Happily, after traveling from roughly March 16th - April 17th (counting Cologne, Germany), I am back in Edinburgh, and here to stay - for the most part. How I am to relate my travels to you all, I scarcely know. I plan to churn out entries at whatever rate I may, and hope that you (whoever you are) will keep up at your own pace. Tales I have to tell that would fill up tomes vast and voluminous, yet I shall tell all, or try to.
I shall begin at the beginning. Thursday, April 24th, 11pm: I had pre-purchased my bus ticket on a direct line to the airport; packed my solitary, slightly bulging backpack full of clothing, electronics, travel passes, hotels reservations, and addresses; set my alarm for 4:30am. Flight to London-Stansted Airport departing 7:05am from Edinburgh. All ready, yet a storm was brewing even then.
My kickboxing friends (pictured below) had concocted a plan for a night out, starting at a flat and progressing to a club, and since I would not be around for the coming weeks, hoped I would attend. My plan? - join in the festivities, have a drink or two, and come back to my flat around 1am, so that I could take a wee nap until 4:30 to depart for the airport. Sounds cheery to me. However, anyone with a taste for the dramatic will have already guessed that not all went according to plan (a closely thought-out plan, at that).
Things began to derail upon my returning to my flat at 3:30am. That certainly through a wrench into things, but nothing to fret over, of course. My nap, simply, would be shorter, and I would have all the more reason to sleep on the plane. If only. After a bite from the fridge and a quick check of facebook, my next conscious moment occurs at 6am, a moment of bewildered fear, confusion, and various sudden movements. First - out of the bed; second - to the cell-phone (Ah! It is, indeed, 6am!); third - to google, and from there a list of taxi services. Within a minute I had arranged swift transport from 8a Darroch Court over to Edinburgh Airport, followed by a moment of calm at the center of the storm, for all was waiting at that point: waiting for the taxi, for the ride to end, for security to check me through - then it would be a race to the gate.
Greater feats have been accomplished in the history of Man: we've sent people to Space, erected tall monuments, delved winding canals, and all within a brief three-thousand year span of existence. Surely I could make it to my gate within an hour? Thus is the tale: Cab arrives 6:25am, I leap out frantically twenty-two minutes later at the airport (6:47am), it's not a big place - I'm through security by 6:54am; I fear that the gate may have closed, even though the plane may not have left. Running. Panting. Rage, despair, wonder, and contingencies flash through my wondering consciousness.
The Departures Board: Flight EZY228 Edinburgh to London-Stansted, gate 8, delayed 2hrs.
DELAYED. Two hours. Relief and weariness set in simultaneously. I collapse in a chair at my gate and await departure.
* * *
Despite the havoc involved with getting there, London was a dream! I met my friend Bridget from F&M at Stansted, and together we embarked for London to meet up Gardner, another fummer, studying drama in the city. Bridge and I decided to walk from Liverpool station to his flat near Marble Arch, looking forward to getting a better feel for the city than we would have taking the tube (subway). We marched for two hours, taking our time, stopping for a meat pie, multiple photo-ops, and a quick look about St. Paul's Cathedral (which looks like the US Capitol Building). Surreality set in when my eye caught a sign for Chancery Lane and Lincoln's Inn near Holborn Hill. For my legal-savvy readers, you may already know that this quarter of London holds (or held, at least), many of the courts and legal offices in England's capitol. Why so surreal, then? Well, I only recognized the names because they feature significantly in Charles Dickens' Bleak House, a novel of nearly one-thousand pages that I read last year (and loved). How strange! To be among the streets and buildings I had read of in Dickens' world! And now seen in mine!
Moments like this occupied much of my time abroad over the past month: in Paris in St. Antoine, where Dickens writes of a highly pivotal wine shop in A Tale of Two Cities; in the Venice of Shakespeare's merchant; in the heavenly Florence, where Dante wrote his Inferno.
My initial impressions of London were tempered by my exposure to it immediately after having been in Edinburgh. Though it is not to Edinburgh's discredit - I much prefer the airy Heart of Midlothian to Foggy Londontown - it felt like going from a village to metropolis. After all, London is a metropolis - I had just never known the extent to which it was. Overall, I would say it felt more like New York City than any other place I have been on my travels. Whereas I struggle to picture even one 'skyscraper,' or something close to it, in Edinburgh, London had many tall, modern, glass-faced structures.
Our first move was to hop on the tube and see Big Ben and Westminster Abbey. Big Ben was, in my opinion, not as big as I had imagined. It's a tall, for certain, but less imposing than I had imagined. The tower is connected to the parliament building along the south side of the River Thames (pron. Tems) and Westminster Bridge (where Wordsworth got the inspiration for his poem of the same name) juts out across the water. The tower sits grandly among its surroundings, gold paint at its top, the clock faces pointing out boldly in all directions.
Westminster Abbey was austere as well. Compared to the Dom of Cologne, I was not necessarily blown away. It's like trying to appreciate hills after having seen the Rockies. In any case, the abbey itself is very large, with impressive carving and sculpture all around the outside - your standard Mary and Child, Saints, Angels, &c &c. Due to a mass at the time of my first visit, I did not go inside until the next day, but, for the sake of narrative, I'll step outside my chronological account to tell of the abbey's innards.
Imagine a box - large; stone; vaulted lid. Imagine an hourglass, and each grain of sand a year. With every falling grain of sand, things begin to fill the box: coffin-shaped things. A lady-chapel is added on to the box; some more flying buttresses; then a clock is fitted into one of the box's towers. More coffins. Some plaques, name plates, &c. A few more grains and suddenly a great many statues have sprouted up, crowding the box's corners, occupying its niches. Tiny priests give tiny sermons to tiny crowds inside the box. Slightly larger crowds, totally uninterested in hearing sermons, circumnavigate the box's insides. Tiny faces gawk. Children and men alike look on at the time-accrued monuments, half-proud of the coffins and half-ignorant of their inhabitants. The sand runs more slowly - the present day approaches.
Why a box? Frankly, it's just how it struck me. A large chamber, filled up with half the history of England: Henry V (who uttered, with Shakespeare's help, the famous lines: 'We few, we happy few, we band of brothers'), Elizabeth I, Mary Tudor, Mary Queen of Scots, Richard II, &c, as well as half of the authors on my syllabi for the last three years: Chaucer, Dickens, Hardy, Ruyard Kipling, Spenser, Tennyson, &c. There were many more memorials scattered around the 'poet's corner,' as well - Shakespeare, Keats (who was destined to reoccur in my travels), Shelley, Eliot, Austen, Arnold, and more. Truly astounding to be amidst so much 'history,' though it be, as it often is, dead history. In the presence of such greatness, I felt what, just maybe, Hamlet was meant to have felt when he sees the gravedigger toss poor Yorick's skull up out of its grave. 'Alas, poor Yorick...a fellow of infinite jest...that skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once!' So felt I, my feet on the earth where half the cannon of English Literature lies buried (Those hands had fingers once, and could write!).
To return to a chronological account of things, after Westminster we walked along the Thames between London Bridge and Tower Bridge. Here I learned something! Perhaps you, fair reader, may have been aware of this fact - I was not: London Bridge is simply a bridge. Nothing fancy, extravagant, or otherwise iconic about it. I had, however, always thought that London Bridge was in fact the water-crossing called Tower Bridge, pictured to the side, which I am sure you all will recognize. Apparently the bridge of London's name simply marks the spot where, centuries earlier, the Romans first spanned the Thames. The iconic Tower Bridge, however, featured in many films and television shows (the Harry Potter advertisements all over Europe has it in the background), is farther down, leading from the southern bank of the Thames roughly to where the Tower of London sits.
As the sun was setting we walked around the streets on the southern side of the river, asked these two girls for directions who had no idea how to get around, despite the fact that we had just seen them exit a secondary school in uniform and were walking home, and finally settled down to eat dinner. That night Bridge and I got to meet Gardner's friends, and we all went out to the scariest night club - if you can call it that - I've ever been to. Animalistic madness prevailed. Smoke filled the air of its cavernous, multi-level interior. Meaningless drum and bass eroded upon any rational thought - the only faculty that sustains humanity and separates Man from Beast. Beast prevailed in this den of horrors. Stevenson comes close to describing the scene in The Master of Ballantrae accounting a pirates' revel: 'On the deck the rest were got to a pitch of revelry quite beyond the bounds of what is human; so that no reasonable name can describe the sounds they were now making. I have heard many a drunken bout in my time...but never anything the least like this.' Men - shirtless, hair raised up to pin-point with gel, fists bludgeoning the wispy, neon-laser air around them - eyes dull, yet charged with anger and heat; women like Furies, hair flashing as heads whip wildly to mad music - bodies seemingly electrified.
Horrified, disgusted, repelled - we fled! Thanks for taking my ten pound cover charge, though! The name of the club: Fabric. Perhaps the signifier least corresponding to its signified that I have ever run across. No fabric was involved. It was like walking into a store called The Flower Pot and finding out it only sells car insurance, except far more frightening.
The next day Bridge and I embarked sans-Gardner to see the town. Vaguely, we wanted to see Notting Hill, Hyde Park, Wimpole Street (explained below), the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, and to get high tea. We succeeded, more or less.
Hyde Park was simply a large, open, green area, so we took a picture in it and proceeded on to Notting Hill. Sadly, however, the tube wasn't running in that direction that day, and the bus ride was six pounds return, which we deemed a bit pricey to see a hill. With high hopes, and the day before us, we moved on to find Wimpole Street. This destination is, perhaps, one of the most obscure in London, and rarely ever figures into most sightseers' plans - yet I am not every sightseer. 27a Wimpole Street, I recalled, was the address of Henry Higgins in Pygmalion/My Fair Lady. How could I go to London without paying a visit? Of course the house, like the character, is fictional, yet the street exists, and walk along it I did.
To back up a bit: before we even got to Wimpole street, we happened upon a museum that turned out to be one of my favorites on the trip! Called the Wallace Collection, located just off of Oxford Street and contained in a grand Victorian mansion, the museum is reallyjust a great series of rooms filled with an immense amount of odd bits of collectible, fine art, armor, weaponry, furniture, and curiosity from around the world. I was particularly delighted to find that one of my favorite paintings - Fragonard's 'The Swing' - was in residence there, and felt rather moved by an ancient saber from Persia, one of many swords, daggers, lances and so on displayed at the museum - moved so much in fact, that I wrote a poem about it. After all, just imagine the history of the saber: once an article of status and willpower - a weapon: cruel, sharp, serpentine - and now suffocating behind a pane of glass! What blood it must have tasted on those far off desert battlefields. What anger once moved its weight towards screaming foes! Museums can certainly be a bore sometimes, but if you are willing to give a little life and consideration to what you're looking at, it can totally change your experience there.
Among its curiosities, I also found a renowned painting by Rubens, which is said to have been so well done that it inspired an entire genre of paintings called 'rainbow landscapes,' not surprisingly comprised of sprawling landscapes overspanned by a rainbow. I spent some time looking at it, and it is, I agree, a very well done painting.
Tempted to spend all day in this museum of absurdities and wonders, we yet moved on to wonders other and else.
From there we progressed on to St. James Park and Buckingham Palace, both of which are beautiful in their own rights. The park, full of daffodils just blooming in the early Spring, speckled with wildflowers and blanketed in lush grass, was a refreshing respite from the bustle of London's crowded streets and busy tube. Aside from pigeons here and there, gallant ducks and assorted fowl roamed leisurely, some lounging by the lake, others winging overhead towards the Thames. The palace is large, but, personally, I found the large statue and fountain outside of it far more impressive than the building itself. Also: no guards in red coats with big silly hats! What a downer! Instead we were left with these chumps in grey coats with assault rifles, looking very Stalin-era-esque. Bummer, says I.
After those sights had been seen, we moved on to the great box of Westminster Abbey, which I have already detailed above, and then got tea by Tower Bridge. Our plan was to get high tea, which includes several courses of tiny sandwiches and other tasties, but since it turned out to be quite pricey, we invented 'medium' tea, and ate scones with clotted cream and jam instead, alongside our respective pots of tea. Very tasty. I must say that, overall, my taste for tea - an old favorite of mine before coming abroad - has expanded and increased. I respect tea for what it is, and found an article pinned up in the shop about the drink very interesting. In it, the writer discussed the different ways of thinking about tea, one being to consider 'tea' as a measure of time, a small unit of relaxation, solitude, or socialization free from responsibility or concern. In a way, it makes the whole concept of tea much grander than simply being a drink, but rather a social construct based around a special unit of time. Coming from America, where a cup of coffee - our (stereo)typical drink - is usually consumed on the run, during the moring commute, or to help us power through a sluggish afternoon, the idea of tea as a relaxing span of time appeals to me.
After tea we strolled across Tower Bridge, declining to go to the top of it for five pounds (maybe it was more than that), and instead continuing on to the Tower of London. It was a whopping eighteen pounds to get into the Tower itself (which is, in reality, a large complex reminiscent of a castle/fort), so we, again, opted simply to walk around it and appreciate it from the outside. Poor Clarence came to my mind - Richard III's unfortunate brother in Will Shakespeare's play of the same name - and his death by the hands of those conscience-stricken murderers. I thought of all the prisoners kept there at one time or another, and of all those who were killed, and felt much the same way I did in a museum in Scotland where a guillotine was kept. It had been used for over three thousand executions, and there I had been, standing straight in front of its platform, my head occupying the space where a basket probably once lay, waiting for other heads to tumble into it. Just as certain places seem to exude, or rather concentrate, doses of 'history,' so too can some places seem to collect auras of death and suffering. The Tower was one of them, for me.
After the Tower we continued on to Covent Garden - where My Fair Lady begins - and wandered around the shops and things, later to return to Gardner's. He went out, but Bridge and I were properly knackered, and so bought some beers and ciders, watched Much Ado About Nothing with Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson, and turned in to get up early.
The last installment of my Londontown tale concerns the following morning. Bridget had risen early to catch her flight back to Dublin, and I arose later, as my train through the Channel Tunnel to Paris did not depart until 10:30am. I took the extra time in the morning to visit University College of London, an old medical school, where I met a girl from Malaysia waiting for a young physician's conference to begin, and spent some time writing postcards. Bridget then texted me, (understandably) frantically, asking what time it was, because she had apparently missed her flight, despite serious planning.
My spine straightened up, and, as the veterans of Henry V's battle of Agincourt on the mention of St. Crispin's Day, I was instantly on tip-toe to find out what madness was afoot. My phone said 9:04am, but I suddenly recalled that the UK had not done their version of daylight savings time yet, whereas the US had weeks earlier. Panic! I asked my Malaysian doctor friend for the time, and sank into the hallowed pavement of University College when she told m that it was, apparently, 10:05am. What!!?
With little else to do, I sprinted, heavy backpack and all, back to the tube station, waited impatiently until I got off at King's Cross/St. Pancras, and ran like fleet-footed Mercury to the ticket counter. It seemed that, at this point, the UK was only trying to mess with me, as the humongous digital clock - had to be at least three feet wide, with foot-tall digits - read 9:30am. I heaved a sigh of relief, and suddenly wondered what the hell Bridge and this aspiring young Malaysian had been talking about. Out of breath, I approached the pudgy man at the ticket counter.
"Hello sir," says I, "it's really 9:30, right?"
Pudgy man blinks, yawns, perhaps blinks again.
Finally, he speaks, as calmly as can be: "Oh, sorry mate, it's 10:34am, officially. Haven't been bothered to right the clocks yet."
I pale. "Excuse me? Isn't this a train station? Shouldn't the clocks be correct?"
Pudgy man blinks. "Well, it was right this morning. just haven't been bothered yet."
I felt like bothering him.
"So I've missed my train."
"If your train was before 10:35."
"10:30, actually."
"So you've missed it, then."
Deeply unhappy with this man's nonchalant response to my predicament, I was surprised when he offered me a new, free ticket for a later train direct to Paris, and wished me a cheery day. Thank you, pudgy man. Maybe change the clocks next time.
Thus concluded my stay in London - though I'm going back in late May, though exactly how and why is a story for the Rome segment of my blog. On to Paris I sped, under the English Channel, ready to enter a world of French, baguettes, brie, and wine!
With so much to cover, I will simply keep on attempting to churn out these entries. Keep up at whatever pace you will. I hope I entertain with my tales.
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