A Day in London

Among the many reasons it is good to have friends is they help you get out of your own head and push you to do new things when you get stuck in a rut. A few weeks back, my course mate Sophie suggested we visit London to see an opera, with Puccini’s Tosca falling on a particularly opportune day.

I arrived in London in the morning, having decided that I would revisit Westminster Abbey after my ill-timed trip there in the spring. I got waylaid, however, by an unexpected stop at the Supreme Court. One of the security guards was standing outside near a signboard with visiting times, motioning passers-by to come in. Intrigued, I entered.

The Supreme Court is protected by airport-like security complete with metal detectors and X-ray machines. After walking through, visitors can drop by any of the three rooms where cases are heard – including at times when the court is in session. This happened to be the case on the ground floor, where, due to the presence of a flag, I concluded the session somehow involved Antigua and Barbuda. The process seemed extraordinarily boring, as the speaker took lengthy pauses between each of his sentences, and having entered in media res, I could not piece together what was going on. I did not stay for long and spent another few minutes looking around the other two court rooms.

My impulsive visit did not impede me from touring Westminster Abbey. Indeed, if I did face any impediments, it was other tourists, who I did not expect to see in such numbers on a perfectly unremarkable Monday. Long queues snaked their way in and out of every chapel, and I found the cloisters occupied by what seemed to be the entire school-aged population of London.

I met up with Sophie in front of the National Gallery just as I finished downing an oily veggie burger with a raw onion on top. We spent about two and a half hours at the gallery, in part because we got a little lost but also because we had a lot of knowledge, real and fake, to impart on each other. My highlights included learning that the Woman of the Hofer Family has a fly on her head to display the artist’s talent, and that Botticelli’s Portrait of a Young Man is remarkable for portraying a face asymmetrically.

We did a few more things in the afternoon before visiting the Royal Opera House. We visited a bookstore, where Sophie bought some old maps of London while I reasoned myself out of impulsively buying a book and beginning to learn Hindi. We also stopped by the Freemasons’ Hall in London, whose exterior is a bizarre blend of neoclassicism and art deco, and whose interior boasts a captivating museum and a lovely art deco library. Having drunk a little tea and eaten some pho, we finally made our way to the Royal Opera House.

The performance gave me a new appreciation for Tosca, though perhaps strangely, a few instrumental parts stuck with me more than any aria. I spent the next few days humming the melody under the Te Deum as well as the melody to which Cavaradossi is executed. That evening, I also learned that travelling to London for opera performances can be quite an ordeal unless one plans to stay in town for the night. I only returned to Oxford a little before one o’clock.