Passing Seasons

The nice thing about living near downtown in London is that around every corner, there is something of historical or national or otherwise significance. Take today, for example. I had some errands to run. I went to the stationary store, dropped by the post office, and then took and hour-long swing through the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square. Oh, and that's the other nice thing about London: most of the big museums are free. Which is great for amateurs like me, because I can cope with about an hour of art-looking, and then I get bored. Since it's free though, I can take short jaunts through on different days and get to see much more that way - honestly, if I had to shell out 10 pounds at every museum, I'd probably just do without the art experience. Although I also have to admit that I haven't been into any given museum more than once yet - there's so many around, I feel like I might as well see a new one instead. So far: the British Museum, the Tate, the National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery, and...was there more? Probably...they all meld together after a while.

Last week I had happened by the crypt of the church of Saint Martin in the Fields - just off Trafalgar Square - where a photocopied sign noted that there would be a performance of Vivaldi's Four Seasons on the following Saturday night, tonight. I'd heard of St. Martin in the Fields before, largely due to a music academy of the same name whose performances frequently populate the air time of classical music stations everywhere. I'm not a huge fan of classical music, but if you know any classical pieces, you'd know the Four Seasons - if for no other reason, then because a large proportion of the 12 movements have been cribbed into the advertising world. I know this piece well - played a couple of abridged movements during my viola days, if nothing else.

So I went. I sat back in the cheap seats ("no view of the performers" warns the box office before you buy the 6-pound tickets), and even from there it was a stunning performance. The church is darkened to just candle light (ok, electrical candle light) for this concert series, and the 300 year-old walls echo with music not much older or younger than that. It was beautiful. It made me love London and miss home all at once.

Afterwards, I was walking back up Charing Cross Road (my flat is virtually a straight shot down Charing Cross/Tottenham Court Road from Trafalgar Square), stopped in a Borders Books (yes, they have those here too, often not far from the nearest Starbucks, *sigh*), then turned a corner to find dozens of people glaring at the sky. Because people are generally just glorified sheep, I felt the need to look up too. Rappeling from the top of the Centre Point highrise were two people, one hanging loose and the other sitting on a makeshift platform. I watched them come down 20 or so stories, and I believe they had started higher than that. I am completely mystified as to what this exercise was about. I figure it was either a failed suicide attempt or some kind of performance art. Given that someone was playing thumping techno music in the background, I'm going to assume it was performance art.

That was it for Saturday, except that I made a couple of phone calls to the States - through one of which I found out that one of my credit cards has been used fraudulently to order $3000 jewelry from Italy over the internet. Several other charges were also attempted, but all were rejected because whoever did it had the wrong expiration date. The account has been closed with minimal damage (none of the charges actually went through, so I'm pretty safe), but I have to wonder. Really. When you order something over the internet (say, for example, a $3000 brooch from Italy), don't you have to give a delivery address? And with the seller's computerized records, wouldn't that make tracking down the perp kind of a no-brainer? There must be something I'm missing here. In any case, this whole thing is a bit sobering, because of my other cards are also compromised, I'm kind of dead-in-the-water from a financial perspective until my financial aid check turns around - probably still 3-4 weeks from now. That's a bridge I'll cross if I ever come to it.