A London Thing

'She who is tired of London is tired of life', to misquote someone, Dr.Johnson maybe. I was certainly in London and tired. I realised I had made a grammatical error yesterday, you always go UP to London wherever you are in the country. Don't suppose they teach them that any more in school.
London can bring out the belligerence in me, astonishing huh? I have a mental fork, not one like Hume's, although his did concern the is/ought question and mine goes something like, 'you ought not to be doing that or I will mentally stab you with my fork.'
The district line tube was crowded to suffocation and some woman was letting her very small child occupy a seat. What happened to the age old custom of children being expected to give up their seats for anyone older?

We went all the way out to Olympia to the Camp America recruitment fair, which even Alex said she was overwhelmed by. Lots and lots and lots of would-be happy campers. We didn't stay long, but we used the toilets. If teaching has taught me just one thing, it's never pass up a toilet opportunity whether you need it or not.
We had travel cards, so we all hopped on a bus, any bus, and went around Hyde Park and around everywhere it seemed until we got to Picadilly circus where we foolishly thought it would be a good place to alight. I'm stunned at how much better Alex knows London than I do, she knew exactly where we were at all times. I tend to just take a tube and travel under the city.

Picadilly was heaving. I told some people off who were dithering on the edge of the road when others were trying to cross. That gave me a warm feeling and didn't involve my mental fork. I have to be so much politer in Canada, here among my own I can be - well, basically Hugh Laurie's character from House - and it's just a perk of getting older.
We went to Funland inside the Trocadero and it was no fun at all. Even more people here. I noticed in one particularly crowded shop where I thought I might faint, that the St John's ambulance lady, the person who deals with you when you do in fact faint, was making the situation worse. Seven security men were having some kind of conference outside the shop. There must have been a doughnut call or something because they just kept arriving and laughing. Very funny guys, now get back to work. The potential for thievery in this place was enormous.

Walking back to the tube station our attention was drawn to an actor dressed up as a cybernaught, boddy popping. Next to him stood a bagpiper who had a friend stand by him with a cigarette. Every time he got to the end of a tune, friend popped the fag in his mouth. I promise that's not rude in English.

We had to go all the way across London to New Cross to see Goldsmith's College, part of the university of London. We had to go on the Jubilee line to Canada water. Now the tunnels that lead to the platforms of the Jubilee line have interesting metal panelling, rectangles, that make it look like the inside of the Tardis. British Petroleum were advertising their new fuels, the posters done like those colour blindness tests where you have bubbles of different colours and you read the words or numbers hidden in the patterning. You can only read the ones on the opposite walls because you are too near the ones where you are walking. 'Bio-fuels' said one, 'wind', 'hydrogen'. Hydrogen ! Holy Crap, that's scary.

New Cross was nice, the University of London owns a lot of property in and around London and the buildings were a mixture of old and new. Alex was pleased enough, she is hoping to go to Goldsmith's next year. It is a college with a sparkling reputation for performing and creative arts as well as excellent departments of English and French. Alex will be continuing with Drama and English.

Again we jumped on a bus that meandered slowly through the London twilight, finally dropping us just above Waterloo. As we walked along the pavement a woman stuck her arm out to hail a bus right in front of me. I growled at her and she looked scared. Ben thought I was out of order, Alex thought Ben was out of order and so the argument batted backwards and forwards until we arrived on the station.

I think perhaps I agree with Samuel Johnson. I'm nowhere near tired of London, in fact today showed me how much more of it there was that I hadn't explored, but I'm happy with it in small doses.