Ruth's birthday 2020

Friday 3 January

As per last year, we decided on an overnight stay in London and seeing something theatrical. We arrived in London early afternoon on the Friday and made our way over to the hotel to check in. We went out and sourced tea and cake at Cojean on Ludgate Hill. Then, as Ruth isn’t as keen as I am on just walking around in London with no clear aim in view, we had a look for somewhere specific to visit. Briefly considered St Paul’s, as it was nearby, but we’d left it too late by then as it only had half an hour to go before closing. We made our way to the Bank of England Museum, as Ruth thought it sounded moderately interesting and the internet had suggested it was free, but we arrived to find it closed (contra the internet, which had suggested that it was open). In a last-ditch attempt to go somewhere, we spotted the London Mithraeum on Google Maps, and my curiosity was piqued by the name so we went to have a look.

Turns out it’s the ruins of a Roman Temple of Mithras. The ruins are underneath Bloomberg’s European headquarters. We did a complete circuit of the Bloomberg building before locating the entrance. It’s clearly had money poured into it as it’s all beautifully done. At ground level there’s a contemporary art space, which when we visited was housing an exhibition of pieces by Daniel Silver called ‘Human Activity’ (one of the pieces above). There’s also a display of some Roman artefacts – apparently the excavations prior to the current Bloomberg building’s construction produced a large number of Roman finds. The exhibition also shows how the ground level in the City of London has changed (risen) quite dramatically over the centuries.

Going downstairs takes you to a darkened room with an audio narration talking about what’s known about Mithraism (not all that much) and the temple of Mithras on this site. On a lower level again are the reconstructed remains of the temple itself. These are enhanced by an audiovisual installation that’s pretty good. We were lucky and saw the ruins in the company of just one other couple, which made them more atmospheric.

The remains of the Temple of Mithras

Today’s exhibition is a recreation of the original structure discovered in the 1950s (a chance discovery on a WWII bomb site). After its discovery, the ruin was dismantled (for reasons I didn’t quite get) and ‘reconstructed’ about 100 metres away, but this 50-60s reconstruction seems to have been viewed as a bit of a hatchet job. The present-day reconstruction follows Bloomberg’s acquisition of the site in 2010, and was done in consultation with conservation specialists. The latest reconstruction is close to the original position and level of the temple.

We’d booked an early pre-theatre dinner at the Cork & Bottle wine bar, having been there before for lunch and liked it. Although we thought we’d allowed plenty of time for the walk there, finding the place proved a headache and led to a lot of swearing at Google Maps. We were also thrown as Maps took us to the official entrance on Cranbourn Street, while on both our previous visits we’d been in via the other entrance on Bear Street, resulting in us standing around for a while just outside the door without seeing it. By the time we got in we were about 15 minutes late and weren’t optimistic that they’d have held our booking – the young waitress did tell us she’d just given away a small table but seated us in some sort of wine cellar-esque alcove, bigger than we needed but quite cosy, and we were just happy to be seated. We had a lovely dinner: we both had the beef carpaccio followed by schnitzel with capers. We even had dessert; I had the Hokey Pokey ice cream; I forget what Ruth had.

Ruth at the Cork & Bottle

Ruth had taken a while to decide on a show to see in the evening, but had eventually decided to get tickets for The Woman in Black at the Fortune Theatre. The Fortune is a fairly diddy theatre, with undoubtedly the smallest ladies’ toilets I’ve ever come across. It was apparently once described as “this most intimate of theatres”.

The Woman in Black has been running in the West End since 1989, and is apparently the second longest running non-musical play in West End history, after The Mousetrap. The play has only three actors, and one of them (the woman playing the Woman of the title) doesn’t speak. On the night we saw it, the play featured Stuart Fox and Matthew Spencer in the speaking parts. It’s based on a novel by Susan Hill, which I haven’t read but Mum says she has. In adapting Hill’s novel for the stage, the playwright (the late Stephen Mallatratt) opted to make it a play within a play (the play opens inside an empty theatre where the lead character Arthur Kipps, now an old man, is getting coaching from an actor in reading aloud his life story). I couldn’t quite decide if I liked that aspect of it.

In general the play was enjoyable, and they do quite a good job of making it scary though frankly that is a bit challenging. The second half wasn’t enhanced by the young couple to my right munching their way loudly through a bucket of popcorn – since when do theatres sell popcorn? We both vowed to complain to the theatre about it afterwards but I don’t think either of us has got around to it.

We got lost again walking the barely a mile back to our hotel, completing a day of useless navigation.

The following morning we checked out and walked back to Covent Garden where we had breakfast at the Carluccio’s on Garrick Street. After this, Ruth was keen to get home but I wanted to make a bit more of our time in London, so she went off and I took a meandering walk back to Paddington, via a visit to Innerspace, where I bought a book that probably won’t make me a better person, but it’s a nice thought, and via the Marble Arch M&S where I bought some sourdough bagels from the bakery counter.