Posts Tagged “London”

On my last day in London, I dropped in at the Tate Modern. Like many London museums, the Tate does not charge an admission fee, so it’s perfectly reasonable to just pop in to check out one exhibition or even just to get out of the rain. I stumbled upon Doris Salcedo’s installation, Shibboleth. Almost literally. Salcedo’s work is a crack in the gallery floor that widens to a small chasm and branches once or twice as it runs the length of the turbine hall.

The work is entirely negative space. It certainly makes you wonder how it was “installed” and how it’s going to be “removed” at the end of its run. Except for the handy warning signs, it’s an act of subtraction, and an engaging one, too. People were getting down on the floor to take pictures or stick their hands down into the crack. I was pleasantly surprised to see no litter in there.

In case you are not a professional logophile or a biblical scholar, a shibboleth is a shared idea, a buzzword or even a joke that helps people identify members of their in group. Wikipedia has the whole story, which begins with ancient Gileadites killing 42,000 Ephraimites as they tried to cross the Jordan river. The Ephraimites were distringuishable by their inability to pronounce “shibboleth” to the exacting standards of Gileadite diction.

I suppose this bloody bit of history is recalled in Salcedo’s use of a chasm, a crack that looks like it will cleave the gallery in two, as a stand-in for the river Jordan. Those who don’t know the password - or those who don’t get the joke - might be killed crossing it.

When I ran across The Fryer’s Delight, I was actually on my way to Lamb’s Conduit Street, where a guidebook had suggested I might find some nice restaurants. Leaving aside why I stopped for fish & chips instead, let me say that “Lamb’s Conduit Street” is one of the coolest street names I’ve run across anywhere. It’s even better than Einbahnstrasse.

I returned on my final night in London, and found myself in a pub with the almost as interesting name of “The Perseverance.” The website gives no indication of how they chose the name, but I settled in for a cider - Kopparberg Swedish pear cider over ice - and perused the menu.

“Our menu is based on traditional pub fayre; it is home made, freshly prepared honest pub grub at reasonable prices,” claims the website. Note sure if anything in London seems reasonably priced on the lousy dollar these days, but I ordered leek and bacon soup and salmon-haddock fishcakes.

For some reason I was expecting a thick, creamy or potatoish soup with crumbled bacon. I was wrong but not disappointed. The soup was not too think, definitely not creamy, and had real leek flavor without too much of anything else. Except bacon. There were good sized bits of thick smoky bacon in the soup. The cibatta and English butter made the prospect of a main course a little worrying.

The salmon and haddock fishcakes (with homemade tartar sauce) were served on some of the best greens I’d had in a week in London. The cakes themselves were full of good-sized chunks of both fishes and potatoes, too. Not spicy like a crabcake, but hardly bland. The salmon added interest to what might have been a too-predictable pub dish. Very satisfying. I’m glad I persevered.

It happened again.  I got asked for directions.  So what, you ask?  Well, I was in London, where as you may know, I do not live, or even visit all that often.  In fact, I had been in London fewer than 24 hours when I got asked, and was in the middle of the not very English act of jaywalking.  Indeed, I was at the precise moment when I was asked for directions, lost.

Woman with English accent:  “Pardon me, do you know where the British Museum is?”

Me (best American accent, hammed up a bit): “Lady, I don’t even know where I am.”

This happens to me a lot at home and on the road - it’s even happened in Asia - and I often wonder why.  Do I look especially trustworthy or knowledgeable?  How could I look like a native in so many different places?  I must have somewhere along the line lost my New York City “I’m walking here, don’t bother me” mojo.

If you find it, please tell me where it is.  I may need directions to find it.