Vodafone consumed 2 hrs of tech support time on their in-store "white phone" trying to get MMS working on Perry (never did, fully) and find out why it cost me £8 to check my e-mail using GPRS via my cellphone (need to not download files/content--headers only). The clerk took pity on me and credited me £10 on my acct, although he was just as baffled as I by the MMS problems.
Sitting now at the Hands Tea House on York St. behind the abbey, working down an early lunch of chunky Irish stew of lamb, carrots, baby corn cobs, peas, cauliflower, and barley. I'm missing the big breakfasts I used to get at B&Bs. All this walking makes me hungrier and the cereal and yogurt at the Y just doesn't cut it. It's been two weeks without the egg breakfasts I usually make for myself at home, and I'm missing them.
I have been in a watching mood the past few days, sort of looking for company and just as glad not to have it. A quiet, grieving, inward sort of time, although I don't feel particularly sad about anything. Pensive is closer. Travel puts a lot in and takes a lot out at the same time.
Unlike London, Bath looks the same wherever I go--same basic building style, same basic building materials, same basic cream-colored stone rising like a tide up the hills around the city's core. It's both comforting in its consistency and tedious in its sameness. Only ground floor shopfronts and signage and the new Bath Spa show many 20th-century influences. Time may be frozen in buildings, but definitely not in the people. I loved watching this gal in skirt and heels mop her storefront, and the younger set favor zipping around in micro Mini-Coopers, which are about the size of a roller skate.
I have inadvertently come to Bath at the height of a three-week International Music Festival (mostly chamber music) and the annual Fringe Festival of local arts and music.
Tonight was opening night for the Fringe Festival. Before the first event, I took a table in front of a closed pizzaria in the abbey courtyard and had a dinner of picnic parts I bought today at a French open-air market that had come in for the festival weekend. It took some time to dredge up enough of my weak French to order fruit from one stall, slices of meat from another, and ask about the best cheese to include from a third. The olive vendor had bushels of olives that shoppers could sample. Bought a few of the really hot ones and some with garlic.
I piece-mealed together, literally, an apricot and cherries, 3 slices of salami, soft camembert-like cheese, baguette, cookies, and olives. Shared the bread with a plucky pigeon that ate from my hand and then flapped up to sit on my finger after I'd put it all away. "What, no more?" it was saying. Its feet felt cold on my skin, and the bird was heavier than it looked.
I missed the Fringe's wine and art tour, which was shepherded from one venue to the next by a pudgy fellow who warned his wine-glass-and-yellow-printed-program-toting paying guests to "not be contaminated" by people who weren't part of their group. He was looking straight at me when he said it, for I had followed them into the Podium shopping mall to find out what was going on with a mass of 50 people all crossing the street at the same time.
Actually, I had followed the pink hairdo of a drag queen and his escort. The companion, of average height, was gray haired, portly, dapperly dressed in slacks and suit coat. He took the arm of his much-taller companion, who was replete in 3" patent-leather black stilettos, black fishnet stockings whose seam was crooked at the right ankle, white midthigh skirt, 3/4-length white fur coat with black flecks and wide fold down collar, and (I'm not making this up) a cotton-candy pink pageboy wig.
When they stopped in a department-store doorway to refit the stilettos, I paused to comment in sympathy, "A real pain, those are, aren't they?"
The drag-queen was leaning a hand on her friend's shoulder for balance and working the heel of the stiletto. "Yes," she grunted. "They are." Pale makeup was slathered over a pocked masculine face.
"Have you been at a Fringe Festival opening party?" I asked.
She straightened, readjusted her fur coat, and reclaimed her wine glass from her escort. "We're part of the wine tour, darling," she said in a throaty, lovely upper-crust Brit accent while looking down at me from her stiletto-amped height. "You should come next time."
They rejoined their posh tour while I headed for the festival's main stage.
A set of spiraling stone steps beyond Pultaney Bridge led me to the riverside walk of Avon River and to the main venue of the Fringe Festival--the Orange Speigeltent set up on the cricket field. I arrived late and walked in without a ticket.
The place was standing room only around small tables that circled a stage. A troupe of belly dancers was doing their lovely fluid dance to a blend of Arabian/Indian/Mediterranean music. (So the program said--I can't tell one style from another, let alone recognize a mix of it.)
I took an empty seat at a front table with two 50+ ladies from Bath and Bradford-on-Avon, 2 miles away. It was too noisy to talk even during the break because they had piped-in music for guests to dance to. The floor was filling up with girls and young women, mostly in pairs of friends. My feet wanted to move, but the old gals at my table didn't want to join me. I finally plucked up the courage to get onto the dance floor, hanging around the edge with a few other women who were also dancing alone and inviting them to interact with some success. I felt pretty wooden at first, trying not to compare myself to others, or worse, to those lovely skilled belly dancers whose every movement is sinuousness itself.
The rest of the evening involved single belly dancers. One of them was in her forties, at least, and moved like an 18-year-old. By the enthusiastic reception of the players and other dancers, she was the teacher of the bunch.
I loved watching the energy of the music flow through the dancers--spine, belly, shoulders, hips, arms, wrists, fingers, neck, feet. It was luscious and awesome and inspiring. Ah, to be so free and fluid in my own body. It takes me much effort to tap it unselfconsciously.
