Life in the Slow Lane

In which The Author makes it up as he goes along

On Tuesday I made another of my semi-regular visits to London. Unlike my previous trips, I didn’t have anything specific in mind this time. That turned out to be a good thing, as nothing went quite according to plan.

When my alarm went off at 5.00 it was pitch dark, and the rain (which had started the previous evening) was still hammering down outside. For a minute I was tempted to say ‘Fuck it!’ and go back to sleep. Then I realised that I’d only had about half an hour’s sleep anyway, so I might as well get up.

I had a quick bath and listened to the early weather forecast while I ate breakfast. The south-east of England could expect heavy showers in the evening, apparently, while South Wales had experienced ‘showers’ overnight. (Showers? Yeah, right!)

When I did venture outside, just before 6.00, the rain had actually stopped. I walked through Robertstown and got to the station just before quarter past. The train was already in, and I grabbed some shut-eye once I’d bought my ticket. I got into bad habits when I was commuting to Cardiff, sleeping on the train there and back a lot, and my sleep routine hasn’t been right since. I jumped off at Cathays and made my way to the bus stop just opposite the station entrance. I was the first person there, so I read a few pages of my book before the coach arrived. It was a few minutes later than scheduled, and that turned out to be the order of the day.

Last time I travelled up, it was the first week of the school holidays and the weather was glorious. I’d been fairly confident of arriving at Earls Court before eleven, as I did last time, and making it to the Wetherspoon pub in Hammersmith in good time for second breakfast.

I was given some discount vouchers a few weeks ago, and they’ve been burning a hole in my pocket since. Since a breakfast for £2.69 represents particularly good value for London, I’d tucked the vouchers into my bag before setting off.

I don’t know if the adverse weather had affected the traffic flow, or if the journey into London was hampered by other factors. We made pretty decent progress until we reached Slough, but crawled the rest of the way. We eventually reached the stop ‘near’ Earls Court a full hour later than last time.

Luckily for me, the rain had stayed away, so I walked back towards North End Road. I was on the right side of the road to check out the very complex railway interchange hereabouts. If I ever get the money to restart work on my model railway, it’ll probably look something like this.

I topped up my Oyster card at West Kensington Tube station and caught a 329 bus to Hammersmith.

(Incidentally, I’ve just received a survey from National Express, asking for feedback on my recent journey. I’ve suggested that dropping off at Hammersmith, where there’s a Tube station and a major bus interchange, rather than on the A4 – where there’s nothing – would probably be much for convenient for passengers. Let’s see what they make of that!)

By the time I reached the William Morris, breakfast was long past and the lunch menu was in full swing. I used a different voucher and got a veggie burger, chips and a pint of lager for only £3.99. You’ll be lucky to buy a pint for four quid in London, so I was quite happy with that. When I checked my receipt, it seemed that the voucher was part of a ‘student promotion’ scheme. It’s good to know I can still pass for a student.

Fed and watered, I headed back to the bus station and jumped on a number 10, heading for Kings Cross. I was aiming for Goodge Street, from where I could head across Bloomsbury to the British Museum. This was the second public transport SNAFU of the day.

The bus made reasonable progress through Kensington High Street and Knightsbridge, went up Park Lane in fits and starts, rounded Marble Arch, and then inched its way along before grinding to a halt entirely near Oxford Circus. I don’t know many times the traffic lights in front of us cycled from green to red and back again, before we made it past them and into the next stretch of nose-to-tail traffic. I grew accustomed to the stop-start progress of London buses back in the old days, but I’d never seen anything like this.

Then again, I was on the upper deck, so I was able to check out thousands of gorgeous women from all parts of the world as they strolled past. It would certainly have been far quicker to jump off and walk the length of Oxford Street, but I’d have missed the unofficial Miss World contest going on below. Swings and roundabouts.

I’d also have missed out on seeing the reason for the hold-up: the latest phase of the £15 billion Crossrail project, redeveloping Tottenham Court Road station. I was able to grab some decent photos from my vantage point high above the safety barriers. I dare say it’ll be nice when it’s finished.

There was another massive building site on the north side of Oxford Street, too, but that turned out to be nothing to do with Crossrail. Rather disappointingly, it’s going to be part of a new Primark store.

We eventually reached Goodge Street and I headed straight to Torrington Place. The flagship Dillons bookshop opened here, way back in the 1930s, and it’s still closely associated with the University of London and University College Hospital. I thought I’d call in and check out the new academic stock, just for old times’ sake.

The prices of textbooks had been shooting up for a couple of years before I left the trade in 2009. Now they’ve gone through the roof. For example, I looked at Rang and Dale’s Pharmacology, and it was nearly fifty quid! That was one of the cheaper books I glanced at. The long-awaited third edition of The Art of Electronics will set you back nearly sixty quid. (When I say ‘long-awaited’, it had assumed almost mythical status by the time I finished work. As with the Messiah or the Twelfth Imam, a lot of people had begun to wonder if it would ever materialise.) Having had a foot in both camps, I can see why students tend to look for second-hand editions, or buy online. On the other hand, you have to wonder just how many thousands of pounds’ worth of sales Waterstones has thrown away over the years, simply by choosing to neglect the huge student market.

I was glad to see that the latest editions of Molecular Biology of the Cell by Alberts et al, and their cooked-down Essential Cell Biology, have continued the tradition of the authors recreating Beatles’ LP covers, as I told you in Adventures in the Book Trade (Part 9). The current editions are clever pastiches of the A Hard Day’s Night cover and the famous ‘balcony shot’ of the Fab Four. Who says scientists don’t have a sense of humour, eh?

Back in the fresh air, I found my way to the rear entrance of the British Museum, heading (I thought) for the new exhibition on Celtic art. Then I spotted a small poster on the wall outside. It didn’t actually open until Thursday. At least I’ve got an excuse to pay another visit soon.

I made my way to the Egyptian gallery again, and this time I found the Rosetta Stone. I’d missed it last time because it had been surrounded by hundreds of sightseers. It’s much smaller than I’d imagined, too. I wandered past some more incredible statues and pieces of wall art before heading for the gift shop. Rhian and Steff have just moved in together, so I picked up a little housewarming present for them.

Back in the daylight, I walked along Museum Street to the famous Atlantis Bookshop. It’s often been described as the home of British magick, and I wanted to have a browse around inside. The window was full of books on arcane subjects, and just inside the door was a bulletin board full of ads for meetings, talks, events, and workshops. The shelves were crammed with books on all manner of obscure topics, and I could have spent a lot of money given half a chance.

I came across two volumes of Robert Anton Wilson’s Historical Illuminatus trilogy, a couple of books by Timothy Leary, a whole raft of books by or about Aleister Crowley and Austin Osman Spare, and some eye-catching books on ‘forbidden archaeology’ and UFOs. I couldn’t help thinking about my old friend Carl Blewitt, and reflecting on how much he’d have loved to spend a couple of hours browsing in Atlantis.

On the way out I checked the bulletin board again, and noticed a poster for a conference about William Blake. I should have known then that a spate of weird psychogeographical synchronicities were about to kick off (see Limehouse Blues and Twos). I walked as far as Bloomsbury Way and straight away stumbled across St George’s Church. It’s another of Nicholas Hawksmoor’s designs, needless to say. Unfortunately it’s too big to try and photograph in one go, especially with heavy traffic passing in both directions. These’ll have to do for now.

Just to complete the triangle, I’d only walked for another few moments when I spotted this in a side street.

Once again, my random wanderings through the side streets of London had managed to connect William Blake, his spiritual guru Emanuel Swedenborg, and Nicholas Hawksmoor, the anti-hero of Peter Ackroyd’s eponymous novel – a bizarre triangle if ever there was one.

I’d only walked a little bit further when I came across a small gang of guys in high-vis gear, directing traffic past a building site in the middle of the road. It turned out to be another part of the Crossrail scheme – but look at the railway tracks leading into this mysterious subterranean passageway. They weren’t laid yesterday, were they? This access portal to the underground railway probably dates from the early days of the cut-and-cover system. I’d have loved to get closer to it, but I settled for a photo instead, after explaining to one of the guys that I was interested in railway engineering. He very kindly told me go ahead. That doesn’t happen often.

Not far from there I found a nice piece of street art left over from the 2012 Olympics. It was a ceramic tile, cemented onto the side of a building after being decorated.

I walked along Theobald’s Road as far as the northern entrance to Gray’s Inn Gardens. Then I stopped to try and get my bearings. Even though I’d taken my trusty A-Z with me, I don’t like to consult it in the street; it makes me feel like a tourist (or a murder suspect in an episode of Sherlock). To try and make things easier for visitors, London is dotted with little ‘You are here’ posts, each of which indicate a five-minute walking radius from your current location and a fifteen-minute stroll on a less detailed map.

Unfortunately, they’ve obviously been designed with the satnav generation in mind. Instead of having north at the top (in common with 99.9% of maps made since the Middle Ages), they seem to be oriented as though you were facing in the direction of travel.

I consulted one of these ‘handy’ posts and found that (according to the little map) Gray’s Inn Road runs from left to right. I knew full well that it’s aligned approximately north-south, so I ignored the map and headed off along Gray’s Inn Road by dead reckoning instead.

I arrived at High Holborn a couple of minutes later, and was greeted by a pair of the strange dragon-like figures which guard the portals of the City of London. I’m not going to go too far down the David Icke ‘reptilian’ route here, but it’s difficult to walk around the City of London without wondering about the occult symbolism you find everywhere. One day I’ll take a proper walk around with my camera and see how many things I can spot for myself. Maybe I could start work on a kids’ book called I-Spy Occult, Masonic and Satanic Conspiracies.

Most of the City of London was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666, of course, and the majority of the old buildings date from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. There was a second wave of devastation during World War II, and it was substantially rebuilt in the 1950s and 1960s; a third phase of demolition and rebuilding got under way in the 1980s, and is still going on. Everywhere you look there are cranes towering above the skyline as architects and developers vie to outdo their rivals down the road. That’s probably why I was so surprised to see this fantastic half-timbered structure next to Staple Inn.

Just opposite it is the astonishing frontage of the Prudential Building. It’s actually much longer than this, but I couldn’t fit the whole thing into the frame.

I was only a minute or so from Holborn Circus, which was my next destination. To tell the truth, the place I was actually heading for is even more peculiar than half the things in the City of London combined.

This is the entrance to Ely Place, which isn’t technically part of the City of London. It’s an enclave of the Diocese of Cambridge, which I first heard about several years ago (and I thought at the time it was a joke). Then I read about it in Vitali Vitaliev’s entertaining book Passport to Enclavia. He starts his book in Ye Olde Mitre Tavern, and explains the strange history behind this obscure corner of London. St Ethelreda’s Church, which nestles halfway up this little cul-de-sac, was built as a chapel of ease for the Bishop of Ely when he was visiting the Smoke. Consequently the land stayed in the possession of the church, and apparently the whole place remains outside the jurisdiction of the City of London Police. Mr Vitaliev had started his journey around Europe’s enclaves in this most unusual of London streets.

I made a mental note to try and find it when I had the chance. On Tuesday I found Ely Place without any trouble, but the pub was more elusive. I walked the length of the street, wondering whether it was concealed behind one of the grand frontages. The church was tucked away between two large buildings, but there was no sign of a pub.

At the far end of the street I came to a wooden gate, and stepped through it to see if the pub was tucked away behind it. Instead, I found myself in the even more cunningly concealed Bleeding Heart Yard. It takes its name from the pub at the other end, on the corner of Greville Street. There’s a restaurant here, and a couple of buildings seem to be homes to offices. If it hadn’t been for my research before setting off, I’d never have even suspected it was there.

The Bleeding Heart was all very well, but it wasn’t Ye Old Mitre Tavern. I wondered for a moment if Mr Vitaliev had been pulling his readers’ legs. I walked back into Ely Place and checked out each building carefully. They were all fairly nondescript offices. I was about to concede defeat and ask the chap at the gatehouse for help. Then I passed a tiny alleyway between two buildings and heard cheerful voices coming from the far end. I know the sound of a pub crowd only too well, so I walked up the alley. A group of smartly-dressed City types were standing outside the pub, holding pint glasses and chatting. I made my way into the remarkably small lounge, where two middle-aged women were sitting in one corner, a bearded chap in a suit was using a laptop in the other corner, and a shaven-headed guy in an Iron Maiden T-shirt was sitting at a table in the middle. It was my kind of place.

I was greeted by a friendly barmaid who reminded me of my friend Josie, and had a quick look at the range on offer. I erred on the side of caution and ordered a half of Kronenbourg. £2.05 isn’t bad for London. I explained to the barmaid that I’d read about the pub in Passport to Enclavia, and she was quite surprised that I’d made a special journey to check it out. They had a decent selection of real ales, and I decided to text Rowland to tell him about my discovery. (He spends a lot of time in London, and likes to check out new pubs.)

I also texted Gaz, who borrowed Passport to Enclavia from my Lending Library a while back, to tell him where I was. Needless to say, he’d beaten me to it – he’d stopped in for a couple of pints on his way back from Israel earlier this year. The exterior was too small to photograph, but the interior was full of character and crammed with pub memorabilia.

The pub was starting to fill up (which didn’t take a lot), and time was getting on. I finished my drink and headed outside. Back in the alley, I turned right instead of left, walked for a short distance, and emerged in the middle of Hatton Garden. I wonder how many thousands of people pass this tiny gap between jewellers’ shops every week and never suspect that there’s a pub within easy staggering distance. It’s an old-school City pub, too – only open from Monday to Friday. I’ll definitely be going back next time I’m in town.

I returned to Holborn Circus and made my way east. A minute later, quite by accident, I found myself on top of Holborn Viaduct. Built in the 1860s, it was designed to span the valley of the Fleet and make it easier for horse-drawn traffic to enter the City. It’s a very busy road now, and there are some great statues on either side, representing the four elements on which London’s wealth was built: Science, Commerce, Agriculture and Fine Art. (Needless to say, the dragons are there too.) I only photographed two of the statues before heading down a flight of wide stone steps into Farringdon Road. You get the idea, though.

I’d accidentally found myself at the site of the original Smithfield Market. It’s in a sorry state now, and there doesn’t seem to be any work in progress on it. I found a builder’s notice on a nearby building, but the old market hall is slowly falling apart. Just across the road is the new Smithfield Market, the main meat wholesaler in London. I’ve been a vegetarian since 1987, so I was quite relieved to find that they’d closed up for the day. I took a short cut through the covered hall, where I found another war memorial to add to my collection.

I emerged at Farringdon Tube station, which has retained its original frontage and looks pretty impressive.

I was really just following my nose by this point. I knew that if I headed down Farringdon Street, I’d eventually arrive at Blackfriars and the Thames. I’d completely forgotten that Ludgate Circus is in the middle. When I arrived there, I had a choice of three routes: south, to the river; west, along Fleet Street and into The Strand; or east, up the gentle rise of Ludgate Hill to one of London’s most distinctive and impressive buildings. I went east.

I’ve seen it before, of course, but St Paul’s Cathedral still manages to take my breath away. It’s not just that its sheer size staggers your imagination; it’s also a stupendous piece of architecture and engineering. I’ve never been inside, but that doesn’t matter. Its colossal dome, towering over the massive structure and topped with a cupola which itself was a daring and visionary piece of engineering, is one of the things that the word ‘London’ immediately brings to mind. Even though it’s surrounded by some of the bravest pieces of modern architecture, they don’t detract from the magnificence of St Paul’s.

In a BBC book called Spirit of the Age, published in the 1970s, the architectural historian Sir John Summerson states that nobody alive has seen St Paul’s in the way that Sir Christopher Wren intended – totally dominating the skyline of the city. That may have been true forty years ago, but now the southern aspect is pretty much unobstructed (apart from the occasional bus, of course).

When nearby Paternoster Square was listed for redevelopment, HRH Prince Charles memorably weighed into the argument. That spoke volumes about the importance of St Paul’s, not just a place of worship but as a piece of our national heritage. It’s an enduring symbol of London, and undeniably one of the West’s most recognisable and iconic buildings. It’s little short of a miracle that it survived the Blitz almost without a scratch.

It’s almost impossible to get a sense of scale from these photos. You really do need to see it for yourself to appreciate just how vast it is.

As well as his most famous work, there are numerous other Wren churches peppered throughout the City. Everywhere you turn you can see a spire poking up from among the tightly packed buildings. You have to wonder just how many people lived here back in the day, to need so many churches in a relatively compact area.

A short distance from St Paul’s is the National Firefighters’ Memorial. It’s an impressive bronze sculpture of three men during the Blitz. London is brimming with interesting statues and monuments like this one; I just wish I had the time to photograph and catalogue them all.

The City of London is full of intriguing street names, too. As well as Bleeding Heart Yard, while I was walking around I found (among others) Turn Again Lane, Wardrobe Place, Pageantmaster Court, and this flashback to a cheesy 1980s SF TV show.

(Incidentally, trivia fans, the City of London features a myriad of ‘hills’, ‘lanes’, ‘streets’, ‘alleys’, ‘courts’, ‘walks’, ‘places’ and so forth – but not a single ‘road’.)

A short walk south from St Paul’s led me nicely to the Millennium Bridge. I hadn’t seen it before, and it’s more impressive than I’d thought. It no longer wobbles under the feet of its many thousands of users, but you can feel it gently undulating if you stand in the dead centre. It’s a bit unnerving at first.

From here, you get a fantastic view along the Thames, past Tower Bridge and as far as Canary Wharf to the east. What was London’s tallest building is now overlooked by Europe’s tallest structure, The Shard. Did Sir Christopher ever imagine that St Paul’s would be dwarfed by these later skyscrapers, I wonder?

As you can see from that last batch of photos, the weather had followed me from Wales. I made my way to the South Bank, emerging just outside Tate Modern, and decided to stroll along the Queen’s Walk towards Waterloo. It was thronged with trendy restaurants, small shops, takeaway food stalls, buskers, and thousands of tourists. I hadn’t been in that part of the city for years, and I was amazed by the way it’s been transformed. When I first explored there, it was seedy and run-down (to say the least). Now, it’s a buzzing hub for tourists.

Sure enough, just after I passed Blackfriars Bridge, the heavens opened. I took one photo of the left-over columns from the original bridge before shoving my camera in my pocket. I learned a couple of years ago that water and cameras don’t mix.

It was pointless trying to find somewhere to shelter, so I kept on walking. The shower was quite heavy, but short-lived, luckily. I passed the South Bank Centre, skirted around Waterloo Station, strolled past County Hall and St Thomas’ Hospital, and crossed the river again at Lambeth Bridge. Halfway across, I realised that I wasn’t the only person who’d been caught out by the sudden downpour. I had to feel sorry for this poor couple, who were trudging across on the opposite pavement. I bet they felt as if they were in a Richard Curtis comedy film.

There’s a fantastic view downriver from here, so I grabbed a final photo before heading into Horseferry Road and the 507 bus back to Victoria.

More by luck than judgement, we arrived back at Cathays with two minutes’ grace before the Aberdare train departed. I was back home just after eleven o’clock, which made for a long but very satisfying day. In spite of rumours to the contrary, I’m definitely not tired of life yet – as I’ll certainly never tire of London.

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What I Did On My Holiday

In which The Author does something different

A 5.a.m. start is nothing new when you suffer from chronic insomnia. In fact, I’d just begun to feel drowsy when my alarm sounded. It was getting light when I got out of the bath about ten minutes later and headed downstairs. I switched on the radio and Radio 4 had yet to start broadcasting. I caught a few minutes of the World Service overnight broadcast before Tuesday’s first shipping forecast, the start of Farming Today, and the full weather forecast.

‘Why the fuck were you even up and about at this ungoddessly hour?’ I hear you ask.

Because I was going to London again – that’s why.

I left the house at about 5.50. I wanted to buy a paper before catching the first train. I’d been prepared to walk into Aberdare and buy a paper there, but the Spar in Trecynon was open when I passed. Job done!

I don’t think I’ve ever caught the first train before. I knew from some of my friends that it used to be a bit hit and miss (especially during the winter timetable), but when I came within sight of the station the train was already in. It had started to rain while I was in Robertstown; that was in line with the forecast, anyway.

The booking office wasn’t open, and the ticket machine is hit and miss as well, so I boarded and waited for the conductor to come along. The train was composed of four cars, and was (perhaps unsurprisingly) pleasantly quiet. The rain got heavier as we headed towards Cardiff; if I’d been heading for the Orkney Islands, I might have had a chance of sunshine. It’s August in Wales – go figure!

I jumped off the train at Cathays and crossed the road to the bus stop in Park Place, just opposite the Students’ Union building. I had about twenty minutes to kill. Subway and the coffee shop were gearing up for the day’s trading. I’d had breakfast and made sandwiches before I left the house. I’ve done this too many times to fall into the trap of eating out in the city.

The coach pulled in just after 7.35, only a minute or behind schedule. The main reason why I’d booked the ticket from Cathays, rather than the city centre, is because Cardiff Bus Station has closed for ‘redevelopment’, and the new National Express terminus is at Sophia Gardens. It’s a bit of a trek from Cardiff Central Station on a good day. Tuesday wasn’t a good day. I’d have been drenched before I got on board. Cathays was much more convenient.

It also saved me three quid each way. I think I’ll be revising my travel plans in the future.

By leaving before the rush hour traffic kicked in, we were able to make good time to Newport, and thence to the Second Severn Crossing. As soon as we hit England the clouds departed and the sun came out. To begin with I was engrossed in the last chapters of When the Sleeper Wakes. I’d also taken Iain Sinclair’s book Lud Heat and Suicide Bridge (see Limehouse Blues and Twos), so I didn’t really pay much attention to the journey up. When you’ve done it as many times as I have, the fields of crops flanking the motorway merge into one continuous prairie punctuated by church towers, interchangeable new housing estates, and a steady parade of service stations.

It was obviously a new experience for the teenage boy sitting behind me. He insisted on giving his mother a running commentary about everything that caught his eye. He can’t have heard that Chris Evans got the Top Gear gig, as he remarked upon every flash car he spotted from his window seat. I’d zoned out after the umpteenth Mercedes, so I was slightly shocked when he pointed out ‘a big castle’. It was Windsor Castle. It was just a few minutes after ten. We were making excellent time.

Clarkson manqué turned his attention to aeroplanes as we sped past Slough. We shot past Heathrow and into the suburbs without losing pace at all. In all the times I’ve done that journey I’ve never known such an uninterrupted run on the motorway. Suddenly, catching the earlier coach didn’t seem like such a bad idea.

It crossed my mind to point out some interesting features of the London landscape as we passed them, but the lad seemed more interested in his mobile phone than in his new surroundings. I heard him voice his amazement when we passed The Ark, so I told him what the building was called. That was as long as his attention span lasted before he turned back to spotting expensive cars, pointing out ads for the latest iPhone, and commenting on movie posters. London is wasted on the young.

We dropped off at Earls Court just after 10.30, and I was free to explore for a couple of hours. I doubled back along Cromwell Road, crossed the complicated rail junction south of Kensington Olympia, and made a mental note that it’s an untravelled section of my Rail Atlas. Maybe next time …

I took a detour into North End Road, topped up my Oyster card at West Kensington Station, and spotted an interesting shop front just opposite.

I hadn’t heard of this pub before, so I didn’t know about its importance in the Punk and Post-punk era. It had closed by the time I first got to London, so it wouldn’t have been on my radar at all. There’s a little cluster of shops nearby, but they quickly dissolve into a warren of residential streets as you head south towards Fulham.

It’s an area which grew rapidly after the railways brought it within an easy commute of the City and the West End. As a result, the architecture is brick-built, solid, undeniably Victorian, and rather easy on the eye. The pale yellow of the houses, commercial buildings and railway structures contrasts really well with the bright red of the later buildings. I passed a few large street-corner pubs (none of which were open at that time of the day, of course) before turning into Star Road. I hadn’t gone far when a blue plaque on a red brick block caught my eye. I decided to investigate.

A little further on I came to St Andrew’s Church, which operates a community café in the mornings. (It’s the sort of thing Fr Robert has in mind for St Elvan’s in Aberdare.) It was just a shame that the scaffolding got in the way of a nice photo.

I was tempted to call in for a cuppa, but as I had plenty of time before my appointment I kept on walking into Greyhound Road. The Greyhound was a well-known music venue back in the day, too, but now it’s turned into a trendy bar with a different name.

It was still too early for a pint, so when I got to the busy shopping part of Fulham Palace Road I turned southwards. I had an sudden urge to see the Thames, and I had a couple of hours to kill. It was a bit cloudy, but pleasantly warm and quite breezy – ideal weather for walking around the suburbs.

I ate my sandwiches on the way towards the river. I wasn’t entirely sure where I’d emerge, but some of the buses heading north had come through Putney, so I had a very vague idea. I passed a little recreation ground, and there was a high hedge alongside it. I didn’t find out until I’d consulted the A-Z that it was Fulham Cemetery. I bet there are some interesting graves in there. While I was wandering towards the river I came across a number of old-school street signs, like this one. I think they’re got a bit more character than the modern ones.

I skirted the extensive grounds of Fulham Palace, and wondered whether to have a look around inside. In the event I sidelined the idea and carried on walking into a busy area of shops and pubs. Among the mini supermarkets, newsagents, clothes shops, hair salons and cafés there’s a very strange shop selling nothing but boxes, bubble wrap and other packaging materials. Either the housing market is experiencing a surge in the Fulham and Putney areas, or it’s worth competing with online companies like Viking.

I also found this ornate tiled archway, which I presume used to be an entrance to a tube station. Putney Bridge Station is nearby, so it might have been a secondary approach.

I was still on the perimeter of Fulham Palace when I spotted a war memorial surrounded by mature trees. It reminded me of the Mountain Ash memorial at first glance – although I think ours is rather more dramatic.

I returned to the pavement and found myself on the northern approach to Putney Bridge. You can tell from the clouds that I was expecting to get soaked at any moment.

I’d forgotten how busy the skies over West London are. When I was a student in Uxbridge, we’d often hear the traffic overhead on its way to or from Heathrow. That was thirty years ago. Now there seems to be a plane overhead every two minutes. There’s a running joke in one of the ‘Reginald Perrin’ TV series, where a character’s voice is drowned out by the roar of jet engines, followed by the line, ‘Sorry, we seem to be on the flight path again.’ That’s what it must be like to live in Putney.

On the south side of the bridge I found a walkway leading to the shore of the river. I’d never been right up to the edge of the Thames before, so I couldn’t pass up that opportunity. There was a large gaggle of geese dabbling about at the margin, but they ignored me as I took a few more photos.

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I decided to walk under the bridge, and immediately realized I’d made a mistake. What appeared to be a thin coating of algae on the pebbles was, in fact, the slimy and rather smelly green crust of about two inches of mud. If Humanity ever does discover life on another planet, it’ll probably resemble the multicellular colonies I inadvertently disrupted before deciding to turn back. The thick grey ooze didn’t even wash off in the river. At least I was wearing boots. It would have run right over the top of a pair of trainers.

I walked into Putney and headed for a covered shopping centre. I wanted to wash my hands, and I guessed – correctly – that there’d be public toilets inside. I also found a small Waterstones, so I was able to buy Ben Aaronovitch’s latest paperback Foxglove Summer before heading back into the main street.

The bus back to Fulham left from the middle of Putney Bridge, and made excellent time to Greyhound Road. As things turned out I’d misread their letter, so I was over an hour early for my appointment. It was a good thing I’d brought a book, really!

After my appointment I headed into the labyrinth of Charing Cross Hospital to pick up my travelling expenses, and walked from there to Hammersmith Station. I caught a Piccadilly Line train into the centre and perused my A-Z, trying to decide where to get off. In the event I made my way to the surface at Holborn, took a moment to get my bearings, and headed for Bloomsbury Square. The centre of the square was full of people taking advantage of the afternoon sunshine. I cut across the grass towards the statue of Charles James Fox at the northern gates. A minute later I saw the huge frontage of my destination, thronged with tourists and visitors.

I still can’t believe that I spent most of my student Sundays in Uxbridge, when a couple of quid would have got me into the city centre within an hour or so. Consequently I never visited any of the countless museums and galleries which make London the greatest city in the world. On Tuesday I decided to make up for lost time with the biggest and best of all – the British Museum.

You probably won’t be surprised to learn that I made a beeline for the Egyptian sculptures on the ground floor. I’ve got a dozen or so books about that ancient civilization, but (apart from the odd little museum on the campus of Swansea University) I’ve never seen any of the artefacts. The only word that came immediately to mind was ‘Wow!’

The centrepiece of the gallery is this huge stone head of a pharaoh, raised on a plinth to keep it beyond the reach of curious hands. It must be at least fifteen feet high and weigh several tons – it makes you wonder just how big the whole statue must have been. The rest of the room is filled with smaller statues, several huge stone sarcophagi, and two enormous granite pillars carved with hieroglyphics. It’s difficult to believe that these mighty works were executed by hand, using only iron tools, some four thousand years ago.

The room was filled with sightseers, and I think it’s fair to say that they were all as amazed as I was. If I have one minor criticism, it’s that the place was too busy. It was almost impossible to have a close look at the individual pieces without feeling that you were getting in the way of a dozen other people.

After having my mind blown by the sculptures, I headed for the stairs and the main Egyptology section. The stairwell is lined with some huge mosaics from Halicarnassus. It’s sobering to think how painstakingly these pieces were put together. Each individual tessera is smaller than a postage stamp, and each picture is composed of many hundreds of tesserae.

The Egyptian exhibits occupy several adjoining rooms on the third floor, and they’re dimly lit to preserve their vivid colours. There are several mummies on display, including some rather cute mummified calves and a disturbingly high number of cats. (I almost got lynched in a lecture a few years ago, when I said the Egyptians had the right idea when it came to cats – they built great stone monuments and bricked the buggers up in them.) There are papyrus scrolls, ushabti figurines, carved figures of gods and goddesses, farming implements, fishing gear, items of jewellery, inscribed stones – the list goes on and on. I must have missed some of the exhibits, though, because I didn’t come across the Rosetta Stone. Its trilingual inscriptions famously provided the key to deciphering hieroglyphics.

I found my way back to the atrium through a maze of rooms showcasing artefacts from all over the world and all periods of history: the Middle East, from Babylonian times to the recent past; the Indian subcontinent; China and the Far East; mainland Europe; Roman and Celtic Britain; even some twentieth century sculptures. I’d only been in a small part of the building, and I was conscious of zooming past too many interesting things.

It doesn’t matter, because I’ll definitely be paying another visit soon. Like the Victoria and Albert Museum, which Rhian and I rushed through last year, the British Museum is far too big for a single visit. The ideal strategy is to list the contents in order of priority – what you really want to see, what you’d like to see, what you wouldn’t mind seeing, and the stuff you’re not fussed about – and work your way down.

Back in the atrium I gave into temptation and visited the little shop. The souvenirs seemed a bit overpriced, frankly. (They wanted £9.99 for a two gigabyte memory stick in the shape of the Rosetta Stone, for instance. Only last month I paid a fiver for eight Gb in Argos.) Even so, I found a nice little resin model of an obelisk, painted gold, which has joined the Egyptian pantheon on my stairs at home.

Back in the open air I called into a souvenir shop next to the Museum Tavern. I’d decided to send Mother a postcard to pay her back for the one she sent me a few years ago. It’ll be a nice surprise for her. I never tell her in advance that I’m going to London, because she’d worry relentlessly that I’ll fall victim to a terrorist attack, knife crime, gang warfare, muggers, pickpockets, aggressive beggars, illegal immigrants, junkies, prostitutes, clip joints, airborne viruses, the Russian mafia, or another of the thousand things that give Daily Mail readers nightmares. (For example, on July 7 2005 she rang the shop to make sure I was there, and hadn’t decided to visit London on the day of the bombings!)

As a matter of fact I’ve always felt much more confident walking around London that I ever did in Cardiff city centre after dark – or even late at night in Aberdare these days. In London – where the shops and cafés stay open long after the good people of the Valleys have gone to bed, where buses don’t vanish after 6 p.m., where people are always around in large numbers, and where police cars patrol constantly and CCTV cameras monitor the streets 24/7 – your chances of getting into a scrape are much smaller than you might imagine. As long as you’re sensible about keeping your stuff safe, and you don’t look like a tourist (by not consulting your A-Z every two minutes, say, or looking completely adrift on the tube), you can walk around most of London perfectly safely. Apart from being rather desultorily propositioned by a young tart in Soho on one visit, and being offered some dope on a street corner in Ladbroke Grove many years ago, I’ve never encountered any of the low life. Of course there are parts of the city that are best avoided unless you’ve got a military escort – but you can say the same of some of the big estates nearer home, too.

In fact, the biggest problem I faced on my leisurely stroll towards Covent Garden was finding a bloody postbox, closely followed by having to run the gauntlet of some Barnardos chuggers in Neal Street. I passed the tube station, which has a nice gimmick on the information board: an inspirational ‘Quote of the Day’. Tuesday’s was this gem from Joan Didion. It makes a change from updates about delays and industrial action, doesn’t it?

It was about 4.30 by now, and the piazza outside St Paul’s Church was thronged with tourists watching the ‘free’ (i.e. ‘pass the hat’) entertainers. There was a living statue in the middle of the square, somehow suspended in thin air about eighteen inches from the ground. How he’d managed that was beyond me. In one corner of the square a street magician was preparing for his next magic show; someone else was beatboxing a few yards away; there were a couple of jugglers and a fire eater, too. The one variety of street entertainment I didn’t come across was a traditional busker, with a guitar and a handful of classic tunes. They tend to be found in the long tunnels on the tube network these days.

St Paul’s Church is where PC Peter Grant meets a ghost in the first book of Mr Aaronovitch’s sequence, Rivers of London. I thought I’d take a photo while I was in the vicinity.

I explored the side streets around Covent Garden for a while. I found a number of second-hand bookshops, but didn’t stop to have a closer look at any of them. (I had enough books with me by that stage.) I even found – by accident – the famous Watkins in Cecil Court. It’s one of the most renowned dealers of books about the occult/parapsychology/magick/unexplained phenomena. Typically for my luck, they’d decided to close early that day. Unforeseen circumstances, maybe?

Around another corner I found the offices of Oneworld Publishers. It crossed my mind to call in and ask if I could add my name to their list of freelance proofreaders. It was late in the afternoon, though, and I know from experience that publishers tend to favour an early finish.

I’d also had half a mind to pay a visit to the offices of Orion Books. Their Gollancz imprint publishes a whole raft of acclaimed science fiction and fantasy authors, including Philip K. Dick, Stephen Baxter, Brandon Sanderson, Christopher Priest and Mr Aaronovitch himself. They used to be based at the southern end of Covent Garden, just before it blends into Trafalgar Square. (While I’d been reading Foxglove Summer in the waiting room I’d spotted a few glaring errors – including one in the jacket blurb, no less.) Unfortunately it turns out that they’ve recently relocated to new offices in the City.

Next time I go up I’m going to take a pocketful of business cards and some CVs with me, to see if I can get a foot in the door with a few of the London publishers. Sometimes the direct approach will pay off, after all.

I meandered through Leicester Square and toyed with the idea of a pint in the Coach and Horses. Then I realized that I’d have to rush it, so I decided not to bother and headed for Trafalgar Square.

A couple of weeks ago my mate Jamie D. tipped me off about an unusual feature of the built environment, which I’d never heard of before. Jamie used to be a copper in the Met, and he’s as big a fan of London trivia as I am. He showed me a photo of it on a website, but it was a new one on me. I wanted to try and track it down for myself.

It forms part of one of the uprights of Admiralty Arch, which separates Trafalgar Square from the Mall. If you didn’t know it was there, you’d probably never see it for yourself.

You’ve heard of the London Eye – now meet the London Nose.

It reminds me a bit of a brief incident in Christopher Priest’s debut novel Indoctrinaire. The protagonist finds that – for no apparent reason – his prison building has a large ear on its outside wall. Jamie wasn’t able to tell me any more about the origin or purpose of the London Nose (making it even more like the inexplicable ear in Indoctrinaire), but I’m glad I’ve seen it for myself.

I sat in Trafalgar Square for a while, watching the living statues levitating a couple of feet from the ground and listening to a couple of buskers outside the National Gallery. At about 5.45 I made my way into the Strand and caught the 11 bus to Victoria Coach Station.

We made excellent progress on the return journey, too. I was back in Cardiff just after 9.30. I was engrossed in my book all the way back, and hadn’t noticed the time flying by until we passed the University Hospital of Wales. Maybe the school holidays have contributed to the streamlined traffic flow into and out of London. Perhaps next time it’ll be bumper to bumper as far as the Brentford flyover as usual.

The timely arrival in Cardiff meant that I could catch the 2141 train home. Even better, my old work colleague Jeremy H. was on his way home from a two-day stay in Liverpool, and he kindly offered me a lift from the station. I was back in the house by 11p.m., so I stayed up reading until I’d finished the first part of Foxglove Summer.

I don’t need to visit Charing Cross Hospital again, but I’m definitely going to keep up my semi-regular visits to London from now on. There are so many places I want to explore, so many things I want to see, and so much to do, that I could go up once a month and still only scratch the surface. Although I wouldn’t want to live there any more, it’s still my favourite place to wander around and investigate in detail. And if I can start targeting publishers’ offices as part of a day trip, so much the better.