The House Husband

We thought the marionettes doing opera was bizarre enough but tonight we witnessed a truly surreal performance at the Black Light Theatre. We saw an ad for the show yesterday. It promised a fantastic trip beyond Wonderland for little Alice in a show called Aspects of Alice. Loving all things Alice, as I do, this show was a must.

Loving all things Art Nouveau as Mirinda does meant we had to visit the Municipal House (Obecni Dum), said to be the ‘…most exciting Art Nouveau building in Prague…’ by the Rough Guide. They have regular guided tours (in English) and we wanted to be on one. We turned up and we directed to the ground floor information desk and jewellery counter. We were told there was only one tour and it was at 4pm.

What could we do but go and have a coffee in the wonderful cafe upstairs (after buying tickets for the tour). The cafe is incredible. Amazing chandeliers, bevelled mirrors, pink marble…it’s simply beautiful. It reminded me of the Grand Cafe in Oslo only without the need to rip people off and with better coffee. For the prices are extremely reasonable and the staff most attentive.

It was then in search of a tram ticket…and a tram to use it on. The ticket was quite easy. I went down to the Metro station and translated the Czech instructions, buying a 24 hour ticket for about £3. Finding the #22 tram did not prove as easy.

We wandered far and wide, searching for the tram. We did, however, find statues…

Statue of plenty - the Soviet ideal?

…we also found a window, behind which sat two girls having their legs and feet nibbled on by little black fish…

All you can eat...

…and, eventually, we found the tram line we needed. Across the street we watched (as we waited) while a couple of little dogs had a complete disagreement with each other. Their owners thought it was all very funny but the little dogs were deadly serious.

At last, a #22 tram turned up and we hopped on. These trams have a row of single seats down each side and a very wide section in the middle. This is because (I think) most people make only short journeys and don’t bother sitting down. For this reason, the standing room is maximised. It makes sitting together somewhat awkward.

Also there’s a rule in Prague that men have to be chivalrous and give up their seat to women and children. The only seated males I saw seemed to be tourists. None of this ‘please give up your seat to someone less able to stand’ namby pamby rubbish, just a blanket ‘MEN STAND, WOMAN SIT’ rule.

We stayed on the tram all the way to the end of the line and then caught it back (after it did a sort of half circle at the terminus and changed from a nice new one to an old clanky one) to the funicular.

We love a good funicular; we try and find one wherever we go. The beauty of the one in Prague is that the price is included in the 24 hour ticket we bought earlier! How brilliant is that! So, a bargain trip later and we found ourselves inside what appeared to be, a large walled garden.

As you leave the funicular stop at the top, you are confronted, not with a lovely view over Prague, but by a very high wall called the Hunger Wall. It was built a long time ago in order to find some work for the hungry peasants to do.

It was in the 1460s and Charles IV was a bit perplexed. Here he had a whole bunch of starving peasants…what to do with them. One of his advisors suggested getting them to build a massive, 30 foot wall, around the southernmost perimeter of Prague. Genius, thought Charles, and so it was done. I guess all that walking up the hill to work each day and then the subsequent building work took their minds off their rumbling tums.

We wandered around a bit before finding the way out of the walled garden (which, oddly, meant we were once more entering Prague) and found the Rozhledna which is a one fifth copy of the Eiffel Tower. Or so they claim. Mirinda is not convinced.

The Petit Eiffel Tower

It apparently shocked the French when it was built in 1889, and is one of the few remaining exhibits from the 1891 Prague Exhibition – another being the funicular. I decided I had to journey to the top for the spectacular views of Prague. Mirinda stayed at the coffee shop at the bottom and enjoyed a hot chocolate.

To go to the top of the tower, the price was 100KC. For this you could walk up the long, spiral staircase. For an extra 50KC you could catch the lift. It’s very important to realise that 50KC is £1.60. There was no way I was going to climb the stairs. Instead I stepped aboard the Mechano like lift with the bowler hatted young lift attendant who barely stayed awake for the trip.

Generally speaking on this trip so far, we have found the people of Prague happy and friendly (even when scamming the tourists) but this all changes once you climb the mountain and get to the edge of the Hunger Wall. Perhaps these are the (still hungry) descendants of the original builders. I don’t know why but they are particularly surly. Mirinda had a hilarious exchange with the grumpy woman selling souvenirs.

But enough of the miserable workers…the view from the top was outstanding. The tower rises above the trees so you get an uninterrupted view down and across Prague. Sadly it was a cloudy day – on a fine day it must be incredible – but even so, with a couple of the windows open, it was exhilarating.

Charles Bridge from up the hill

The thing was that it shook, from side to side, in the wind. It was quite disconcerting, lining up for a photograph only to have to compensate for the sideways drift of the tower. I’m not exaggerating. I realise it has to move, otherwise it would just fall over in the next big wind, but it is very obvious.

From the tower we decided to take the funicular back down and have a stroll to the Municipal House for the tour. It was quite a long stroll so, by the time we reached our destination, we were forced to have a coffee and a piece of traditional honey cake each in the splendid cafe.

And then the tour. I was ordered (by my wife) to purchase a photographic pass (you are not allowed to take photographs without one and never with a flash) and then instructed to take as many photographs as possible. This could have numbered in the 1,000s.

An incredibly beautiful place. This is a highly recommended tour for anyone interested in beauty. Our tour guide was a bit annoyed by the rude foreigners who spoke loudly in their own language whenever she said anything interesting in English. Actually, she only spoke English so they yabbered loudly most of the time.

There was a very rude Dane this time. He had a little beard and a Smurf-like countenance but beneath this jolly, blue exterior beat a heart of pure rudeness.

I’m only going to include one photograph of the Municipal House (I’ll, more than likely, make an entire album when I get home) and it is of the concert hall. I include it because it is where we are going tomorrow afternoon for a Christmas Eve concert.

Beautifully ornate

Our guide was lovely, and quite funny in a dry, struggling with English kind of way. I didn’t manage to get her name but here she is mid-flow, telling us about a fish tank.

Our tour guide

After the tour we ended up in the American Bar (the oldest in Prague) for a free beer/prosecco before heading out to see Alice.

Every time we walk through the Old Town Square and the Christmas market, we see the stall selling grilled cheese. Apart from the facts that it smells a bit cheesy and we both love cheese, the brightly coloured varieties in the window are ridiculously intriguing. For that reason, we decided we had to try a grilled cheese tonight.

First of all, it is just cheese, grilled, with a piece of bread. They are moulded into little boat-like shapes and sit on the grill receiving an occasional prod and poke from a peasant-ish old woman in the shawl. There is a sign which, quite handily in English, lets the buyer know it is sheep cheese.

Mirinda threw all but one bite of her’s away. Commandeering her piece of bread, I managed to finish mine. As you’d expect it tasted very strongly of sheep cheese but was warm. Alarmingly and unexpectedly, it squeaked as you bit into it. An odd experience that I’ll not be rushing headlong into trying anytime in the future.

Another odd experience, as I have hinted at, at the beginning of this post, was the wonderfully bizarre Aspects of Alice.

It is the story (very loosely) of Alice as she grows up. Here’s a short impression of what I think it was about:

Alice, all giggly and girly, is enticed into joining a scary and slightly evil, magician by means of an apple. This is to show how easily young girls are drawn away from innocence and into a world of strange, grown-up things…I guess.

Having bitten into the apple, Alice discovers she can do all sorts of magical things which mostly consists of flying. (There was a lot of flying and it looked really good.)

During her journey she meets all manner of people. A couple of old giant men who spent a lot of time touching her (they are puppets), two hilarious clowns who teach her to walk on a wobbly pole, unaided (this was my favourite bit), a couple of humanheaded fish (I don’t know why) and two sets of naked female legs.

Now this is where it starts getting a bit adult in nature. During the first half, it’s all very much a child-like entertainment. Possible because Alice is still the child she was. There was at least one child in the audience. But in the second half it all gets a bit steamy. I didn’t see what happened to the child.

After Alice meets the legs, she next sits in a chair, the back of which is a naked back. A second head appears and the two heads float around a bit. This then vanishes (you have to remember this is all live on stage and the effects are very clever) and the evil, scary, magician returns. Also, two naked girls appear.

One of the girls is Alice, the other is…I don’t know, maybe the representation of young Alice. Anyway, they have a bit of stroking fun until, eventually, Alice is alone with the magician. At this stage we realise she is just topless and is, modestly, wearing pants.

Then the magician, using a big bit of material, makes a wedding dress and then a baby, for Alice. Finally, she disappears into a strange pagan symbol.

The whole thing was unexpected and truly surreal. We loved it. Possibly for the wrong reasons. Tomorrow’s concert will be very tame in comparison.

We bought an Alice marionette at the theatre to remind us of the weirdness

According to NY1 (my new favourite TV station) the weather today was set to top the 90 degree mark with the chance of thunder storms and extreme humidity. While there was no thunderstorms that I could see, the temperature was horrific and the humidity was so high, fish were walking along the sidewalks breathing the air.

I woke early and, after my usual breakfast at Roxy’s Diner (famous since 1944 with the motto ‘Take your time hurry up’) hopped on the C train heading uptown to 81st Street. The hotel we’re at is so handy for virtually all the subway trains. It has the added benefit of not being in Midtown.

Unlike the Tube, the subway trains are deliciously air conditioned – it’s like sitting in a fridge. I reckon anyone without air conditioning should just ride on the subway all day. Of course the comfort levels are drastically reduced once you leave, as I did, into the heat of 81st Street.

The New York Museum of Natural History doesn’t open until 10am and I arrived at 9 in order to wander around a bit of Central Park. Actually that sounds a bit random. I’d found out there’s a statue of Alice in Wonderland in the park and was determined to find it.

Central Park is so amazing. Rolling hills, lakes, woodland, open grass. A true oasis in the heart of Manhattan. And there’s always lots of people enjoying it. Joggers, mothers with babies, school groups playing football and learning to dribble…actually I sat on a bench for a bit and watched this guy painstakingly explaining to a group of toddlers how to dribble a ball into the net.

He started at one end with a small football at his feet, telling them to take little steps and just tap the ball in front of them, approaching the small goalposts. He demonstrated as he spoke, taking tiny steps until he stood about a foot from the goal and then, with the instruction to score, booted it into the back of the net. He then turned around and told the first little girl to have a go.

She looked a lot like Shirley Temple, all curls and cute little dress. Her foot was resting professionally on the ball, her face a study in concentration. She lifted her foot and kicked the ball straight at the goal, scoring effortlessly. The guy smiled grimly and told her, while it was a great goal, it she hadn’t quite grasped dribbling.

She was about four and she looked at the guy as if to say there was no way she was slowly walking towards the goal in the heat when she could just as easily kick it from where she stood.

Anyway, eventually I found the Alice statue but, to my massive disappointment, it was undergoing some sort of surgical procedure by park staff and had been roped off. This is as close as I could get. Thank goodness I had my new camera!

Alice in Central Park

You can see the White Rabbit, Alice (who looks rather demonic), the Cheshire Cat behind her, the Doormouse on her lap and the Mad Hatter to the right. Such a pity I couldn’t get closer! Clearly I will have to visit New York again.

The heat of the day was rapidly growing as I wandered back across the park to the Natural History Museum. I gladly entered its air conditioned arms, paid my entrance fee and wandered up to the dinosaurs.

Up on the 4th floor there is the largest collection of dinosaur fossils in the world and I wandered around, eyes wide, taking in the wonders. Here’s just a couple of them.

Dinosaurs at the New York Museum of Natural History

And, of course, I had to go and look at the rocks. The museum has the largest piece of meteorite in any museum in the world. It’s called (yes, it actually has a name) Ahnighito and is just a bit of an original one that fell to earth thousands of years ago in Greenland. It’s solid iron and weighs 34 tons. It is seriously big!

Further along the rocks galleries, they have lots of amazing displays showing all sorts of crystallization and gemstones. One quite extraordinary rock is a piece of mesolite from New Jersey, which looks like it’s covered in white hair.

Mesolite from New Jersey

From the rocks (I won’t bore you with any more about the rest of the marvellous things I saw) I went downstairs to the Hall of Human Origins where a cast of Lucy as well as Turkana Boy and the Flores (the so called Hobbit) were displayed.

Interestingly, Lucy didn’t look nearly as good as when I saw the real one in Houston! Still, the display of our ancestors, gradually moving through the millennia is excellent.

I was pretty much museum-ed out by this time so I went to the cafe for a coffee then trawled the museum shop. Quite apart from the size of the museum, the shop has to be the largest one I’ve ever seen! It covers three floors and has an incredible amount of stock. And that’s just the main shop. There’s another, smaller shop upstairs with the dinosaurs. Very American, I must say, and not in a bad way!

Stepping outside onto Central Park West was like walking into porridge. I stopped at a street vendor for a lovely New York pretzel then headed back to the subway and, eventually, to the hotel room for a good cool off.

I figured this was about my day over and was preparing to go and eat something when I had a text from Dawn asking me if I was anywhere near the High Line. She’d read about it in a magazine and thought it looked incredible. I looked it up online and decided to head on out again to see it for myself.

It wasn’t near me but was a subway ride to 23rd Street, which I managed like a native, and a wander down to 10th Avenue where the vision of an elevated railway line overgrown with wild flowers and people hits you as incongruously as it sounds.

Originally built in 1930s, it was a railway line for freight trains, lifted 30 feet into the air in order to avoid putting it along the streets of Manhattan. In 1980 it was no longer used and in 1999 it was under threat of demolition until a group of people calling themselves the Friends of the High Line managed to save it and turned it into a long, elevated garden.

It’s a wonderful use of space and preserves the structure which is wrought iron however, the noise from the streets below and the lack of shade, makes it a bit of an odd thing. I guess as the plants grow, the shade will increase but the traffic noise isn’t about to disappear any time soon. However, as a way to walk through the meatpacking district of New York, it’s certainly an improvement on street level!

A section of the High Line, New York

Obviously, Mirinda would have been very interested but there’s no way she’d have walked along it in the heat. I could only manage half of it before taking a set of steps back down to 24th Street then catching the subway back to the hotel.

I had a text from Mirinda saying she was hiding in the toilet because the conference was so boring. I guess her day hasn’t been as nice as mine.

No lunch with Mirinda this week as she had a meeting booked right across it. So I stayed at home and wrote some test scripts for my dissertation. Who’da thunk it? All those years of being a tester have come in handy after all.

Though cloudy most of the day, we’ve had only little spits of rain every now and then. For breaks, therefore, I weeded and planted some snapdragons. I also took the poodles to the park. Carmen had an FSI! Annoying dog. She also freaked out when a golden retriever tried to sniff her butt. Day-z jumped into my arms but Carmen was left running in circles around me, her tail down as this big dog eagerly tried to sniff her. It makes a change from her snapping at other dogs and embarrassing me!

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I’ve just realised I forgot to give my review of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland that we watched on Saturday. So…

For anyone that doesn’t know, I’m a big Alice fan. I’ve read both books many times and even sat on Alice Liddell’s grave! I’ve also seen the secret garden in Oxford where she played with her sister. I’ve visited the Alice Shop in Oxford which was the original inspiration for the shop in Looking Glass where the sheep is knitting. Of course, there are lots of Lewis Carroll stuff in Guildford because he lived with his aunt there for a while. I’ve stood at his grave on the Mount and smiled at his gentle genius. So, yes, I’m a big fan.

I sat down to watch Burton’s version with some trepidation. I knew beforehand that it was about an older Alice and that both books had been amalgamated to create a new adventure. These things didn’t really bother me. The characters are so wonderful, an attempt to move the story forward in time is a tribute to Carroll’s masterpieces. In this, I think Burton succeeded. His Alice doesn’t remember the Wonderland of her childhood and this gives the director an opportunity to re-introduce her (and us) to all the ‘Underland’ characters, as if for the first time. An excellent device.

The look of the film is fantastic. Exactly as it should be. A magical place with a hint of foreboding. Like Alice, we should not know what to expect. Speaking of Alice (Mia Wasikowska), I thought she was terrific. Her gradual growth (not literally!) was cleverly accomplished by both director and actor. I believed she was an older Alice.

One of the main problems Burton has is his continual use of both Helena Bonham-Carter and Johnny Depp. I reviewed Sweeney Todd a while ago and thought they were terribly miscast. Not this time. Helena, particularly. She is tremendous as the Red Queen. Johnny Depp, too, was a great Mad Hatter.

With so many great actors in the film, mostly as voices for animated characters, it’s difficult to pick any single one out. As for animated characters, the Cheshire cat was superb. The way it slowly vanished into smoke was exactly as I’ve always imagined it. Beautifully voiced by Stephen Fry as well.

A big surprise was Anne Hathaway as the White Queen. What a ditz! She was tremendous. Loved her performance. I can’t forget the Tweedles. Marvellous Matt Lucas.

And so, I really enjoyed the film, but…of course there’s a but and it’s a big one. Actually there’s a big but and a quibble. Firstly the quibble.

I’m not sure why the Red Queen had playing cards for her soldiers. I have no problem with her being the ‘baddie’ rather than the Queen of Hearts, even though it was the latter who always said “Off with his head!“. I cannot understand why the cards, though. It makes no sense. Especially when the White Queen had chess pieces for her army. Small, but annoying. There was also a mistake in the flash back sequence but, at the moment, I can’t remember it.

My big problem with the film as a sequel to Alice is the format. The thing about the two Alice books is that they are made up of a series of adventures that Alice goes through. Both have an ending (the garden party and trial in Wonderland, Alice being made a queen in Looking Glass) but neither is a struggle for good and evil with a hero needed to save the goodies from evil. And this is what Burton created. A typical fantasy film where an unlikely hero is needed to thwart an evil threat hanging over a once peaceful place. Works fine in Narnia, Lord of The Rings, and any number of other fantasy stories. I think it’s an easy option and rather sad given Burton’s early skills of personality films (think Edward Scissorhands).

Anyway, Mirinda thinks I’m wrong. She loved it. And, to be fair, I loved it as a film. Just not as an Alice.

The day started quite grey but gradually the clouds were chased away and the sun shone weakly out of a blue day.  A very chill wind blew across the higher parts of the park!

The weather reports above are more for my benefit than anyone else’s.  I decided to include one with every post.  And then Mirinda bought me a weather station for Christmas.  Once I have it erected and running, up to the minute weather will be beamed directly to my PC.  Just think how boring THAT will get!  Wind speed, wind chill, dewpoint, humidity, blah, blah, blah.  I may have to change the blog name to ‘skip the first para’.

And so today I tested the weather station.  I’m going to have to build a structure for it to sit on but I needed to test the wi-fi signal from the bottom of the garden.  It worked just fine.  Now I need a 2.4 metre post and few bits and brackets and the GazWeatherWatch can begin.

Mirinda was a lot sicker today.  Mostly because she’s sick of being sick.  This involves trying to sleep but even getting bored with that.  In fact, last night, the latest symptom was insomnia.  And dry eyes.  I was working upstairs on my DITA assignment when I realised she’d finally dropped off to sleep.  I figured I’d come downstairs and leave her to it, knowing my typing would wake her.

My day wasn’t very interesting today.  I went into town to buy dinner and spoke to Alex in Starbucks.  Her cat ate half her Christmas dinner and is now full of chicken and she didn’t get any Christmas presents because they are waiting for her in Schumania where she’s returning for a holiday in January.  And that was about it.  Not forgetting the two old ladies who asked me if Waitrose was open.

We watched most of Alice in Wonderland on channel 5 – the one with Woopi Goldberg as the Cheshire Cat.  I find it amazing that people mix and match bits from Wonderland and Looking Glass to make a single film.  It’s quite clearly a sequel.  I wonder if Tim Burton is thinking that.  Even so, it’s an enjoyable adaptation and Tina Majorino is a delightful Alice.  I do wonder why they decided to put her in a yellow pinafore.  And the striped stockings were in Looking Glass and not Wonderland.  Still.  Gene Wilder made a sorrowful Mock Turtle and Miranda Richardson was fabulous as the Queen of Hearts.  I have seen it before, of course.

And then to the park to watch as Carmen and Day-z chased a poor, frightened, ten times bigger than them, Labrador while it screamed in terror.  Oh, dear.  Naturally I apologised and told the girls they were bullies while smiling inside.  If the Lab had stopped and started chasing them, the pair of them would have run a mile and hidden, shaking and squealing.

Like yesterday, there were quite a few people roaming about and I saw a few of our neighbours taking the early evening air, shivering in the chill wind!

The poodles taking a break on a bench

I am now going to return to my DITA assignment.  I haven’t really written JavaScript for about five years!  I must concentrate!

Oh dear, Mirinda just sneezed about eight times.  I fear she may be awake again.