My name is Alexander Hamilton (…shot)
Thursday 25 October, 2018
This was our last day together, and we were determined to make the most of all the time we had and crammed everything in. The day started with business as I had to drop my bag off in a storage facility near Marble Arch – close enough to Paddington as to make no difference when I come back from the west.
Then we went to Trafalgar Square for a free lunchtime concert in St Martins-in-the-Fields – bliss, a chamber choir doing excerpts from Messiah. Interesting trivia: Handel became a British subject in 1724, the year the church was finished. Lunch in the crypt, cheap and cheerful as always, and then to join the madding throng at the National Gallery.
I always remember the NG because of Dom’s finest hour. I made the mistake of asking him what her really liked – a reasonable question, because I always walk out of a gallery with a couple of favourite moments, like the Caravaggios and seeing The Fighting Temeraire up close and personal. Dom, whipped out his iPhone and proceeded to give me a ranked list. Sometimes, dear son, you are just scary.
Dinner was Spanish and lovely – no £16 glasses of wine here! The show? Well, there is an argument that Lin-Manuel Miranda is just too good a student of Broadway, because the music nods everywhere to previous hits as well as using hip-hop as its chief weapon (surprise, fear and a fanatical devotion…). Amazing staging and a very interesting finale, a deserved hit, and a wonderful night out together.
Our trip home was a bit quiet because we were basically packed and ready for the morning. It has been a wonderful four weeks and I wish to God that we could share the next stages together. That’s the problem with being in love – it’s a shared set of spectacles through which to see the world, and telling your other about it later isn’t the same. Next time I will remember to kidnap her and hide her in my backpack!
But a great way to finish. In celebration, I can only do what others have done as a tribute to Lin-Manuel: link to the Hamilton Polka! Sorry I can’t do an embed on the iOS version of WordPress. Thanks, Weird Al.
