Getting Started

Well, we’ve come for a proper break to what is one of, if not the most exotic city in the world.  Yes I do know about New York (so good they named it ONCE) and I also know about New Amsterdam and accept that that it isn’t so catchy.   Having been born and grown up in East London, it all seems a bit strange.  Well, of course it would, we’re sauf of the river and staying in Abbey Wood just downstream from the great shipbuilding area of Woolwich, original home of the greatest football team, The Arsenal.  The only team in the whole football league not to be named after a geographic location and the only one to have a London tube station named after it.  For anyone who’s interested Arsenal station was originally Gillespie Road.  Those who aren’t interested can consider the next bit as social commentary.  I haven’t checked this for accuracy but I read that every club bar one in the Premier Division is situated in a Labour held constituency.  The exception, appropriately playing in blue is Chelsea.

Abbey Wood is a nondescript suburban area and while the campsite we’re on with our motorhome is attractively wooded and quiet, there really isn’t much in a ten minute or so walk, certainly in the way of eating places.  There’s a cluster of dusty looking shops by the station including one each of Chinese and Indian restaurants neither of which look very appealing.  Our usual complete lack of planning correctly failed to uncover that the station is closed every weekend for Crossrail engineering works.  For anyone who doesn’t know, Crossrail is a new rail system through London with new stations and track, adding 10% to the Capital’s rail capacity.  It’s costing Gazillions of pounds.  Abbey Wood is also two or three miles downstream from the Thames Barrier, the main flood defence for London if a high tide and storm surge combine.  Being downstream of course it would probably be bye-bye to bits of Abbey Wood and areas closer to the river.   When I was a computer operator in the early 1970’s and pre-Thames barrier, the basement computer room I worked in was fitted with alarms in case the river did start to overflow into the city.

Our planning has been tied down very stringently by our normal travelling standards.  For our three weeks here, we have just one thing booked, apart from the last day when we attend a black tie banquet at the Mansion House, opposite the Bank of England and about as central in the City of London as it’s possible to get.  The Mansion House is the official residence of the Lord Mayor of The City of London.   The invite is courtesy of my old friend Bill who this year is Master of the Worshipful Company of Masons, one of the old Livery Companies of the medieval city.  The Livery Companies were set up to ensure that standards were kept up in various trades.  I went to a Grammar School called Coopers which had links to the Coopers Livery Company.   Coopers make casks (barrels being a size of cask) and very handy when beer was safer to drink than water.  Mind you I never remember double cask making as one of the lessons.

We do have a sort of vague ‘shopping list’ of places we want to see, many of which I have never been to such as the Imperial War Museum.  We are going to go into the Tower of London which I last did as a 10 or 11 year old on a foray into town.  I remember being photographed there by an American woman who asked us if we were ‘real Cockney kids’.  Having come from Bow we reckoned we were as Cockney as you’d get.  What I do remember about the forays into town was that the only restriction from my parents was ‘not to go down to the canal’.  I think this was about the dangers of drowning while overlooking the fact that I could swim.  In the fifties the canals were probably so polluted that poisoning would be more likely.  Now amazingly, salmon swim in the Thames.

Actually there was a plan of sorts for the first day, Heather and Tim were going to attempt (successfully as it happens) to get Tim a wedding suit while I was going to enjoy myself.  So after the three of us began the day with a restorative hot beverage in House of Fraser’s seemingly Alice in Wonderland themed restaurant I was off.   Photographer’s Gallery (free until midday), Getty Images Gallery (free and open at midday) and the Cartoon Museum (old fogey concession entry) filled an enjoyable morning.   The Photographer’s Gallery is good if there is a retrospective of older photos and there was one of a series of 1930/40’s London in atmospheric and class ridden black and white.  The photos I have trouble with are the more modern ones along the lines of a tilted shot of a graffiti covered wall with half of someone’s head on one side.  Not many people know that artistic integrity is an anagram of absolute crap.  Or at least as close as it needs to be.  Getty Images had some terrific news shots of the year and the Cartoon Museum had a great display of Martin Honeysett’s work.  If you have ever seen the cartoons in Private Eye you will have seen his work with his rather grotesque people.  He is, or at least was an excellent cartoonist.  I was unaware that he had died in 2015.

It is very odd seeing places I knew well about 50 years ago and how they’ve changed.  Carnaby Street particularly.   It’s now pedestrianised but I used to park my mini there while I looked round Take 6 and I Was Lord Kitchener’s Valet or had my trousers specially tightened in a tailor’s nearby.  In those days I was built like a piece of hairy spaghetti.

After the first day here, I’ve already been asked if I speak any Romanian and met a family of Albanians in Patisserie Valerie.  For anyone who doesn’t know, this place has a great selection of those exquisite French cakes that don’t taste of anything.

Actually the most awkward thing so far has been trying to get to grips with fares on public transport.  It used to be that you just slapped a few coins down and said where you were going.  But things have improved.  Older locals get the London Travel Card which lets them travel for free on anything all the time, it seems.  We have our Oyster Cards (prepaid to scan on readers) for the train and tube, our Bus Passes for oldies on the bus and Senior Railcards for the train.  The Senior Railcards can be linked to the Oyster cards for a one third discount.  The Senior Railcards can’t be used in peak times in this area but the Oyster Cards can be even if linked with a Senior Railcard.  The experiences of sorting out transport systems payment in places like Bogota and Buenos Aires have proved a godsend.   Then, the first time I wanted to use my Oyster Card on the train, it snapped in half as I got it out of my pocket.  Ha, Ha.  So I had to get another one and put some money on it but it can only be linked to the Senior Railcard at a Tube station and I was at a different type of station.   Oh and I can’t cash the new one in for 48 hours for a refund.   We’ve had to seek assistance three times from different members of staff at tube and railway stations and they have been incredibly helpful.  It’s just like being abroad or maybe it’s just my knack of behaving like Private Godfrey in Dad’s Army.

This isn’t a rough version of Lonely Planet and not a travelogue of well known sights but I will say that The Imperial War Museum’s World War 1 exhibit is extremely good.  The most surprising statistic I learnt was that despite the carnage and the numbers of families losing soldiers (two of Heather’s Grandfather’s brothers were killed) 88% of service personnel returned home.  We did drop in to see the Old Operating Theatre near London Bridge which was used until the 1860’s.  Pre- antiseptic and mostly pre-anaesthetic it was the last place you would want to go to.  In many cases of course it was the last place.  Apparently the surgeons would sometimes wash their hands after an operation.  The theatre was in an attic and for some reason sealed off in the mid-1860’s to be rediscovered by accident in the 1950’s.  Can you imagine the excitement of being the person who found it?   I remember reading once that the quickest leg amputation was about seven seconds.  A circular knife cut to the bone followed by the saw though the bone itself.  For the one I read about, the surgeon’s assistant also had three fingers accidently taken off at the same time.  It would certainly make your eyes water and what about Health and Safety.

Whenever I write these notes I write about the differences or oddities that I notice which are probably not noticed by a local because to them it’s normal (e.g. Scandinavian shop doors opening outwards) - easier to get out of in a disaster, apparently).  Here in my home city, I’m no longer a local and expect and hope to notice things.  Having not lived in London for more than 40 years I’m looking forward to experiencing that famous L P Hartley line “the past is a different country, they do things differently there”.