An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn, mud from a muddy spring,
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,
An army which liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield,
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless, a book sealed,
A Senate--Time's worst statute unrepealed,
Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst to illumine our tempestuous day.
Holy smokes we shouldn't generalize that fast batman! That there is a monster treasure chest of really first rate history is not up for dispute. But from my very brief touring of London I can say the anti English sentiments, oddly I most frequently perceive from the English them self, are not fair at all.
Now before I talk about the routine surprises of London I need to comment on something more petty. The head of state for Canada is Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth the second. ER2 is on our money, our passport reads The minister of Foreign Affairs requests, in the name of Her Majesty The Queen..., when Lesley became a citizen she had to swear allegiance to The Queen, as is usually the case when The Queen is not present The Queen's representative in Canada, The Governor General, holds the highest rank in the land, if you go to a place where there is no Canadian embassy or consulate your passport instructs you to turn to the British for help, and so on. So I want it explained to me, when Lesley and I entered Great Britain we were in the "Non EU or GB citizen" lineup, as opposed to someone from say, France, a country that was at war or near war state for pretty much the entire history of England since the Norman Conquest to the invention of the telegraph! Or what about say, a German? Or a Czech? Surely the fact that my great uncle served and died in defense of the Empire (he was a front upper gunner on a Lancaster that was shot down over Bochum Germany in 1944, a fact that landed him in the city of Toronto's roll of honour) should land me a more favoured access to commonwealth nations, if my frequent and very un-American use of the letter "u" doesn't do the trick? For heaven's sakes after the American Revolution George Washington declared he would never set foot on English soil again. Canada's first Prime Minister ran on a campaign of "A subject of the crown I was born and loyal I shall die." Of course Sir John Alexander MacDonald was in fact born in Scotland but back in those days as a Canadian you were either proudly British, wished you were British or were Quebecois. For that matter it still seems quite true, Toronto's current mayor, David Miller, was also born in Scotland. I am not sure if we could elect an American born Canadian as mayor, but I am sure we will elect someone from the mother country any time.
The whole thing smacks of a mother who wishes to cut relations and abandon her adult children for the sexy man with the French, or is it Spanish or perhaps German accent? Gee mum, I really feel the love, next time you call on me to help out, maybe in Iraq?, don't expect me to jump to attention.
Anyway once I cleared the customs silliness one of the first things I noticed was the rail in England, I think I have seen one episode of Top Gear too many and had come to believe the English nurse the same idiotic notions about driving that we maintain in the Americas. But the trains in England are fast, efficient and clean. Unlike Canada where air travel is a more cost effective way to get from A to B, taking the train is a completely rationale way to get around England.
When we got to London I must admit I had some difficulty with the tube at first, it is such a complex network one pretty much needs to study a map prior to heading out no matter how many times you ride the underground. I suppose a regular commuter would not have these problems, but I strongly suspect that if you threw even a native Londoner off their regular route by so much as a few lines they would need to consult a map just to find their way home again. I should as a warning to Canadians who think we pronounce Glouster correctly, apparently we do not. I would like to think I speak one language well, that is the English language, but when I asked someone who's uniform clearly identified him as an employee of the London Underground if this was the correct platform for Glouster station he gave me that same befuddled look of the Shanghai taxi drivers when I ask for Xin Tien Di.
Another remarkable break from the expected was the food situation. When it comes to cooking, us Northern European stock (and as a fourth generation Toronto boy I think I count as Northern European) can only depend on importing good food from spicy regions, and I suppose partly as capital of the greatest empire the World has ever known, Londoners have access to some really first rate food. Now I will grant that I do believe Toronto is more diverse in its composition, but then Toronto may very well be the most culturally diverse city on Earth. None-the-less London puts on a strong showing beside hog town.
After a surprisingly good lunch at an Asian place called Wegamama Lesley and I went to Kensington Park. In the park is Kensington palace, Kensington palace is where Queen Victoria was born and where I had a chance to get a good laugh at the statue of King William III, a gift from a certain King William II of Germany, grandson of Queen Victoria. Of course astute students of history will recall that Kaiser William (pronounced Vill-helm) the second was as responsible as anyone can be for World War I, and William III, or King William of Orange? He brought the invention of modern credit to England, this credit would allow a small fog shrouded Isle to carve out the greatest maritime empire the world has ever known. Of course ultimately this credit, in the hands of former English colonists in America would cause the great credit crisis of 2008.
Just past Kensington palace, was a large pond. Around the pond were a number of chairs, there was no notice on them so Lesley and I enjoyed the sunshine at length in a beautiful English garden. Only later on did I learn one is supposed to rent the chairs for a cost of £2 for four hours. Which frankly seems rather exorbitant but then most things in London are pretty expensive.
Dinner that evening was a formal Italian affair. It was exceedingly formal and exceedingly good. English food may be awful but the cooks the English have sure play a good game at the cook top.
The day after we arrived Lesley and I took a bike tour of the borough Westminister. Bike tours are a great way to see an area of town. Instead of burning out your feet or having a very restricted radius of sight seeing, you can ride a bike and see about as much as you can from a bus without the environmental impact of driving and with a greater appreciation of the pedestrian aspects of city life.
We, that is to say the bike group, went to a pub for lunch, this was not exactly a BCC Tuesday night hammer feast insanity ride, although speaking of Hammerfeast, there is such a place, it is a town in the far north of Norway, no word on what sort of bike tours are done there. Anyway we went to a reasonably inexpensive pub near Trafalgar Square where I made sure to have the London staple, Cod and chips. How anyone built an empire on that greaseopolza in their belly is beyond me. But I have gone to England and had fish and chips at an English pub, not worth repeating.
We resumed our tour and saw more gardens and memorials. At this point I want to state something that ought to be blindingly obvious but somehow escaped too many people in North America, cities are for people to live in. It seems to me that all to often we seem to forget that and make cites a place where cars can roam freely at the expense of people, remember the pedestrians? I recall searching for a supermarket in Phoenix last year and all I saw were cars, for ten or fifteen blocks not a single pedestrian, it was unsettling to say the least. Well London, at least Kensington and Westminister, don't seem to suffer any confusion. You want to drive, you are going to pay, through the nose, for the privilege.
As we rode through Hyde park we saw the mounted guards on horse back match down the road after the changing of the guard. What was mind boggling to me was that the cars stuck behind the soldiers did not attempt to pass or even honk. Respect for the monarchy runs deep.
Over the following days we went to Cambridge where our poor tour guide although well aware of the history had a very limited knowledge of physics and it showed. At one point she mentioned how an Australian born physicist named Rutherford had split the atom (ooops!) And done a lot of work at Cambridge. (Actually Rutherford's greatest achievement was the discovery of the atomic nucleus, which he made at McGill University in Montreal. A high school friend of mine was made to consider McGill by his father, a McGill alma mater, my friend told me the area where Rutherford worked is now boarded off, it is so radioactive!) Although it is true Rutherford did work for a time at Cambridge. The guide also mentioned how a certain professor Stephen Hawking is now the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, as was a certain Professor Issac Newton. She neglected such luminaries as the guy who first theorized antimatter, Paul Dirac. You would think with all the attention antimatter has received since that Dan Brown book, Angles and Demons, Cambridge would want to capitalize on some of the fame. Then again more Nobel prize winners at Cambridge than... Oh the United States! I guess they can afford to throw guides who don't understand such things at us.
We also went to Westminster Abby. If English history is not your cup of tea then I guess this is not a good place to visit. As for me, well I could have been locked up in there for a week with water and food and not been bored. The Abby is a place of prayer, and also the place where the monarchs have been crowned since William I (William the Conqueror). In fact when William was to be crowned King in 1066 they made a chair for the occasion. That chair is in Westminster and preserved for the same function to this very day! (Yes that chair was last used in 1952 when a young lady by the name of Elizabeth Mountbatten was crowned Queen.) In fact according to our guide that chair is in the Guinness Book of Records for oldest piece of furniture still serving the purpose for which it was originally built. Near the chair is the tomb of King Henry V. The very same fellow who besides having a silver tongue whipped the French on St. Crispins Day, 1415 at Agincourt, as the scope of the battle is beyond the scope of this entry I will refer the interested reader to the play Henry V by a playwright of some repute from Standford on the Avon River, for the details.
Near the tomb of Henry V is the tomb of Elizabeth and Mary, half sisters who hated each other in life. Right next to the two ladies there is the memorial to the boys who served and died in the RAF. In Westminster is Chaucer's tomb, as is Newton and Darwin. Just off to the side is a door, there are no jams, the door has a note, "this door was built in 1050, it is the oldest door in England". I might be alive when that door celebrates it's thousandth birthday!
A little way from Westminster Abby is the national portrait gallery. When I see the gallery in England and think of all the silliness around our own lack of a gallery I think, maybe we should give the English our portraits and ask them for a new BNA act. Clearly they win, portraits in their collection include Kings, Queens, scientists, philosophers, a number of them done by none other than Joshua Reynolds, do we have even one painting by Reynolds in all of Canada? Don't even get me started on the National Gallery, it isn't the Louvre, but it is nothing to shrug off. Put plainly Westminister and Trafalgar Square are awesome. At least the Canadian Embassy is at Trafalgar square, maybe we could make it the residence of the colonial representative to Westminster and do away with the whole national sovereignty thing. Would the Brits take us back? Please!
We also went to The Tower of London. Yes I saw the crown jewels, they look very nice. We also such ominous places as traitors gate and the bloody tower (so named by Elizabeth, first Queen of that name.) If you go to the tower, a good place to see, get a guided tour by one of the Beefeaters, the British sense of humour alone makes the trip to London worthwhile. But because the tour will include children read the punishment that Guy Fawkes received on Wikipedia before hand. Just try not to think about it too much after.
Of course observant readers will notice I missed some of the greatest museums of all, for example the war cabinet. That will have to come on our second visit which Lesley and I had already started dreaming about before we had even left.
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