I then went through Horse Guard's Parade, I wasn't planning to but I saw a Cannelloni painting of it last week so I thought I would anyways. It leads to St. James Park, which is the park that leads up to Buckingham Palace. I had no idea it was so close to Whitehall. I need to explore the parks here more.
My main reason for coming down this way was to go to the Churchill Museum and War Rooms. They're in the basement of a huge fancy building diagonal from Parliament. They were the base for Churchill and the government during WWII and kept completely secret. Supposedly, if the building took a direct hit, it would have collapsed and killed everyone.
The rooms were for the most part untouched since they were vacated. The museum was incredibly well presented, relying just on glass walls separating you from the rooms. Sure they had some mannequins in the rooms, but they didn't have anything ridiculous or unneeded, they just let the rooms do the talking. And it was incredible to be down there, you could feel the war time worries and imagine life down there better than I expected. They were small rooms, not luxurious at all. The maps on the walls with thousands of pinholes were fascinating. This might have been the best museum I've been to.
I decided to stop in the cafe in the bunker for lunch because they were advertising pancakes for £3.50 and today was the actual Pancake Day. I had the berries one and a tea while I read the Prague book. I'm getting pretty excited for Prague, it's definitely going to be a lot different than my UK trips, a lot more exotic.
I then walked down to St. Mary Margret's Church, the Westminster Abbey-run church for the commoners from the 1500's. Winston Churchill was married there and Sir Walter Raleigh is buried there, even if he was such a stupid git. Not the most impressive church I've been to here by any stretch, but it was free, so no complaints. I've also gotten pretty good at sneaking photos of things I'm not supposed to be taking pictures of, including the insides of churches and insides of theaters. If my flash isn't on, who really cares?
I then went down to the Jewel Tower, which along with Westminster Hall is the only things that remain from the original Westminster Hall. The building dates from the 1300s, although it's pretty lame. It's three stories, and the first story basically gives you the history of Parliament. Nothing special. The second gives you a little about the Jewel Tower, but nothing really happened there. They stored Parliament's records and held the official weights and measures. Not exciting. The building itself was in decent shape, but not all that cool. For the £2.30 I paid, it wasn't that bad though, but going to Westminster Hall for free in infinitely better.
I walked back and ate before going down to Shepard's Bush for "Wrecks" at the Bush Gardens. The theater was incredibly small, maybe only 50 people big. I sat in the front. It was a one man play held at a funeral home for a guy wife (spoiler alert: it was also his mother, which I spent the last 15 minutes of the last hoping was not going to be the outcome). I really enjoyed it, the actor was great, he'd walk right up by you, you could smell him smoking. The play was solid too, until the whole aspect came into it at the end and just ruined the whole thing. Dumb. I left angry.
I talked with my DePaul counselor and filled out my degree conferral and talked about being able to walk at graduation. I'm considering giving a speech, although they probably wouldn't let me since I couldn't practice with them in person.
Tomorrow I think my column is going to run, so that's exciting. I don't have the writing class, just a 15 minute meeting with the professor and then the devising class. So no real big plans, maybe one more play at night which would get my caught up, but most likely I won't. Although since I can't think of anything else really to do, that seems like a decent possibility.
I got a pretty funny email from Prof. Conklin. I told him I was going to be in the paper tomorrow and that I was getting $75 an article and he sent me this.
Hey, as long as you're not paying them !!!No, seriously, this is fine. It's great exposure.Let me know if I can help at this end---Olympic stuff, whatever. I just had an Op-Ed piece run in The Tribune last Friday, plus a Sunday magazine piece two weeks ago. I think my payment will be handshakes, so you're doing better than me!!!By the way, I did tell you I am a Tottenham Hot Spurs fan, right?
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