Music Tour- Day Ten

The previous night, Stevie J had told us that breakfast would be served at 8, so I planned to get up at 7.45. I changed my mind, however, and got up at 7.30am instead. This turned out to be a good thing: at 7.48am Stevie J came to our room and told us that the buses were waiting for us! We hurriedly made our final preparations to set off. Unfortunately, the clothes we had hung up to dry didn’t dry properly and were instead starting to stink, so we all had to set off smelling odd.

When we got to the ground floor, Tori said that about 10 people were late, so at least it wasn’t just our room. Everyone was equally confused. When we got on the bus, some of the chaperones were “tut-tutting” us and other people said, “Well, you guys took your time!” The ten of us who were late were understandably annoyed. After a little bit of asking around, we managed to piece together what had happened.

We were the first bus back, so Stevie J was simply telling us the original plan for the next day. After everyone went off to their rooms, the adults on our bus went to the shops so they missed out on being told the change of time. By the time they found out, they assumed that all of us had been told. We weren’t: some people went around door-knocking the next morning at 7.30am warning everyone that they had to be on the buses by 7.45am, but they missed two rooms: my room of 4, and Jess B’s room of 6. In any case, I’m one of those people who isn’t comfortable when things don’t go to plan, so this didn’t go down too well for me.

We set off for Westminster Abbey. Wind Orchestra set up facing an orchestra from New Zealand. The three songs we practised were our “war memorial” songs- three slow songs that sap all of your breath if you’re playing a wind instrument. They were Handel’s Largo, Blessed Are They and Well Met, My Own True Love. After practising, we went outside and I began to nibble on some of the biscuits in my brown paper bag- the only breakfast I got that day (this was possibly the first day in my life in which I didn’t have breakfast). I was told to put my clarinet in the pile of instruments to be loaded on the instrument van so that I didn’t have to carry it around London. I did, and watched the instruments being loaded onto the van until mine was safely loaded on. As I watched, I felt an odd sensation: I felt a sense of loss as my clarinet was parted from me.

We then set off in our bus groups to explore London. Our group went shopping for a bit and then to the park outside Buckingham Palace for lunch. If I remember correctly, we heard a fanfare and could make out the shapes of soldiers marching near the palace. After that, we went to Oxford Street and, while we were at H & M, we saw a protest march pass by. When we were done shopping at H & M, we went into another shop and then took the tube to St. Paul’s Station. We stopped off at a café to have milkshakes before heading off for St. Paul’s Cathedral.

St. Paul’s cathedral has several floors. The first long flight of steps took us up to a ring-shaped floor called the “Whispering Gallery” because apparently whispers can be heard from the other side. Julia O came up here with us, but when we went up to the next gallery, she went down because she’s scared of heights. Jess C went down as well to keep her company. I can’t remember what the next gallery was called, but it was outdoors and afforded a good view. The last gallery was called the Golden Gallery, and to get there, you had to go up lots of metal steps above… the unknown. It was a little scary at times, particularly because you were trapped in a way: you couldn’t go up or down  because so many people were in the way. At the top, I walked around the Golden Gallery, took a few photos, and bumped into the attendant at the exit who was trying to get as many people to go down as she could so that more people could come up. I told her to tell my group that I’d gone down.

At the bottom, we saw Jess C and Julia O waiting for us. They told us that they could hear Stevie J talking through the headsets so they were eavesdropping on them as much as they could.

When everyone was downstairs, we headed back for the tube station. First, we took the train to Bank and then took the Waterloo and City line to Waterloo. The Waterloo and City line is the best train line ever- it only has two stations! Waterloo Station itself is huge as it also houses trains going around England, so we got lost looking for the correct bus. We ended up having to take lots of tube trains until we finally found the right bus! At the end we were exhausted from public transport, and were grateful for getting back to the hostel. We had some time to get ready for watching Wicked, which was a really good musical and had everyone saying, “That was wicked!!” at the end of it.

Music Tour- Day Nine

Friday was the day we travelled to Bath via Stonehenge.

As we left, we got a view of the Buckingham Palace gardens. Angus said, “Now here’s a photo opportunity I’m not going to miss!” and got out his camera, but soon a bus came and blocked his view. “Oh no!” Angus exclaimed. “Bloody bus!”

We had a rest stop on the way to Stonehenge. At the rest stop, some of the boys had decided to annoy Scotty. They asked me to help by taking his bag and hiding it under the bus. I didn’t do that, but I did run around the buses until I lost him and then ran back on the bus and hid his bag in the toilet. When Scotty got back on the bus, I had to tell him where I put his bag.

Eventually we got to Stonehenge. It was a lot smaller than most people expected it to be. We were given headsets but I don’t think anybody listened to all of the information- there probably wasn’t time anyway. We took several pictures of people in such a way that it looked as if they were holding up Stonehenge with their arms and also a couple of pictures of sheep on the hillside. (Yes, we went to Stonehenge to take pictures of sheep.)

After an hour or so, we set off for Bath. Our first stop in Bath was Parkview Gardens, where we gave a concert for an hour. Halfway through the concert, Jonty went to the cathedral in Bath because Mr Hey said that there was going to be a special Good Friday Mass there. Unfortunately, it turned out that it was cancelled or something so he had to come back and play Marche des Parachutistes Belges. His piccolo wasn’t warmed up so it was extremely out of tune when he had to play. Poor Jonty!

After the concert, some of us left our instruments for the chaperones to look after while we had a guided tour of Bath, which didn’t last for very long. At the end, we had a little bit of time to get an ice cream and watch a horse and carriage tour pass by. Right before we went back on the bus, I asked if there was a toilet nearby because I wanted to avoid using the bus toilet as much as possible, but it was probably going to be a fair distance considering we had to be on the buses soon. In any case, there was going to be a stopover on the way back.

When we were near the buses, I got my clarinet back from the chaperone. When I got on the bus, Alastair had given us another reason to avoid bus toilets.

He dropped one big stinker in there.

Additionally, the bus toilet wasn’t a vacuum toilet: it was worse. It was one of those toilets that had a flap which opens directly over the septic tank, so you can smell of the contents when you flush.

Everyone was cursing Alastair for stinking up the back of the bus. Eden sprayed Eau de Cologne everywhere.

After most of the smell had diminished, Stevie J came on the bus holding a Buffet R13 case, asking for me! I was dumbfounded: I thought I had already put my clarinet into the overheads! Upon further inspection, I saw that Stevie J was indeed holding my clarinet. Confused, I opened the overhead locker and took down… Adrienne’s clarinet! Everyone had a good laugh at the confusion between the identical clarinet cases.

Finally, we set off. On the way, Eric had motion sickness, giving us yet another reason not to go into the bus toilet. At this point, I decided that I would do whatever I could to avoid having to clean toilets for a living.

Eventually, we stopped off at the rest stop, and, after making a massive fool of myself when I bought food, we set off for the youth hostel for the night.

Music Tour- Day Eight

The towels that were meant to have arrived the night before were still missing. Apparently there were some communication problems between head office and the youth hostel. In the end, Jenny (one of the chaperones) had to go out and buy over 100 hand towels using the emergency money.

That day, we set out for the Globe Theatre. We went around in groups. The lady who showed us around said that the original Globe Theatre burned down 14 years after its construction in the Great Fire of London. The Globe Theatre that stands today is an fairly accurate replica built by following blueprints and drawings of the original Globe. The main differences between the current Globe and the original Globe are the exits: there are fire doors and more of them. (In fact, quite a lot of doors that I saw in London were fire doors.) We went inside the actual theatre itself and the lady explained that you only had to pay a penny to stand on the lowest level of the theatre, and it was often crowded. People on the upper tiers would yell insults at the people on the bottom such as “Penny-stinkers!” or something like that.

After having a look inside the theatre, we were taken to another building a short way down the road. We went through some acting exercises and we were shown an example of a script during Shakespeare’s time. Actors wouldn’t get the full script- they’d just get a cue script, consisting of the actor’s lines and the last words spoken before each of the actor’s lines. We all had a go at using cue scripts. It was pretty difficult because I felt that I was concentrating too hard on listening for the cue words and not really taking in everything that was being said. Another difficulty was that a character might tell a character not to grab on to them, and since cue scripts don’t have actions written on them, people only realised that they were meant to grab on to another person after the line was said.

We had lunch in a small park next to the Globe Theatre overlooking the Thames. We got a good view of the Millennium Bridge- in fact, it was almost directly in front of us.

Our itinerary said that we were going to walk to Australia House for our next concert, but we ended up driving instead- probably because of all of the instruments and concert uniforms that had to be transported. Apparently the parts of Harry Potter involving Gringotts were filmed in Australia House.

We had to get dressed in partitioned-off corners of the basement floor, which not everyone was too keen on doing since if you stood at the right angle you could probably see inside the other gender’s dressing corner (no, I didn’t try this). After getting changed, some people began warming up their instruments. One of the Low Foul Winds decided to play an ostinato on their instrument- F, C, F, C, F, C, F C D E. Cookie then joined in with “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” in the altissimo register (the high squeaky one). Senior Wind Orchestra played Pastime with Good Company, Fantasy on an Australian Folk Song and probably one or two others as well which I’ve forgotten. After the concert, some people were able to meet up with relatives.

We boarded the buses yet again, this time our destination being the London Eye, a.k.a. giant Ferris wheel. While waiting for the bus to leave, I saw the London School of Economics through the window. I took a picture of it for Mrs Reilly, the enthusiastic economics teacher who went on Canberra Tour with me (I felt sorry for her, but then again I feel sorry for anyone who has to go on the same plane as me). Then it was off to the London Eye.

The queue was hideous, even though our tickets were pre-bought. The queue was actually in two parts, and there were people in the first section who would highlight the tickets so that when you went to the second part the people there would be able to see that you weren’t a queue jumper. We boarded in groups of about 10. Due to the size of the wheel, and the fact that it had to go slow enough for people to get off and on, it took a while to get to the top. Julia O had a fear of heights but she was brave about it and got on anyway. Finally, it was back to the hostel for dinner and sleep. By this time, the hostel didn’t seem so bad after all. It must have just been the shock of the first night.