Gone to London to Visit the Queen...

London, it turns out, is a pleasant enough city. It has the feeling of a city that was once somewhat grander than at present. Unlike America, there is a greater emphasis on government support for the arts, which allows poor students the chance to enjoy proper ‘culture’ with relatively few resources. Heidi’s school was near the British Museum (which is free), where we spent many of our weekends studying at the Reading Room (Karl Marx also spent his weekends studying in this room). From the outset, I think we had some inkling that we might soon be bereft of our resources, so we booked ahead shows throughout the year, so at least we would have something prepaid to look forward to. Though we had lived near Chicago, this was the first time we felt that we had such easy access to a wide array of music and theatre and the like. During that year we must have seen two dozen shows of sorts- Puccini, Rachmaninov, Mozart, Handel, Gilbert and Sullivan, Oscar Wilde, etc etc, in addition to the Royal Portrait Gallery, British Museums and the Tates, etc. One of the more enjoyable opportunities for the proles is the BBC-supported Proms- a series of first-come-first-served operas for £4, performed at the Royal Albert Hall. It has always struck us that it is much better to be poor in the rurals than in the city- London provided some exception to this, as there were so many things to do without money. One does, however, get hungry…