Bar Italia: Time Eludes us

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The Natural History Museum is one of those wonderful Victorian buildings, so abundant in London, that draws your eye before you even get close. The architecture itself makes the museum a truly remarkable place before you have even stepped into the main entrance. Of course, when you do step in, you are greeted by a diplodocus, or at least the carefully welded-together bones of a diplodocus that probably died around 150 million years ago. The bones don’t stop there though; a huge section of dinosaurs contains dozens of nearly perfectly preserved dinosaurs and fossils, and by the time we were through the ‘blue zone’, maybe a quarter of the whole museum, it was approaching twilight outside, and once again we sacrificed the completeness of the visit for moving on to somewhere new. The Natural History Museum probably needs a day trip of its own to do it justice, and one of the few remaining shining beacons of our fading empire is that the country can still offer such vast access to history for free.



We decided that, before the evening drinking began, we would take the ladies to that shoppers paradise, Oxford Street. Of course, the shops in Oxford Street, such as Primark, H&M and Topshop, can all be found in Wolverhampton, but there must be something about the size that attracts. The nearest tube took us into Covent Garden, where we found people. Lots of people. Far too many people, in fact, and so we gave up on shops and found a pub instead. One of Chris’ friends, Andy, was in London, and we had agreed to meet him for a drink, and during our quick pint we suddenly realised that the delays of the milling crowds had made us late. Worse, Andy was at Clapham Junction, which could only be reached by two tubes and a train. This wouldn’t normally take long, but the overcrowding on the London Underground coupled with an increasing amount of tube closures slowed us down. Not deterred, we arrived at Clapham with plenty of time for a quick pint or two before Andy had to be on his way.



Time, by now, was becoming an issue. There was still Bar Italia to visit and food to eat before we could jump on the last train home in two hours’ time. The London Underground, so reliable on my trips to London in the past, continued to hamper us, and by the time we were booted off at Charing Cross due to underground closures and forced to get on a bus, it was clear that we had to make a choice between Bar Italia and food. Despite not having eaten since breakfast time, I was more than willing to skip tea and reach the only definite destination in the day’s plan, but I was outvoted as everyone else considered food fairly essential, and, somewhat reluctantly, the visit to Bar Italia was cancelled. It seems that a recurring theme is starting to develop on these trips; whatever idea originally conceived from the music has to be cancelled for one reason or another. The crowds made it essential in this case though, and after standing waiting for a bus in a traffic-choked Trafalgar Square for what seemed like an eternity, we were in danger of running out of time for food, so we flagged down a taxi to Euston Station, which clearly took us the long way and charged for it, but got us there with around 45 minutes to grab food before we left.



The last time I came to London we got to the station in plenty of time, grabbed some food and then promptly missed the train by a few seconds. There was no repeat of that this time, but there was a repeat of the train from earlier in the day. It was perfectly possible that we were on exactly the same train, and that the toilets still hadn’t been cleaned. The train was full, and as our allocated seats were in the vicinity of the offending smell, we chose, despite being on our feet all day, to stand outside of the carriage by the train doors, such was the strength of the aroma. Due to a strike on the London Midland train services, the journey only got busier, and we were virtually in Birmingham by the time we did sit down.



The day ended as it began, everyone looking tired, staring out into the darkness from the front of Wolverhampton train station. On the bright side, we had a convoy of lifts waiting to take us all home, no forty minute walk to round the trip off, just a quick drop off and straight to bed some time after midnight at the end of what had been a long, often crowded day, but one which kept us busy chasing around the many and varied sights of London, and left us with enough uncharted territory to make a return visit more than likely.

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Comments

[James Griffin]

Nice post!
Only just found the blog Ste! Great reading. I say we find some dirt cheap tickets in Feb/March for a Saturday. Go London in the morning head to 1 attraction then to SOHO mid afternoon for Bar Italia. What do you think?