August 22, 1987 (3:23 AM): And it really feels like it's 3:23 in the morning. That is because I woke up about 12:30 in the morning yesterday and couldn't get back to sleep until about 5 AM. I went into the den and watched THE BIG COUNTRY while playing with my new graphics calculator. Maybe I will be able to do the impossible and sleep in this little square seat on the plane. We are flying Virgin Atlantic to Gatwick.
Our last meal, as Dale Skran drove us to the airport, was Wendy's hamburgers. Okay as hamburgers go but probably better than any hamburgers you can get in Britain. This is in keeping with my belief that the British love hamburgers but have no idea how to make them. Sort of like the United States and candy. So we got to the airport and as no surprise to me they made us check our 'carry-on' bags. Evelyn had told me that the airlines were cracking down on too much carry-on luggage. She was really pleased because she claimed she never tried to carry on too much. I opined that the amount she takes would never be allowed. Evelyn claimed that her knapsack would count as just a big handbag and that her suitcase was called a carry-on so of course the airlines would think it was just fine. I seem to remember a two-against-one disagreement on this very point at my in-laws' house. I lost that argument; the court ruled that Evelyn was right (big surprise). Confident from her victory, Evelyn knew she wouldn't have to check her luggage. Then we got to the ticket counter and the man told Evelyn she would have to check her bag. Evelyn told him it was all right, she could stow her suitcase beneath her seat. The man produced a wooden box half the size of Evelyn's luggage. 'It would have to fit in that box.'
Life is a give-and-take proposition. Some things work out well; some do not. A sense of optimism is good to have but not always easy to maintain. Some people at better at it than others. But when I saw my wife pick up that big suitcase and try to fit it in that little box, I got a lump in my throat. I mean, there are limits to how much I can stretch my optimism.
Actually, it is probably the tightness of the plane that requires the heavy restrictions. This is a 747 packed as tightly as any plane I can remember. It is 11 across a row and four rows of seats for each three that the plane was designed to have (you can tell that by looking at the overhead compartments). This is tighter than the Russian Ilushun that we flew in China. Someone eight rows ahead decided to take a nap and reclined his seat and everyone behind him in the cabin had to recline theirs too or be crushed. Now I am headed for some clear air turbulence. That means that the plane is flying smoothly but I am getting a real bucking from the knees of the guy behind me who would prefer that I sit up with the head of the guy ahead of me in my lap!
Actually I have gotten a little ahead of myself describing the inside of the airplane before the outside. I must describe the outside. The airline is called Virgin Atlantic and there is a giant painting of a woman on the side of the plane wearing a swimsuit and flowing silks. I don't know if she is the same woman on the side of each plane or if sh illustrates the particular plane's name, 'The Scarlet Lady.' The plane has a big red tail that says 'Virgin' in big letters across it.
I mean, come on, guys. Let's put some dignity back into flying.
(8:24 AM): Wow! I've been able to sleep on a plane. I've never been able to do that before. I've only been waking up for meals. I fell asleep shortly after getting on the plane and woke up about 5 AM for a small, semi-palatable steak and a brownie. I have been dieting and the brownie tasted awfully rich and sweet, but only because I have had nothing of the sort for a month and a half or more.
The diet makes this trip come at an awkward time. After a while on a diet, the body becomes extremely efficient. That sounds good, doesn't it? It is a horrible dirty trick of nature. It means that it takes far fewer calories to maintain a fat level. You can diet until you are blue in the spirit but you will lose little if any weight and that one brownie probably did worse things to my weight than a piece of Black Forest cake in normal times. After dinner I fell asleep and woke up to find two rolls and an orange juice in front of me. It really feels like morning. With luck I may have no jetlag in this direction at all.
Evelyn just discovered another Virgin Atlantic exclusive. There was a large ant crawling on her. I have never seen an ant on an airplane before and one wonders how it would even get there. One presumes this particular ant will have a harder than usual time getting home. The guy behind me, by the way, turned out to be a young woman with (it would seem) Olympic-class knees. She also puts a fairly hefty slam on the plastic window-shade which is 4' from my ear. By the way, we gave them back our rolls. They weren't very good according to Evelyn so after one bite out of an ersatz mockcroissant she gave up and I skipped them entirely. It is now 8:51 AM and feels it.
(10:05 AM): We just landed at Gatwick. Why does England look so much more pastoral from the air than does the United States?
(11:37 AM): Things have changed in Britain. Time was they used to just wave you through Customs if you were a Yank. No more. These days there is nobody to wave you through; you just walk through and if you look suspicious (or rather, if they not only look but are suspicious), they stop you. Nobody is in a position to gave you the wave. I missed my wave and felt a lot less secure not getting it. Just to do my bit for security I waved through a number of people who they had already let walk through. The odd thing is they looked at me as if I was committing the faux pas. Eventually I did get my friendly wave-through by a nice Customs man. (Note: I must find out what 'bugger off' means. Probably a sports term.)
We got an exchange rate of about $1.70 per pound and exchanged $400 worth and boarded the train for London. Ev and I could not get seats together. I am sitting next to a guy who is coughing, sneezing, and reading a cookbook. I hope he doesn't prepare food in this state. We are getting to London. Lots of brown brick buildings, several churches that are of an older style with tall steeples. Ah, now we are in Victoria Station (12:03 PM).
We took the Underground to Sloane Square and carried our luggage three blocks to the Wilbraham Hotel where they had lost our reservation. 'Very unusual,' the clerk said. Not for me, it isn't.
(9:32 PM): Well, they got us a room but it is three flights up and it is quite warm during the day. There is no television and the lights don't all work, but for London it is still a pretty good deal.
We took a look at a list of points of interest. The map listed an 'Historic Ship Collection.' We went where the map claimed it was. What we found was a marina with nothing particularly historic. Well, on to the next thing on our list, the H.M.S.Belfast over on the other side of Tower Bridge. That is the other side of the closed Tower Bridge. However, we did find an unexpected attraction, the London Wall Walk. A medieval wall has been excavated that was built on a Roman wall base. The London Wall was really the wall of a fortress from the Middle Ages. To see the various pieces excavated you have to walk a mile. At each piece there is a tile 1-1/2' by 2' explaining what you are seeing and a map telling you how to get to the next piece. There were eleven of these stations in all. The fourth was made out of paper, not tile, just as a temporary measure. The fifth was not only paper, but it had gotten wet and rotted somehow. In ant case, the map of how to find the next piece was destroyed so that was that.
The next site that we wanted to see was St. Paul's Cathedral. This was more something Ev wanted than I wanted. Admission was free, but much of what might have been interesting to see Evelyn did not want to see because it would require climbing. So we achieved the status of being able to say we had been there, but not that we'd actually seen St. Paul's. For me, the most interesting thing was a monument to General Charles Gordon, who had successful campaigns in China before being sent to Khartoum to defend it against the Mahdi. I was curious if there was any of Gordon's remains in the casketshaped monument. There was nobody to ask in the Cathedral, so we went to a Tourist Information Centre across the street. They were not sure.
We stopped for sodas; we'd walked a long way in the heat. Most of what we'd seen were closed insurance companies. I told Evelyn that a bus tour might have been a better idea. Particularly since tour buses seemed to pass us every five minutes or so. Our next stop was the Old Bailey, the courthouse. It was under renovation and you couldn't even see the building.
Next Evelyn wanted to go to the Sherlock Holmes Pub which she has wanted to see for years. We got there a little after 5 PM and it wasn't open. One of the kids on the street told us the pub opened at 6. So we went to Leicester Square to see if we wanted to go to any of the plays they offered at their half-price booth. The choices that looked good were ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD by Tom Stoppard and BREAKING THE CODE, a new play about Alan Turing, a major name in computer science. Evelyn took a look at the plays and said that she would be unable to stay awake. I was a little disappointed but I didn't insist since there were still three more nights.
We had some friends in town from Massachusetts and the plan was we would meet them at the Holmes Pub for dinner Monday night and after dinner we would go to see THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. Well, if the pub didn't open until 6 PM it was going to be impossible. So after some effort we found the telephone number for our friends' hotel and left them a message to meet us at the play. This was to be the default plan anyway so the call really did nothing. We started back to the pub, but part of the way Evelyn realized we would not be able to see a play on Sunday; no plays are done on Sunday. That was disappointing, to be able to see only two plays in four days in London. Broadway puts in mostly fluff plays. The London theaters do more serious plays, and at bargain prices.
We then went back to the pub and got there about 5:50 PM. Already there was a crowd forming, almost all Americans. In fact, as far as I can tell the pub is entirely for tourists, like wax museums and Ripley's Believe It or Not Museums. But Evelyn is a bug on anything to do with Sherlock Holmes. 6:00 rolled around and the pub stayed close. All the tourists stood in the rain waiting for the pub that wouldn't open. We all talked. By 6:20 finally we saw a woman going in the back. She said the pub opens at 7 PM. Evelyn and I decided to eat at a fish-and-chips place we'd seen and come back to see the pub. We got back at 6:54 and talked to some more people going to the pub. At 7 it opened and we went in. The walls were decorated with photos from Holmes films and with supposed artifacts from the Holmes stories. Upstairs a small room is decorated like a versions of Holmes's study. But the centerpiece of the downstairs in a showcase was the head of some poor hound dog. It has been stuffed by a taxidermist and then they painted parts of the head with garish green luminous paint. It was pretty gross and disgusting. Even Evelyn called it tacky.
After that we went to the theater playing THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA and bought a program and a booklet giving background to the play.
Then Evelyn got concerned that our Massachusetts friends might not understand our phone message so she decided to walk to their hotel; we might even spend the evening with our friends. |
