It’s
never easy bidding farewell and such was the case when time came to say goodbye
to Lin and John who are especially good friends as well as the most amazing
hosts. It was even more difficult when I
realised there would soon be 16,855km between us. Who’d have thought you could determine the
exact distance from Hornsby Heights on the edge of Sydney and Sunnybrow near
Durham but it’s all there on the internet, you just have to look.
So
after hugs, thanks and a promise to return Peter and I boarded our train in
Darlington for the first leg of the trip to London. I managed to find a ridiculously cheap fare
that required a quick change in York which seemed like it might be a bit of fun
and it was. In any case, there is no point
booking 1st class on a weekend because the usual complementary hot food
selection and open bar turns into a sanga and soft drink for the exact same
price.
Three
hours and fifteen minutes later we arrived stone cold sober at King’s Cross
Station in London, their place names still sporting apostrophes unlike those in
Australia. In no mood to battle the Tube
then a drag our baggage from Oxford Circus like common tourists I hailed a
classic black London cab and we were at our expensive but rather ordinary and
quite tiny flat on Poland Street in Soho in no time at all plus a generous tip.
We
decided to stay in the heart of it all this time. On our first visit in 2015 I booked Canada
Water which was quiet and modern but although only a few hundred metres from
the Tube was a little out of the way.
Next time in 2017 saw us in a very atmospheric flat at Russell Square
overlooking leafy parks front and back once you ascended three flights of very
narrow stairs. It was also a bit of a
haul from the Tube and Waitrose. This
time we went for restaurants, nightlife and an elevator. Of course once we opened a window and heard
the street noise outside we wondered why the hell we wanted nightlife so
thought it best to find out and took ourselves across the road to The Kings
Arms which is oddly devoid of an apostrophe unlike King’s Cross Station.
The
Kings Arms a gay pub frequented by bears - generally older larger gentlemen who
tend to be unshaven both facially and everywhere else. There was nothing buffed over there so I felt
like I’d arrived home! We bought a
couple of pints and settled in to meet the locals who, as it happened, were
Christmas tree farmers from Te Kuiti, New Zealand which made perfect sense
given they both looked like Santa Claus.
And of course they knew my oldest Kiwi mate, Philip Jamieson as
everybody does. In fact Barry is a
distant relative by marriage through Aunty Eulene’s late husband Ray and Trevor
met Philip at a Scottish Country Dancing summer school in Palmerston North
decades ago so there was the topic of the evening’s conversation. We promised to meet up again for dinner and
not mention Philip, Aunty Eulene (who does a lovely gem scone) or Scottish
Country Dancing.
Poland
Street shares a corner with Broadwick Street which is an iconic location for
reactionary right-wing talkback radio tragics.
This is where, on 6 December 1988, Alan Jones was arrested in the classic
underground Victorian public toilet for 'outraging public decency' which was evocative
of his forced resignation from The King's School at Parramatta in 1975. No visit to Soho would be complete without
stopping by Broadwick Street to celebrate Australia's most famous old bog
troll!
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| The Broadwick Street Bog |
From
there we strolled across to Tottenham Court Road and took the Northern Line up
to Archway to relive a fabulous Turkish lunch we enjoyed at the oddly named
Bistro North Mediterranean and Turkish Cuisine which I'm sure had a much
simpler name five years ago. The food is
still excellent though.
We
didn't pay homage at the tomb of Karl Marx in nearby Highgate Hill Cemetery
which was the purpose of our last visit to the area but continuing the theme we
took the Tube back to Tottenham Court Road, changed to the Central Line and
alighted at Marble Arch. That's the
closest station to Speakers' Corner (with an apostrophe of plural possession)
in Hyde Park. We listened to a modern
day communist for a short while but deluded though he was, there was little in
what he had to say that I found worthy of argument so we moved on to an anti-vaxxer
who was infinitely more entertaining. I
can only hope you're not reading this on a 5G device. If you are best say your goodbyes right now
and get your affairs in order quickly!
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| Anti-vaxxers at Speakers' Corner |
Well
fed and entertained we made our way back to Poland Street where we decided to
have just one pint at the Kings Arms and ran into Barry and Trevor the
Christmas tree farmers from Te Kuiti again.
It turned out they were in London for ten days and could be found there
on any evening, earlier on a Saturday or Sunday. We arranged to meet for dinner on Tuesday,
finished our pints and went on our way.
So what
else did we do during our week in London?
- The Victoria and Albert Museum - what a stunning swag of colonial plunder!
- The Tate Modern - loved some things, hated others, but well worthy of a visit.
- The Houses of Parliament - a return visit for us but I'm passionate about democracy and this place is the origin of our own, such as it is at the moment in both nations.
- The Hop-On-Hop-Off Red Bus - which we have avoided on the last two visits but having done them in Cambridge, Bath, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dublin I now see the point.
- Westminster Abby - studiously avoided on previous visits much like the Tower of London but it is jam packed with history and although dead people abound none were executed on site.
- The Embankment - we retraced the numerous land reclamations along the northern bank of the Thames and the now subterranean Fleet River which still joins it albeit invisibly.
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| Bananas at Victoria Embankment Gardens |
Tuesday
rolled around and we toddled back to the Kings Arms to meet up with Barry and
Trevor who were quite excited by their recent discovery of the Golden Union
Fish Bar which was pretty much right across the street and up a bit so with one
pint each on board, along with the Santas who had arrived early, off we
went.
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| Barry & Trevor |
Now I
don't mind the odd feed of F&Cs and the Golden Union Fish Bar defines
itself by the following quote from the New Statesman "You can’t get more British than
fish and chips. Winston Churchill
exempted the dish from wartime rationing, Amy Winehouse ate them on her wedding
anniversary, and George Orwell believed they could avert revolution." How could I possibly argue with any of that apart
from the Oxford comma which I detest?!
Peter,
as always, was not the least bit adventurous and went with straight old cod and
chips; Barry had the saveloy and chips with curry sauce which I thought both
exotic and adventurous; after some deliberation Trevor ordered the steak and
ale pie with chips and a side of Heinz baked beans; and I went for broke and
with haddock and chips (no salt) and a pickled egg. Now the observant amongst you will have
noticed my use of semicolons rather than commas in that list thus avoiding the
ugliness of the Oxford coma. You may have
also been left wondering why Barry and Trevor wanted to go to a fish cafe but
never mind, it was all good!
We
arranged to meet one final time before we were due to head north to Lara, Nikos
and Yiannis in Fordham near Ely and the Santas headed home to Te Kuiti which is
quite close to where Lara was born and raised in the southern Cambridge. And what could be a better venue than the
Friday evening wine bar disco with the gender-fluid DJ at the National Portrait
Gallery just off Trafalgar Square? Well
who'd have thought those big boys could dance?!
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| Che Guevara and Debussy to a disco beat... |
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