STARLIGHT EXPRESS, STARLIGHT EXPRESS.
We caught the train into Liverpool Street and from there went to Jessops Cameras in Oxford Street to do a couple of things, then to NZ House on Haymarket Street. We applied for letters of an introduction for Zaire¹ then went up on the roof. What a view!! It is said to be the best view in London.
From there we went to the IVC for the first of our “ab-so-lutely painless”²(!!) vaccinations.
- Polio (oral)
- Yellow Fever
- Rabies
- Cholera
- Typhoid OUCH!!!
We had tea at the Hard Rock Café (SAVE THE PLANET) after an eye-opening trip to Harrods in Knightsbridge: the place is mega, to say the least, and sells absolutely everything.
Another mystery bus ride took us quite by chance to the Apollo Theatre where Starlight Express³ has been playing for five years. We went and got our £20 seats for £8 and saw an absolutely marvellous 2 1/2 hours of singing and dancing, all done on roller skates with brilliant special effects and music. We both went home singing the tunes!
¹ We would be visiting the corrupt, dictatorship of Zaire during our Overland trip. I order to be granted visas to enter Zaire (the actual visas had to be obtained in Nairobi) we needed letters of introduction from our embassy, guaranteeing that we were people of good character. This was, indeed, ironic as the President of Zaire, Mobutu Sese Seko, was a corrupt, murderous, psychopathic megalomaniac whose personality cult held total sway over the brutalized population of his country.
² The doctor who administered our vaccinations declaimed in his very posh accent that the jabs would be “ab-so-lutely painless.” They fucking weren’t!
³ Starlight Express, written by Andrew Lloyd-Webber, went on to be one of the world’s longest-running musicals, playing 7,409 times between 1984 and 2002.
CurseOfTheTraveller 