50 Not Out

In which The Author has a rather disappointing birthday

I expect you’ve been expecting an exciting entry centred on the Celts: Art and Identity exhibition, which I missed by two days last time I was at the British Museum. (It started on the Thursday – I was there on the Tuesday.)

This isn’t an exciting entry centred on the Celts: Art and Identity exhibition. There aren’t even any photos of this latest trip to London. What a waste of forty quid!

My schoolboy error in reading the poster should have taught me to double-check the dates of anything I’m planning to visit in the future. But I was confident that a major exhibition like that would have been in place for at least six months, or maybe longer.

I also had a milestone birthday looming, so I booked my coach ticket to London with a dual object in mind. I could take in the exhibition, and (more importantly) not be in Aberdare on the day I turned fifty.

I was dreading the prospect of walking into the pub and finding the whole place festooned with balloons and banners. There was also the ominous prospect of having to spend the day with my ‘family’ – in other words, Mother (not so bad) and my brother (definitely not good). It was easier to take the path of least resistance and get the fuck out of Dodge for the day.

It was just a good thing I didn’t pay for Rhian to come with me as well. She’s starting her new job today, and had her induction day on Friday. It’s a full-time permanent job, too. (Don’t tell everyone – they’ll all want one!)

Neither of us had slept on Thursday night, because we were too excited about the day ahead. At least I had some company on the second train out of Aberdare. It was quite cloudy when we walked to the station, but the forecast was for clear skies and sunshine later on.

I left Rhian at Cardiff Queen Street, where she was getting a connection into the suburbs, and headed into Queen Street to buy a paper. I walked as far as W. H. Smith, but they hadn’t opened. I doubled back to the bottom end and called into Sainsbury’s instead. Armed with i and the Western Mail, I walked through Dumfries Place into Park Place, and then to the coach stop opposite the Students’ Union. I like Cardiff at that time of the morning, before the traffic builds up and the crowds pour in. Not surprisingly, I was the first person at the stop. I read the paper for a while until the coach arrived, a few minutes later than scheduled.

The driver was a friendly guy named Colin, and we had a bit of a chuckle over my ticket. For reasons best known to National Express, you can’t book online a return journey which sets down at Earls Court and departs from Victoria. He said he’d have to stop at Earls Court anyway, so I was good to go. I found a seat halfway along and settled down to do the i crossword.

With Punk dispatched in twenty minutes or so, I took advantage of the 230 V outlet between the seats. I plugged in my Netbook and did some more work on a project I’ve been potching with for a while. I was so engrossed that I only knew we were passing Newport when we went through the Brynglas Tunnel. I also didn’t pay a lot of attention to the shenanigans going on at the front of the coach a little while later.

We were in Chepstow, and two people who’d booked tickets online weren’t on the driver’s manifest. Colin managed to find them room on board (although not together), and we left the little border town about twenty minutes late. I was immersed in my project again, and didn’t even notice we’d crossed the estuary and were in England.

I glanced up a few times while we were heading east. The promised sunny skies had failed to materialise. There’s not a lot to see when you’re on the motorway, unless you’re an Eddie Stobart spotter, so I was glad I had something to occupy the journey. I noticed the time passing on my screen, and at about 11.00 I looked up to see where we were. We were passing Heathrow Airport. Somehow we’d managed to claw back the twenty minutes and were back on track. I put the Netbook away and settled down to enjoy the journey into the city.

I jumped off at Earls Court, and I remarked to Colin that we’d made good time after all. He seemed quite surprised as well. We wished each other a pleasant day, and I set off on foot to Earls Court Tube station, about five minutes’ walk away. And this is where things started to go wrong.

I’d already put £5.00 on my Oyster card on Wednesday via the TfL website. The payment still needs to be ‘activated’ at your nominated station (in my case, Earls Court) by touching the card on one of the yellow readers. In theory I could have just breezed through the barrier and onto the train. In the Real World, my card didn’t want to play. I was definitely at the right station, but after a few attempts to scan it I gave up and went to the machines instead. I had to pay another fiver to top my card up, which seemed rather pointless.

I know I’ll get my original payment back when it’s not ‘activated’ within seven days, but that’s not the point. Next time I won’t bother with the time-consuming online procedure, and just do it on the day. It put me in a bit of a bad mood, though. Things were about to get worse.

I jumped on a District Line train towards Tower Hill, changed at Embankment, and headed to Goodge Street. I don’t think I’ve ever used that station before. I was surprised that, instead of escalators, it still has lifts between the booking hall and the platform level. My Oyster card was behaving itself by this stage, and I emerged onto the street only to realise that I didn’t actually know where I was. I think I walked in a circle through narrow side streets for a few moments before finding something I recognised.

The BT Tower dominates the skyline in this part of town (Fitzrovia, in case you’re wondering), and soon gave me a fix on my location. I headed across to Gower Street, walked past the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and approached the British Museum from the rear, opposite Senate House. There were posters outside advertising the current special exhibitions, and my heart sank. There was no mention of the Celts. At all.

I went inside, found my way to the atrium, and went right around it looking for any posters about the Celts. There was nothing.

I spent about forty minutes wandering around, making mental notes of things to revisit when I’m more in the mood. You’re really spoiled for choice in places like that, as Rhian discovered when we went to the V&A about eighteen months ago.

The trick is to list the things you really want to see (in my case, the Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Romano-British collections); then the things you wouldn’t mind seeing (the Sutton Hoo hoard, some of the Mediterranean stuff, parts of the Indian and Chinese collections); then the stuff which would be nice, but not vitally important (African and North American items); and then the also-rans, like eighteenth-century busts and modern ceramics.

(There doesn’t seem to be any logic to the layout, either, so you just walk from room to room with no obvious underlying pattern. Maybe that’s all part of the plan – I don’t know.)

Eventually I found the British Celtic exhibits. Actually, I found some of them. Signs on the display cases advised visitors that many of the items are currently at the National Museum of Scotland, as part of … Yes, you’ve guessed it!

I gave up and headed for Waterstones. I’d read a review in the paper about the new film adaptation of J. G. Ballard’s High-Rise, so I thought I’d pick up a copy of the book. It seemed that everyone else had had the same idea, though, as there wasn’t one to be had. I found Gavin G. Smith’s first two novels, which was a considerable improvement on Cardiff’s no-show a month or so ago. I wondered about buying the first one, and then remembered I’d have to pay p&p on the second one anyway. I didn’t bother.

I walked as far as Warren Street and caught a train to Camden Town. If Bloomsbury had been a let-down, surely Camden would be a bit more exciting.

My birthday present was obviously the anti-gift that just kept on taking.

Camden Market was already becoming a notorious tourist trap last time I was there, about five years ago.

Now it’s ten times worse.

There’s a scene in a Doctor Who episode called ‘Turn Left’, when the Doctor takes Donna to a bustling Chinese market (maybe on Earth, maybe not), and they have a great time looking around, browsing the stalls and trying the food, before the whole story turns incredibly dark and disturbing. In my mind, Camden Market should be like that. It isn’t.

Instead, it was full of foreign tourists, bearded hipsters, ‘trendy’ types, buskers, hawkers, chuggers, living bloody statues, rough sleepers, beggars, Big Issue sellers, and other assorted wankers.

The market boasts, among other things, a food stall offering ‘genuine Peruvian cuisine’. Call me cynical, but probably only one person in ten thousand in London would know ‘genuine Peruvian cuisine’ if they tasted it – and they’re the sort of gap year tossers who’ve done the Inca Trail, funded by the bank of Mum and Dad.

There were plenty of attractive women there, of course, so the day wasn’t entirely wasted. But I was getting more and more depressed as the afternoon proceeded.

I wasn’t even in the mood for taking photos, which is unusual for me. Normally I snap away happily whenever I’m in London, and then spend a couple of hours going through them the following day. But when every idiot and his mother is taking selfies on their smartphones, you wonder if there’s any point.

I walked from one end of the market to the other, and didn’t find anything especially interesting. There’s a nice little statue of Amy Winehouse in the former stables, but so many people were having their photos taken with it that I didn’t bother trying to snap it myself.

Instead, I decided to have a pint in the World’s End, on the corner opposite the Tube station, which bills itself as ‘Possibly the biggest pub in the world.’ It’s certainly huge, and seems to have grown since my last visit.

I’ve been in there a few times, but usually on a Saturday afternoon, when there are more people about. On a Friday afternoon it was relatively quiet. I wasn’t the oldest person in there, but it was a close-run thing. I paid £4.75 for a pint of lager, found a quiet table, and made a few notes about the day so far.

Picture the scene. I was sitting on my own, with a pint in front of me, in a room of complete strangers, on my fiftieth birthday. I’d failed to visit the exhibition which had been the main objective for my visit. Waterstones had let me down yet again. I’d spent a fiver on top of the fiver I’d already spent topping up my Oyster card.

I’d also (apparently) missed a phone call while I was in the museum.

There was no number logged, so it could have been anybody, but I’ve got a feeling it was Mother. I wouldn’t have picked it up anyway, the way the day was panning out.

What would I have said?

‘I’m having an absolutely shitty time, thanks for asking.’

It was marginally better than the same old scene, I suppose – but not much. At least I hadn’t had to make polite conversation with the pub bores, or listen to the Debating Society and the Ancient Mariner droning on in the library. Being out of Aberdare was a two-edged sword, though. I wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone who approached me, in fact, even if said person had been the most amazing girl ever.

We couldn’t have had much of a conversation anyway. The music on the sound system was exactly what I was talking about in ‘Static Shock‘. Underneath the World’s End is Underworld, a famous rock/Goth/alternative nightclub. I think I’m right in saying that it was the venue of the Legendary Pink Dots’ last known UK appearance, about ten years ago. It was probably the last time there was anyone there doing anything slightly different from the mainstream.

I drank my pint rather slowly and then moved on to the Camden Eye, on the opposite corner. It was a new one on me, but a board outside described it as ‘Camden’s most awesome pub.’ That sounded intriguing, at least. I decided to have a pint and see what awesomeness they had on offer.

£4.50 for a pint was a little bit more like it, but still nothing to shout about. There was a printed menu on the table, so I had a glance at it. The menu prices were certainly jaw-dropping, if not completely awesome. The barbints were quite cute, but there was nothing particularly special about the place. Plenty of people were coming and going, but nobody was ordering food. There’s a big Thereisnospoon beside the Regent’s Canal, only a couple of minutes’ walk away. Eleven quid for fish and chips in the Camden Eye can’t really compete with their national Friday offer. (I expect the service is rather quicker, though.) There are also plenty of takeaways lining the streets, in addition to the dozens of food stalls in the market. You can’t go hungry in Camden Town, that’s for sure (unless you’re one of the area’s many unfortunate rough sleepers, of course).

I decided to explore the side streets, just to look at the architecture of the surrounding area. The proposed HS2 railway route threatens to demolish many of the historic buildings, and there’s an active campaign to save Camden Lock and Camden Market from redevelopment. (There are no prizes for predicting the outcome of that particular battle, by the way.) I wandered aimlessly as far as Chalk Farm station, then headed back towards Camden and returned to the market.

On the way I passed the Hawley Arms. Ten years ago it was a trendy place, with notable regulars including Ms Winehouse herself and ex-members of Oasis. I wondered about having a pint, just to say I’d been there, but when I passed the window it seemed to be full of ordinary-looking people. It didn’t seem worth the bother.

I jumped on the 29 bus and made my way back into the city centre. On the way we passed the Hope and Anchor, which was a famous music venue in the 1980s. It’s closed, and all the windows are boarded up. According to a piece published in the Camden New Journal about eighteen months ago, it’s going to be converted into flats. It was one of many pubs I spotted which have died, or which have been turned into flats, or which simply aren’t pubs any more.

We ploughed our way through the early evening traffic, back through Bloomsbury, down Tottenham Court Road, crawled along Denmark Street (for some unknown reason), and then went stop-start down Charing Cross Road before terminating outside St Martin-in-the-Fields Church. I jumped off and realised I still had an hour before the coach left.

I didn’t fancy another pint. I couldn’t be bothered with another wasted visit to Waterstones. Instead I decided to walk to Victoria Coach Station. I knew from my previous visits that it isn’t as far as it looks on the map. I set off down Whitehall, heading for the Houses of Parliament.

There was quite a scrum of tourists at Horse Guards Parade, as always, taking photos of the immaculate soldiers on duty. There was a smaller scrum outside the gates to Downing Street, and about half a dozen armed officers were keeping a fatherly eye on them. I’d forgotten how big the gates are, to be honest. The Cenotaph is much bigger than it looks on the TV, too.

I reached Parliament Square and turned down past Westminster Abbey. I was in one of the most photographed parts of the city, but I still wasn’t in the mood to get my camera out. I made my way along Victoria Street, which is an odd mixture of government offices, large shops, and a new block of luxury ‘New York style apartments’, the cheapest of which will set you back over £3.5 million.

There’s extensive redevelopment at Victoria Station, to improve the interchange between the underground and mainline train services. It seems to have been going on for ages, so I skirted the station entirely and headed straight into Buckingham Palace Road. The first time I tried it I got slightly lost. I know the area well enough now that I can get from one side to the other without having to cut through the station concourse.

I was at the coach station just before 6.00, and for once I was able to get a seat in the waiting area. The coach doesn’t leave until 1830, but to my surprise the gates opened at about 6.10, and a driver called ‘anyone for Cardiff only’ to come through. I don’t know why they were running two departures, and I don’t really care. If it meant we didn’t have to stop at Newport on the way home, I was game.

It was Friday evening. The traffic was nose to tail until we were past the airport, and then we picked up a bit of speed. It had taken us nearly an hour to get as far as Slough. I’d been dozing during the first part of the journey, so I checked the time and realised we’d be lucky to get to Cardiff on time. It would only take a small delay on the M4 to throw us off schedule again. Even so we crossed the Severn Bridge at about the usual time and headed straight into Cardiff. Things were looking good – with any luck I’d be able to catch the 2141 train from Cardiff Central at Cathays, and be home by eleven.

My luck definitely wasn’t with me. I jumped off the coach outside the Students’ Union, ran to the station entrance, and was faced with a couple of dozen students milling aimlessly around like sheep waiting to be dipped. The Aberdare train was already there. I charged through the sheep, but it was too late. As I reached the platform the train powered up and pulled away. I pushed my way back through the wankers and made my way into Park Place.

I could have walked into town and had a pint in the Golden Cross, but it hardly seemed worth the effort. It would take about quarter of an hour to walk across town, and a further ten minutes or so to get to the station afterwards, leaving me barely half an hour for a drink. I could have called in the Central Bar, but the chances of getting served in a city centre Thereisnospoon on a Friday night (especially on a Six Nations weekend) are vanishingly small. It would have to be the Pen and Wig again.

Rowland had already warned me that it was another pub which – like the Cambrian Tap (formerly Kitty Flynn’s) – has shifted its focus to so-called ‘craft beers’. He’s a CAMRA member, and views these trendy products with justified suspicion. Hand in hand with craft beers come the inevitable bearded wankers hipsters. The Pen was full of them. There weren’t even any cute women for me to look at while I drank my pint.

I don’t know what exactly happened when the guy at the next table stood up. I just knew that suddenly the table (and a fair bit of the floor) was covered in broken glass. He might have knocked his glass over when he was putting his coat on, or he and his girlfriend might have had an argument. Whatever the story was, it took one of the barbints a few minutes to clear up the mess. I was glad I wasn’t staying.

I walked back to the station, where my friends Nick and Hilary were waiting for the train. They’d been to the Sherman Theatre to see another of Simon Callow’s one-man shows, this time about Orson Welles. It suddenly dawned on me that they’d had a far more enjoyable day than I had. I wondered why I’ve fallen off the Sherman/New Theatre mailing list. Mr Callow’s show would have been better than walking aimlessly around London and looking for somewhere interesting to have a pint.

I got home at a minute to midnight, and went straight to bed. I’ve had far better birthdays, and I’ve had one or two which almost came close to Friday’s débâcle. Better luck next time, eh?

PS I’ve just checked my Oyster card balance online. It seems that my original £5.00 was credited when I went through the barrier at Earls Court, so I’ve now got £5.15 to use next time I’m in town. Let’s hope my next trip has something worth reporting on, eh?

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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.