Day three in London was about getting out and seeing all those iconic places I had heard about throughout my life (and a few monuments as well – you can’t really go to London without seeing Big Ben.). My first stop was Carnaby Street – the once famed corridor of fashion shopping is now filled with international chain stores and has an archway at either end proudly announcing that you have reached the iconic street. Carnaby was Liberty, one of Britain’s many department stores. Liberty is housed in a Tudor building, one of the few I saw in London.
From here I walked down Oxford Street towards Leicester Square. I had heard there were ticket boxes in Leicester Square where you could get half-priced tickets to that evening’s shows. I decided that seeing a west-end show would be a fun thing to do in London and a fun way to spend my birthday eve. I could have gone for a really serious play but that, to me, is not what the West end is about. When I think West End, I think musicals. Monty Python’s Spamalot and Tim Firth’s Our House (which features the music of Madness) weren’t showing. There were about 30 musicals based directly on films including Dirty Dancing and Zorro – seeing a film on stage was not really what I had in mind. I chose the Ben Elton penned ‘We will Rock You’, based on the music of Queen.
From the box office, I headed to Trafalgar Square. Like the Italians, the British aren’t afraid to erect a monument or two to their heroes, such as the statue of Lord Nelson high atop the thing in Trafalgar Square. I didn’t see too many of the famed pigeons. As a matter of fact I didn’t see many at Il Duomo either. So there you go – winter is a good time to visit if you want to avoid pigeons.
This was the point at which I realised two things a) I wasn’t all that far from Buckingham Palace b) the changing of the guard was due to start in about 10 minutes so with these things in mind, I headed towards the Palace. I didn’t really see the changing of the guard. Like lots of other monuments, you have to be there really early and stand around for hours for that. I wasn’t that interested in the pomp and ceremony. However, I did manage to follow the mounted regiment up to the gate. In order to keep things nice and clean for the Queen (and the tourists), there is a special pooper scooper vehicle that follows the horses up the mall in front of Buckingham Palace. [‘The Few’ – Billy Bragg – Billy is one of my favourite singer songwriters and he’s someone who puts his effort where his mouth is, running grassroots campaigns to make a difference. One of the most pertinent things I ever heard him say was about violent protest action. He said if you blow up a McDonalds for exploiting its workers, there’s another McDonalds around the corner. He suggested that organizing a trade union inside McDonalds was a better solution.]
From here I headed towards Westminster Abbey. Unfortunately it was closed for a service for Commonwealth Day. I did manage to see the tail end of a parade of Commonwealth flags being taken into the abbey for the event. I was informed by the two London bobbies at the gate that if I cam back in a few hours and braved the crowds, I might get a glimpse of the Queen or PM ahead of the 3.30pm service.
I walked on to the houses of parliament (and Big Ben of course). It’s not until you get this close to the big clock that you realize there is a lot of gold gilt edging shining in the sunlight. In fact, I was quite surprised at the amount of gold decoration I saw on the outside of palaces and government buildings like parliament in Britain. I had expected it in Italy but not here. I have no idea whether it is actually real gold. I suspect not anymore but probably originally. I wasn’t as repulsed by the opulence here in the same way as I was by the Vatican. It’s probably because the majority of British people support this system of government with a monarch as head of state, that the Queen actually pays tax to the state and that a large portion of the wealth actually belongs to the people of Britain rather than the royal family personally and that the government actually has some say in determining how much money the royals receive. The Vatican doesn’t have these sorts of controls and church members play no part in determining the political direction of the church or how its money is spent.
There was an interesting juxtaposition of images standing on the edge of Parliament Square out the front of Westminster Abbey. In the foreground, in front of Big Ben were the flags of the Commonwealth nations flickering in the breeze. In the background, on the other side of the river, you could see the London Eye, which is essentially a massive ferris wheel. The whole thing looked like a carnival, which is probably quite appropriate for parliament. [‘Sexuality’ – Billy Bragg – one the easiest interviews I have ever done was with Billy. What you see is what you get. I spoke to him just days after 9/11 and it was one of the most interesting interview conversations I’ve ever had.]
I decided to see if I could get a glimpse of Gordon Brown collecting the paper at Number 10. The humble nature of the terraced house as the PM’s residence in Britain has always appealed to me against the opulence of the royal palaces. Don’t even bother – there is tighter security there than at the lodge. All those news shots you get of media packs hounding the PM outside his front door must be gathered by people with appropriate security clearances. Not only are there guards and those pylons with the red lights across the top at the entrance to Downing Street, there is also a double gate arrangement and a guard house. Lucky only other politicians live on the street these days.
Just around the corner from Number 10 are the Cabinet War Rooms. This was one of the most interesting museums I have ever seen. It is in the bunkers built to house Winston Churchill and his cabinet during WWII. It was recreated in enormous detail with each room laid out as it would have been during the war, right down to the implements in the kitchen, the typewriters and telephones and the war strategy maps on the walls. I stopped in a t the café to have afternoon tea of finger sandwiches and jam sponge. The menu (which they wouldn’t let me souvenir) was written like a ration book. The museum also had the best gift shop I have seen, including recreations of metal advertising signs from the period, ration books, cookbooks featuring wartime recipes using rations and books created by the government with helpful hints about health and making your clothing rations go further. My favourite was the dig for victory campaign which encouraged people to build home gardens to feed themselves during the war. [‘Zoot Suit Riot’ – Cherry Poppin’ Daddies – swing is such great dancing music – if only I was a slightly better dancer. And I love the clothes. For the record, I bought my first piece of vintage clothing, a lace dress from Route 66, back in 1989 so you can see why I was enamored with the London vintage clothing craze.]
From here I walked across the Westminster Bridge and along the South Bank of the Thames to Tate Modern. The interior design in the building is amazing, even more impressive than the Powerhouse in Sydney which also utilizes a disused power station. I was a little disappointed with the exhibition though – the minimalist gallery was closed, due to be replaced with another exhibition. Tate Modern works on a timeline of art from the early 20th century and how you can do that without minimalism is beyond me. Like the Spanish gallery, there is an over-fascination with cubism and surrealism here. Sure I am impressed by Picasso, Dali, Magritte and Duchamp but enough already. There was also a temporary gallery of 80s paintings. It reminded me of the kind of art we studied and worked on at school. Like everything about the 80s, paintings were supposed to be big, huge and mostly abstract. The highlight for me though was the pop art gallery, seeing Roy Lichtenstein’s Whaam and Wall Explosion II up close and personal.
From the Tate, I wandered to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre – I decided not to pay for the tour and settled on just seeing the outside. In the end it is a recreation, not the real theatre and the experience would be in seeing a play there, recreated in the way it would have been seen in Shakespeare’s time. I decided that it was probably best left for my next visit to London.
I decided to head back to the hostel to get ready for my West End show on a London red bus so a) I could see the territory I had been covering underground on the tube and b) I could actually get to take a ride on a red bus. When there was that huge controversy about the government getting rid of London’s double-decker red buses. It turns out that what they were talking about was the really old buses with the conductor at the back door, as seen in about 100 carry-on movies. There are more modern double-decker red buses everywhere. There are still some of the old ones on a few heritage routes but I didn’t manage to catch one.