Bar Italia: In the city that has a lie in

---

It was dark. It was also cold. There were very few signs of life, though the occasional house had a bathroom light on, and a minibus full of Eastern European men drove past on the way to an early start to their working day. In the main though, it was just darkness and beautiful silence. Or at least, that’s how it was in the outside world, but through my ears the sound of Hot Chocolate’s ‘Heaven is in the back seat of my Cadillac’ was pounding ruthlessly. One of the many functions of the MP3 player is that, if you decide to get out of bed at 4 o clock in the morning, you can use it as a tool to wake you up without disturbing the normal people who are still asleep. It was a 40 minute walk to Wolverhampton train station, and by the time I was there, despite the hour and the temperature, I was wide awake and slightly sweaty. The same could not be said of the others, mainly because they weren’t there.



The train left at 5.43, and confident as I was that Lyndsey would always be late, I told her it left at 5.30. Sure enough, Lyndsey and James arrived at just after 5.30, Lyndsey looking just about awake, James like he was sleep walking. Worryingly, Chris and Vicky, normally extremely punctual, still hadn’t arrived. Had the taxi let them down? Was there a crazy overnight road closure that had significantly delayed them by diversion? It was neither in the end, the taxi arrived in time, but they were still in bed when it did. Somehow they got themselves ready in an amazingly short amount of time and made it to the station with at least a minute to spare.



As we headed towards our seats, we passed the toilet. There was a distinctly unpleasant smell coming from it. The first train of the day appeared to be the train that they couldn’t be bothered cleaning. At least our seats weren’t too bad, though James probably wouldn’t have cared anyway, as he continued sleeping in a slightly comatose state until we arrived in London. It was still early in London, in fact I had watched the sunrise from the train only minutes before we hit Euston. Of course, London is a big city, and cities never sleep so our first stop would be for breakfast. Considering it is in the middle of a city that never sleeps, Euston Station was pretty much closed, so we walked off instead to St Pancras Station, just down the road, not because we expected a better chance of finding breakfast here, but because there was, apparently, a big Christmas tree made of Lego there. The Lego tree was pretty impressive, largely due to the fact that you couldn’t even tell that this structure of 600,000 plastic bricks wasn’t even a tree until you were fairly close to it. There was nowhere for breakfast though, so we trusted in an establishment that you can generally find open and serving beer to tramps at any time of day; the humble Wetherspoons.



A quick search on James’ phone for the nearest Wetherspoons took us to the Angel, Islington, which we decided would definitely be open purely on the basis that it was on the monopoly board. A quick trip on the tube and we were there. After quickly going the wrong way we eventually found The Angel pub, and outside of it there was a tramp (or possibly just an alcoholic). This was not a good sign. At this time in the morning the tramps and alcoholics should be inside, reached for the whiskey. Clearly the pub was closed. We carried on walking around Islington, certain that somewhere would be open for breakfast, but ended up disappointed. There was no life whatsoever to be seen. It was almost as quiet as Bushbury had been at 4.30 in the morning. Eventually we found out that there was a football match on at Arsenal later that day, and nowhere would open until 10.00 for fear of attracting the kind of hooligans you would generally see at an Arsenal match, so we gave up on Islington and instead made our way to Camden.



In Camden we finally found Belushi’s, a smart little bar that was both open and serving breakfast. Despite the fact that we had spent an hour and a half looking for somewhere to eat and had been out of bed for more than five hours at this point, the breakfast was just...ok. It filled the gap but lacked a sparkle that would have made it a heartily satisfying meal. Still with food in our stomach it was now time to begin the day properly, by going shopping.



Being a day that was essentially themed on the songs of Pulp, Camden was an essential feature, for it was where Jarvis Cocker bought his festival tickets in Pulp’s classic ‘Sorted for E’s and Whizz’. Our first impressions of the manky fruit and veg stalls were that Camden Market, famous as it was, was slightly like Bilston market but perhaps not quite as good. Thankfully, we realised not long after that this market was in Camden, but wasn’t in fact, the famous market we were looking for. Finally we stumbled across the cobble stoned area round by the canal locks, full of record stalls, paintings, hippy trinkets and general junk, and while obviously more commercialised than the days when it was famous for getting something unique for a cut price, it was impressive nonetheless. The markets seemed to go on and on, just as you thought you were at the end there was another cobble-stoned row of stalls just round the corner, and so we decided, in the interests of seeing something else in London, to leave before we had seen it all.



From Camden we took a tube to Green Park, home of a park, which, by coincidence or design I’m not entirely sure, was green. At the end of this particular park was Buckingham Palace, home of the Queen. Or at least, it is kind of an official home, as she seems to prefer Windsor Castle. To be honest, you can tell that she doesn’t stay at Buckingham Palace very often by the grubby colour of the net curtains up the windows. Looking past this though, it is a rather grand place and most certainly home to a crowd of tourists, many of whom are happy to spend long periods of a cold November day hanging around the gates in the hope that something regal may happen. It didn’t while we were there so we decided to move on and head in the general direction of the Natural History Museum. We kicked the fallen Autumn leaves lying in great mounds by the side of the palace like excited five year olds, wandered past more impressive buildings, through an underpass and into an embassy-filled square full of Malaysian protesters, where we suddenly realised we didn’t actually know where we were. As luck would have it, we were pondering which route to take when a policeman walked past, and he helpfully pointed us in generally the right direction. That particular direction took us onto Knightsbridge, home of many posh places and of world famous department store, Harrods.



There was a time when Harrods was a pretty exclusive place, where only those of a higher class would shop, and a bunch of tourists from Wolverhampton wearing jeans and t-shirts wouldn’t get past the front door. Fortunately for us, and several thousand other people, that level of exclusivity has long gone in favour of tourism profits. On a Saturday afternoon in London during the run up to Christmas, there is clearly a significant trade in tourist profits to be had, so much so that there was barely room to walk, people completely missing the grandiose surroundings because they were so busy concentrating on the path of the person in front. It’s actually quite hard to imagine Harrods making much money out of this many people, as we had barely seen any of the store before our particular shepherded crowd appeared to be heading back in the general direction of the exit.



Having walked for maybe around five miles, James was particularly keen for a rest stop before we hit the museum, so we promptly headed into the nearest pub, where we waited for around 30 seconds before deciding to take our custom elsewhere after the barmaid was particularly rude to us. We then meandered around indecisively for another half an hour or so before finally finding a place with both seats and more friendly bar staff. With a couple of pints for fuel inside us, we headed round the corner to find the Natural History Museum.

---