EXPLORING

Sunday

In the past three days I've been doing a bit of exploring around London before heading to other cities. Last Sunday having sorted my photos etc, Fritha and Anthony took me out to Beckenham to see their house. The area is very pleasant, very leafy with lots of parkland close by. Indeed right across the road is the Kent County Cricket Club, and five minutes away is a very beautiful golf club. What more could they ask for?

Monday

Another relatively quiet day, but in the afternoon, despite a somewhat chilly wind and overcast skies, I headed off to Lambeth, and the Imperial War Museum. I've been there before but there are always new exhibits, and plenty of time to spend looking at historical objects and documents, and this is what I did. One of the most moving exhibits is called "The Children's War". It tells the stories of the children of London who were evacuated during the blitz and the stories of the kids of the Kinderstransport, Austrian and German Jewish children who were sent to Britain before war broke out.

But it's the displays of children's personal things, letters written to parents, tiny toys and books that children carried with them, a small pair of round metal rimmed glasses, a miniature copy of Jewish prayers, a handkerchief embroidered by a mother in Austria, possibly farewelling her child for the last time...these are the things that I found most moving. There was one story about a little Austrian girl who arrived in England, alone and frightened. From the railway station she saw across the road, a sign above a shop which said "Gift Shop." In German "Gift" means poison.

The little girl was convinced that she and her fellow refugees were about to be killed. That just choked me up.

Of course there are many many stories, and exhibits of famous battles of the world wars and a score of other wars. I spent several hours wandering through these exhibits, before heading to Fritha and Anthony's place.

Tuesday

Today has been a most interesting one. I spent several hours at St Paul's Cathedral. I took one of those audio supported tours which told a great deal about the significance of this magnificent building. I didn't know that it was the first cathedral built, unconnected to the Roman church.

But it is the architecture and the things inside this structure that are mind boggling. The whole building gives a wonderful sense of light and space. It is almost as if the place is larger on the inside than it is outside.(Rather like the Tardis)

The nave is impressive, but then you walk towards the high altar and under the great dome towering 365 feet above you, one foot for each day of the year.

As it happened there followed, a service which was conducted by a priest. Much of it was pretty much familiar to me as a Mick and I joined the worshippers for half an hour or so. Afterwards I shook hands with the priest and expressed the hope that one day my faith too would have women priests. She replied that she hoped and prayed so too. And then there are the monuments to the great figures of British history. In the crypt there are the tombs of Wellington and Nelson, two huge granite monolithic structures raised on imposing plinths, paying tribute to the heroes of Waterloo and Trafalgar.

And there are monuments too to Churchill, to Florence Nightingale, to Gordon of Khartoum and many many more.

Also in the crypt there is a shop and a cafe. Because photographs in the cathedral are banned, I bought several post cards and then I had lunch in the cafe. I had barely finished when an alarm went off and we were told there was an emergency and we had to leave. There was no fire, and at least I had finished eating. My journey then took me down Ludgate Hill away from the cathedral and on into Fleet Street, then right into Chancery Lane. I came to a place called the Silver Vaults. You go down several flights of steps to a long corridor of underground shop, all of them bursting at the seams with silver. Each shop is indeed a vault, with great steel doors, and inside silver silver silver. The shops are open to the public and you can buy anything in silver that you can imagine. There are silver antiques, jewellery, table decorations, cutlery, coffee and tea services, silver plate, silver trophies, silver statues, silver birds and animals. Got the picture?

There was a lot of silver.

And then back onto the tube heading for my last port of call for today, Highgate Cemetery.

I alighted at Archway tube station and out into Highgate. It was a long walk up a hill to the cemetery, but worth it. This is not a very old cemetery, having only been around since Victorian times, but it has an almost Gothic atmosphere, with hundreds of tombstones and monuments all topsy turvy and overgrown with ivy. It's not the sort of place you'd want to wander about at night. However in the daytime you can find dozens of famous names among the ruins. The most famous monument is that of Karl Marx, but there are many more. George Eliot,(real name Mary Ann Evans) author of The Mill on the Floss and Silas Marner, also Herbert Spencer,British philosopher and sociologist and surprise surprise, the Australian artist, Sidney Nolan. It was getting late and the cemetery was closing, so headed back. Tomorrow I'm going to Durham to see their castle and yet another cathedral.