Bill and George

Posted on 2007/04/26 08:33:44 (April 2007).

[Monday 23rd April]
So today was not only St. George's Day, but also apparently Shakespeare's birthday is some time around now. Now this would usually be hugely irrelevant, but Chie had heard about an event on at the Globe which she quite wanted to go along to, so this evening we headed down along the river in honour of the bard.

En route we'd wanted to go for a quick drink at the George Inn near Borough Market, but given that it was St. George's Day it was understandably somewhat overcrowded, so instead we went to some other pub just around the corner.

At the Globe they were projecting old black and white silent films on to the outside walls of the theatre (conveniently an off white colour), accompanied by a string quartet and a piano player. Very civilised! Some of the films were as old as 1899, and I particularly enjoyed an Italian version of King Lear, which had been partly hand painted (the costumes were all bright purples and oranges).

Nice as it was I don't have a great deal of patience for this sort of thing, so eventually the novelty wore off and we decided to leave... but for a while at least it was really interesting.

After that we crossed the Millenium Bridge, and the Thames by night was quite enchanting (for want of a better word). St. Paul's and my Grandfather's one time place of work (the Tate Modern) were lit up either side of the river, it was a warm spring night and we could still hear the piano at the Globe in the distance. Really nice.

We fancied another quick drink, so went along the river about to the Blackfriars, and there rather guiltily ended up having a second dinner. They did these giant Yorkshire puddings filled with sausages and vegetables, which was very nice indeed. Particularly with some mustard. Appropriately English food for St. George's Day I feel.

Given that I then felt very bad about that excessive over eating, I decided we should walk back home. It was another nice stroll along the Thames and didn't really take that long.

A very nice night out.

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