Sept 18, 19 - Jazz with Cousins and a trip to the British Library

 Sept 19

From the Royal Opera House, looking down at Covent Garden

    We met Pete and Shirley at the Royal Opera House for a coffee. 

Royal Opera House

Cafe of Royal Opera House

What a gorgeous building in the midst of the hubbub of Covent Garden. Peaceful, beautiful, quiet. It was the perfect spot for a long chat - over 2 hours of chat!

    From there, we walked to Soho to the Ronnie Scott Jazz Club where we had dinner and saw Tim Garland and a band playing songs from Chick Corea. Jim Garland is a noted British saxophonist and band leader. The band paid tribute to Chick Corea, an American jazz composer who died in 2021. His music spanned the 1960s until his death and had played with Miles Davis in the late 60s. He was noted for the fusion of jazz with global music such as Brazilian music. Tim Garland played with him on several albums. The show was amazing. 2 guitars, saxophonist, keyboard player (Jason Rebello) and a drummer. The keyboardist has played with Sting and  Jeff Beck and Branford Marsalis, among others. They were so in synch with each other.  We especially liked a song that blended flamenco with jazz and a later piece of his called "Galaxy 32, Star 4." The audience especially liked a standard, "500 Miles High," which we did not know. Pete and Shirley are knowledgeable about jazz and had seen Tim Garland and the keyboardist before and have some of their albums.

    We had a convoluted ride home as the Piccadilly line had a long delay. I think we were on 4 tube lines before we got home. Mark has an infected and swollen big toe, so walking a long way is an issue; we tried hard to walk the shortest distances possible today.

Sept 20

    We tried to have a bit of a rest day, partly because we were out late last night and partly to spare Mark's foot. But, we still ended up walking about 4 miles, but we took it slowly and with rests. 

    We took "our" tube line (so, no changes) to St. Pancras and walked a block to the British Library.

One is St Mark and one is St Matthew

Old printing press

There, we perused the "Treasures Room" which is so manageable - they have displayed a lovely sampling of rare documents - maps, books, musical scores - from all over the world. We saw one of the Gutenberg Bibles, a Bible ordered by Henry VIII, rare copies of sacred texts of the world's major religions, 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Folios of Shakespeare (all in one case). We saw a tiny Bible from St. Cuthbert. It is the oldest European Bible that is intact. It spent 400 years in the grave with Cuthbert.

The leather binding looked brand new...and it was from the 8th Century! We saw the world's oldest complete book - a rolled manuscript from China. There were some more recent additions such as documents from the Beatles and also Monty Python's script of the "Spanish Inquisition." 

"Spanish Inquisition" - Monty Python

   From there, we took the underground back to our neighborhood and walked down the Portobello Road and ate at Mia Mamma - again. (On Blenheim Crescent). We each had the same dishes we had last week - Barbara had eggplant and Mark had pizza.