London Calling

As the dying days of summer move into fall and thus into the political scene, some thoughts of London, old and new to mark the end reporting on fun and starting to deal with politics here and below the line. A last fling, you might say.

For Wendy and me, London is our Maui, and as I recently costed out a Hawaii trip for just after Christmas, London is cheaper -- if you know what you're doing and not looking for luxurious digs.

This time our two weeks were a contrast between the old and the new. The old came early, as we could not stay in our hotel of 15 years, Jurys in South Kensington, because they're in the midst of massive refurbishment. We find that it may well become a new hotel entirely with, I fear, new room rates that may have us looking elsewhere to meet our budget. As we had our regular dinner with Emma Chatterjee, Jurys' reservations manager, we talked of those 15 years -- always at least twice per year -- and all the staff we'd known. We've seen many of them get married, seen their babies and now their teenagers. We talked of the fun times like the night a teenager at a late night party three times pulled the fire alarm having the entire hotel out on the streets on a November rainy night. We remembered the characters and it being an Irish hotel, there were lots of them.

But as with all things good and bad, things change and what the hell, it's been a slice. And we did stay in another Jurys on Great Russell Street, near the British Museum, and it was great. Not the same, but great still. This meant trading the relative calm of Old Brompton Road for the ongoing hustled, bustle and occasional madness of Charing Cross Road, Chinatown and Leicester Square -- one of the best places to "people watch" in London.

This also meant finding a new watering hole, and we discovered The Crooked Surgeon just off Leicester Square. Scarcely an old pub it had two great advantages -- it was full of and served by young people and we both love that and, provided you both have the same meal, you got two for the price of one!

That appealed to my Scots ancestry I can tell you! The other advantage is not new but still recent enough to be noticed, the no smoking rule.

London anew

The mix of people has changed. While London as the one-time centre of the empire and still its financial capital has always been cosmopolitan, I now felt that I would soon be seeing signs in shops saying "English Spoken Here." When I listen and look, now it's sure a different place than it was when I first came there in 1964.

I don't know how Londoners feel but we love it. In the Crooked Surgeon, one of our servers was a young Polish lad doing his master's thesis and another was a young Hungarian woman who was born and raised in Slovakia -- not an easy thing to do, we gathered.

Old and new came together at Shakespeare's Globe. Built in 1995 as a replica of the original, it's been our annual port of call since then; we were there the second night for the first play, Two Gentlemen of Verona. This time we saw Timon of Athens, a little-performed play Shakespeare wrote in concert with Thomas Middleton. Actually, I had seen Timon last year at Christopher Gaze's Bard on the Beach. For some reason, both Wendy and I enjoyed it more than many of his more popular plays. Simon Paisley Day, as Timon, was simply magnificent. The Globe, built of the same materials as used in the 16th century, is a must and even if you're there in the off-season, take a tour. It's right across from St. Paul's so take the underground to Mansion House, walk across the Millennium Bridge, and there you are. (Wendy and I were at the opening of this bridge in 2000, the day it nearly collapsed, providing embarrassment for all, especially the architect!)

Mamma mia, here I go again

Our other theatre trip took us to the Prince of Wales theatre in Leicester Square where, are you ready for this? I saw Mamma Mia for the sixth time and Wendy saw it for the seventh! We took in the matinee and both agreed that if they would have let us, we'd have stayed for the evening performance. Simply the most fun you can have in London with your clothes on! In case there's a reader who doesn't know that Mamma Mia is based upon the music of the great Swedish group ABBA, I can only assume that you've been in a monastery somewhere in the Urals where there's a vow of silence or, like Rip Van Winkle, just woke after 20 years in the sack. Incidentally, Wendy went to the movie and loved it -- I'm still not sure I want to change or even test my image from the musical. I'll leave the subject at this -- we'll be back in Blighty for my birthday -- New Year's Eve if you were thinking of a gift, and money would be wonderful -- and we'll be back in the Prince of Wales Theatre one more time.

Back in the "old" department we took the train to Rye, one of the Cinque Ports on the English Channel. To give you an idea of its age, The Mermaid Pub was "rebuilt" in 1420 and another pub claims that it's the oldest one in town! Its main church, St. Mary's, celebrated its 900th birthday three years ago. The entire town is a throwback to the Middle Ages. Old, and I mean old, buildings and real cobblestone streets. Speaking of the old, Rye has a couple of superb "previously read" book stores (if car dealers can do that why can't book lovers?).

In addition to Rye, where I only bought two books, one The Oxford Book of Villains by the wonderful John Mortimer of Rumpole fame and the other entitled The Twelve Days by George Malcolm Thomson, which recalls that fatal last 12 days leading up to the beginning of the First World War, a fascinating story of man's stupidity. I did the usual stores on Charing Cross station plus the open air stalls on the weekend on the South Bank and along Piccadilly. Not a big haul by my standards only seven... plus six new ones of course.

The Churchill industry

I never cease to marvel at the output on Churchill. Well over 50 years since he held office and there is always a new book about him in the bookstores. On the shelves now are two. The first is Churchill Goes to War by Brian Lavery, which tells about all the great man's trips during the war, the planning, the people involved and what happened. It is a remarkably good read with fine sketches of Roosevelt, Stalin and many senior politicians and highly placed officers in the armed forces. My one quibble is that a very regal looking duffer in an official photograph of the 1944 Quebec conference is identified as South Africa's Field Marshall Jan Smuts whereas in fact he's the Earl of Athlone, then Governor-General of Canada. The other book is, I suppose, for the Churchillian only. It's called Churchill and Chartwell, The Untold Story of Churchill's Houses and Gardens. I'm part way through and enjoying it greatly. Perhaps that's because I've been to Chartwell so often.

I'm frequently asked when I return home with a dozen or so unread books, how can you read them all? The answer is I can't. But I can possess then, and that's important. When I work in my office surrounded by books, I'm in paradise. How many of you have a bit of a wardrobe? You know that you'll never wear all those clothes but it's nice to own them. I am getting a serious space problem. Our condo is so small that if I bring in a box of beer, I have to take out a case of empties. In addition to wall-to-wall bookcases in my office we have smaller ones -- including one just for Churchill first editions -- all over the place. This means that when I get home, I'll be doing some culling, which makes me very sad and the Lions Bay librarian very happy.

In the "new" department, Virgin Records has been bought out by an outfit called Zavvis. They have several stores including what used to be Tower Records at Piccadilly Circus and the former Virgin store on Oxford. I have seen two more smaller versions, one on Kings Road in Chelsea and one near our hotel on Tottenham Court Road. If you, like me, love traditional jazz, either of the larger stores will make you think that you've died and gone to heaven. Warning -- allow yourself lots of time and forget that the pound is more than $2.

A walk in the park

One thing never changes -- our walk in the parks where we start at the top of Kensington Gardens near Notting Hill Gate and walk through that park to Hyde Park, then to Green Park through to St. James's Park to Westminster. We take our time; we linger at the Round Pond and watch the au pairs with their perambulated charges, stop by the statue of Peter Pan, lunch at the Lido on the Serpentine, sit at the Rose Gardens at Hyde Park Gate, stop at the Canadian War Memorial just as you exit Green Park at Buckingham Palace and find a bench in St James's to watch the pelicans.

"A wondrous bird is the pelican,
His beak can hold more than his belican.
He can hold in his beak
Enough food for a week
And I'm damned if I know how the helican".

A final note on the parks. When we got to the Long Water in Kensington Gardens, we met a man with two beautiful Black Labradors. He had the two of them having a marvellous time splashing in after a tennis ball in one case and a stick for the other -- all right under sign saying "No Dogs Allowed In The Water"! That's one of the many things I like about the Brits -- pass a stupid law and it will be ignored as it was a couple of years ago when we saw a saxophonist busker playing in the Piccadilly Tube Station right under a sign that said "no busking -- 200 pound fine."

London, may we return often... Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose...

And long may it be so.

Related Tyee stories:

• London, a Spring Tonic
  In search of happiness again, I knew where to look.
• Report from London
  I was in the tube when the third bomb hit.
• Raised on Cricket
  The great global game has some BC roots.