Feeling Lonely?

Whenever I go to hear a classical music concert (which is pretty often) I’m usually the youngest person in the room. The oldest person in the room is always the composer, an he has usually been dead for at least fifty years. This worries me immensely. Because of these particular worries, I was especially looking forward to opera producer Beth Morrison‘s chat on, “The New Classical,” which–according to my handy TBA catalog– promised to unveil a ” creative renaissance rooted in classical music.” Morrison is a champion for new operas, and has presented  successful projects all over the world, featuring composers who are living, breathing and under the age of fifty. After hearing her presentation it was clear why she is so incredibly successful.  She isn’t simply producing works, she’s part of a musical revolution!

“Indie-classical” or “new-classical” are the terms Morrison uses to describe what may be the first genuine movement in 21st century classical music. This movement gets its unique and refreshing sound from a synthesis of 20th century genres and an outright embrace of popular music, resulting in musical flavors that are weird, but good (think salty french fries and a nice thick chocolate shake for your ears). Take Missy Mazzoli’s, Songs from the Uproar, a strange concoction of Steve Reich-brand minimalism and tangy rock progressions. Even zestier is David T. Little‘s Soldier Songs, which features a musical theater-esque vocal line over a churning underbelly of metal.

In the “new-classical” movement, the performance, production and  consumption of music is changing just as much as its compositional style. Composers are creating their own ensembles to play their works instead of waiting for an established group to program them. These ensembles, in turn, promote the works of other, similar minded composers. Performances are becoming cozier, with chamber operas premiering in tiny downtown clubs like New York’s experimental performance space “The Kitchen,” and  works are increasingly influenced by contemporary mediums like film. When performed in an intimate space, with a modern production, and a score infused with popular music, a work like Ted Herne‘s oratorio Katrina Ballads is incredibly effective. Katrina Ballads was by far my favorite snippet Morison played during her chat. With literal text from the sufferers, survivors and surveyors of Hurricane Katrina and a hearty and jazz influenced score, Herne’s piece is truly tragic, expressive and ironic.

This talk gave me a considerable amount of hope for the next generation of classical music, my only concern now is, when is the new-classical movement coming to Portland?

The Last Radio Drama Standing

In his latest radio drama for the BBC,  filmmaker Paul Watson attempts to bring his celebrated knack for TV documentary to the radio. “Last Family Standing” paints the portrait of the Truscott family, struggling to make ends meet in the aftermath of the second world war. The story opens with Watson interviewing the aging Dorothy Truscott, played by Janet Amsden with a perfect blend of feeble moxie. Though obviously quite grizzled, Dorothy can still rail against modern-day politicians as hard as ever. As she rants at Alistair Darling’s sad plans to dig out of the financial crisis on the audible television, she slowly unravels the story of her family’s hardships in the aftermath of the second world war. In Dorothy’s memory, we are introduced to her parents, Marjorie and Charles Truscott–played by a too young Jaqui sharp and a too melodramatic Jonathan Trafler. These characters spell out their story clumsily: they both worked hard in a munitions factory during the war, and gave one of their son’s lives to the British cause, yet there is  no work for them in the post war economy. This blatant central theme is minimally accentuated by the over-zealous plot developments: A black yank soldier charms Dorothy and leaves her pregnant, the family’s only surviving son is forced to make money through quasi illegal investing and Marjorie decides to turn tricks at the local pub in order to make ends meet. All the while the post-war depression to blame for these incidents,  a depression spawned by the big guys at Westminster not caring about the “little guy,” fat-cat bankers getting rich off the poor racial tensions, and bullying Yanks who dominate Britain culturally and politically. Sound familiar? Indeed, there are parallels to our current economic situation, and Paul Watson makes absolutely no attempt to make this connection subtle.

Something very quiet

There is a certain feeling of content sadness that only comes at the end of a truly excellent book. When the last phrase is finished, it is routine to flip back through the pages, inhaling the musty scent of an old volume.  Running your fingers across the cover and down the spine of the latest bestseller you attempt to absorb the last little bits of prose through your fingertips. Deborah Pearson earnestly seeks to recreate this sacred relationship we have with books in her work, “Something Very Quiet is About to Happen.” Stationed at the Battersea Library, this part scavenger hunt, part installation, part performance art comes together haphazardly at first, but  the end result is truly pleasing. Pearson opens the piece by giving an awkward but brief tour of the library’s literature and reference sections,  handing you a short list of materials to find. What comes next is a lovely foray into the minds of the books we love. The core of this piece is lovingly placed, literally, in the books themselves. Pearson’s imagined correspondence stuck randomly in the most arbitrary holdings of the library perfectly personify the novels, anthologies of poetry, and graphic novels we flip through lazily, carefully study, or hungrily rip apart. In this literary meditation, don’t rush through Pearson books, her notes are best read closely and you’ll make the most of Pearson’s final quiet moment by taking your time with each one.

Historically Accurate Performance is out of date in “Arias for Mrs. Arne”

An aging crowd gathered last night to hear, “Arias for Mrs. Arne,” the fifteenth event of this year’s Handel Festival, hosted by the prominent Handel Society. The recital was cleverly designed illustrate audibly the career of Cecilia Young. Cecilia was a lyric soprano praised by contemporary critics and adored by Baroque composers; famed music connoisseur Charles Burney described her voice as ‘a good natural voice and a fine shake [and] had been so well taught,’ and composer Charles Arne was so infatuated with her voice  that he married her and George Frederic Handel was inspired to create the roles Dalinda in Ariodante, Morgana in Alcina just for her. Performed by the London Handel Players and sung by early music diva Dame Emma Kirby, this event showed promise of being a truly interesting night of Baroque style.

The London Handel players were most definitely on top of their game, obviously emitting the sparks of a high quality chamber ensemble. Director and first violinist Adrian Butterfield communicated almost telepathically with violist Peter Collyer and second violinist Oliver Webbe to seamlessly pass and accentuate the repeating motifs common in baroque music. The ensemble was heartily supported by the basso continuo created by Peter Buckoke’s double bass, Katherine Sharman’s cello and Laurence Cumming’s harpsichord, while Rachel Brown’s period flute bounced between complete integration with the ensemble and soaring overhead like a soloist.

If the London Handel Players were so on par, why was this homage to Cecilia Arne’s life and career so lackluster? It may have been a result of  two major factors: programing and venue. In terms of program, the Handel society’s decision to scatter the lovely arias of Handel, Lampe, Arne and Geminiani with additional music from the period outside of the sung drama tradition was an interesting  nod to the Vauxhall Pleasure gardens where these composers and their beloved Cecilia performed works of all kinds, however, in a recital context this mixing of genres was confusing to listen to and awkward to watch. Another awkward aspect of this recital was the venue. Trained primarily as a chorister and then as an “early music singer,” there is no denying that Dame Edna Kirby has trouble filling a large space with her voice, and even the modestly vaulted ceilings of St. Georges seemed just slightly beyond her.  In an attempt to fill the space, she audibly gasped for breath and strained to reach the peaks of Handel’s gloriously pennedmelismas with ease. The result was a  line punctuated in all the wrong places. These two snags in, “Arias for Mrs. Arne” raise interesting questions in terms of historically authentic performance practice. Historically accurate performance is generally a requirement for early music anoraks, however, it may not always be translatable to contemporary audiences. Furthermore, singers often resort to poor technique when striving for the pure, vibrato-less sound of early music. If the Handel society is looking to create another generation of Baroque music lovers, they may want to explore new ways to perform Handel’s music that maintains the original intent of the composer–to connect with an audience– and doesn’t sacrifice it in the name of authenticity.

Film

Finally! A movie about London! In this film you’ll see a few funny things that have happened to my classmates in London: a Scottish caleigh (folk dance) we went to in our first week, a sighting of B-list movie star Edward Randell, our trip to Hampton Court (the home of Henry VIII), and a few bits from our Theater in London course.

Enjoy!

Click here to watch

Not for the faint of heart

I’m definitely not the most patriotic American, however, there are some basic American principles I deeply revere: the protection of free speech, a bill of rights and a check on governmental power. I hate to admit it, but I think this reverence for American democracy impeded my initial understanding of British politics. When I first arrived here, I tried to keep an open mind, but now and then a tiny snobbish voice in my head would declare, “this is the tyrannical aristocratic body that our founding fathers broke away from! What would Thomas Jefferson say about this archaic monarchy, the blasphemous mingling of church and state in an obviously religiously diverse country and their complete lack of a written constitution!?” Luckily, as I fell in love with the city of London—the free museums, British humor and a strong economy (well, at least stronger than America’s)—I couldn’t help but fall for the parliamentary monarchy as well.

It started slowly with a field trip to the Houses of Parliament for our Fine Arts in London course. The Parliamentary estate is a huge complex on the bank of the Thames River with a colorful, nine hundred year history. According to legend, the site once supported a Roman temple dedicated to Apollo that was destroyed in an earthquake. The medieval Westminster palace was shaped by many rulers including Edward the Confessor, William the Conqueror and Henry III. Westminster Hall was the only medieval chamber to survive the Great Fire of 1666 and that is where we began our tour. The hall itself is magnificent, with a soaring ceiling of heavy timber and heavy stone walls that made it impressively cold, both figuratively and literally. I understand the history of this space and I think it is definitely interesting to marvel at the sites where people lost their heads, but this gigantic room seemed to have no purpose outside of its pomp. This concept of useless space or became a common theme as we traveled through the rooms of parliament. It seemed like every hallway was absurdly large and ridiculously opulent, thanks to the tediously detailed designs of E.W. Pugin. Pugin was one of the first ‘interior designers’ and the brains behind the Houses of Parliament’s over-the-top style. In art history he is well-known for his enthusiastic embrace of the Neo-Gothic method, which, ideologically, tries to evoke a return to noble ideals of medieval times by aesthetically reflecting medieval designs.  Pugin’s style is a little bit overwhelming, ironically much more so than the actual medieval architecture of Westminster Hall. Every single inch of every single room Pugin designed is painted or plastered or overlaid with something flashy, and the attention to detail—even in the carpets—was unbelievable. It seemed ridiculous to waste all of this energy and resources on rooms that are only used once or twice a year when the Queen comes to visit parliament, and this blind monarchial worship is something I found appalling. However, Pugin viewed his designs in a completely different way. While I see this pomp and luxurious excess as oppressive, Pugin believed his designs acted as an emancipation from the clutches of  cookie-cutter Victorian industrialism. He placed a high value on handcrafted work and argued that any decoration added to an object must not detract from its actual purpose.

When I started looking at Parliament from Pugin’s more radical perspective,  I started appreciating the  houses of parliament more as a center of government.  The House of Lords and the House of Commons are both fairly small rooms in comparison to the queen’s rarely used ceremonial rooms, and they are crowded with rows and rows of padded benches. This element of design is a nod back to the first British parliament meetings which were held in St. Stephens Church and the pew like structure of the houses is such a defining aspect of the space that Winston Churchill refused to change the design when he was given the task of rebuilding the House of Commons after it was destroyed in the Blitz of WWII, despite the fact that in the original building there were not enough seats for MP’s and no desks for them to take notes on. In explaining his position, Churchill stated famously, “We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us.”

I got to see this shape in action in my Contemporary Britain course, where we watched a clip of the weekly parliamentary event “Question Time,” where the minority party’s opposition questions the current Prime Minister’s political decisions. The majority party, lead by the prime minister of the day, all sit crowded on one side of the room and face their political opponents (the opposition) head on. There is a small table where the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition (currently Gordon Brown and David Cameron) face each other in debate while the other MP’s are egging on their respective sides. These weekly meetings are not polite and full of carefully constructed arguments, but chocked full of direct accusations and cheeky (sometimes insulting) puns, interruptions and genuinely hot-blooded  political debate. The stress of events were clearly visible in the house of commons when we visited, I think my favorite part of visiting the house of commons was standing at the Prime Minister’s podium and seeing the brass corners worn away by a nervous PMs of the past and thinking how stressful it must be to face your opponents in such a head-on way and how brilliant it is for a political system designed with this sort of credibility! I have sense become obsessed with following British politics.

My obsession is directly fueled by the British obsession with newspapers. In London they love newspapers. On any block you can find shops full of newspapers that each cost about a pound and there are also three free papers published each day. Some of these have great art coverage while some focus on financial or political analysis, there are left-wing papers, tory papers, papers for the upper class and others still directed to the “white van man” (the British version of “Joe the plumber”). I started reading the free Evening Standard to get me through my evening tube commute, but the more time I spend here, the more I find myself splurging on The Times, The Guardian, or The Independent so I can fastidiously keep up on the current scandals and drama surrounding the upcoming election.

More than just a one-off

I have to admit, I was a little unsure about this trip. Not because I am a homebody or because the trip itself is particularly risky, but rather, because I am participating in the program as a second semester senior. The Fine Arts in London trip is one of the most popular offerings of Lewis & Clark’s overseas program, however, despite its popularity, the trip is only offered every other year. I knew I wanted to go overseas sometime during college, and LC’s overseas program is one of the things that originally drew me to the school, however, when the application deadline rolled around in the spring of my Freshman year, I was still testing the waters of at least four different majors, completely unsure where I belonged.

Finally settling in the music department, I was behind in my major and unable to travel abroad during my Junior year, when most Lewis & Clark students go abroad. By the time the application for the spring 2010 London trip started up I waffled for a long time over whether the program was really worth it, considering I would have to cram all of my final academic plans into one semester including my thesis, a senior vocal recital and a few other electives I just really wanted to take before I graduated (call it “the curse of the liberal arts student”–we love our electives here); not to mention that I would be missing the second semester of my senior year including all the exciting things that lead up to graduation.

As you guessed it, I decided to come in the end, and while sometimes I may have regretted how ridiculously busy I was last semester and I was a little sad to miss the Class of 2010’s “Senior Soiree” last Friday, I cannot even begin to describe how amazing it is to live in this city. In the three weeks I’ve been here, I’ve experienced more music, art and theater than the three years I spent studying them at Lewis & Clark. I have seen paintings that are hundreds of years old, music composed four days before its first concert and plays performed in tiny back rooms of pubs. I have spotted B-list movie stars, met a knight and walked the same streets as T.S. Elliot and Freddie Mercury. Throughout all of this, I am learning that the differences between the US and the UK are greater than I originally thought. My experiences with Brits are often confusing, awkward and hilarious. This is obviously only a brief summary of what I’ve done, but I promise to fill in the gaps with later posts. Until then, cheers from London!

Conquering The Great Zambezi

To get to the first stop on our journey, Livingstone, Rachel and I decided to take a bus company that came highly recommended to us by her fellow peace corps volunteers (“they hardly ever break down!”). Just north of the Zimbabwean border, Livingstone is the largest tourist attraction of Zambia’s southern province. To get there, we left at 6 AM and rode for six hours on what the worst stretch of road in Zambia, stopping only once for a short bathroom break, which we had to pay for.  This was actually not as bad as it sounds, the bus was a regular coach style bus you see in the US and it was comfortable enough, though it pretty crowded and a little bumpy.  When we got to Livingstone around noon and checked into a cozy little chalet with a thatched roof and mosquito nets at the Jollyboys Hostel. Our room was so cozy and shady that I immediately wanted to go to sleep, but Rachel dragged me get up, forced a banana and a softie (Coca-Cola) on me and dragged me to Victoria Falls (this might be a little but of an exaggeration but I cannot even begin to describe how hard it was for me to get up).

Victoria Falls made forget completely about my terrible feelings of weary, nauseous jet lag. It was a clear afternoon and the sun was out and casting circular rainbows all over the gorge. We could easily see across the falls to Zimbabwe and the Zambezi River down below. Rachel was pleased to notice that there were much fewer baboons in the park (when she came with my Mom and Aunt they had their lunch stolen by a hungry pack of chimps), but she spoke too soon. As we were leaving the park we noticed a busker playing in the market outside with a little baboon dancing to the music. We stopped to watch and the monkey started to come closer and closer to us. Suddenly it ran up to me and grabbed my uneaten banana right out of my hand! It was completely terrifying, and it didn’t help that a rude American tourist said, “you know you shouldn’t have given that banana to a monkey in a plastic bag.” Trying to get away as quickly as possible, we decided to walk over to the Zimbabwean side of the falls just to take a look.

Currently, Zimbabwe is not an ideal place to visit. Under the leadership of President Robert Mugabe, poverty and political repression have become increasingly widespread, many white Zimbabwean farmers are in exile  and the economy has declined so much that you can buy one billion Zimbabwean dollars on the street for a little less than $1. Crossing over for a quick look or bungee jumping is allowed by the government, but it was a bit scary passing by the guards carrying huge rifles and there were also baboons completely surrounding the border (also scary). By about 5PM I was basically  sleep walking, so Rachel and I got a pizza from a local shop and went back to the hostel to discuss our plans for the next day.

Since this was Rachel’s third visit to Livingstone and possibly her last vacation in Africa before leaving the peace corps, she really wanted to “do something,” some sort of “African” adventure offered by the various local tourist agencies (opposed to her life, which is a  genuine African adventure of living in the bush). These adventures are generally guided safaris like  “Walk with Lions!” or “Ride Elephants!” but since safari-like activities have a bad reputation for treating the animals badly, Rachel and I decided we would spend the morning white water rafting and the evening on a Sunset Cruise (also known as a “Booze Cruise”).

Lucky for us, the Zambezi River is home to world-class rapids, each with a creative name like, “the gnashing jaws of death.” You would think that we would need some sort of training to maneuver these but apparently only a brief safety talk is necessary. We joined a rafting team consisting of: a roly-poly Brit, his two children, a twenty-something Australian and a guide, Boyd, who handed us a paddle, helmet and life jacket, dubbed us “Team Mzungu” (Mzungu= white person) and led us down to the riverbank.

I should explain now that, though the national language of Zambia is English and a lot of Zambians speak it, it is very different from the English I am used to speaking. It is heavily accented, the letters “L” and “R” are interchangeable and words are often rearranged in weird ways. Communication was more challenging than I thought it would be–especially when the roar of class V rapids mixed in.  For some reason, Boyd didn’t explain how you actually went about the white water rafting  business until we were actually in the raft, churning around in the first rapid (“Boiling Point” which is between a class IV and V). Needless to say, Team Mzungu was not very successful, despite Boyd’s constant proclamations, “MZUNGUS’ CONQUERING THE GLEAT ZAMBAZI!!!” and “MZUNGU SWIMMING LESSONS!!” Every person in our raft (minus Boyd) fell out on “Boiling Point” and our raft flipped completely on two other rapids. Flipping was probably the most terrifying thing I have ever experienced (a legitimate fear, considering we later learned two people died on the river in the past year), however, as you may have already deduced, we survived the Great Zambezi under (despite?) Boyd’s watch, and at noon we climbed out of the raft and ascended a rickety ladder to get to the top of the Zambezi River gorge, where our transport (and luckily, cold beer and water) were waiting for us.

Our Sunset Cruise on the Zambezi (above the falls) was much more low-key, but we did see a bunch of Hippopotamuses and a Crocodile! Also, I should mention that I don’t have a camera (mine tragically broke two days before I left for Africa) so you’ll have to wait until Rachel gets home in April to see pictures, but here are some from the internet just to prove I’m not exaggerating:

Getting There

Getting to Lusaka was a little more work than I thought it would be. I arrived at Heathrow airport ready to go at 4 PM and my flight to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia  wasn’t due to leave at 10 so I spent two hours anxiously waiting to check in. The only books I had on me were “A Clockwork Orange,” and “The Complete Stories of Franz Kafka”–not very good for mindless distraction. At 6PM I rushed to the desk of Ethiopian airlines only to find a large crowd of very angry people. I was wordlessly handed a letter stating my flight had been canceled and rescheduled for the next morning, food and lodging would be provided for me.

I fought my way through the crowd (there was no line, my sister Rachel tells me this is an African thing) and when I finally got a chance to talk to someone I realized that no one seemed to know when I would be getting to Lusaka. This was stressful. It didn’t help that I was in the sort of mood where even the tiniest problem can bring on frustrated tears. Actually, I’m pretty proud of how I held it together, considering that contacting my parents and sister to tell them what was up turned out to be a two-hour process once I made it to the hotel, my flight the next morning was delayed another 3 hours and my new connection to Lusaka also came with a 12 hour layover in Addis Ababa International Airport. In my sleep deprived delirium I didn’t realize that Ethiopian Airlines would have given me a hotel room in Addis so I spent the night in the airport (something that I would not recommend) where there are no payphones and internet is five US dollars per hour (you have to buy an hour and you have to use it all in one sitting). My flight was supposed to leave at 9:30 AM on the morning of the 19th but was also delayed, though no one actually told us so. The plane just arrived three hours late and then just sat there for a while. It actually got to the point where my fellow travelers were so frustrated that they started mobbing the door to the plane until they let us in (this is not an exaggeration).

This being said, I was incredibly happy to finally get to Lusaka. It was so warm and I was so happy to finally get a chance to see Rachel! We took a Taxi to the Peace Corps Office where I met some of Rachel’s fellow volunteers and I got a chance to change into some clean clothes and then walked to a nearby gas station. This was sort of scary and overwhelming because it was dark (VERY dark because there are no street lamps in most of Lusaka) and the cars were speeding by on the wrong side of the road. When we got to the gas station we were accosted by about 15 taxi drivers all wanting to give us rides, in Zambia taxis are completely private and unmetered so you have to negotiate on a price before you get in and they are constantly competing with each other. We found a taxi and Rachel negotiated the right price for the driver to take us to the house where we would spend the night, which was the home of American aid workers. The couple wasn’t  home while we were there, but their pets (Taffy the dog and Elsa the cat) were and it was really nice to spend the night in a home,  especially since we were gearing up to leave early in the morning for our first adventure.

Pulling out of Portland

I left Portland on the morning of Wednesday December 16th, 2009, after frantically packing until 2:30 in the morning. In retrospective, it seems completely insane to spend my last semester at Lewis & Clark frantically juggling an opera, an a cappella group, a job, a recital, a thesis on top of a full course schedule; but for some reason I thought it was necessary, and needless to say I was ready to leave. The plane ride over was uninteresting enough, a short stop over in L.A. and a 10 hour flight to London that I actually slept a little bit on. Arriving in London on Thursday morning seemed painless at first,  I found the tube easily and rode it to Kings Cross Station (yes, where Harry Potter catches the Hogwarts Express), but then, things started to go downhill.

When I got out of the tube I realized that a) it was freezing and snowing, b) its hard to tell where you are  on a map when you were just traveling underground and c) I was lost, sleep deprived and confused. After taking a quick glance at my map and sticking it in my pocket for “safe keeping,” I wandered around for a little bit before realizing d) my map had fallen out of my pocket and was now lost and e) rolling suitcases do not work well on cobblestone streets. I honestly have no idea how I found my hostel or how I pulled my heavy suitcase up to my tiny room on the second floor (I only have vague memories of interacting awkwardly with the girl at reception), but when I did I fell asleep immediately.

I woke up at 5:00 PM (or 17:00 hours for non-Americans) completely disoriented because aside from one small hole for entry at the foot of the bed, the bottom bunk I was sleeping in was completely surrounded by dark wooden paneling. I should explain now that the hostel I was staying at, “Clink Hostel,” was once a courthouse. When I booked the bed it sounded amazingly cool, steeped with history, but actually it was really quite creepy, windows were few and far between, overhead lights were dim and the walls were painted nauseatingly “trendy” colors like bright orange and purple. Also, I was sharing a tiny room with 11 boys (one of which was definitely approaching middle age) and it smelled way too much like KFC for my liking. I decided to take a break from this terrible place to wander around the neighborhood and after a very British dinner of Bangers and Mash (sausages and mashed potatoes) at a cheap restaurant nearby I felt ready to go back to sleep in my little hole-bed. Unfortunately for me, there appeared to be hundreds of dutch school children also staying at the hostel who had decided that running around screaming, slamming doors and pulling fire alarms at 2:30 in the morning was much more fun than sleeping. Despite of this, I must have eventually fallen asleep, because the maid who came to clean the room  at 10 AM woke me up–two hours after the alarm I had set was supposed to go off. Trying to avoid a late checkout fee and having had enough of the clink hostel, I tore out of the room as quickly as possible.

After leaving the hostel, my original plan was to find the cheapest venue to store my suitcase (full of my fancy London clothes) while I was in Africa. I had located two places on the internet beforehand, and was on a search to find the cheapest one, supposedly located somewhere near Kings Cross. Unfortunately, after two hours of searching, I determined that this place did not exist, and after the second cheapest place would not allow me to store my things there without proof of a British Address (i.e. a utility bill) I was forced to store my things at Kings Cross Station for a whopping 4 pounds a day. This, combined with the fact that I felt completely disgusting (I rushed out of the hostel without brushing my teeth) and was  starving made me feel very disheartened, and, on the whole completely fed up with London. So, after leaving my bag in its overpriced storeroom I decided to take the tube to Heathrow to wait for my flight to Zambia even though it wasn’t due to leave for another seven hours.