  When asked whether she could return for the second set she admitted she had another 150 poems in her folder, a fact she would have done better to have kept from me.

 

And then, just as my brain was starting to cushion itself with the unreality of the whole thing, on to the stage saunters Earl Okin.  I leaned over to Mom and said “We’ve seen an Englishman in spats now, we can go home.”  Earl took up his guitar. Utterly unflustered by the recording apparatus and seated on a barstool with a tractor in its lineage, he began to play beautifully.  First, he mentioned that hehas a CD coming out soon called Earl Okin: Musical Genius & Sex Symbol.  He gave us three songs, and I would willingly have stayed to hear another pile of poems from the blond if Earl had said he could have come back for the second set. 

 

Earl seemed to me to be tapped in to the music hall tradition.  He is a talented singer and guitarist, but mostly he is an ace entertainer, and of course he has a gimmick.  In his case, really two gimmicks.  First, there is the whole dress for the Edwardian age, lisp slightly, and talk about what a sex god you are thing – itself well worth the price of admission.  Second, he can with nothing but his voice and lips, perfectly reproduce the sound of a muted horn.  I mean, perfectly.  If it wouldn’t have been even harder in that blighted basement space to hide a trumpet player than to produce those tones without an instrument, I would have suspected trickery. 

 

Special bonus points – one of the acts the details of which I’ve spared you included a saxophonist.  I was seated where I could see him, and when Earl first started playing his horn, I saw the fellow’s face fall slightly in the sure knowledge that he was going to be the second best horn player of the evening, even though he was the only one who had brought a horn. 

 

Knowing that lightening rarely strikes twice, we edged out during the act after Earl.  On our way out of the Troubadour, I saw Earl at a table and stopped to fawn briefly.  He handed me a buck slip for his upcoming album.  It included an URL I haven’t had a chance to follow up yet - www.spats.demon.co.uk.  I recommend a look to any of you, and if his CD is released in the colonies I suggest you scoop one up.

 

Cab ride home, set an alarm, off to bed.

 

Most of Wednesday was consumed with travel.  The cab ride to London City Airport was a nice last core sample through London.  Our driver had a lot to tell us about the Docklands and the rest of the East of London.  He also gave us some advice about the Lake District and joined the growing chorus of people warning me that I would find Northern Wales cold (Sara – pack fleece).  I quizzed him a little about what I was likeliest to find difficult about driving on the other side of the road from what I’m used to.  He gave me a few clues – and good directions from Manchester to The Lakes – but mostly said I shouldn’t find it too difficult. 

 

I am relieved to say I found he was right, but before getting to that a brief note on London City Airport.  If it represents the future of 21st century air travel, sign me up.  Checking in and flying out of there was the closest thing to a private flight I ever had on a scheduled airline.  Everything was quick and convenient.  Our flight was announced for a 20 minute delay that turned out to be exactly 20 minutes.  Traveling late morning on a weekday probably helped.

 

We landed in Manchester, found our bags quickly, then picked up the car.  I had been nervous about driving a right hand drive car.  Mostly, I was concerned that the positions of the clutch and accelerator might be mirrored as well, which would have made me a hazard to navigation beyond a doubt.  As it happens this is not the case – clutch left, brakes and gas right.  I do have to fight a tendency to drift to the left, since I’m used to being about 5 feet to the left of where I’m sitting, but that was only an issue on the very narrow village roads, and it seems a good idea to take them at a crawl anyway. 

 

We got nice views of Lancashire countryside on the way up, then took the scenic route through the Lake District Park villages of Windermere, Ambleside, and Rydal.  The scenery was beautiful, but the driving was a sort of baptism by fire.  Got through without doing damage to myself or others, but I did run the left wheels up on a few curbs.  Don’t tell Alamo.

 

With only one minor turnaround, we found Hawcliffe House in Eskin Street and were shown to our rooms.  I hauled our luggage up.  After a little unpacking, we headedout for a walk, the route for which I had pulled off the Keswick tourist information web site.  The route took us along a lane out of town, then up a hill through the woods along Brockle Beck.  At the top of the hill, we went through a stile into a series of sheep fields.  There were quantities of lambs chasing each other around and looking for their mothers to nurse.  The adults were all spotted with different colors of dye which gave them a festive air.  The walk stopped off at the Castlerigg Stone Circle, a sort of Stone Henge Light that our guidebooks claim is older than its more famous cousin.  We shared notions of what it could have been for with a large English family who was also at the site.  The leading contender was that it was really a sort of direction rose like you often get on peaks showing you the names of other features you can see from there.  Certainly, from Castlrigg on a clearing afternoon, you can see a pile of the Lake District hills.  The views were just spectacular. 

 

Garmin walk facts:  5.27 miles  walked with  1 hour 49 minutes of walking and 45 minutes of gawping at scenery for an average moving speed of 2.9 mph with 350 feet climbed.

 

After dropping off packs and changing shoes, we walked back into town for some dinner at the Black Lion.  We walked down to the Theatre by the Lake to learn about shows the rest of the time we’re here.  Looks like we can probably drop over on a last minute basis tonight and tomorrow night if we want to see some of their youth theatre festival.  We will need to book if we want to see Pooja – one woman show about an east Indian, British woman with astrological problems.  I think we’ll probably do that.

 

We put a coda on the day by walking out into Crow Park – a field full of sheep administered by the National Trust which again gave us lovely views of the town.  It was 9:30 PM, and the sun was just setting behind the hills.  A large group of elementary or junior high kids was running around the field, some of them in red vests and some not as though they were in teams, but I saw no evidence of organized sport.  We made our way back home by way of a footpath that ran along side St Johns Church and its cemetery, feeling we’d spent the day well even with about 6 hours of it given over to travel. 

 

Time to go down to breakfast.