Fizzling Out, apart from The Banquet

John, the friend who used to tell me what on the blackboard in my functionally blind days has lived in London all his life and has developed a number of ‘walks with facts’ over the years.  This trip was a perfect opportunity to enjoy a guided walk and we had a really good day-long meandering wander, from Whitechapel and through the City, ending up on the south bank for dinner near the National Theatre.  According to the pedometer on my iPhone it was about 12 miles. 

We started our walk just behind Whitechapel Tube station where the first Jack the Ripper victim was discovered in 1888 at the beginning of a killing spree lasting only a little over two months.  I think people generally think it was over a much longer period.  When I was growing up this was very much a Jewish area but now is very Indian sub-continent and a Sari shop just along from the tube station was the location for the displaying of John Merrick, The Elephant Man as a curiosity.  It does not have a plaque, blue or otherwise noting the fact.  A quick visit was paid to the fascinating Whitechapel Bell Foundry where Big Ben (13,700kg), the bell inside the House of Commons clock tower was cast, as was the United States Liberty Bell (900kg).  Apparently there’s no contemporary account of this bell being rung when the Declaration of Independence was proclaimed but it is generally thought to be one of those rung to announce that The Americans were revolting.  The foundry is quite amazing really.  It’s just a small building on a corner, still in operation after hundreds of years.  We walked past what was the location of another Ripper murder, which has been completely redeveloped and later in this same walk were to pass either directly or very close to three more victim locations.  Not much more than half a mile by half a mile would cover the locations of all the murders.  With the interest in the story and at a distance of 125 years or so it is easy to gloss over the fact that these were vicious murders where women were ripped open (hence the name) with some sort of knife, some having organs removed and the last being cut to pieces and displayed around a room as if it was a butchers shop.  It’s not at all romantic and these women were real unfortunates in life who just happened to be in the wrong place for their grisly deaths.  Despite a number of bizarre suggestions, the most likely suspect is a Montague Druitt who committed suicide just after the last commonly attributed ‘Ripper’ killing.  He came from Bournemouth and is buried in the churchyard at Wimborne Minster.

We skirted the edges of the old city passing the location for many of the old gates, several with similar named churches just outside where the wall had been e.g. St Botulph without Aldgate and St Botulph without Bishopsgate.   ‘Without’ in this context meaning outside and St Botulph being the patron saint of travellers and farmers.   Remember that the wall and gates were built by the Romans and when this city was probably the biggest in the world in medieval times, the country was still Roman Catholic with Martin Luther, Henry VIII and Elizabeth I still centuries away from even being a gleam in their Dad’s eye.

As you can imagine, an all day walk with a knowledgeable guide provides a lot more information than I’m going to attempt to include here, so just one last point.  In every city you just have to look up.  All the shopfronts are modern, plastic and neon.  Above that is where the interest lies and is also a great reason to sit on the top deck of a bus, especially now that smoking is banned.  My older reader will no doubt remember when smoking on a London bus was forbidden downstairs but allowed upstairs.  Eastcheap (cheap derived from the Old English for market) has some wonderful Victorian extravaganzas of buildings and John pointed out one tiny detail on one nearby.   Allegedly when it was being built, a mouse was seen eating one of the workmen’s food and there on the wall ten feet or so up is a tiny little carving of two mice eating some cheese.  Not the sort of thing to see on The Shard or the Gherkin or Walkie-Talkie.  

We did include some cultural diversions while we were here.  We took in a fascinating exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of the first 100 years of Vogue.  Lots of really great fashion shots by a century of the best in their field plus Anthony Armstrong-Jones who I’ve never rated much.  The Royal Academy had a exhibition about the influence of gardens on art from the mid-19C to about the 1920s.  Naturally Monet was in there, spectacularly with his huge Agapanthus Triptych with each canvas roughly 14 feet by 7 feet.  It’s incredible to read that Monet’s own family sold this work in the 1950s to three separate American museums.  As good an example of cultural vandalism as you’ll find.   We were in the first timed entry for the day and at Heather’s suggestion we walked straight through to the end and began in a virtually empty gallery with the triptych and worked our way back to the beginning.  It was a great tactic and we were back two thirds or so before we met the herd coming towards us.  By the time we got to the start it was like a tube station at rush hour so I am very critical of how many people the RA let in at a time.  This should not have merely been a money making exercise.  There were however some great pictures and I’m always happy to see some John Singer Sargent works I’ve never seen before, there were two here.  The third part of our main cultural activities was Shakespeare’s As You Like It at The National Theatre.  I just love the setting aside of any sort of sense when you have to assume that people just don’t recognise each other or even what gender they are.  Still, they say that stranger things happen at sea but as my experience is limited to cross channel ferries, how would I know?

I did take the opportunity of a walk with my brother Colin through some of the area we grew up in.  We met at Bethnal Green tube station where there is now a memorial to the 173 people crushed to death on 3 March 1943.  You may not all know that in WWII the tube stations were used as deep level bomb shelters and hundreds of Londoners would sleep on the platforms overnight.  On the fateful night, anti-aircraft guns began firing in a nearby park and the supposed air raid which turned out to be a false alarm caused a rush for the stairs, someone fell over and you can guess the rest of the story.  It was hushed up at the time for public morale reasons.  This was nearly two years after the well known Blitz which was the sustained bombing of (particularly) London and other cities  lasting from 7 September 1940 to 21 May 1941, beginning with London being bombed for 57 consecutive nights.  Counselling anyone ?

Walking around the area I’d grown up in was strange, being both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.  We went past the church I was christened in, a wreck at the time having been bombed in the war but since rebuilt.  Any TV East-Enders watchers may have seen the large park at the top of the map in the end credits which looks like a wellington boot on its back.  That’s Victoria Park and the one nearest to my childhood home.  It is a large open space and it has a lot going for it by being a large open space but it is desolate and empty.  There is grass and mature trees but all the shrubbery and bushes have been removed.  The ‘English Garden’ is a farce of a garden being mainly paving.  It really has been ruined and it is all the more obviously so if you visit the wonderful Regents Park ‘up in town’.  A number of what were quite slum-like houses along the eastern side have been gentrified and now look westwards across the park.  The road in front of them is no longer a main road and is almost traffic free.  The drawback is that just behind them now is the multi-lane dual carriageway motorway standard road towards the Blackwall Tunnel under the Thames.  There is a constant roar of traffic. 

We’re headed towards Stratford and past the Olympic Park which I remember as a wasteland bounded by smelly canals where we would dig holes and light fires or slide down slopes on sheets of corrugated iron.  It really should have been a display sport at the 2012 games (good grief that’s four years ago!).  Our route is along ‘The Greenway’ which is only a javelin throw from the stadium and it does sound more acceptable than what it actually is.  It’s actually an earthed bank with a tarmac top rising perhaps 25 feet above the surrounding land and heading towards the Thames four miles or so away via the absolutely fantastic Victorian Pumping Station at Abbey Mills.   I mentioned Balzalgette’s Victorian sewage system in London Notes 2 and the newly named Greenway covers his Northern Outfall Sewer pipes as they flow probably somewhat viscously towards the south east.

Right at the end of our trip we had a special evening out.  My old friend Bill was this year The Master of The Worshipful Company of Masons and he had invited us to the Master’s Banquet at The Mansion House (official residence of the Lord Mayor), opposite the Bank of London.  This was black tie minimum and a truly GRAND affair.  From the military carpet guard, the formal announcement of our arrival and the fur robed and regalia draped greeting line, this was not the way we normally end a trip in our van.  About 270 guests in the magnificent Egyptian Hall ate and drank royally.   The Worshipful Company of Masons is one of the City Livery Companies, originally set up in medieval times to maintain standards and conditions in a whole host of different trades.  My own senior school was linked to the Worshipful Company of Coopers, who make casks (barrels of course being a particular size of cask).  To my surprise I found out that new Companies are still being added to the list, in recent years including The Honourable Company of Air Pilots, The Honourable Company of Tax Advisors and The Honourable Company of Environmental Cleaners.  There are now 110 of them and I do find it amusing that one group trying and failing so far to be a City Company is the Association of Public Relations, who clearly don’t bang their own drum skilfully enough.  To show you the antiquity of these organisations an order of precedence for the first 48 companies was settled by the City of London in 1515.  The Merchant Taylors and The Skinners dispute their respective precedence between six and seven having both received their charters in 1327.  This is a theory for the origin of the phrase ‘at sixes and sevens’

The best part of a week before we were due to come home and three or four days before the banquet, I developed a really bad cough, felt rough and had a knee playing up so I spent several days at the van doing very little.  Heather was getting pains in her side.  It seemed to be healthier in Colombia or Bhutan or pretty well all the far-flung places we’ve been.  It turned out that Heather had Shingles and my knee was Bursitis (if I’d like some sympathy), otherwise known as Housemaid’s Knee (if I want to give everyone a cheap laugh).   H is well on the mend and two weeks later on my knee seems to be getting better (X-rays and blood tests to be done).   As we plan to do the Two Moors Way (south to north Devon across Dartmoor and Exmoor) next month that knee had better watch out.

Anyway, the above rather curtailed some plans and having looked carefully at the books we think there might be one or two, possibly three more things to do in London.  As General MacArthur almost said in a totally different context “We shall return”.