London

We’ve been in London for a few days. We stayed near to “The Gherkin”, more prosaically known as 30 St Mary Axe, between Fenchurch Street railway station (where I used to alight from Leigh-on-Sea), and Liverpool Street railway station (which I used when the Fenchurch Street line was inoperable, which was often as it was one of the oldest, dirtiest and most unreliable lines – and was one of the last to be converted from steam power).

We visit London a few times a year, mostly for exhibitions and galleries. Also, a couple of years ago we walked the Thames Path (mainly, through London, on the South Bank) and a few months ago we spent a while exploring the canals in East London (when further research revealed that S. and I had grandparents who lived only a few streets apart near what is now the 2012 Olympic Park, in the 1920s). However, it’s a long time since I wandered around the area where I used to work, rather than drive hurriedly through. The building I worked in, at the junction of Fenchurch Street and Gracechurch Street, EC3, was, in the ‘sixties, an imposing 14-storey affair with an expensive statue outside, marbled halls, mezzanine and cool, ceramic-tiled lavatories, where I retired regularly to smoke my Stuyvesant cigarettes and contemplate the stupidity of mankind.

Well, that building is now long-gone. Its replacement houses a Boots The Chemist on the ground floor. There is a Marks and Spencers over the road and a Peacocks-type cheap clothes shop on the opposite corner.

When I worked there, men still wore bowler hats. Non-ironically!

We had pre-booked to visit the Manet Exhibition at The Royal Acadamy. As usual with “big name” exhibitions, it was very busy. More enjoyable, really, were the many more-or-less spontaneous, mostly free, visits we made. These included:
The Garden Museum.
Tate Modern (the Turbine Hall being made ready for a Kraftwerk concert).
Tate Britain (much more relaxed and varied than TM, I think).
The Barbican (to visit a “Rain Room” exhibition which we had to miss due to a minimum two-hour queuing time – nice just to wander around, though).

A particularly unexpected gem was The Old Operating Theatre, just south of London Bridge, along the road from the very new Shard building. The Operating Theatre is now a museum but was a surgical theatre in the very early days of medical surgery. We managed to stand at the back during a student lecture which was fascinating.

We had some nice food while we were in London: Turkish, Japanese and seafood. Also breakfast in a butchers in Leadenhall Market which was a first, particularly for a non-meat eater like me.

Leadenhall Market.

Speaking of eateries, there are an unbelievable number of Pret À Porters in London. You can stand on some junctions and see three at once! They must be doing something right.

The Ship, Talbot Court, EC3.

The Ship, a few yards from where I worked and where I used to have lunch and play darts and, in 1969, watch the Apollo Moon landings on a television in the upstairs room. Talbot Court is close to Pudding Lane, where the Great Fire started, destroying the previous pub, The Talbot. Apparently.