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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London's Great Squares

4 December 1995. In the last entry we walked from Oxford Street down Bond Street and Regent Street, the end of which brought us to Piccadilly Circus.

This is theatreland - London is justly famous for its West End theatres and there are many to be found in Piccadilly and along Shaftesbury Avenue, that approaches it from the east. At the time of our visit the Criterion Theatre was showing Taking Sides, a new play by Ronald Harwood that earned him a nomination for the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play.

The building had a Lillywhites shop as the centre of it's ground floor with the Criterion Theatre on the right and the Criterion Restaurant on the left.

A short distance away, the Piccadilly Theatre was hosting performances of Mack and Mabel, the musical based around the on-off relationship between silent films director Mack Sennett and the ultimately tragic star, Mabel Normand.

The two things everyone pictures when Piccadilly Circus is mentioned are the statue of Eros and the huge illuminated advertisements.

The statue was not meant to be Eros at all, the artist had in mind a joke with an archer about to bury a shaft into Shaftesbury Avenue. However it was set up facing the wrong way and Londoners - those incurable romantics (huh?) - soon made a link with the Greek God of Love, Eros.

In 1995 the adverts are still neon rather than the huge video screens of today. I think I rather prefer them somehow!

A quick peek into the front door and entrance to the Cafe Royal. Established in 1865, it quickly became famous for its wine cellar and was frequented by Royalty, great thinkers, artists, writers and musicians. From Oscar Wilde through the Burtons to Princess Diana and onwards, people have come here to eat and drink in convivial surroundings and to discuss the great matters of the day. It was also here that the Queensbury Rules for boxing were agreed and set down.

On the edge of Piccadilly Circus is this huge statue, set into a corner, of the Four Horses of Helios. These were the horses that pulled the fiery chariot (the sun), driven across the sky by the god Helios during the day. At night he plunged the chariot into the great ocean, thus travelling through the centre of the earth, to emerge again in the east the following morning.

The backdrop to the statue is a large curtain of falling water and with fountains before them, this was not the place to linger for long on a cold winter's night without feeling uncomfortably like wanting to create fountains or waterfalls of your own... We move on...

From Piccadilly Circus a short walk along Coventry Street brings you to Leicester Square. The Empire Cinema the following night was to host the London premiere of the film The American President with Michael Douglas and Annette Bening. We were just five minutes off meeting them but it was so cold and snowing that night that we didn't wait. When they arrived only one brave couple was there (and they must have arrived after us) and they were invited to go in and watch the premiere!

Talking of snow, it is starting tonight too as we walk down from Leicester Square to Trafalgar Square and Nelson's Column. The National Gallery is seen in the background.

And this surely dates this visit! Who uses these nowadays? But whilst mobile phones were growing in popularity by this time, we hadn't yet identified a need to have one ourselves.

Admiralty Arch, leading from Trafalgar Square towards the long straight road of The Mall and to Buckingham Palace at the far end. Commissioned by King Edward VII in memorial to his mother, Queen Victoria, he would not live to see it completed in 1912.

Miss Franny poses in front of one of the massive lions at the foot of Nelson's Column. The building of the column commenced in 1840 with the statue being raised three years later. It was another 11 years before the final bronze relief scene was placed on the pedestal and the famous lions were not installed until 1867.

Behind the water of the fountain the National Gallery is seen at the rear with the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields at the right hand side. A church has been on this site since at least 1222. King Henry VIII rebuilt it in 1542 to avoid having plague victims from the neighbourhood carried through the Palace of Westminster. At this time the church was still situated in the middle of fields in an area between the cities of London and Westminster.

The current building dates from 1722-1724 after a survey showed the 180 year old church to be in a state of decay. It is the parish church of the Royal family and contains graves of furniture maker Thomas Chippendale and, most famously, King Charles II's mistress, Nell Gwynne.

A photograph of the same scene with the fountain lit by flash.

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Back in the Capital

Wherever I end up in all my travels for work, and that's a lot of places, I hardly ever get the chance to see anything of them. Waking up in a Premier Inn you know you're in a Premier Inn because they all look the same. But is it Nottingham? Cardiff? Edinburgh? But there's just something about London that makes me want to get out and walk miles. Too many miles.

In London I normally stay in the Tavistock - an art deco ground floor and a few staff who have got to know me over the years. But to eat I always trot (stroll/crawl...) out of the door and down to Leicester Square to see if there's a premiere about to happen or anyone famous knocking about, or just to soak up a bit of atmosphere.

There's so much close by. The Waterstones on the corner of Trafalgar Square is open late enough for a mooch and there's the pillock-of-the-hour on the fourth plinth at the moment too... Standing still whilst painted as a statue has always struck me as a moronic way to earn a living and the result of too many students allowed to choose theatrical studies as a main course, when we need engineers, entrepreneurs and (desperately) people who can think of things we can make that the rest of the world might want to buy. We need living statues like we need our eyeballs pecked out by crows...

Anyway, far too often these London walks leave me with sore feet. So last night I decided to hail a cab and return to the hotel in a slightly easier manner. I ended up with one of those brilliantly witty London cab drivers, who kept me entertained throughout the journey. He told me how his son was a water polo player of county standard. His wife was from Serbia and whilst on a visit there, their son had been invited to play with a Serbian water polo team. The lad's verdict was that not a single member of his county team would stand a chance of getting onto that team. They trained 6 nights a week for 3 hours, warming up by swimming at a pace for a full hour.

That's dedication to the exclusion of any other pursuits and an acceptance of pain of endurance that does away with what most of us would term "fun".

Then we got onto the subject of cab drivers and their knowledge and he told me tongue-in-cheek how it was all for the good of the public and not for financial gain. "We're a service for the good of the people, Sir, we don't do this for the remuneration..."

"Ah good," I said, "because I've got no money..."

"Ah well, Sir..." he said with a slight sigh, "You can f**k off and walk then..."

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My Course - 4th Day

Day Four, water ran out on 2nd night. Last night Carruthers left the tent saying he'd only be gone for a few minutes. He made a hell of a racket and eventually we went out to drag him back in...

Ok, fiction over, what follows is almost the truth of it! Phew this is not an easy course - even for someone like me who has been running Project Management workshops for 4 years! That means I've got 4 years of "other terminology and methodology" in my head of course, so have had to ditch that for the week.

This morning as I expected I passed the Foundation Exam with plenty of marks to spare. I was feeling very wary of the Practitioner Exam which is tomorrow but the tutor gave some excellent exam strategies and tips this afternoon so that I'm now ready for them to wheel on the question paper! (Well I am now - tomorrow morning may be a different thing!)

We were told not to do too much cramming tonight but to have a rest and relax. I've been out for the first time this week. Every day so far has been leave hotel, walk 5 minutes to course venue, leave at 5:30, walk back, study, rush out for meal (or have taken a sandwich back) and then more study until falling into bed. Heavy going!

Tonight I walked down to Trafalgar Square and was aghast to find it crowded with people sitting on grass!!! It is extremely warm and humid in London tonight, I walked down to the river and then past the Eye to the Golden Jubilee Bridge and back up to Bloomsbury by the back streets. I was a dripping mess by the time I got back to the hotel! (Cuts an attractive mind picture eh, ladies?)

Am back to my usual cool sophisticated self now though! Where's that exam? Let's get it over with, then let's hit the train for home!

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Sunday in London

Well I got to London on time - Virgin Trains actually got in a little early although it was a long journey compared to the more usual weekday one! We went via Coventry and all round the houses it seemed.

Met up with Fran and Gill on Trafalgar Square where they were resting their feet and getting splashed by the spray from the fountain every time the wind blew their way. They didn't have a great deal of time with me as they have to get over to Stansted for their flight back. Why oh why are Ryanair stopping their Blackpool/Stansted flights? Doesn't seem to make sense, every time I've been on them they have been very nearly full and over the past few years I've used them quite a bit!

When you consider the cost of train fares if you have to book close to the date of travelling, being able to get a flight and then be in London by 10:00am was brilliant! Even considering the train to and from Stansted-Liverpool St station, it was still less than half the price of Virgin's fare.

We had a trundle up Regent Street and into the big HMV on Oxford Street where I was delighted to find at last a DVD of "Prehistoric Women", a Hammer film starring the lovely Martine Beswick as a queen of a tribe of women stumbled upon by Michael Latimer. I've met Martine several times over the last few years, she was a Miss Jamaica, a stunning beauty in the 1960s (and not at all hard on the eyes now!) who starred in several of Hammer's films and a couple of Bond films; "From Russia With Love" as a fighting gypsy girl and "Thunderball" as one of Bond's doomed helpers! Anyway, I've never watched this film before so I will enjoy that once I get home again!

A relaxing night in store I think - chance to finish my book, the 10th in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. And yes... I did bring No.11 with me!