DOING THE TOURIST THING

The weather in London is starting to look a bit more like spring again, although it's pretty chilly in the wind.

The past 2 days have been sufficiently fine to warrant going out and doing touristy things. Yesterday Fritha and Anthony and I went back to where they used to live, in the area known as Little Venice. It's the junction of two of London's main canals with the huge turning basin where they meet. Every year scores of colourful narrow canal boats gather to show off. They are painted in bright colours and dressed up with flying pennants for the occasion. On the walks beside the canals were stalls selling every sort of tat you can imagine. And there was a lunch tent where we enjoyed baguettes stuffed with crackling and barbecued hog, and pints of real ale. (My cholesterol must have soared). Today Fritha and Anthony went off to work, so I continued the tourist theme and took the underground to Green Park across the road from Buckingham Palace. This of course is where they change the guard each day. The place was crowded with gawking tourists, just like me. And I don't care how anachronistic the whole show may be, it is a stirring sight. At first you can hear the beat of drums and distant martial music and then you see the glint of brass and the bright scarlet uniforms as the new guard, led by the band, comes swinging up the Mall and in through the great iron gates of the palace. For next the half hour there is much shouting of orders as each guard post is changed. Then the band strikes up again and the old guard marches out through the gates and back to barracks.

And then back on the tube to Baker Street, once the address of Sherlock Holmes, and Mme Tussaud's. I had bought my ticket online so avoiding the massive queue outside. And it was worth the visit. The waxworks vary a lot, some of them are extremely lifelike, others less so. The first one I encountered was Morgan Freeman and I had to look twice to be sure he wasn't real. And so it went through rooms featuring movie stars and sports stars and rock stars. I had myself photographed sitting at a coffee table with Audrey Hepburn in her Breakfast at Tiffany's role. Then on to rooms full of famous statesmen and women including Barak Obama, Tony Blair, and many more. Charles and Camilla are there of course, looking as bizarre as they do in real life. There was also a bloke named Adolf Hitler and quite close by, John Howard. That seemed not inappropriate, I must say.

The last bit of the visit leads you down into a dark dank dungeon and the Chamber of Horrors. This is not a place to get stuck behind teenage girls. There are lots of sudden noises and ghastly scenes of murder and mayhem, and this evokes screams of terror from the girls. There are waxworks of famous murderers, Crippin and John Christie and more. And there are bodies dangling from gibbets, or broken on the wheel or being tortured on the rack. All ghoulish stuff!

So that was my day. But the best part was that I spoke to Barbara by phone, after days of trying. I was sitting in the lounge at Fritha's flat, with the Thames flowing by and she was in a boat on Lale Titicaca, between Peru and Bolivia. She's having a terrific time, and raved about Machu Pichu. She hasn't had the opportunity to record her trip in this blog but she's keeping a diary and we'll put it all online when she gets to London. The big worry is that she seems to have bought a lot of stuff and says she needs to buy a new suitcase. Cripes!