London - Adventures in Babysitting

There's a story I've been telling for about 20 years of how my brother got invited to go out for a Chinese by Robert Smith of the Cure after a small intimate gig at a pub in Leeds , but he couldn't go because his friend who was driving was too tired.  I'd never thought to check the facts until last week, and it turned out I had some of the details wrong.

This was supposed to be a picture of the Gherkin

It was actually at a massive venue in Manchester, it wasn't a Chinese it was an Indian, it wasn't a friend it was just someone with the same birthday (and that was all they had in common)  and it involved some sort of car chase through the streets of Manchester following the Cure's tour bus.

They have these signposts everywhere in London - Even idiots can't get lost

The comforting thing in all this, was that I did have the central and most important fact right.  It was Robert Smith, and there was an invitation for a meal.  I guess with all stories, especially the ones I write or tell, it's the central point of the story that's important, the details are flexible.  I'm not writing a history book, or making a documentary, I'm just talking about things as I experience them, things that inspire me, and which have a point, which I want to share. At least to me, there's always a point!

These new geese were readily available in the park - No entrance fee required

Probably because I know my brother still feels somewhat robbed when it comes to spending time with Robert Smith, I agreed to go to London this weekend, to babysit my 4 year old nephew, so he and his wife could go see the Cure at the Royal Albert Hall. They don't perform very often, but once a year they do this concert for the Teenage Cancer Trust.

Luckily I got some more chances to see the Gherkin

The day before leaving for London, I nearly got hypothermia going to the corner shop for some milk. It was like a Perfect Storm out there. The kind of the rain that comes in sideways at the back of your trousers, so only the backs are wet, but not the fronts. You only realise this when you sit down.

I've been trying to say Yes to more stuff this year (the Mens' Retreat at Alnmouth being a case in point), and although I considered saying No to the babysitting, I thought in the interests of trying to have better family relationships, I'd give it a go.

Here's me trying to relate to my nephew - Monkey to Monkey

In the spirit of last week's Edinburgh early start, and to get the most possible from the weekend, I caught the 06.31 from Darlington on Saturday morning. On the way to Darlington station, it was that grey mist that seems to wet you through, and I wondered if I had brought enough layers.

You don't see this on the Underground!  Look at those colours!

An attractive, smartly dressed smiley woman, probably in her 30s, carrying a coffee, came and sat next to me at York. I had a couple of attempts at 'passing the time of day' with her when she got on but she seemed prickly at both attempts, so I gave up. Maybe she was watching out for the nutter on the train, and she was worried it might be me. It was trivial stuff, to do with window vs aisle seating, and use of the overhead racks vs not spilling her coffee, but I thought if things had got off to a start as bad as this, no point trying to talk about the meaning of life.

It's a bit hot for running around!

Before I'd left for London, I'd checked the weather forecast. It was due to be 13 degrees in Darlington, but 20 in London! 20 degrees! I'd got to see this for myself, so when I got off the train at King's Cross I decided to get straight up onto the surface instead of travelling any distance by underground.

Don't walk around without shoes.  You'll burn your feet off!

It was amazing, I suddenly felt like I'd left the oven door open and walked in front of it.  I was wearing far too many clothes. I'd brought a scarf and a hat! But here there were people frying eggs on the pavement! (I made that part up).

This is pretty much my Day 1 Route

Despite the heat, I had that initial feeling of being a bit overwhelmed once I stepped out of King's Cross, so I reverted to known knowns and had a greasy mcmuffin from McDonalds.  

King's Cross - actually quite nice above ground

After being in Edinburgh, London was a bit of an adjustment.  At least McDonalds are all the same food and decor wise, so I could at least centre myself while I got used to the new background noise.

And Edinburgh it was not.  For example, there was a young black man on his mobile attempting to communicate in a language similar to the jive talk I last heard on Airplane the Movie.  He was talking so loudly the whole restaurant could hear.  He was talking about Crime Mortgages (which I'd never heard of) and about how if you make money from crime, the police can seize yo' assets etc.

Whoever he was talking to, he really didn't need a phone, he should have just opened the window, but the nice thing about his overall message was that it seemed to have a moral tone.  His central argument seemed to be, that if you're going to buy things, it's best not to buy them with money that's been earned from criminal activity, because then you can most probably keep them, whereas if you buy things with drug money, the police can take break your door down and take them away.  Very sensible I thought!

I didn't bother with a Boris Bike - I don't think they come with a Support Vehicle

Two young someone else's at the next table, one white, one black, but who both looked like they'd climbed straight out of the window display from the local Superdry store, were saying how tired they were and how they could do with a sit down, and everything they said they finished with the term 'bruv'.  Their conversation was like Eastenders but with all the anger taken out.  Then there was a young lad at the next table who couldn't believe his luck.  Not only had he won a free hash brown in some sort of raffle where the prizes were more grease, but they'd served him with it in no time!  

Then, an elderly Indian man came along and sat next to me.  He asked me if I wouldn't mind looking after his bag and his food while he went to get some ketchup.

Sometimes when you look at your own reflection, you might not like what you see

I hate the fact, that even for a split second, I am capable of  having the thought that someone Asian with a bag might be a terrorist.  I suppose it's all part of the horrible legacy of the 2005 bombings, that innocent people can be regarded with suspicion, when there's no reason for it.

As with any irrational fear though, I think it sometimes works just to reason it out statistically, and so I did.  What's more likely I thought, that the guy next to me is about to blow up McDonalds, or that he just wants some ketchup with his meal? I decided ketchup, and I was right.

The Post Office Tower - I'd never seen that before

Some people don't like London, because they think people are rude and it's impersonal. I've never found it that way. I've always taken the opposite view, which is that it's incredible how so many different races and nationalities blend effortlessly together, and in all the thousands of people I saw this weekend, the only raised voices were a white family from Sheffield on Sunday night, who after a full weekend away together, had gone into full Jeremy Kyle mode. Everyone else was just having a good time!

As I was walking along Euston Road, I became very aware of the bottom of a woman of indeterminate nationality in front of me, who was listening to a white I-phone with it halfway hanging out of the back of her skimpy jeans pocket. "You want to be careful love, someone could have that off you", I didn't say.  I got the impression that the halfway hanging out of the pocket look was part of her image, and that was somehow more important than the risk of having it stolen.  In fact, almost every young person I saw had some sort of Apple product hanging off them, and white earphones coming out of their ears.  I've only got a pair of black earphones, so I didn't feel like I was riding their particular wave of cool.  I think I might have missed the boat on that one.

St Pancras - For some reason I always confuse this with Charing Cross

It was nearly 10 when I left McDonalds.  I'd arranged to meet my brother at the zoo, and it was about 2 miles away from King's Cross, through Regent's Park, so I set off walking, removing layers as I went. There was so much to look at, I didn't even bother putting my camera away, it wasn't worth it.

This doesn't even begin to capture how lovely it was in the Park

I find peoples' faces fascinating.  There's so much to see in a face, and what I saw expressed in so many faces on Saturday in the park was joy.  It was as if the joy was actually bursting out of people.

Another mad thing. People were actually sitting on the grass! As in, it was dry enough to sit on! Amazing. Up north for the last six months, you'd sink into a world of sludge.

Neither does this really - You had to be there!

It was as if the whole Earth had been woken from a coma, and everyone was simultaneously experiencing the joy of being alive again.  And that's how I felt too.  And all the people were beautiful. Or so they seemed to me.

London is full of beautiful people. Of all nationalities. Not sure if more beautiful people live there, or if it's just that it's more densely populated, so a greater number of people are likely to be beautiful, or if the people that are there, just look more beautiful because of the backdrop.  Someone must have done some research on this, but I haven't.  My evidence is just based on walking around and looking.

When I was leaving Starbucks in Edinburgh on Tuesday, I'd heard a snippet of a Talking Heads song, and as everything does at the moment, it reminded me of 1986 / 1987, and the first time I ever watched Stop Making Sense with my friend Dan at his house, during our Year Off.

I watched it again this week, and was once again transfixed by David Byrne's energy. I bought the audio version to listen to while I was away, and as I walked through the park, mixing with other coma awakeners, the song Heaven came on.  It seemed a perfect song for the moment, and I reflected that if  Heaven was like this, it would be worth going.

Eventually I did get to the zoo, which kind of broke my heavenly trance state.  I think I'd have been happy just walking round the park for about the next 10 years (or at least till sundown).  It was so relaxing.

Do they have Monkeys in heaven?

It was £26 to get into the zoo, which like a short sharp kick to the head, brought me back to reality.  I then resisted the temptation to start sprinting round ticking off how many animals I'd seen (do small fish count as one each?) but just to accept that the entrance fee is exactly that. That's how much it costs to get in, that's how much you pay the gatekeeper. Once you're in, you can do what you want. You don't have to look at anything if you don't want.

Once you're in, you can just sit around it you want.  Nobody makes you do stuff

I think I've learned this lesson since Alton Towers.  I used to go there and sprint round all day desperately trying to get value for money. Dividing the number of rides by the entrance fee. Trying to get it to less than £2 each!

This is the closest I got to a Tiger all weekend - safer that way

At one point on Saturday, I decided to sit in the sun and have a coffee, but I managed completely accidentally to get into a tense coffee purchasing racially sensitive stand-off with a young black girl who was trying to sell it to me.  On the menu Americano was £2.20 but white coffee was £2.35.  I asked for a white coffee but she didn't seem to hear me and only charged me £2.20.  I wanted white I said, you've given me black.  She seemed not to understand.  No, I don't want black, I want white!  It went on like this for a while.  Probably there was nothing in it, it was probably all in my head, but I've never felt so tense about wanting milk in my coffee.  The coffee was pretty horrible anyway, so I maybe should have just bought a bottle of water.

Meerkats - Generally likeable, which may explain why they are cynically used to sell insurance

A bit like at Edinburgh Zoo last year, at first I couldn't find any animals.  The tiger wasn't around for a start.  A young enthusiastic zoo employee was explaining to a group of children that tigers don't come out much until the evenings, or at all at this time of year.  That's not really very convenient for me is it, I didn't say.  I don't go to zoos to see their star attractions anyway. The Pandas weren't out in Edinburgh last year, so no Tigers, no biggie!  Tigers are just big cats anyway, and I've seen loads of cats.  I did want to see some monkeys though.  I like monkeys, they're always good value for money.

Spot the Monkey!

To be honest, I found that watching the people who were watching the animals was more interesting than most of the animals.

Here's some monkeys queueing up to look at a monkey

Some children seemed to have got the concept of a zoo mixed up with the concept of the circus, especially in the Gorilla enclosure.  "Oh, but Daddy he's just sitting there, make him do something!"

Yes, dad, why don't you go in the cage and see if you can start a fight with the occupant to amuse your son? The zoo might be more fun for certain children if it was like this statue.

Hold it there Dad while I get the lens cap off!

Later when I met Phil, we talked about this, and wondered if zoo attendances would be any higher if zookeepers electrocuted sleeping lions and tigers, to get them to move about more.

But Gorillas aren't clowns in the circus, they're not even very good footballers.  They're certainly not paid by results.  At one point the really big Silverback did get up, but only to squat and have a number two somewhere else but in his own bedding.  That's more advanced than some humans, I thought!  Good for you!  Of course this went down a treat with all the small children present, there's nothing funnier to a small child than poo.

Giraffes - easier to find than Tigers and good value for money on account of their size

If any of this sounds cynical and it might, there's an antidote for cynicism and it's enthusiasm.  Something similar happened to me on Saturday that has happened previously at Edinburgh Zoo.

You can't stay cynical for long when there's penguins about

If there's anything certain to shame me out of any negative feelings whatsoever, it's motivated parents teaching their children to wonder at nature, and at life.  It blasts me out of my cynicism every time.

Here's a monkey watching some monkeys

It's a cliche I know, but parenting is the hardest job in the world, with the longest hours, the worst pay, and no guarantee whatsoever of even the slightest reward blah blah blah.  But despite the drawbacks, it's possibly the most important job there is, and on Saturday I felt genuine admiration for the hundreds of parents I saw, taking the time to educate and nurture and love their children.  Just watching their efforts alone was tiring me out.  All that effort has got to count for something.  I hope so anyway.

Parenting - Harder than it looks!

It was probably a good thing, that I'd started to think like this, because pretty soon my nephew turned up, and tonight I was going to get a few hours practice, as a stand-in parent for the evening.

Some relations of mine

It was just as well they turned up when they did at 1, because I was starting to run out of monkeys to look at.  I'd already been in the zoo two hours, and by now I'd justified the entrance fee, so I was quite happy to tag along with them for the rest of the day.  Just as well, since progress with a 4 year old can be slow at times.

Progress through the zoo slowed down somewhat after I gained a passenger

It had actually been a target of mine to try and tire him out during the day to such an extent that he would sleep the whole evening away, and things were looking good at the zoo because he didn't even have a snooze, although I was disappointed to see that he'd arrived in a pushchair.  I'd been expecting him to walk everywhere and I knew that would really exhaust him, so the fact that he was getting little rests in the pushchair wasn't such a good sign.

Actually, the babysitting was fine in the end, although the first half an hour went a bit wrong.  I was on my own with him from 6.50 pm, and by 7 he was crying his eyes out because I couldn't find any more Scooby Doo for him to watch.  Thankfully I did find a different rubbish DVD to watch with some talking animals in and by about 9 he'd passed out.  I'm led to believe that once he's asleep there's no waking him, but I didn't want to chance it so I pretty much spent the next 3 hours silently watching him, just in case anything happened.  Nothing did!

We were staying at Ramada Docklands, and we'd had some nice views of the city as we headed out to our hotel.

Father and Son - No idea what they were on about

On previous visits to London, I've never made it as far down the river as Tower Bridge and the Tower of London and beyond, so the location of the hotel, although quite far from the city, was good for me, because I got to see lots of things I hadn't seen before (like the Millenium Dome or whatever it's called now and the Gherkin).

On Sunday morning, because the Docklands Light Railway dropped us back at Tower Bridge, I decided that was going to be the start of my Sunday activities.  I was awake for hours on Sunday morning.  Even the loss of an hour due to the clocks changing didn't stop me being awake before 7.

I think Selfies are easier on those new Smartphone things.

I spent a bit of time reading the guide book to assess my route for the day, and I also killed a bit of time photographing myself in the mirrors in the hotel room.  I think these days it's called a Selfie, although I'm sure it's much easier to do one with one of those new fangled smart phones.  This is the best I could do with my 19th Century camera.

Tower Bridge, Tate Modern, Trafalgar Square, here we come!

The four of us had a nice breakfast in the hotel (breakfast and room were provided courtesy of my brother so that was a nice treat) and then we parted company around 12.  My train back to Darlington wasn't booked till 7.30 but theirs was at 3.30 and they wanted to go to Covent Garden before heading back, whereas I was more determined to see Tower Bridge and the South Bank.

This was my walking route for Sunday.  It's further than it looks!

On Saturday night I'd bought a day ticket for the underground for Sunday, but when Sunday looked weatherwise to be just as perfect as Saturday, there's no time to be wasted under the ground I thought.

Sunday - Not a day to be under the ground!

I nearly saw Tower Bridge in 2008 from the top of St Paul's but I was so scared of being up at the top of it, that I daren't look over the edge.  I found it much more pleasant to be able to see it from ground level on Sunday.

Tower Bridge - At last!  Only 6 years after my first visit to London

If Saturday had been notable for the regularity with which I saw people wandering around as if they were in some sort of post-comatose thankful to be alive state of delirium, Sunday wasn't much different.  The weather was equally perfect, which of course helped.

With views this good, you can't really go wrong!

I passed the rebuilt Globe Theatre, and then I spent a bit of time photographing a show-off dressed as a Transformer, before I sat down and rested my feet and checked my whereabouts against the pull-out map from the guidebook outside Tate Modern.

No-one likes a show off (according to my mum).

I found myself sitting next to three generations of excitable Japanese, who seemed to be having the time of their lives.  The children from the group were having a lot of fun chasing pigeons while the older ones were content just to watch.

All the World's a Stage and Men and Women are merely players - something like that

I'm not an expert on language, but the language I seemed to hear the most at the weekend was Spanish.  I suppose it is spoken pretty widely.  One of the great advantages about listening to people speak in languages that you don't understand is that it all sounds very exotic and exciting.  They could be talking about doing their laundry, or the latest episode of TOWIE, or the difficulty of finding a reliable plumber in the Greater London area, but it sounds so much more exciting than that.  No wonder church used to be in Latin!

A late, and very sweet lunch at Tate Modern

At about 2 pm I realised I hadn't eaten anything recently, so I went and had a sit down and some sticky toffee pudding in Tate Modern.  It was delicious.  It wasn't exactly ideal lunch food, but it was what I fancied at the time.

Here's me full of pudding

Once I was suitably full of pudding, I decided to go and take another selfie on that bridge that they use in the Apprentice.  I didn't really have the corporate wear for it myself, but this is what I look like these days!

Back onto the North Bank

I stayed on the South Bank until I reached the Golden Jubilee Bridge, and then I crossed onto the other side of the Thames, carried on up Northumberland Avenue, past Charing Cross and into Trafalgar Square.  I sat there for quite a while just absorbing the atmosphere.

Trafalgar Square

Two for the price of one - Big Ben and Nelson's Column

Although there was a nice atmosphere in Trafalgar Square, it seemed a lot more frenetic and less relaxing than the area around the South Bank had been in the morning.  That continued into Leicester Square too.  I'd only been there at night before, and I'd really enjoyed the feel of the place.  But this was daylight, and there were security everywhere.

Quick!  There's a young lad in a suit on TV!

Clearly there was some sort of film premiere on, as there were a lot of young people hanging around.  There were big screens showing images of some impossibly good-looking kid who looked about 12.  I figured he must be in it.  I wasn't hanging around to see him.  Doesn't he know there are good looking people on every street corner in London, I'm not queuing up to see him.

I might have queued up to see Freddie Mercury if he'd been on

Seeing as I'm such a fan of symmetry, I took this picture because it was of the Dominion Theatre, and only a week ago, I'd been sat in the Dominion Theatre in Edinburgh.

I continued walking up Charing Cross Road, where I bought some indigestion tablets and a Frappucino from Superdrug and by the time I reached Tottenham Court Road, I was getting dangerously close to King's Cross with still about 4 hours to go before my train back to Darlington, so I thought I'd better take a detour to look at the British Museum.  If there're nothing else on, you can always look at the ceiling.  That's a work of art in itself.  It was all Norman Foster's idea, as I understand.

If there's no good art, you can always look at the ceiling

There was some exhibit on about life and death and about how people throughout the world find strength in animals and community, and making necklaces, and religious rituals to help them ward off evil, and deal with death, and so on and I thought 'Oh, no, not more stuff about loss, it's everywhere'. But I was still drawn to it.

Oh No, not more stuff about loss.  I can't seem to shake it off

After the British Museum I still had ages before my 7.30 pm train home so I spent some of it sitting in Russell Square listening to Talking Heads.

Russell Square

I was so tired from all the walking that by about 5.30 I couldn't walk any longer so I decided to go back to King's Cross and have a sit down before my train.  I was slightly alarmed when I got to King's Cross as it was full of football fans.  The first few I encountered were spilling out of a pub and trying to get themselves knocked over at zebra crossings and that sort of thing.  They were Peterborough fans heading home after their team had won the Johnstone's Paints Trophy at Wembley.

King's Cross - Football fans were there but there was no violence, only pasties

It's an annoying trick of the mind that thoughts form involuntarily around anything which might even remotely be perceived as threatening, especially things which the media like to tell us we should be frightened of, and just as I'd started the weekend thinking: Asian man + Rucksack = Terrorist, I now had a bit of a Football Fan + Drink = Hooligan moment.

But stereotypes don't work (I know this from my time in secondary school, but that's another story), and the longer I mingled with the fans in the station, a lot of them turned out to be families with small children, and ultimately they were just trying to get home after a nice day out.  And so was I.

Monkeys - more dangerous than they look

There was a succession of trains to Peterborough that came and went over the next two hours, but many of the fans only had tickets for the infrequent and small local trains so they had to be packed in like sardines to get home, while lots of big and long and empty trains to Peterborough went without them.  Their tickets weren't valid for the Intercity trains, like the one I was catching.  But no-one complained.  They just waited patiently, standing around talking about their day, and eating pasties.

No policemen got smashed over the head with paving stones, no police horses got punched, it was all very peaceful, like the rest of the weekend.  When I did eventually get my train home, a family of four Peterborough fans were on there who'd had the foresight to buy Intercity tickets, and they were just a lovely family going for a day out.  In fact, they were just like many of the families I'd seen at the zoo, although the chimps they'd been watching had been dressed in blue, and they'd been kicking a ball around.

This is a monkey, not a footballer

While the football fans mingled around very peacably, I did spend an amused 20 minutes watching a family of 4 from Sheffield implode before my eyes.  They seemed to have been doing the opposite of bonding during their weekend away, and they now had grown to absolutely hate one another (if they didn't already).

All four of them were technically adults but they were having the sort of absolutely furious exchanges that you can only really have with loved ones you've grown to hate, about various minor subjects such as whether they had gone under a road before they'd come out of the station, and whether they'd collected all their bits of orange cardboard for the train from the ticket machine.  Eventually there was some swearing and they all stormed off in different directions, like a very amateurish version of the Red Arrows.  It's very hard to storm off while you're wheeling a suitcase up and down kerbs, but they gave it a go bless 'em!

We're all monkeys really!  Even if some of us don't live in trees anymore

The only other person I saw at the weekend who looked remotely disgruntled was a woman at breakfast in the hotel on Sunday.  She was dissecting a fried egg she'd been given as if she'd been served a dead kitten.  She spent ages telling her husband how many different ways the egg had not only been cooked wrongly but presented wrongly.  Personally, I'm not sure there's much scope for creativity when it comes to fried eggs?

I can't be too hard on these people though.  When I look back at my own life, I know I've spent a lot of time complaining about the eggs I've been given, and stressing about whether I've been under a road or not, and whether I've got all the right bits of orange cardboard for the train.  A sense of perspective is a wonderful thing, but sometimes it's an easy to lose thing too.

Probably best not to take myself too seriously

Something I've been reading in 'The Age of Absurdity' which I'm probably paraphrasing terribly, is that the brain isn't static through life, it constantly keeps rewiring itself.  It's never too late to make new neural connections, to reprogram ourselves.

I've always found it too easy to jump to negative judgements about people, and it's something I need to guard against constantly.  Half the battle though is awareness of my own thoughts, to realise that thoughts I'm having are not facts, but just thoughts I'm having.  If I start labelling people Terrorists or Hooligans I have to take a giant leap back and wonder why am I using those labels?

Something about my impressions of visiting London reminded me of this parable, which I've read several versions of.

A traveller nearing a great city asked an old man seated by the road,

“What are the people like in this city?”
“What were they like where you come from?” asked the old man.
“Horrible,” the traveller responded in disgust. “Mean, untrustworthy, detestable in all respects.”
“Ah…” said the old man thoughtfully, “you will probably find them the same in this city as well.”
A few hours later another traveller passed by and asked the old man the same question.
“What were they like where you come from?” he similarly asked.
“They were fine people. Honest, industrious, generous, caring; I was sorry to leave,” the traveller responded.
“You’ll find them the same here,” the old man replied.

If the outer world we encounter is often a reflection of our inner life projected outwards, then thankfully when it comes to London it's a place where I usually like the people I meet, whatever colour or nationality they are, even if I sometimes get in a tangle ordering coffee.

Nothing to be scared of?

My perception of London after a few visits there is still that it's a vibrant cosmopolitan city where people who are very different from one another manage to peacefully co-exist, often at very close quarters to one another.

Added to that, at the weekend, the sunshine and the warmer weather made the majority of people I saw appear to be literally 'Full of the joys of Spring'.  I know I was.

In the beginning, I was nervous about going all the way to London to be a babysitter, but ultimately I said Yes to something I was a bit scared of, rather than playing it safe by saying No, and the thing I was scared of turned out to be okay, and I had a lot of other adventures along the way.

I caught a train to York yesterday, and the final destination of the train I was on was King's Cross, and I could already feel London drawing me back into itself for more.

I'm sure it was Samuel Johnson who said 'If you're tired of London, you're tired of life', and he lived in a time when the Thames was pretty much just sewage, so if he liked it then, there's no wonder I like it now.  I'm hoping to go back very soon...


PS.  If you didn't get the film reference, I got the inspiration for the title of this post from the film 'Adventures in Babysitting' starring Elizabeth Shue.  Well, I just looked up that film up on IMDB to see what year it was made.  You guessed it.  1987!

PPS.  That film premiere that I was so dismissive of that was going on in Leicester Square, I just found out that I only went and missed Kate Winslet!  I was just saying last week in Edinburgh that we don't mix in the same circles and there she was!  That's what the security was for.  I might have hung around if I'd known, instead of spending two hours sitting in King's Cross with Peterborough United fans!