London: The trip so far

Our story begins at JFK, and our departure from New York. I was peer-pressured by people who were, ironically, much older than me, into buying some duty-free hooch to take with me on the trip. To be fair, everyone WAS doing it! :) I assumed there would be plenty of time to enjoy and share on the plane, but the guy I ended up sitting with also bought a bottle of whisky and kept refilling my glass from his bottle, so I never really got the chance to break into mine. So now I have this bottle of Maker's Mark and I don't really know what to do with it. Oh well, I guess either the opportunity will present itself, or I'll take it home with me (if I can even do that).

At any rate, the flight was rather uneventful, and far less painful than I thought it would be, for a 7-hour flight (perhaps the booze helped). All of the seats had their own little TV with a menu of movies, TV shows and games that helped pass the time. I had expected to sleep most of the time, but I think I only got maybe 2 or 3 hours at most. Not actually a good thing, since we left at 6:30pm, and would be arriving at 6:30am local time, with a full day ahead of us. Likewise, getting through Customs was quick and uneventful, aided by the fact that we were able to use the group travel line and get through all at once. Then it was onto the bus and off to our first destination...

...Which was Windsor Castle. We actually got done so fast at the airport that when we arrived, the castle wasn't even open yet. It was pretty nifty, and hard to imagine that people still actually live in this building furnished with 900 years worth of furnings in it. After the castle, we had tons of time to explore the town surrounding the castle a bit, and then we were off to our lodgings. There wasn't enough money to get a group our size into a hotel, so we're staying in a hostel that's mainly used for Scout troops. Basically, the rooms are like dorm rooms, only possibly smaller, with a bathroom the size of an airplane bathroom that somehow has a shower crammed into it. We had an awful dinner at the hostel (if you didn't know already, British food is shit), and then I ventured off to explore the neighborhood we're staying in.

First of all, the weather is beautiful. It was high 80s in New York when I left, and it's upper 60s in London, so it's like I just got off a plane that landed in Fall. I wandered past Hyde Park and happened upon our Kensington store, so I popped in to have a look. It was funny to see that all the new venues that have been popping up in the new stores we're opened stateside were all clearly copied exactly from this store. I wandered about some more and passed by the V & A museum right next to the hostel, which was open late, so I spent a little time there. It was a pretty cool museum, and at least it kept me awake a bit longer. By that point I was pretty exhausted, having been up for more than 24 hours, but not wanting to sleep until at least 9 or 10 to beat the jetlag. I wish that I could say I had an amazing, well-deserved sleep, but the 10-year-old girls running around screaming in the hallway, and the horrible springy mattress with only about an inch of padding proved otherwise. But it was enough.

Saturday we were up bright and early to do all the typical touristy London things - a walking tour for photo ops at Westminster Abbey, Big Ben & the Houses of Parliament, the changing of the guard, and the Tower of London. It really is spectacular seeing the crown jewels, and yet also a little frightening when you think about how much they're really worth and how all that money could've been better spent over the enturies. That night a group of us decided to see a show on the West End. We sent one person to go get tickets to Joseph from TKTS, but when he got there, the only available options were Zorro, and Buddy: The Musical. Buddy it was. Oh dear. It was possibly the worst thing I've ever seen, even worse than you might think a jukebox musical about the life of Buddy Holly might be. It was so bad that it actually became rather entertaining, especially with the group of queens from the choir I was with. Let's just say there was a lot of clutching of pearls when the actor playing Richie Valens came out in his stretch pants and started shaking his hips (and other such things)...

Sunday, our last day in London, was church and more church (exciting, huh?). We went to Westminster Abbey for Sunday eucharist, and watched a choir from New Zealand in the shoes we're about to fill at Salisbury cathedral tomorrow. They were pretty good, but didn't blow us away for sure. It was a choir of men and boy sopranos, so I did get a kick out of the old-timey frilly high collars the boys wore. Later that afternoon, we headed to Southwark cathedral for evensong, which is where we really got our confidence back, meaning the choir there suuuuuucked. They even did one of the pieces we're going to be doing, and we know we can do better. One of our choir members even fell asleep on her feet at the service, and had to literally be caught from falling down!

Tonight was probably the best night thus far. A group of us went for Indian at a nearby restaurant and really bonded. I felt like I really connected with some of these folks for the first time, and it made me really glad to be here with this particular group of people, and not a bunch of assholes like so many other choirs. At one point in the evening, someone asked me if I could do anything in the world, would I want to sing full-time, and my answer was unequivocably, "no." I wasn't a surprise to me, but it was sort of good to say it out loud and to talk to some people who understand where I'm coming from and feel the same way as I do - that singing is something I do for me; that it's an avocation and not a career. I need the stability of a fulltime job, and something that I do just for me that is a creative outlet that in unmarred by the stress that comes from a job. I had a similar talk with my friend Jean in the summer, and I know that my life is as it should be in that matter. It's sometimes hard to reconcile those two worlds, though, and it's something I've been struggling with a bit lately, so it was nice to hear that I have peers who feel the same way, and that it's ok to not want to have a fulltime music career. This doesn't mean I'm going to stop singing, or that the singing I do is never going to be anything more than what I'm doing now, it just means I need to do what I want to do and not worry about it.

Right, anyway, tomorrow we head off to Salisbury and our first gig. Wish me luck!