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MY EUROPE DIARY - London 

SUNDAY 30 AUGUST

Travel day.  Flew from Ireland to Heathrow, meeting up with Rose's friend Ian at the airport.  Imagine, the underground isn't wheelchair accessible!  Railways information officer at Heathrow was good enough to tell us that while a number of stations are marked as accessible there have been so many lift breakdowns that she tries to steer wheelies to the bus.  We take the bus.  At the hotel Rose really lets herself go and collects two vast bags of washing, then tramps over half London to find a laundrette and goes hog wild with a box of detergent while I run Anne up to Chapel Market to show her the scene of our wild youth.  Food from an Indian all-you-can-eat-for-2.75 vegetarian restaurant.  Wish they'd had one of them when we were there.

Working out how to use room deserves post-doctoral fellowship.  Turning on lights require a permutation of switch at light, master switch at bedside, and master master switch by door, that ensures five minutes fruitless clicking every time.

Rose up till 2 unpacking.  Drawer sticks.  Rose reduces it to matchwood with three well-aimed kicks, asks Chris to ring desk to complain about defective furniture.

MONDAY 31 AUGUST

August Bank Monday.  London largely inoperative.  Only tourist traps open, which is fine by us.  To the

Tate Gallery

where they have taken out all the Stanley Spencers except one, all the Hockneys except one, and The Fairy Feller's Masterstroke in order to include a lot of inferior English Surrealists.  They did these things better in the 1970s, when they had lots of Stanley Spencers and Hockneys.  Anne was disappointed; there were very few things she wanted to shoplift.  Then strolled down to the palace of Westminster (with scaffolding)

and

Big Ben,

 a run around the exterior of

Westminster Abbey,

a step up to

Trafalgar Square

to check in with the lions, and back to the hotel.
Rose stays up till 2 viewing videos of the children she is to assess tomorrow.

TUESDAY 1 SEPTEMBER

Ah, England.  The morning's Guardian:

Corrections and clarifications
The recipe for chocolate cookies on page 35, Guardian Weekend, omitted chocolate and cocoa from the list of ingredients.  It required 90g of rich fine cocoa powder, to be sifted into the mixture with the flour.  The list of ingredients did include 60g of rich dark coffee, which was not mentioned thereafter.  That should be added to the mixture at an early stage, with the eggs.

In yesterday's obituary for Dr. John Wilkinson we confused toggle and woggle.  Dr. Wilkinson introduced the woggle to Albania, not the toggle.

Rose off to work, Anne and Chris off to

Westminster Abbey.

Extraordinarily cluttered.  There must be about six monuments the size of a Bernini pope's tomb just for the captains at the battle of Brest.

Westminster Abbey is a queer place -- all those nonentities with vast monuments.  I'd clear them away, I'm a Stalinist, I don't appreciate the importance of individual initiative. (AM)

Difficult to determine who one feels most sorry for -- the poor lions who have to serve as footstools for spurred and armoured knights, or the poor duchess who has to go through eternity with her feet resting on her heraldic beast, the porcupine.

Then to the undercroft to view the royal waxworks, then off to view the insultingly few bouquets left at

Buck House

for the late St. Diana.  Then up to Piccadilly and the purchase of a game pie at Fortnum and Mason's, and then home.  There must be something about us which inspires confidence -- three tourist groups ask for directions.

Rose stays up till 2 writing reports.

WEDNESDAY 2 SEPTEMBER

Rose to see more children.  Anne and Chris to

British Museum.

Wonderful Assyrian work -- winged bulls, the Emperor's lion hunt.

The Lion Hunt was the most awesome art I've ever encountered..
I was properly impressed by the courage of the lions but I was unimpressed by the cruelty of the king.</ul>

Sutton Hoo treasure, particularly recommended by Rose.  Parthenon relics.

Swap you the lion hunt for the Elgin Marbles any day -- can't understand why they don't just give them back to the Greeks.  (AM)

Because then they'd have to give the Lion Hunt back to Saddam Hussein.

Rose stays up till 2 preparing workshop.

THURSDAY 3 SEPTEMBER .

Rose off to give all-day workshop -- keen but small.  Anne gives a cameo speech in the morning.  On the way back buy some jerk chicken and Akee rice at a Jamaican restaurant and get a very small minicab to

St. Paul's,

where we spend about half an hour trying to find the wheelchair entrance.  On the way out comment that the signposting is the worst we've seen in London.  The attendant replies enthusiastically, "In the world, sir!  In the world!"

Great dome, rotten access. (AM)

In the evening off to an Indian restaurant with Ian (old English friend) and with Lila and Hendrik, two Danish colleagues from House M in Copenhagen over for the workshop.

Rose stays up till 2 writing reports.

FRIDAY 4 SEPTEMBER

Rose to see more children, Chris and Anne to

Tower of London

Entrance free for wheelchair users and attendants.  How generous, we thought, till we discovered why.

The Crown Jewels (all inferior Edwardian work, anyway) are accessible, but everything else isn't; a lot of looking at exteriors.  Never mind the Elgin Marbles, surely they should give the Crown of India back?

Disappointing.  They make too much of the story.  A few lousy executions and they think they have a radio soap.  (AM)



In the evening off the Savoy Theatre to see Edward Fox play Harold Macmillan in A Letter of Resignation, a stodgy play about the duller bits of the Profumo Affair.  Return home to find that Chris has lost camera and thus we have no establishing shots of Anne at Trinity College, Anne at Dublin Castle, Anne in front of Big Ben, Anne in front of Westminster Abbey, Anne in front of Assyrian bulls, Anne in front of St.Paul's, Anne with Tower ravens, etc.  Rose says bitterly "All right, Anne, you were never here."  Pity.  I am photographed, therefore I was.  Very postmodern.   Patch her in on the computer?

Rose stays up till 2 looking for camera.

SATURDAY 5 SEPTEMBER

Rose off to see more children, Anne and Chris off to get new camera and go to Cambridge for some photos.  Rain continual.

Kings College chapel

Nice to get out of the rain.  Over to

Trinity College chapel

Anne prefers Georgian to Gothic, less cluttered (unless you fill the place with statues of lieutenants who died heroically in the battle of Brest, as in St.Pauls).

Anne's left tire pops off.  Problem.  In the rain.

Go to three bicycle shops.  All too busy to help on Saturday afternoon.  Condemn them to rot in the hell reserved for those who fail to help the needy wayfarer.  They do not relent.

Stagger back to London.  Right tyre pops off.  Deduce the cause. We've had the first really rainy day of trip (though Dublin did a nice line in Scotch mist).  Anne's brand new solid inner tyres expand when wet, stretching the outer tyres till they fall off.

Find lost camera.

Rose up till 2 trying to dry solid tyres with hairdryer to shrink them again.

SUNDAY 6 SEPTEMBER

Spend the bulk of the day chasing up new tubes for tyres.  Get two new tubes.  Puncture one installing it.  Substitute dried solid tyre.  Now too short.

Off to catch Chunnel train to Paris.  Rose and Anne stop off at the

National Gallery

for a half-hour race through, pausing at Uccello.  Tyre falls off and out on rims to grab taxi.

The only wheelchair spaces on Chunnelers are in first class, so there we are.  For some reason additional to this we are in a carriage to ourselves.  With a more or less vacant carriage on each side.  Are we infectious?  Have a high old time.  Try to refix tyre.  Taxi from Nord to hotel.

Bed by two.

Next: Paris