London Day 3 – Waitrose, Oxford Street, The Importance of Being Earnest with David Suchet

10/14/2015

We started the day with a very delicious English meal of meat pies and Scotch eggs:

Scotch egg

The mini meat pies we scored at M&S yesterday. 18 for 4.55 pounds! So we bought two packages. There's three different flavors: original pork, mustard pork and pickle with pork. I like the first two, but the pickle was just too strong for me.

We learned from hunting for a payphone when we first got to London that there was a Waitrose just around the corner from us. We started the day shopping at Waitrose, which I always thought was the most expensive of the grocery chains. Turns out, it’s comparable. Yeah, they might be expensive on some items, but other items, they’re actually cheaper. We scored Maldon sea salt for 1.80 pounds. Score!

We wandered along the backstreets to cut through to Tottenham Court Road, and stumbled across Woburn Walk. The poet William Yeats lived here, as well as other literary luminaries like Charles Dickens. The short street is lined with bricks and the buildings look very old, but well-maintained.

Many coffee shops in London have funny chalkboard signs

Turns out, this is London’s first shopping arcade. Built in the Victorian age, it still has the look and feel of a bygone era. Because of this, BBC and other tv shows often use Woburn Walk as a filming location. Episodes of Poirot were filmed here, which is especially appropriate for today as we’re going to see David Suchet perform tonight in The Importance of Being Earnest.

Woburn Walk

Along the way, we discovered this:

Big Fernand is a burger joint from Paris that was right next to our Airbnb last year. Every time we walked by, we saw lines of people waiting for a burger and couldn't understand why. Why eat a burger in Paris when you have so many other yummy choices?

Turns out, they were onto something. Angel ate at Big Fernand this year in Paris and she said it was one of the best burgers she's ever ate. Alas, we didn't have time (or the stomach room) to eat here this time.

A hilarious postcard:

We went into the Tottenham Court Primark today (we went into the Marble Arch location yesterday) and originally thought we’d take two hours. We ended up staying for four. There weren’t that many people in the morning, which I thought was rather nice. By the time we left, it was jam-packed with people. The fitting room line was ridiculously long, as well as the cashier lines!

By the time we finished shopping with Primark and Marks & Spencer’s, it was already 4:30pm. If we wanted to make it back home in time to eat dinner before going to the theatre, we’d pretty much have to leave now. But because the M&S didn’t sell Angel’s favorite raspberry cream cookie sandwiches, we went to the M&S Simply Food on Tottenham Court Road. There was only one box left, so we asked the lady restocking the aisle if there were more. She asked how many we wanted; we replied, “Twenty.” She was a little shocked, but she said she’d see if they had some in the backroom. A few minutes later, she came out with a pallet of twenty-four. We said we’d take the whole box and she laughed. It must’ve been the first time she’d seen someone clear out the shelf. That’s us! J

Brownies are very popular this year in England. So are chocolate chip cookies, for some reason. And Mexican food. These were things that weren't so popular in past years, but the M&S brownie did look mighty tasty, so we thought we'd try it out.

It's gluten-free and surprisingly very delicious. They make it with rice flour and the texture is oh-so-fudgy.

Dinner was a very delicious meal of Scottish crab cakes with melted Red Leicester cheese, tender cod cakes with parsley cream sauce in the middle, beef and potatoes Cornish pasty, egg and sausage pie, and as always, caramel shortcake bites and flapjack bites from Sainsbury’s. Because we were enjoying our meal so much, we were a little late in getting a move on to the theater.

Pasty

The London tube station says it reinvests ALL its profits to improving the tube system. No bloody wonder it’s always under construction! Particularly this year, a lot of the stations are either closed (Tottenham Court Road—how can you close Tottenham???) or exit only (Covent Garden, Victoria). Now why can’t Silicon Valley’s transportation system take a tip from London and build one? It’d be so much easier to get around, and if they just reinvest the profits (though doubtful, because it’s CA politicians and they like to line their own pockets. Capitalism at its finest.), the system would be up and running in no time.

Covent Garden tube station is exit only due to construction works, so the queue to get out of the station was very long. There’s only two elevators in service and everyone’s trying to jam their way in. I suggested let’s climb the stairs, but Angel noticed a sign that said that street level is 15 flights up. Strike my suggestion! We were already running late because we chose to eat dinner at home. 

We passed the Jubilee Market in our mad rush to get to the Vaudeville Theatre. It’s near the Adelphi Theatre (Kinky Boots on Day 1) on The Strand. This whole area is packed with theaters. Turn a corner, Book of Mormon is not far away. Turn another corner, there’s Lion King.

I’d watched the movie The Importance of Being Earnest before with Colin Firth, Reese Witherspoon and Rupert Everett, but it was so dull, I thought I might fall asleep at the show too (also because I’ve been sleep-deprived for the past month). But the play was freaking awesome! Everyone in the audience was laughing, and I was cracking up so hard, my ribs hurt. I rarely laugh out loud when watching tv/entertainment, so that’s saying something. David Suchet was brilliant as Lady Blacknell. He’s funnier than Lady Catherine de Bourgh! 

Some of my favorite lines: “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” 

“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.” 

“If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.” 

“How you can sit there, calmly eating muffins when we are in this horrible trouble, I can’t make out. You seem to me to be perfectly heartless."
"Well, I can’t eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs. One should always eat muffins quite calmly. It is the only way to eat them."

"I say it’s perfectly heartless your eating muffins at all, under the circumstances.” 

“That’s the last muffin!”

“In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.” 

“I never change, except in my affections.” 

“I'll bet you anything you like that half an hour after they have met, they will be calling each other sister. Women only do that when they have called each other a lot of other things first.” 

The other cast members were sublimely hilarious too. Everything was top-notch, including the stage design. I couldn’t even tell it was David Suchet—his acting was that transformative, I could only think of him as Lady Bracknell! Earnest (or John) is played by an actor who’s on Downton Abbey, though I do not know in what capacity.

The theatre itself is pretty small and intimate. We were in row K which afforded us a damn good view of everything, like the different shades of David Suchet’s makeup. I couldn’t believe David Suchet was only ten feet away from me! Awed to be in the same room as the great master! Poirot! Melmot! He’s so seamless as a lady of consequence, you can’t even tell it’s a man playing the role. It’s not the first time a man has played the role; Geoffrey Rush did it several years back.

Because the Covent Garden tube was closed for entry, we had to walk to Leicester Square to take the tube back to our place. I’ve never seen so many people in a tube station at 10:30 at night…on a weeknight to boot! It’s Wednesday night, people! All the theatres were letting out, every restaurant in the vicinity was packed, and there was a long ass line just to get inside the tube station.

I’ve noticed this in years past, but it seems especially noticeable this time around: older couples going to the theatre. These couples are hobbling around, hunched down, relying on canes. They aren’t very mobile, but essentially it’s just a gent and a woman holding hands, going to the theatres as their date night. It’s so romantic! Gotta love the culture here. No, guys: football is NOT date night.

Back when I was booking the hotel/Airbnb, I noticed that London hotels for this week were especially expensive. This morning, we walked by the hotel we stayed in last year. It’s located in this quaint courtyard along with four or five other hotels. All of them said “sold out.” WTF? What’s going on??? Later on in the day, I saw a poster on the tube advertising the 2015 Rugby World Cup…in London. I came home and googled it. Turns out, it’s happening this week in London! No bloody wonder!