End

"The Royal Borough" of Kensington and Chelsea is putting on a fascinating array of free events this month and next under the title InTransit, and when Bob was still in Vancouver, I booked us into two events. (If there's anything London's taught me so far, it's that you need to book as soon as you find out about something, or it fills up quicker than a Vancouverite can say, "Well, I'm thinking about going . . .") Our first InTransit activity was today; I thought the description of Oh Doh (Japanese for "King's Road," the high street on which most of our walk would occur) was wonderfully promising, but had no idea what to expect, other than the fact that the artist, Kazuko Hohki, was meant to be great. Adding to my curiosity and confusion was the email I received a few days before the walk, which read:

*

Hello Jenny

I know that things are very strange for you at the moment, but I hope you are managing to cope. I was most sorry to hear of your bad news but I hope that I might be able to help you in some way.

This is not because what has happened is in any way my fault, it is just that I am a quite nice person.

Or at least I was.

And you thought things were confusing for you. To be honest, I’m also rather baffled by much of what has been going on of late, but I am confident that things will become clearer if you follow the simple instructions below.

I hope that you will be so good to come to the Chelsea Theatre at 10.45 am on Saturday 23rd June. It is a charming place with many comfy sofas. Once there, please ingratiate yourself with the Box Office staff, who will furnish you with necessary items. I then ask that you say a brief hello to your fellow travellers and wait until you receive word from my associate, the esteemed Kazuko Hohki.

Miss Hohki will help you to no end.

Best wishes and love to all,

Your friend,

Sir Thomas More

*

After I got over the confusion of the letter's first paragraph, I thought, "Oh, this is going to be good,"--and I'm happy to say that it was rather amazing! We arrived at the Chelsea Theatre at 10:45 A.M., as instructed, where posters highlighting the notion of "the end" were plastered outside. Once inside, we were given another letter, this time from Kazuko, thanking us for "travelling so far at a difficult time" and letting us know that she would be meeting us for tea and rice crackers along our journey. Until then, we were to wait until 11:00 A.M. for our journey to start. While we waited, this man mixed the oddest looking "drinks" and silently served them to people milling about the theatre entrance:
At 11:00 A.M., a woman told our group that we were going to meet Kazuko, and off we went along King's Road, where we saw some odd sights, like this man singing and playing his guitar while it was still in the case, and
this King's Road landmark: a clock that spins counter-clockwise (or anti-clockwise, as I think it's called here) at a rapid rate.
We arrived at the swank Bluebird shop, where Kazuko was ready with mugicha (cold barley tea) and o-sembei (rice crackers) to fortify us for our journey. The snacks were set up near the dressing rooms
and Kazuko showed us "her" room, where she said she lived:

Kazuko told us that she loved the concept of "end" and endings, and that today's walk would be about various ends in and around King's Road. She also said that she was fascinated by death and decay, which was why she lived in England. Her assistant began addressing today's theme of endings by demonstrating the ends of two explorers--here she is showing us the "length" of their accomplishments (ahem)
before they came to a disastrous end in the sea (the blue bag is the turbulent water, the upside-down rice bowl is the island the explorers were trying to reach, and the explorers' ship is being thrust up and down in the sea):
We left the "English capitalist shop" (as Kazuko called it) and began our walk, with Kazuko leading us to our next unknown destination. As we began spotting more performers along our path,
we began looking at everyone on the street, wondering if they were part of the performance too. Suddenly, Kazuko turned and entered this chocolate shop!
After a minute or two of talking in the shop, a door behind the counter opened and this woman walked out:
One of the two children in our group whispered to his mum that he wanted to give the lady one of their wet-wipes, which I thought was very considerate, but the chocolate-lover was clearly enjoying her addiction and even wanted to convert us:
When she made lines of cocoa powder and proceeded to snort them, we realised that her addiction was a bit extreme!
After saying goodbye to the woman who met her end in chocolate, we left Rococo, where this priest called one of us forward:
This woman was looking for her lost puppy,
our friends from earlier were busy cleaning,
the bartender was now waiting at a bus stop that was temporarily out of use,
and the sands of time poured out of this woman's hands
while she pondered her end.
What must all the people walking along King's Road have thought of these odd sights? Although I was busy keeping my eyes open for the next performer, I also looked at passers-by, trying to gauge their reactions. In true London form, no one on the street seemed to be stopping or even wondering what was going on. Only the staff inside shops, who were insulated from the street by that all-important layer of glass, allowed themselves to stand near the windows with confused looks on their faces. Our next stop was outside Starbucks, where this woman kneeled, apparently frozen:
Now, we thought this man was part of our group (in fact, we even spoke with him briefly before we left Chelsea Theatre), but upon seeing the woman, he pulled flowers out of his jacket, apologised for being late, pulled a boom box out of his backpack, took the woman's hand,
and off they went! We looked around at the rest of our group, wondering if anyone else would suddenly become part of the performance--so now we were suspicious of everyone! This football player performed warmups for us in the crosswalk,
and rather disturbingly, this woman stood in the middle of the sidewalk, silent and unmoving.
(No passers-by stopped to inquire if she was alright--but when Bob paused near her, she suddenly grabbed his arm and looked tearfully into his face, still silent.) Our next stop was at
where Kazuko told us she was going to ask if we could come inside to relax and have some cold lemonade, since she's heard that "conservatives are charitable and caring." She banged on the door, rung the bell repeatedly, and yelled through the mailslot: "We are travellers in need of some cold lemonade. Can we come in and have some cold lemonade?" But it turns out that we couldn't. Our next stop was at a church garden/ graveyard, where some unconventional preaching was going on:
Our pair of lovers frolicked around the fig trees (yes, more fig trees!)
and then a door opened at one end of the garden and out marched Henry VIII.
He gleefully showed us all of his wives
and even more happily demonstrated their various ends:
We were led into one of the buildings adjoining the garden
where we met Sir Thomas More (he of the strange email) and he and Kazuko talked about various dead people and their ends (including Sid and Nancy in this photo).
They then passed out identities to all of us, with name tags and tales of our particular ends. Bob was Quentin Crisp
and I was T.S. Eliot.
We then sang a song about Utopia
and Sir Thomas More told us that he would now take us to Utopia, if we wanted to go. When Kazuko said that she wanted to go too, he told her that she couldn't come with us and that she would have to find her own Utopia. She was understandably heartbroken.
We were also told that the various people we'd seen along our journey were also eager to go to Utopia, and that they might want to come along, but that we should ignore them and resist their attempts. The woman holding time seemed upset about this
and when we got into two minivans to drive to Utopia (didn't you know that you could drive to Utopia?), all the people we'd seen surrounded the cars like a scene out of a zombie film.
This was the sight out of my window:
As we slowly drove away, they chased us,

but they eventually tired and we arrived at Utopia . . . which appeared to be a highrise council flat! As we milled about, the lovers appeared from behind a dumpster and the man gave a rousing rendition of Sinatra's My Way, in Japanese-- "And now, the end is near . . .":
Here's the dramatic ending of the song:
We all crammed into one of the lifts and found ourselves outside a flat, where a woman in the role of a 1930s socialite welcomed us ("Hello Quentin! It's been too long!") and ushered us inside for tea and biscuits. My mug had Princess Diana on it, and I think some of the other mugs were similarly themed with ends. We sat around, enjoying our refreshments
and the views
while we listened to Kazuko talking about Utopia on this reel-to-reel machine:
When her talk ended, so did the tape, as it nicely flicked back and forth when the reel ended. After thanking our host (whose mother kept peering out from the kitchen, staring at the craziness going on in her flat), we descended to ground level, where the dejected group of Utopia-seekers scowled at us:
We walked back to Chelsea Theatre, where we were led into a completely dark room, and stood in expectation for a minute before a blinding light turned on, spotlighting Kazuko sitting in the stalls:

She told us how she hoped we enjoyed Utopia and wished that we would each find our own Utopia in time and then another door opened and Oh Doh was finished--but not before we all got goodie bags from Rococo, which included artisan chocolate bars. An amazing free performance AND free chocolate (worth £3.75 a bar)? You really can't beat that. Our other souvenir from the day's walk was the booklet of "ends" that Kazuko handed out:
After our long walk (the performance took about ninety minutes), we wandered around the neighbourhood some more, coming across an Oscar Wilde plaque, before we did some more wandering around Covent Garden, where we witnessed a performance of a different sort. This "small builder of the year" drove down down Long Acre, performing ballads in his van's amplified sound system:
Maybe our King's Road paranoia (Is everyone around us a performer?) was more rational than we thought!