I was up early to beat the traffic and try out one of those green ebikes available for use all over town.  Just download the app, and it tells you the location of any available ones nearby and how much time on it the battery still provides.  Scanning the qr code on the bike unlocks it and locks you in to the elaborate network controlling it

Two Limes–the most numerous of several brands– were left at a corner just around the block.  Their design is well suited for non hotshot bikers, the only accessories a fat basket hanging from the handlebars and a little rack to hold your cellphone showing the zoomable map of where you are and if you’re somewhere the bike is not allowed to be ridden or parked.  The app’s location disclosure connected to the phone enables the invisible network, for better or worse, to track your every move. I later learned that Google and Uber own major portions of the company.

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Jetlag and overstimulation caught up today.  Sleeping in, washing clothes at the Laundromat, processing photos and email took up the morning, and after nap, a walk back to the Vand A, a brief stay there and then dinner at an outdoor Tapas restaurant by the South Kensington Tube Station were enough.

Ready for more unplanned adventures before attending tonight’s play, we cautiously crossed the wrong-way street outside the hotel

and boarded a bus headed for Putney, the terminus of a Thames River boat line. Billed as a commuter ride rather than a tourist cruise, one couldnt determine from the website or the app whether “Uber Boat by Thames Clippers” was part of the public transportation system or a private operation.

The stop nearest the dock was called Battersea Power Station, located a block away from the river in a pedestrian-unfriendly maze of criss-crossing tunnels, overpasses, temporary barriers, and littered sidewalks.  After bewildered efforts to follow the google map we were guided back toward the river by some reliable looking signage behind which rose the Power Station’s landmark brickwork,  flanked by modish landscaping and a diverse panorama of  shiny new buildings.

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We’d invited our friend Mo for lunch today on Jan’s  78th birthday, an occasion for celebration and remembrance. She agreed to take the train in from Sevenoaks, her home in Kent.  We’d first become acquainted with Mo through Juliet, her sister, our neighbor in Lund, B.C., the community at the end of the road where we’d lived during our  twenties and thirties and visited annually until 2019. The two sisters, with their chipper spirits and crisp British accents were especially appealing to us two English majors.

The relationship with Mo was rekindled on subsequent trips to London.  In 1978,  our toddlers, Ben and Claire,  played in her kitchen during a three week family auto and backpacking holiday away from the Canadian wilderness.

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The morning after the Royal Albert Hall experience, my Macbook Pro laptop wouldnt wake up,  and dealing with that crisis took priority over finding the next tourist adventure.  I phoned a half dozen repair places listed on the web with nearby addresses promising immediate help but got no response, and then scurried through the neighborhood finding only vacant storefronts or locked private residences. Back at the hotel, it was a relief to hear a human voice from a place called “Computer angels” in Fulham, a remote London location. The speaker provided instructions to reach it by bus and foot which I confirmed on google maps.  Jan and I agreed the setback might be compensated by getting us off the beaten track of the elegant streets of Kensington we traversed under cloudy skies to get to the bus stop

The swervy ride at the front of the double-decker passing through unassuming lively neighborhoods–a mosque, a Russian dress shop, several tatoo parlors–left us off to walk through a treeless street of middle class row houses (more…)

Washed by yesterday’s rain, the glazed red tile and warm yellow brick of The Gloucester Road Station made a pleasant backdrop for the row of rental bicycles at the tree shaded bus stop that met our eyes upon exiting the hotel in the morning sunlight.

Eager to explore the districts urban delights, we were also driven by the appetite for coffee and breakfast.  Halfway up the block across the Road, we were struck by the genteel but sumptuous appearance of a French bakery, whose matte black façade and signage reiterated its distinctive monosyllabic name in classic white font: “Paul.” Trays of fresh sandwiches on baguettes just out of the oven, fruit laden pastries, and gleaming croissants filled the warm-lit window. (more…)

We arrived at London’s Heathrow airport a day after leaving California and tried to get off the Underground connection at Gloucester Road, the station right by our hotel. But the train didn’t stop until the next station, South Kensington. After the confinement of the airplane, the walk back in light rain pushing and pulling our rolly suitcases along a street of Edwardian rowhouses, large London Plane trees and a locked private park felt like stimulating exercise rather inconvenience, but also a traveller’s warning to be ready for the unexpected.

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This was our first trip abroad since we went on a Gate 1 Tour to Spain in 2018. That year, we also traveled to India, Hawaii, New York/Vermont as well as to our homes away from home in Lund B.C. and Sun Valley Idaho—satisfying our prosperous retiree appetites for extending knowledge, connecting with old and new friends, and enjoying fresh pleasures.

At the beginning of 2019 I felt guilty about the continuing indulgence, but by late Fall of a year with no travel, the yen was back. We signed up for a February 2020 tour of China which included a boat trip up the Yangtze River ending at the city of Wuhan.  In January reports arrived about a coronavirus epidemic that started in a Wuhan market and was spreading through the country.  We cancelled our reservations and decided to use the refund to visit Portugal on our own, studying guidebooks and websites, making hotel reservations, arranging meetings in Lisbon with old friends from Cornwall and with my young co-worker and her boyfriend. But by March the epidemic had spread world wide and we were happy to hunker down at home. (more…)

Hi Alexander

I came across your film as accidentally as you came across my Shakespeare at Swanton website.

As part of general downsizing efforts, a couple of weeks ago my wife, Jan, sent a beautiful Afghan dress she acquired in 1972, when we homesteaded in the woods of British Columbia, to a friend born and still living there, who took a photo of it, worn by her daughter riding a ropeswing on the property their family leases from us.

Seeing it reminded me of another woodland use of the dress in 1999 at Swanton Ranch. So I googled the old website to download a picture of it worn by  a student playing Hermia in scenes from A Midsummernight’s Dream that the class filmed there.

I was amazed to find the link to your “Shakespeare at Swanton” video and astounded to watch it.

I’m still pulsing with the world wide web of connections it activated. Parallel surprises of happening upon a relic in the course of searching for lost treasure—lost through fire and aging and through the digital loss of “bitrot” and software updates.

And parallel grief for the losses of Time: 1960’s back-to-the-land hippies turning 80, ’90’s English majors now in their ’40’s, a 2021 forestry student graduated and out in the world.

And the transformation of it all, through memory and art, via the alchemy of Shakespeare.
___________________

March 2024 Postscript: A further variation on the theme of Alex’ video and this post.  Shortly after this entry was written, Cal Poly University erased the whole website which included “Shakespeare at Swanton” from its server. Almost two years later, the site was resurrected from its 404 grave on a different server with a new URL–smarxpoly.net–which allowed for the link here to be reactivated. Thank you, Ty Griffin, for all the work you did to make this happen.

April 6

Sitting in $300/night room in the Westward Look Resort. Discounted for Jan’s semiannual reunion of her 1965 Stanford-in-Germany Group to $150.  I agreed to accompany her since it coincided with our 55^th anniversary the day we arrived and because I remember Tucson as an appealing place from two earlier visits.

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