London Calling

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to a Faraway Town.......

Ah the Clash. Oh yeah. This blog entry comes from the beautiful university town of Oxford and it is beautiful. It's stunning in fact. And it's old. That's the alarmingly scary part. The oldest building in Oxford is something around 1,000 years old. That's really old. That's even older than me......

Anyway, London. There's something in the male mind that is inherently puerile, and when you get on a train after an overnight flight from the USA and the scrolling electronic sign reads "This train is for COCKFOSTERS" one is immediately lead to ask "What is a cockfoster and why are they on this train?" Ok, I jest, but not much. The London tube is a vast improvement on the NYC one. Except for the lack of air conditioning. That means the platforms are cooler (but not much) and the trains are warmer (quite a lot.) Much to my surprise, only about one-tenth of our flight actually disembarked at Heathrow and frankly, at 9am on a Monday, the immigration checks were perfunctory and the customs were non-existent. Almost daily, I begin to agree more and more with my father that this whole thing is some kind of enormous conspiracy.

We had a lovely, albeit brief, lunch and catch up with Anna, and after showering and resting for a bit, we rocked into London town. We wandered from Oxford Circus to Picadilly Circus, down Regent Street to Pall Mall, then found ourselves under the Admiralty Arch and in Trafalgar Square, quite by accident. This city is quite incredible like that. Leicester Square was next (again, quite by accident!) and the many 1/2 price theatre booths. We may go, as it's markedly cheaper than in NYC - Wicked (The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West) was $349.00 USD for regular tickets and here it's £15 - 50.

On Tuesday morning, we took Matt D.'s advice and took the boat up to Greenwich. The park was lovely and the Royal Observatory was a delight. Much of Flamsteed's work is still preserved and many names and clocks one recognises from a certain Dava Sobel work I can recommend to you all. Post lunch, we took the bus on a whim and wound up in Holborn at the Britsh Museum. It is....phenomenal. Some real gems in the collection - most notably the Rosetta Stone (which is much bigger than I thought!) and the Elgin Marbles. I hadn't realised the Parthenon had been so badly damaged by the Turkish explosion, nor that certain members of the Venetian army had knocked heads and arms off various statues and taken them home. We didn't spend anywhere near enough time, so have promised to return in the future.

Wednesday promised to be a day of depressing practicalities. We slept far too late and finally adjoured to Tottenham Court Road (how we got there, I have no clue!) and went phone hunting. Now, armed with mobile phones, we were again free to wander off in our own seperate directions. We wandered back down into the city in an abortive attempt to locate the Pall Mall branch of Lloyds - for future reference to any of you, it's not on Pall Mall, but just off it, on a side street! We discovered that it was late night at the National Gallery, so we happily popped in, only to discover that they'd locked all the good rooms because some of the guards had gone on strike. We perused the mildly interesting collection of mostly British art they still had on display and concluded the evening with a meal in the Wellington - quite by accident - pub food really is good.

Ah the V&A - the most eclectic collection of stuff I have ever come across. It's a lovely museum, and took up a large chunk of our Thursday. The highlight was a collection of Leonardo sketches and folio pages borrowed from HM QE II and the like. The man was clearly a genius, but in some respects, quite mad as well. There was an incredible collection of British silver and some great British artifacts and curios - the Great Bed of Ware for one. Definitely on course for a return here too. We crossed the road to the Science Museum which, sadly, lacked the playing element of the Exploratorium in San Francisco. It did, however, have George Stephenson's Rocket and a neat little exhibit about Isembard Kingdom Brunel and the construction of the Great Eastern. We polished off the afternoon with a quick turn about the Natural History Museum which is probably the most beautiful building in London. It has a magnificent collection of dinosaur fossils, which was definitely the highlight of the visit.

Friday came and Jen wanted to shop so I left her at Oxford Circus and headed into Lambeth to the Imperial War Museum. It was hog heaven! The courtyard is dominated by a pair of utterly enormous 15" naval guns that lead into a beautifully restored and maintained collection of artifacts, displays and vehicles. (The Matilda below was one of my favourites. If the rest of you want to know what I saw, so as not to bore the female readers, drop me a line and I'll send you the piccies!) The main hall was dominated by a V2 World War II rocket and with the planes hanging from the ceiling and the tanks all around, it was lovely! 😊 They had an interesting exhibit on the Holocaust that was alarmingly similar to the museum in Washington (and my opinion was identical) although interestingly there was no video and very few images of Hitler - quite a deliberate omission. The museum focusses on conflicts that the British have fought in since World War I and has some worthwhile sections on the Falklands and the Suez Crisis that were not at all jingoistic.

I met Jen back in the city and after lunch at Marble Arch, we retired to an afternoon of seeing shops. It sounds bizarre, but once you've been to Hamleys and Forbidden Planet you'll understand. Hamleys was like FAO Schwarz on acid. Bigger, more expensive and busier. Maybe it's the time of year. There were many oversized soft toys including a £3,500 giraffe. Frightening. Forbidden Planet was geek heaven. Comics, models, graphic novels, games, everything. It was magnificent. I shall go back, and possibly even buy something. I'll note this here, although I didn't discover it until Oxford - The Hogfather, by Terry Pratchett, has been made into a film that went into post-production in August - due out Christmas-ish I guess. TP himself has a Peter Jackson style cameo and while most of the roles have gone to people I've never heard of, the role of Teatime will be played by the blond bloke from Hustle. YAY!

It dawned a beautiful Saturday morning in Pimlico, so Jen and I hurried off to meet Ruth at Camden Lock Markets. The weather in Camden was somewhat less pleasant, so we got under cover ASAP. It's an odd place Camden - full of hippies, slackers and bargain hunters, along with lots of people trying to get you to eat their food. Markets like these are the same the world over, but still neat to visit. I think the biggest surprises were people wandering down the street drinking beer at lunchtime and the astonishing amount f foreign military surplus in the markets. I'm now on the lookout for a nice dark blue Bundesmarine P-coat that submariners wear. Warm, cosy and cool looking. The afternoon was devoted to the Tate Modern. There was some stunning artwork interspersed with utter rubbish. Picasso's Weeping Woman was the highlight for me. I'm consistently disappointed with the amount of wasted space in museums and galleries these days. Half of the building that houses the Tate is empty. Silly.

Ah the expectation of a new town, I'd forgotten how much I liked it. Too much being sedentary lately. Turns out that the Tate Britain is just around the corner from the hostel, so we spent a couple of hours there before we met the bus north to Oxford. It's a nice little collection of works, few that I was familiar with. The British seem to think terribly highly of Constable and Turner and I think they're both a little naff. But, a lovely way to wile away the morning. It rained in the afternoon, and we got lost at Victoria Station. Mercifully, a nice man put us on the right stop and we were away. The Oxford Tube is a really comfortable way to travel, albeit 2 hours of sitting and looking at the English countryside.

Oxford was even more damp than London, which is never a great introduction to the city. But, we found the hostel and were thrilled to discover that it's crewed by a bunch of really friendly and enthusiastic Aussies, with a solid contingent of permanent residents thrown in. I must confess that it's made the transition back to real life rather easier than it could have been. An Oxford entry will come soon. Possibly tonight if I can get my A into G.

Take Care all,
Talk soon,
A & J

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Photos

Trafalgar
by accident.....

Pigeon Control
London styles

GMT!
Jen and I on time :P

Horse Guards
Poor man, so many photographs

Monty!
That's Monty. Hard to tell...

Matilda
and in Caunter camo! Wayhey!

The Great Jelly of London
Hands up who remembers that

The Wibbly Wobbly
Not so wibbly. I was surprised.

Comments

[Ronnie]

Jelly?
What's the great Jelly of London?! Sounds like you're having fun :) I'm in Melb and its cold :( Very disappointing since when I arrived it was in the high 20s!!!