Then on to the Castle. As you would suppose, buss-loads and buss-loads and buss-loads of people pour into Windsor to visit the castle. The line goes on forever.
But when you are not a tour member, you go to a different entrance, guided by the regal scepter of her majesty-you-know-who:
On Sundays you cannot visit St Georges Chapel, and I was OK with that, but then I saw a "Tour of the Kitchens" placard. Yes! I go over and am ready to sign up when I am told you need a separate £8 ticket (over and above the £28 admission charge) and you cannot buy it there, no, you have to go back to the entrance where the busloads of people are streaming in. OK, so you can buy it there if the QR process works. It is in Beta. After accepting more information than anyone could possibly need: name, title, (title?) address, year of birth (year of birth?), phone number, and so on and so on, and all this on the phone, on which people my age to not enjoy typing, it gets to the credit card number. I do not have my card with me and auto-fill does not work, so that was the end of that. I was so annoyed, I cannot tell you. Then there were the Marsh Gardens for £2 extra, same process. No kitchen tour, no gardens, but a gift shop everywhere you turn your head. Every arrow I followed...to see the Doll House, the Apartments, and I forget what else, led you in a circle. You just ended up in the same bloody place. The one moment of interest was seeing the changing of the guard:
This involved a lot of stamping of feet and precision gun-lifting movements, more stamping of feet, some shouting, and yes, the guard stands as still as a stone for how ever long his shift is. It is intriguing to watch, but there is something almost obscene about the whole process and what it stands for. What does it stand for?!
After that short display, and due to my escalating irritation, I left—without seeing anything other than the guards—five all together—bought a loaf of seeded sour dough, dropped it off at the hotel and went for a walk.
It did not talk long to walk the length of Queen Charlotte Street:
Hunger drove me to lunch after which I went on a walk through the outskirts of Eton.
Some blackberries were ripe for the picking:
where they play honest-to-goodness cricket and which were made even more famous by the scathing retort Harold Abrahams gives to the professors at Cambridge in Chariots of Fire (a must see movie) who accuse him of "denaturizing the amateur spirit of sports to his own personal interest" (robbed that phrase from somewhere) for having employed a coach. The retort goes something like, "And you who grew up on the playing fields of Eton consider yourselves to be without advantage?"
Months ago, I had purchased a ticket to Michael, at the Royal Windsor Theatre, which happened to be around the corner of my hotel. All I could think when I arrived was COVID and I did not bring a mask and here I am packed in amidst a ton of people. This will be my death. I buried my face in my raincoat and watched 45 minutes of a guy who asked to be "liked" on FB and Instagram, clunking around the stage, in an effort to impersonate Michael Jackson. Just for starters, he was physically way to big to be convincing, and he totally lacked fluidity. The super-smiley support dancers could have been recruited from the rejects of a high-school cheerleading squad. All in all, the performance was comically amateurish. The audience seemed not to mind. At the 20 minute intermission (with 50 minutes more to follow) I departed.
What a cranky day!
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