As you Like It

Although overproduction is a word that fails to feature in any of Shakespeare’s opus, it is a word that is often used when American Culture or society is criticised. I was thinking about this when I attended the July 4th Independence Day celebrations.

To start with the city seemed to be hosting TWO firework shows, one over Elliott Bay and another over lake Union. Considering that at least half the resident population had already bought fireworks of their own to let off in their back yards this may already seem like one more than necessary.

I attended the Lake Union event in Gas Works Park and since Krissie is working at a theatre run by an organisation that helps to put on this event we benefited from V.I.P tickets and a sit down meal at the water’s edge. Interestingly Loui, who two years ago thought this was brilliant, choose this time to hang out with the general public that throng the Hill alongside the old disused gas works. With rock, rap and hot dogs on offer in contrast to the Jazz and Teriyaki Chicken of the enclosure there really was no contest.

As the lights of the city began to dominate the dusk across on the other shore, a Blues version of the Star Spangled Banner, delivered from The Hill, announced the flypast of the Chinook helicopter, a huge American flag raging from a pole attached underneath signalling the start of the fireworks.

There were a lot. 20 minutes or more. Yeah, yeah of course they were amazing and synchronised with a medley of music from great American recording artists of the last 60 years, but there wasn’t a note of Rap in there and honestly a third of what they gave us would still have been stunning.

There was no speech from the mayor as there was two years ago, when he movingly spoke about the citizen ceremony that had taken place that morning at city hall, but maybe that was just part of the work that went into making the event different this time. However the choice of Frank Sinatra singing “Fly Me to The moon” was a masterstroke and made up for the absence of Hendrix’s version of the national anthem that had dominated the event in 2006.

The wonder of modern day technology allows you to relive the event on your computer by following this link. http://www.king5.com/video/index.html?nvid=260646 and you can also listen to the full musical accompaniement. It’s weird, on the night the choice of Magical Mystery Tour seemed odd but on the video it works really well, though compression into a laptop’s screen and speakers gives the event an unwarranted crassness that was entirely absent in the vastness of the lake before the city.

As the ash started to rain down on us and the stars began to be obscured by firework smog I remembered the November 5th bonfire nights I enjoyed as a kid when just a packet of sparklers and some sticky toffee was something we talked about for days.

In the supermarket the following day I noticed a similar overabundance with the salad condiments. There was firstly the choice of dressing or vinaigrette. Among the vinaigrettes I could chose, Roasted Red Pepper; Raspberry; Shitake Mushroom and Sesame; Gingerly (probably some ginger in there); Balsamic; Cracked Pepper (could be different than red); Olive and Lemon; Fig and Port; French Tomato; Italian Herb; Greek Feta; Russian Garlic (nothing from England I notice); Honey Pear; Blackberry, Pepper and Zinfandel.

Then from the dressings I had a choice of; Green Garlic (where does that come from?); Tuscany Italian; French; Cowgirl Ranch; Caesar; Mango Fat Free; Ginger Soy; Miso Sesame; Wasabi; Rich Poppy Seed; Huckleberry Ginger; Apricot Dijon; Key Lime Kiwi and Tangerine; and my favourite; Goddess.

And if I was still unsure there was always Champagne Honey Mustard Splash.

I could go a whole month without eating the same flavoured salad twice, and could probably go to a different supermarket and have a completely different month!

It seems that with fireworks on Independence Day and salad coverings at least, in America you can have things pretty much As You Like It.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Lindsay Kemp, interesting man, worth looking up on Wikipedia, left England and made his name as in Spain, came back with a great version of Midsummer Night’s Dream in which he played Puck. I never saw a life performance but the film version was excellent.

Almost 20 years later, I’m in a park in Seattle watching it again, but this time no Lindsey Kemp but a version set in Los Angeles with a dog and hula-hoops. I am unaccustomed to hearing Shakespearean text delivered in a strong American accent so I found the event a trifle strange, plus I arrived in the middle, or possibly near the end so I was a little confused too. But then confusion is one of the themes of the piece I believe?

This afternoon’s performance was delivered by Wooden O Productions who interestingly enough won “ Best Shakespeare in the Parks, Seattle Metropolitan Magazine: best of the City 2007”. Naturally the question that this information raises is – exactly how many Shakespeare in the Parks are there? I have come across one other outfit so far just by wandering the green areas of the city, and a quick search on Google didn’t throw up any other contenders.

Then again we shouldn’t believe everything we read on the web, nor what we read in the papers. The director of tonight’s piece for example, Vanessa Miller has no mention on Wikipedia, which in comparison to Lindsay Kemp seems unfair as she is working in the park today and he is not. Intriguingly she is described in my copy of The Seattle Weekly as “actress/director/all-around badass”.

The Seattle Weekly is one of two (the other is The Stranger) free newspaper/magazines that are available from your local neighbourhood American style metal box newspaper dispenser. For this European it is a quintessential U.S.A. experience to open one of these and take out a newspaper, even if you have no intention of reading it. In fact you need to read both to get a fair idea of what is going on in the city, certainly in film and art though both, and this may be a fair reflection on Seattle, they are lop heavy with the music scene.

The Seattle Weekly is currently gathering votes for it’s own Best of Seattle of which it claims to be the originators and even uses a trade mark symbol in the same breath. The results will be published on Aug 8 in a bumper (and still free) issue that is every traveller’s essential aid. I am particularly looking forward to the results of the “Best in the category that we forgot to list” category. It should show us something interesting and unusual about the place.

Anyway, this afternoon Puck was spreading mayhem in an open-air production, viewable for free in The Seattle Centre. The S.C. is a downtown area of park and pavilions centred on the emblematic Space Needle Tower which remains from a former World’s fair and has a revolving restaurant at the top offering stunning, probably 360 degree views. But you have to pay to go up. An equally interesting, though free view is that of the rows of tourists lying in the grass at its base trying to capture a photo opportunity. In the daytime the Needle resembles a 1950's flying saucer on stilts, at night as dusk settles and its illuminated structure commences to glow it appears as a giant jelly fish floating through the early evening sea.

The Centre has something for everyone, though at times it can feel uncultured and tacky; there is a Science Centre (complete with butterfly house), more than one Sport’s arena, theatres, a Jimi Hendrix experience, fun fair, cinema and a fountain of polished stainless steel, big enough to enthral, that allows everyone to run through and under for impromptu bathing, the architecture is sometimes functional, sometimes inspired and an hour can cost you an arm and a leg or be free. Yesterday the Centre served as a marshaling area for the annual Seafarer parade that paralyses central Seattle and amongst the Chinese Acrobats, Pirates, Majorettes, Brass Bands and a myriad of different floats was one lady with a wheelbarrow and a spade.

It could have been one of Puck’s tricks.

A Comedy of Errors

I thought I should update you on the “desperately searching Henry” aspect of this blog.

If you have been following so far then you will know that I need a Henry to complete Henry v part two and the latest news is not good.

I did meet Harold again who was looking VERY dapper, dressed in what was either a 1920’s groom’s wedding suit or a silver, discarded penguin skin. Either way his tie was way too small to be fashionable but suited him impeccably; he looked fantastic.

A serious search of Wikipedia for “famous people in Seattle called Henry”, even when I widened the search to include people who had moved to the city and are now long dead, has thrown up only one – Henry Suzzallo who was president of Washington University from 1915 to 1926. Ok, he has an exotic name and the university district IS one of the most interesting in the city but I am stupidly optimistic that I will come up with something better.

It is amazing how many things have started here, or folk been born here, that have been influential; The Far Side cartoons first surfaced here though, to be fair it was San Francisco that spotted its genius; Hendrix was born here though he moved away; Microsoft, Starbucks and Boeing all belong to the city and most importantly Gypsy Rose Lee started life here in Seattle.
I had always thought she came from Blackpool, England.

But Henry? It seems as if The NW Washington metropolitan area has become the antitheist to all things Henry.

But I’ll keep searching.
Oh, by the way, The Comedy of Errors was Shakespeare’s shortest work and this post at only 288 words is my shortest entry.

The Taming of The Shrew

In 1967 Franco Zeffirelli directed Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in a Hollywood version of The Taming of The Shrew. I remember watching it at home with my mum but I don’t remember if Sly the tinker made it into the final cut. Bill Shakespeare, who wasn’t much of a filmmaker, started his version thus:


SCENE I. Before an alehouse on a heath.
Enter Hostess and SLY

SLY
I'll pheeze you, in faith.

Hostess
A pair of stocks, you rogue!

SLY
Ye are a baggage: the Slys are no rogues; look in
the chronicles; we came in with Richard Conqueror.
Therefore paucas pallabris; let the world slide: sessa!

Hostess
You will not pay for the glasses you have burst?

SLY
No, not a denier. Go by, Jeronimy: go to thy cold
bed, and warm thee.

Hostess
I know my remedy; I must go fetch the
third--borough.

Exit

It might just be the only time that William used a tinker, or beggar as his opening character.

I’m not sure that anyone is allowed to be poor in Seattle or in fact anywhere in the white corridor that runs northward from here to Vancouver Canada, but I have noticed that in comparison to two years ago there are a lot more people begging. Is this a result of Bush’s policies or simply a reflection of something that is happening everywhere around the world?

There is an underpass that leads downtown rush hour traffic very slowly to Highway 5 and almost-highway 99 and there is always someone at the lights asking for help but it would be difficult to imagine a place as far removed from an “alehouse on a heath” as this.

I did meet someone near an alehouse asking for money, well….. he was outside a burger bar…….. but his technique was certainly superior to Sly’s, who only seemed to anger the Hostess.

He had a large piece of cardboard on which he had written – “You will give me a dollar”. In the centre of this message he had pinned a circular piece of cardboard on which he had patterned a spiral that he was able to spin with a grimy finger for a suitable hypnotic effect.

I didn’t see a single passerby that didn’t laugh and give him a dollar. I even almost stopped the car as I drove past him the second time and gave him another. If he had hissed a drunken “I’ll pheeze you in faith” I would have given him 10.

“Ye are a baggage” would be a useful insult for anyone who failed to give, and is a term I think we should all strive to find more use for in our general conversation.

One Seattle tinker who would probably never need such a come back is the guy I met outside my favourite coffee shop. He stopped to talk to two people sitting at the next table, he was clearly intoxicated and wobbled as he waved two long leaves of a palm like plant that he had clearly decided to recycle from someone’s garden.

He offered to make them a rose in less than three minutes if they gave him a contribution. His client, also intoxicated, though in this case with caffeine, negotiated the exact nature of contribution and then watched as the man skilfully stretched, twisted, twined and knotted the two strands into a tight green rose bud.

It took a little longer than three minutes but the story he told of the Alaskan native that taught him the method was worth the contracted contribution on its own. If Zeffirelli had seen him it would have been in the film.

Romeo and Juliet

Whichever way you look at it, and however you try to say it “What time do you get off?” is clearly not a line from any of Shakespeare’s plays. Which is a shame as it figured fairly significantly last week in Seattle as part of the 48 hour Film Project.

The 48-hour film project was created by Mark Ruppert in 2001 and came to Seattle for the first time in 2004. The idea is simple, you have 48 hours to write, film and edit and if you submit a finished product before the deadline the film is screened in the 700 seat Neptune cinema which is currently showing the latest in the Batman series. At the start of the event teams draw out of a hat a random film genre and then everyone is instructed to include a given prop, character and line of dialogue (see above). Then you rush off and start work.

Since I had drawn the genre horror I decided to visit one of the two famous graves that are here in Seattle, Bruce Lee’s and Jimi Hendrix’s. I figured that a graveyard would give our film an appropriate look and one of the two graves might inspire a plot line. Jimi’s grave is some way out of the city across Lake Washington so I opted for a visit to Lake View Cemetery where Bruce lies and which is not far from the centre.

As you climb eastward from the downtown area you cross the dividing line of highway 5 that hurries aggressively across the city from the airport northward to Canada. It’s an evil road to drive along for someone used to country lanes; there are four, often six lanes of hurtling noisy steal and I always find I am in the wrong lane and therefore directly in the path of a huge truck that snarls as it swerves past. If you can escape this road you come to Capitol Hill that looks down onto Elliott Bay and views of the Olympic headland. The hill is an interesting mix of restaurants and music spilling onto the sidewalk, clothes shops and people asking for money on each corner. At the northern end the streets change and become residential and tree lined and then shaded parkland.

I arrived at about ten o’clock at night and of course the place was closed and locked up for the night. I started to wander Volunteer Park that borders the cemetery hoping to find a hole in the fence. I came across a troop of Shakespearean actors who had just finished an open air performance of Twelfth Night, which was a drag since I had just finished writing my post for that title, and I thought that the art deco façade of the Asian Art museum, also in the park, might make a wonderful backdrop for a travelling shot but it quickly became apparent that the small gap under the main entrance gate was the only way in and only big enough for my lead actress to crawl under, Minnie aged 13.

We returned the next night having written a loose story about the un-dead trying to find a final resting place and the script required a shot of the heroine mysteriously passing through the locked bars and disappearing into the darkness of the graveyard. We filmed the scene in the car headlights and one shot required Minnie to crawl under the gate and disappear into the darkness. She was absolutely terrified and needed fatherly coaxing rather than director’s insistence but the most terrifying part for her was when we had finished and she had to crawl back to the side of the living. The imagination of a 13 year old can be a powerful thing and the thought of a bone like arm grabbing her by the ankle and dragging her off almost paralysed her.

In the daytime the park is a very pleasant place, there is an unassuming tower at one end that could be easily missed as it is surrounded by trees. It is a circular brick tower that encases a wonderful wrought iron water tank; huge century old rivets holding everything together and 183 steps that lead up to a 360-degree observation deck. From here you can see a panoramic view of Seattle’s setting, the snow peaked Cascade mountain range to the East and the Olympic mountains across the bay to the West.

However, at night, down by the cemetery it feels like you are in Romeo And Juliet act v, scene 3.

PAGE (Aside) I am almost afraid to stand alone 
 Here in the churchyard; yet I will adventure.


www.nps.gov/history/nR/travel/seattle/s5.htm

Hamlet

The other day I said that Seattle is like Croydon in S.E. London. Actually it’s probably more like Hamburg Germany, only lighter and sunnier, at least at the moment (summer). Although Seattle has the envious international reputation as being always grey and under the rain my neighbour informs me this is in fact a deliberate lie put about by Seattleites to stop everyone coming here; though In fact everyone may already be here, this morning I met a man from Brighton though I am still no closer to finding a Henry.

So Hamburg? It’s the water you see, not the rain. The longer you are here the more you notice it, and the boats: not tankers so much but ferries and yachts. However the place is so crowded, firstly with places but also islands and even the boats in the marina are stacked in shelves. It becomes difficult to build a geographical concept of the place. There is Puget Sound firstly, with Seattle on the Western shore, but then west again are two lakes, Union and the much larger Washington. Communities on the far side of Washington seem so distant as to be separate but it’s probably a bit like Croydon and central London.

The Troll, from now on known as Caliban, lies underneath the bridge that carries the highway north, high above the area of Fremont situated at the north-western end of lake Union; it’s an area that has a reputation for being quirky. Certainly it’s a fun place with a cute Sunday arts market, a lot of bars and restaurants and a weekend crowd that howls, but it also has, this week at least, a man who is improbably balancing stones at the side of the road for small change. It also has a giant statue of Lenin AND a Cold War era Rocket fuselage on the end of a shoe shop.

The Lenin statue originally came from Czechoslovakia and after the fall of communism it was bought by a Washington resident, cut into three pieces and shipped back to Seattle; probably not in his hand luggage, as at 16 feet tall it must weigh tons. The first time you see it the effect of a striding Lenin in republican U.S.A is startling and when you think about the number of Lenin statues that were destroyed the thing seems almost ghostly. Don’t you think?

The best thing however, in my opinion, is the Fremont Bridge that crosses the canal dug at the start of the twentieth century to connect lake Union with the seawater of Puget Sound. Lying in the shadow of Caliban’s Highway Bridge, It’s a beautiful cantilever construction that can take four lanes of cars, and has extra space for pedestrians and cyclists. It was opened in 1917 and Wikipedia informs me that local residents chose the blue and orange colours in 1985. I don’t think it has been painted since as today there is a pleasing fadedness to it, and that coupled with the choice of blue, which is very metropolitan- police-box-Tardis, gives the whole thing a 1950’s feel. This is enhanced by the clangs and peels of the bells as it stops traffic, opens and lets a yacht pass, something that apparently happens at least 30 times a day and seemingly every time I am cycling over it. This makes it the official “most frequently opened drawbridge in the United States.”

Now this piece Hamlet is clearly all about ghosts and gravediggers isn’t it, but I am sure that in the original productions a drawbridge also figured frequently and if that was not enough for a link to Hamlet as the title for this post then I am sure the ghostly presence of Lenin is. And if not, by lucky coincidence tonight (July 19th) at the Fremont open air movies, one of best established in the city, they are showing Ghostbusters and I am off there now as it’s almost sunset; and I’ll cover graveyards next.

www.fremontoutdoormovies.com

The Tempest

There wasn’t a single person at my secondary school whose name was Henry, but there was this guy who wore red and green nail polish. His name was Tim and I remember that he alone among our year wanted to be an actor and intended to go to drama school as soon as A-levels were out of the way.

So when the English teacher decided that the sixth form would put on a production of The Tempest, Tim was chosen to play the lead role: It seemed fair as no-one else had a clue about acting, especially the English teacher. However, he did have a great idea for the staging, choosing the main assembly room and devising the play to be performed in the round using the balcony above for all of Arial’s interventions. His masterpiece however, was to cast the school’s outcasts as pirates and stage a spectacular storm and shipwreck in the courtyard outside that could be viewed through the glass windows that ran the length of the Hall at the start of the evening.

The storm effect was achieved with some audacious lighting and inspired performances from the school orchestra and a full size skeletal ship was sculptured by the woodwork department. As this was Ken and his gang’s only, albeit brilliant, appearance in the play, they were then free to go home and thus they avoided watching Tim’s masterful yet academic rendition of Prospero. In fact they avoided most things at school and became infamous for continued absence from all sport activity, never once doing anything but wandering the woods that boarded the playing fields and smoking during our six years at the school.

I myself was cast as Caliban and everyone, Shakespeare included, seemed to be unclear of my exact role. Monster was the closest direction I received but the makeup department provided me with a pot of instant tanning lotion, some sackcloth and repeated backcombing of my long hair. Even though I was unsure who or what I was playing, I think I looked brilliant and recall it as one of my finest theatrical achievements.

I developed a satisfying grunt to build the character and my finest moment came in the second performance in a one to one scene with Prospero. Tim, budding thespian, messed up his lines and gave me a cue for the line I had just delivered. He looked confused, as well he should have been, but I saved the day, his reputation and future career and that of the school’s by instantly improvising a series of method acting grunts and groans that continued until Tim realised his error, composed himself and returned to the script. Nobody, not even the English teacher was aware that anything had gone astray.

Shortly after the exams arrived, A-levels were obtained or failed and we went our separate ways to uncertain futures. I never saw Tim again, my last memory of him was during the maths exam when my worried reading of the questions was brutally interrupted by his swearing as he stood up and stomped out of the room. But Caliban is alive and well under a freeway bridge here in Seattle.

That's a real Volkswagen Beetle under his hand.

Love's Labours Lost

For someone (me) who grew up in the London suburbs, Seattle can feel a lot like Croydon, and Seattle in the summer can feel a lot like Croydon on a hot July afternoon: it’s kind of noisy, concrete, dusty, parochial.

The down town area is imprisoned between two seething highways, one next to the shoreline the other not so far away along the lakeside.

As it turns out Seattle is on the eastern shore of Puget Sound but what was probably once a beautiful freshwater lake nestled near a virgin shore is now a downtown "desirable residence" crowded, water-recreational area linked by a dug channel to the sea.

Sea planes take off and land heading for Vancouver and Canada to the north, yachts wait for the weekend to sail and joggers run on asphalt whilst the traffic pounds in and out of downtown all around.

There is a constant hum, even at four in the morning, that is never turned off, you just get used to it; it’s like living with a washing machine constantly running.

Sometimes something reminds me that I am no longer in Croydon - my linguistic non-comprehension of the locals for one.

Two weeks in and I still say “sorry” when I bump into them, when I know that it should be “excuse me’ and I am still baffled as to the correct response to the incessant greeting “howyadoing”: I try a ‘great and you!’ but I must be doing something wrong as the looks I get are strange.

Settling down on my picnic rug with a bag full of buttered popcorn at the "Movie on the Pedestal Night" (see previous post) it took me several minutes to understand the dialogue of the lead character, Juno a 16-year-old girl. I think I missed some of the best one-liners in the film because of my inability to fine-tune my ear to the nasal accent. But it was a great film and I had somehow, at the time, missed the news that it had won an Oscar for best screenplay.

From the film, or more precisely tracking down the soundtrack the next day, I discovered a music genre I was unaware of - anti folk. I think I always believed that Rock was in someway anti-folk, - isn’t that what Dylan did at Newport?

Seems though that it is a separate genre altogether, it even gets its own entry in Wikipedia.

Juno wasn’t my first open air cinema event this trip, that honour goes to my visit to the "Float In Movie" organised by Sidewalk Cinema that helps create open air film events in the Seattle area. This time they worked with the Wooden Boat festival held each year at the beginning of July on Union Lake, the aforementioned water play and live area.

To finish the event they invited boats to float in - and a few pedestrians to stroll up - and watch, first a Popeye cartoon and then African Queen, the film that gave Humphrey Bogart his only Oscar, I learnt this from the film trivia competition that obligatorily precedes an open air screening.

Anyway, what does this all have to do with Shakespeare?

Well, I discovered that there is an online search engine that will scour all of the Bard’s plays and sift out every reference of a particular word.

I didn’t try Queen or Africa but Juno, - probably because she is the Roman Goddess of Birth (the film is about an unplanned teenage pregnancy) - was used by Mr Bill no less than 21 times, and since the film begins and ends with a chair I would choose this quote.

“Let me sit down. O Juno! Antony and Cleopatra: III, xi

Unfortunately Anthony and Cleopatra is not included in the challenge set at the beginning of this blog so I am forced to settle for this.

Juno but an ethiope were; Love's Labours Lost: IV, iii

Twelfth Night

Some of these Shakespeare titles are going to be a doddle!

July 10th and it’s my Twelfth Night in Seattle, jet lag settled, new lap top computer purchased and I am installed in a coffee shop on University Ave drinking a double-shot soy cappuccino whilst the kids take an intermediate hip-hop class with the experimental college. How American can I get?

Well obviously not as American as the young Asian beauty in white summer frock, silver ear-rings and brown leather cow girl biker boots who just walked in who was probably born here, but I'm doing my best.
Hey, maybe she's really a male? That would fit the gender exchange that seems to be at the heart of the Twelfth Night, Viola becoming Cesario thus causing problems for Olivia etc, etc, etc; no, I think I’ll stick with the initial ruse, it's my eleventh plus one evening in the city.

And it's a magnificent evening, not a patch of cloud in the early evening blue sky: the sunset’s rays silhouette the mountains of the Olympic Peninsula and there is not a hint of the fabled Seattle rain (that even the guy in Safeway acknowledged to be of international renown - a shame that his name wasn't Henry). Everyone on the street is in shorts and t-shirt, so what better way to celebrate than to go to the open-air movies?

My first experience of American cities’ summer cinema, open air in any convenient public space with an appropriate blank piece of concrete wall, was here in Seattle two years ago. I had been cycling around the Freemont district when I came across a parking area backed by a massive concrete wall adorned with images of Bogart and Bacall. A discreet sign informed me that on Saturday evening they were screening Grease, one of my daughter’s favourite films so at the appointed hour toward sunset we turned up with blanket and chocolate.

The locals were much better prepared; the parked cars had all been cleared and in their place there were picnic tables and folding chairs, some had even carried their sitting room couch and were installed with red wine and hot food.
We took a seat in the centre, just in front of the DVD projector and waited for dusk to settle enough to allow projection to begin.

In retrospect I suppose I should have considered the presence of many people dressed as zombies as something more than just a local way to enjoy free movies. However when our host for the evening invited them down to the front for audience votes and prize distribution I became a little concerned that I had read the poster incorrectly. A hurried check with the guy handing out programmes confirmed that in fact the evenings bill was Shaun of The Dead, a romantic Zombie comedy that I was certain would be a disappointment to an 11 year old expecting John Travolta and Olivia Newton John.

We started to leave, but then asked; “is it really gory?”
“Well”, came the reply, “there’s a bit at the end…..”

We stayed, had a brilliant time and I only had to hide her eyes once.
Tonight however, I am better prepared. I’ve checked the schedule and with off to Films on the Pedestal in the heart of downtown to see Juno.

http://moviesonthepedestal.com/

Henry V (part one)

There must be somebody called Henry in Seattle, but will I meet them in time?
I have already met a Harold and a Dennis, and Krissie met a Tom- but so far neither hide nor hair of Henry, and will any Henry do or will it have to be the fifth one that I meet?

I had met Harold once before, interestingly enough on a beach as I met him this time on a beach too: maybe he is a guy who just turns up on beaches, the first time in San Francisco a year ago and then on Alki beach in west Seattle a year later. He really is a mystery, but as nice a guy as you could hope to meet on a beach anywhere.

Dennis I met whilst he was walking with his granddaughter through the forest high above the Elhwa river in the Olympic national park. He was wearing the largest pair of cut off wellington boots I have ever seen on a human and being a tall man with large feet he appeared like a giant looming over his young charge as they followed a stone labyrinth at the side of the trail. Perhaps I should explain.

Seattle sits on the East shore of Puget Sound, at least I think that is the case as it is very difficult to 'see' the geographical lay out of the land without a good map. Puget sound would be a huge inlet or bay from the Pacific ocean if it were not for the countless islands, small, large, inhabited (and not) that choke the waters. If you stand on the waterfront as close to downtown Seattle as you can you get a hint of ocean but only a hint as the surf in fact lies over a hundred miles away to the west, past the islands and the east side of Puget Sound.

The East side of the Sound is dominated by the Olympic national park, home to the elk, snow capped summer peaks visible from downtown (if not covered in cloud) and the Olympic Hot Springs. (The elk have their own traffic warning signs that are remotely activated by a sensor that the elk wears.) From Seattle's waterfront a ferry will take you across to Bainbridge Island and it was here, earlier, that Krissie met Tom, a former writer for Buster Keaton who has a life size statue of the comic in his house clothed in original costume. it's not every day that you meet Buster's hat.
From there you can drive across the Hood Canal bridge and find yourself on the east side of the Sound less than an hour after leaving the ferry. To get to the Hot Springs there is an hour more of driving and then a walk of a couple of miles through bear country.

I didn't see a bear, but Dennis gave me a little fright, I hadn't expected to see anyone quite so tall in the middle of the forest. The labyrinth was a simple spiral of stones someone had set at the side of the trail, a useful distraction half way along the hike at a point, especially for four year olds, when you are beginning to tire of a hot spring trip. I would have asked if his granddaughter was called Henry if she had not so clearly been female and already introduced as Gilda. I think.

The hot springs are hidden amongst the forest alongside the trail, there are almost a dozen though not all are inviting and we settled by one that sits on a ledge overhanging the racing torrent of mountain river Elhwa; I later fell asleep among the ferns listening to its constant babble.The best and most private is well hidden and you need to climb steeply beyond the obvious to find it. It was occupied when I arrived by the feet of a totally naked, somewhat overweight man who was reading his book.

A little startled i panted out a 'Hi There' but just wasn't brave enough to ask him if his name was Henry.

www.nwhotsprings.net/olympic.htm,

The Merchant of Venice

When I was a kid my parents shopped in Bromley, a half hour drive from where we lived. The high street offered more than our local town, and pride and place in my memory is the coffee merchant who roasted beans in a revolving drum that dominated the shop window and filled the pavement with an intoxicating aroma.

My mum had a coffe percolator that would bubble comfortingly to itself in a corner of the kitchen but as an adolescent I found the pale beverage that she served a great disappointment in comparison to the smells that swirled around the shop where we bought the grains.

Later in my twenties, working for the first time in theatre I started to drink tea: rehearsals began and were repeatedly punctuated by the sound of the kettle, so it wasn’t until relatively late in life that I started to appreciate real coffee.

Today I buy my coffee fresh and espresso~ed from a monk like torrificator who runs a stall in the local market: he is deeply knowledgeable, patient and caring in preparation and offers a choice of coffee types, Kenyan, Ethiopian, Brazilian, Costa Rican and my own favourite an organic Mexican bean from Chiapas.

So, before setting off on a journey of several thousand miles to the city where Starbucks started and where the Starbuck density per square inch of the city is alarming I logged on to Delocator.com, an online service that allows you to type in any address and which will then suggest a number of alternative independent coffee shops in walking distance. I wrote down two addresses near the apartment where I would be staying.

Starbucks was in the news as I arrived as the company had just announced the closure of 800 outlets here in America. Someone immediately joked that half of them were on his street and it has lead to the Guardian newspaper in Britain starting a blog inviting contributions on the reason why the Starbucks experience had turned sour: some people spoke of overproduction, others of the complicated need to learn a second language to be able to order a drink and others of the competition from places like MacDonald’s. However the recurrent theme was about the use of the term coffee used to describe the milky syrup that they serve.

Two years ago when I came to Seattle for the first time I noticed a petrol station where the mechanic’s bay had been converted into a Starbucks, it now lies empty. I’m sure that the original Starbucks outlet in Pike Street market will in no way be under threat, it was packed when I passed even though it annoyingly has nowhere to sit and none of the comfy chairs, newspaper racks and folk working on their laptops that, more than coffee, have come to identify the brand. It seems a shame that what started as three friends passionately importing coffee to sell in the market has now become a corporate profit machine that now means there are drive thru versions in the city. Someone else joked that this proves that Starbucks finally has become a place for people who don’t like coffee, though I found an independent contradiction to this opinion up on Capitol Hill.

I arrived in Seattle at midday, it took an age to pass through immigration, agricultural checks and baggage claim, check and claim again so it was hardly surprising that I missed Krissie who was waiting to greet us. A taxi drive later and the jet lag, tiredness and emotional disappointment laid me low on a bed and I didn’t stand up again until the next morning.

I always like to start a visit to a new place with a walk around the immediate neighbourhood and thus at 6.30 I left the house with Minnie who had been awake since 4 and followed our impulses and whims along streets, through community parks and up and down steps and staircases until we were more or less lost and hungry.

And what did we see at the next corner?
One of the two coffee shops noted down…….. an Atlantic ocean away. Café Vita, 813 5th Ave N.
Merchant of coffee.

The Challenge ahead

I've been thinking about the task ahead and although i have only been here a week it seems evident that there is no immediate connection between the titles of bill's plays and the so called emerald City.
Andy of course is deaf to such complaint and helpfully offers the following advice;

“perhaps Henry VIII could be positive because of his wives,becoming head of the church of England & eating so much he had to be lifted out of bed with a pulley by his servants when he was old....”

Like I said earlier, be careful if you end up in a negotiation with him.

It would have helped more if the bard had written a play called Microsoft or Sleepless so in the unlikely event that a long lost Shakespearean play will be discovered in the next two months, i will resort to any vague or imagined link between title and report.

Don't expect to learn much about William Shakespeare here, only about my ignorance.

On your marks, get set......

It turns out that my friend, let’s call him Andy, is a tricky customer. Despite claiming to have enjoyed the egocentric nature of last year’s effort he decided that the alphabet approach was too easy and threw down the challenge to use Shakespeare’s plays as the context for a series of personal portraits of my visit to Seattle.

I know much less than I should do about Bill and his work, though I once played the part of Caliban in a secondary school production and I have also seen Shakespeare in Love at the movies. My mum had a copy of Lamb’s Tales of Shakespeare on the bookshelf at home when I was a kid and in Australia I was lucky enough to meet someone from New York who performed two minute puppet versions of the plays: interestingly his name also was Bill.

Seattle and my experiences thereof does not immediately strike me as having anything to do with the titles of Shakespearian plays so this, coupled with my own ignorance forces me to ACCEPT THE CHALLENGE.

After an email or two of negotiation, because frankly Shakespeare’s titles are not always as inspiring as they could be and a full list runs to more than the alphabetic 26, Andy has submitted this as the final list to be observed

Hamlet
King Lear
Macbeth
Othello
Romeo and Juliet
The Merchant of Venice
Henry V part one
Henry V part two
All's Well That Ends Well
As You Like It
The Comedy of Errors
Love's Labours Lost
Measure for Measure
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Much Ado About Nothing
The Taming of the Shrew
The Tempest
Twelfth Night
Two Gentlemen of Verona
The Winter's Tale

If you ever have business dealings with Andy, be careful.

Introduction

Last year I spent a number of weeks visiting San Francisco and an old friend from England asked me to send him news: he is a fan of Alistair Cook’s radio broadcast, Letter From America, and requested something similar. I replied by sending a number of reports each linked to a single letter of the alphabet, thus giving him A letter from San Francisco, 26 separate ones to be precise.

http://www.letterfromsanfrancisco.blogspot.com

I am sure he anticipated something less frivolous, possibly more political or insightful as well, but he was polite and said that he had enjoyed them, I certainly enjoyed writing them and also relished the challenge to find something to say for each letter.

This summer Seattle is home for two months and so I have resolved to do something similar. My friend has not asked me to, in fact he has not spoken to me for almost 10 months and I have no advanced idea for the almost impossible X this time, but a challenge is a challenge even if self inflicted.

Each installment will cover some aspect of life here in the city or elsewhere nearby, it may or may not include political analysis, economic or cultural understanding but will probably end up as another personal and eccentric guide not necessarily in alphabetic order.

X will probably be left to last to give me time to find something.

important update on this challenge here!