Wet London Wrap-Up

Wednesday 6 December 1995. Our final day in London and we awake to the sound of sleet hammering on the window. The TV news showed pictures of snowbound cars and we were thankful that we were to travel back to Blackpool by train later in the day!

Our 24-hour tour bus tickets are good until lunchtime so we hop on and ride down to Piccadilly where we jump off and walk a little way down the famous street. This is Fortnum and Mason, the famous purveyors of food to Royalty and Nobility. The original Fortnum had been a footman to King George III.

Piccadilly Arcade has bowed windows that are very narrow, this being a very difficult technique in glass-making for their day. If damaged I imagine they would be hideously expensive today also...

The Ritz, favourite for a spot of tea at the Ritz, you know! We were on a budget so we opted for a spot of tea at Manky Joe's...

At the far end of Piccadilly as you approach Park Lane, this is Green Park. It is so called because at one time deer were kept in an enclosure made of the upper park and at the time it was almost treeless. The deer cropped the grass so closely that the park was a great sward of green. We were trying to walk to Harrods, but the subway was closed and with a walk of half a mile in the wrong direction in order to cross the very busy road, we succumbed to the cold and got back on the bus! When we got to Harrods I was immediately pounced on by an officious little man in a top hat who pointed accusingly at the camera around my neck and snarled "You can't take photographs in here!" The lens cap was on and I wasn't showing any signs of wanting to eagerly snap away, so why so aggressive? I expect many of their customers, who would think nothing of spending hundreds of pounds on their dog's dinner, would be put off by hordes of flashbulbs going off, but sheesh it's just a shop... It must be shit being rich and having to keep thinking of ways to be obnoxious to people...

The gates to Downing Street. This short street is where the Prime Minister of England lives (at No. 10) and the Chancellor at No. 11. The gates were erected in 1990, to deny access to the public and terrorists. The IRA showed how effective they were a year later, when they lobbed mortar bombs from a parked van.

Once more from the bus and this is the Savoy Hotel. This short street is the only one in England where traffic drives on the right hand side of the road. This is to allow taxicab drivers to reach through their windows and open their passengers' door without having to leave their vehicle.

It looks beautiful and peaceful in films of Royal weddings and such occasions, yet Wren's Masterpiece, St Paul's Cathedral sits facing Fleet Street, one of the busiest roads in the City. The view of a royal couple on the steps may be romantic, but they have an appallingly dirty and depressing view of a city street as they come out! This is our last photograph of the three days in London, though not the last one that I took. I took several photos inside St Paul's but the film was still in the camera at the end of the month when we were burgled just two days before Christmas. The camera, our NICAM VHS recorder (yes, I know - what the hell's that???) and a good deal of Fran's jewellery all went to make Christmas better for some unspeakable low-life scroat. Still, it gave us a reason to go again to retake some of those photos!

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Back On The Bus

Tuesday 5 December 1995. After coming out of the London Tower we went across the way and into a small shopping centre, at the back of which was a dark ride called the Tower Pageant. In this, a small circular car provides a moving platform round tableaux showing scenes from different periods in London's long history. The Romans were shown building their wooden docks, and once through the ride, an actual section of the 2000 year-old timbers is on view.

Then we hopped on another bus - though not an open air one this time and headed back towards Trafalgar Square. There were still open-topped buses going about but it was snowing, it was around minus eight degrees centigrade according to the signs and whilst we had thick coats on there's a limit to how stupid even I am...

We had just passed under the Cannon Street bridge and enjoyed a very loud and echoing siren from this fire engine that was in a bit of a rush. It reminded me that we had just passed the site of Pudding Lane, where the Great Fire of London started in 1666.

And so we came back to Trafalgar Square. We spent much of the day getting off the bus, having something to warm ourselves up - soup, apple pie and custard, and then getting back on a bus to repeat the process...

This was very new at the time - Planet Hollywood, a restaurant opened by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone. A film crew were walking backwards, filming a young girl speaking a commentary for a documentary. The cameraman kept backing into prams, tourists and bollards. In fact I'm sure I heard him exclaim "Bollards!" more than once...

And having gone up and around the corner we arrive back at Trafalgar Square! Nelson's Column commemorates England's Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson, hero of the Battle of Trafalgar in 1806 against the French and Spanish combined fleet. He was struck by a sniper's bullet at the hour of his success on the deck of his flagship HMS Victory. The bullet is actually on display in Windsor Castle, or it used to be - we saw it there once. The column is tall enough for the statue to be able to see the sea. The Christmas Tree is an annual gift from Norway in gratitude for its liberation in World War Two.

St Martins-in-the-Fields. I described some of the church's history in the article on London's Great Squares so here I'll just limit myself to saying the church hosts many lunchtime concerts and does much work with the city's homeless population.

St James's Palace, the main royal residence at one time until Queen Victoria formally moved the Royal Household to Buckingham Palace, was built by Henry VIII. A nice (and true) story is of the visitor who went through the wrong door and fell down a staircase, knocking himself unconscious as he burst through another door at the bottom. When he came to, he found a stern little man bending over, applying sticking plaster to his head. It was none other than King George II and the man had fallen into the King's Sanctum! At the time of our visit the palace was the residence of Prince Charles who was at home that day as witness the two guards on duty. Only one would be on duty during his absence.

The Ritz - here, having tea would have cost around 30 pounds in 1995 and would consist of sandwiches, cakes and as much tea as you could drink. We'll come back to the Ritz later, and you can have a peep inside if you promise to behave...

The bus makes its way across the Thames giving a view across the water to the Houses of Parliament. By now the light is starting to fade.

After a brief dalliance over the river, we make our way back across Westminster Bridge and under the St Stephen's clock tower of "Big Ben".

By the time the bus had travelled back east to the Tower of London it became impossible to take photographs from the moving bus. We got off the bus to take some photographs of the floodlit building and bridge.

It was freezing cold and snowing hard - as can be seen in this flashlit shot of one of the cannons on the embankment. All those little white spots are snowflakes picked out by the flash!

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