Walt's British Invasion
London, January 1999
Things I learned in London:
The most distinctive feature of the London skyline is not Big Ben or Parliament
or Westminster Abbey or St. Paul's Cathedral as one might expect.
Rather it is the ubiquitous construction cranes throughout the city.
There was even construction at the Tower of London. They began building
the Tower in 1067 AD - you'd think it'd be finished by now! And the
Tower of London really isn't much of a tower by today's standards - maybe
50-60 tall at most. It's definitely no CN Tower. But then again,
you don't often have the opportunity to see beheadings at the CN Tower.
London streets are pretty much indecipherable. Streets can change
names practically every block and there are no mountains and often no sun
to help in determining direction. For anyone planning a trip to London,
a compass is highly recommended. Since I didn't have one, I survived
mostly by going off in random directions until I found what I was looking
for.
Weatherwise, London is a bizarro world where, even in the daytime, sunny
skies correlate with cold weather and clouds and rain correspond to warmer
temperatures. At least in the winter.
The Underground or Tube is very convenient and efficient with waits rarely
longer than 5 minutes. And while you wait you can be entertained by
watching mice scurry around beneath the tracks.
Charles Dickens had terrible penmanship. Honestly, I don't know how
he ever got anything published without the aid of a word processor.
Westminster Abbey is nowhere near Abbey Road, and though it contains the
remains of many dead British artists and scientists such as Geoffrey Chaucer
and Charles Dickens, it does not contain the remains of John Lennon.
Nor Paul McCartney...as far as I know.
Harrod's is supposedly the department store that has everything, sort of
a British version of the Mall of America - all in one store. However,
while purporting to have everything to meet your equestrian needs, including
saddles for $700 and up, polo mallets for $150 and racing whips for $7,
I didn't actually see any horses in stock. Perhaps you can mail-order
them.
I didn't much like Harrod's though because they didn't allow me to wear
my backpack in the store or allow me to use their luxury bathrooms -
those fascist, capitalist bastards! I was going to spend of my hard
earned money to buy a polo mallet, but after the way they treated me,
I decided to wait and get one from a place that appreciates my money, like
Target.
Piccadilly Circus doesn't have any animals or trapeze artists or even clowns.
In fact, it's just a glorified street corner with lots of neon lights.
Buckingham Palace is really just a big house guarded by guys in tall furry
hats. When they move, people go crazy and rush the gates to get a
picture of a guy in a tall furry hat walking around. But it was worth
the trip because I got a real good hot dog with extra onions from a vendor
just outside the gates.
A big story I read in The London Times was that Queen Elizabeth was rather
miffed at the vendors outside Buckingham Palace their odor offended her,
particularly the grilled onions. Geez, who went and made her queen?
I still can't figure out the difference between the phantom of the opera
and the hunchback of Notre Dame. From where I was sitting (right next
to Bob Eucker), the phantom looked the same as the hunchback to me.
Although I could tell that Jean Valjean in Les Miserable looked nothing
like Liam Neeson, like he was supposed to.
London has caught South Park fever. Merchandise with the face of
Stan, Kyle, Cartman and/or Kenny were the hottest sellers during the past
holiday season.
St. Martin's-in-the-Field Church is lived up to its reputation as a great
place to listen to a choral concert. However, it is not in a or anywhere
near a field. It is however only 3 minutes and 16 seconds from the
nearest adult bookstore. Or thereabouts.
According to those in charge (whoever they are, The Illuminati? The
Freemasons? The Tri-Lateral Commission? Those aliens on The
X-Files?), the millennium officially begins at midnight Greenwich Mean Time
on January 1, 2000. Which put me at ease, because I was real concerned
about that 2000 vs. 2001 debate. However, it does yield the
interesting fact that half of the world will have entered the year 2000 before
the beginning of the millennium.
Also, though it is a complete fallacy that sinks drain in different directions
depending on which side of the equator you are, it is true that you can
balance an egg upright on the Prime Meridian.
Tibetan food is quite tasty, but not much different from Chinese food.
Apparently, it was much more unique and distinctive before the late 1950s.
The Rosetta Stone is famous because it is written in both Greek and Egyptian
hieroglyphics, thus allowing the hierglyphs to be translated. What
is not commonly known is that the text of the Rosetta Stone is a recipe for
a vegetarian lasagna, which I heard is quite tasty.
All the fuss with the current royal family - the illicit affairs, divorces,
car rides around Paris - are really quite banal compared to the murders,
regicides, imprisonments, accusations of heresy, beheadings, and general
baudiness and intrigue of the past. Ah, those were the days.
The concept of large, big-screen megaplex movie theatres has not yet reached
London. Movie screens are not much bigger than your average American
big-screen television with relatively few seats per screen.
It costs 6 pounds (about $10) to stand on the floor and watch a play at
Shakespeare's Globe Theatre today. In 1600, a floor position cost 1
pence. That's 600% inflation over the past 400 years. And though
it held out longer than Wrigley Field, they now have lights for night performances
at the Globe. (Today's Globe Theatre is a reconstruction, finished a
couple of years ago).
The gates at London's Gatwick Airport are apparently for decorative purposes
only as instead the plane stopped on the tarmac and we walked through the
rain to a bus that took us to and from the terminal.
The Bank of Kuwait's ATM machine did not accept my card. Which really
teed me off. We save their butts from Saddam Hussein and they don't
have the graciousness to allow a good American like myself to withdraw money
from their ATM?!