Mean Times

Hola amigos! I know it's been a while since I've rapped atcha. Just been having some trouble getting pictures uploaded to the blog, which screws everything up. But that's all sorted now.

This is likely to be another long post, so... fair warning, yeah? Don't worry, there are a lot of pictures. See all the pretty pictures!

So. Friday was the London river cruise, and it was pretty cool. My only major concern was not being able to wake up in time because my watch alarm hasn't been doing the trick lately. However, as I rarely have to be anywhere before 1:00 pm, this hasn't been much of a problem thus far, but with the bus leaving at 9:00 am for London, I was a little worried. I downloaded a virtual alarm clock, though, and it worked a treat. I awoke to the techno stylings of Strongbad and made it to the Science car park with time to spare.

The charter bus was about three-quarters full of students; I had my own seat. Sitting in front of me were two girls, one from UCLA and one from UCI. Their conversation was one of the most inane I've ever heard, and believe me, I've heard a lot of inane conversations in the past few weeks (including My, across the hall, complaining about how Brussels has nothing you'd want to see -- just a bunch of dumb museums). Some of UCLA Girl's remarks were so priceless I had to write them down.

The big thing they wanted to do, apparently, was shop. Parliament, Big Ben, St Paul's Cathedral -- screw that. And I can understand wanting to go to Harrod's, but they wanted to see Top Shop. They must have been disappointed in our itinerary (or "itinery"), because it soon became clear we'd be spending all our free time in Greenwich. Thus:

"Maybe we can shop in Green-witch." Ah, yes. Babu Yagu, the Green Man-Witch. Some say he is the devil; others say he is just a man, with green makeup and special lighting. In either case, I don't think he has any shops. Later, she almost corrected herself when she said "Greenwich -- or Green-witch -- I don't know how they say it out here."

"I want to see a Broadway show or something." You're in the wrong place for that, I'm afraid.

No recorded quote on this, but UCLA was telling UCI about the time she saw Pirates for the first time, and how she knew she'd never seen it but it all looked really familiar, and then later a friend told her she'd seen it while she was high, but she'd been so high she didn't remember it! UCI timidly said she didn't do drugs.

On the obelisk known as Cleopatra's Needle and its attendant statues, which sit beside the Thames: "Apparently these were left by Caesar or something." I almost laughed out loud when I heard this. Because, y'know, when Caesar was passing through England, before the founding of Londinium, he was carting this huge obelisk with him for no good reason, and he was like, "Why don't we just leave this here already? Dump it by the river."

I know this all sounds like I'm being quite mean, but... well, I personally don't think I'm being mean. Or not very mean, anyway. Hey, I let them have their conversation in peace, didn't I? I can't deny it got on my nerves, though. UCLA talked at length about how she "won't be controlled" by her parents (e.g., when she was in high school and came home between 3 and 4 am every night despite her parents' feeble objections) and how her daddy made one of his employees in London give her $500. Can I really be blamed for having a strong reaction? Don't even answer that. The answer is "No."

Anyway. Back to the thing.

We did have a teeny bit of time beside the Thames before we got on the boat, but even from the bus I was able to get a couple of good pictures of Parliament. Y'know, the one that V blows up in "V For Vendetta." This actually wouldn't have occurred to me, despite being a fan, if it hadn't been the foremost association everyone else seemed to have with it. Someone tried to hum a bit of the 1812 Overture, and then I was stuck on '92 Phantom all day. Anyway, I think these pictures aren't bad, considering they were taken through a bus window.

So we all piled on the boat (the Mercia, as I recall) and headed out onto the Thames. The pilot took care to inform us that although he was not a professional tour guide, he would be pointing out some of the sights along the river and showing us how things had changed over the years. He was pretty funny, actually; this nonsense about not being a tour guide was... well, it was nonsense, wasn't it? I think what he was really trying to communicate was that he and his mate were salt-of-the-earth working-class blokes who'd tell it to you straight instead of giving you some sugar-coated, memorized-guidebook of a tour. By the end of the trip this meant getting a lot of his political views on the gentrification of the riverside warehouses and some thinly-veiled anger directed at the upper-class residents who've been moving in. I get his point, but honestly, what would you rather have: rat-infested warehouses or some interesting apartment buildings? Me, I opt for the latter.

Anyway, I managed to get some decent pictures of a couple things we saw on the way. This was harder than it sounds, as between the movement of the boat and everyone else crowding around the deck to get their own pictures (the pilot had to tell them to move so he could see...), it was no walk in the park. Some of these are links to bigger versions of themselves, even if it doesn't say so in the caption, so try clicking on them and see what happens.


Apparently, you can rent the entire London Eye -- pardon me, I mean the British Airways London Eye for something like £4,500 for what, 30 minutes.


I haven't done any research on this, but when "most people" think of London Bridge, I think they're thinking of this, but this, of course, isn't London Bridge. It's Tower Bridge. The real London Bridge is pretty nondescript. Actually, the real London Bridge was bought by someone in the U.S., which is where it currently resides.

We passed (and learned about) really far too many buildings to go into here, including Execution Dock, where the local law enforcement used to chain river pirates down to the dock pylons at low tide and then watch from across the Thames as the guilty parties were slowly drowned by the rising tide, and the Grapes, a pub in the attic of which Charles Dickens... wrote... Our Mutual Friend. I just can't escape that book. The pilot also pointed out a statue of Peter the Great in Deptford. Apparently, the future tsar had studied shipbuilding in London, so to honor him they put up a statue. He was described to us as being 6'4" and 20 stone, "so as you can guess, he liked a pint and a fight." Not questioning the historical accuracy of that extrapolation, but I feel the speaker's own proclivities may have colored his assessment.

After about an hour, Greenwich hove into view. There was a huge naval vessel there called the Albion. Apparently, the Queen was visiting that day to mark the 250th anniversary of the Mariners' Society. When the Queen's not there, one of Greenwich's main attractions is the Cutty Sark, in dry dock. She's the last of the old tea clippers. On the boat, when my neighbor tried in vain to ask one of our RAs what a tea clipper was, it fell to me to explain it to him. They're normally just called "clippers" or "clipper ships"; the "clipper" part comes from the fact that they were used to transport the clippings of tea leaves from the East. So... thanks, Mom, for the anecdote. It came in handy.

Nowadays, though, the name "Cutty Sark" has a bit of a different meaning: Scotch.

That's all well and good, but what I really wanted to see was the Royal Observatory. Greenwich is, after all, the place where the East and West meet -- Greenwich Mean Time, and all that -- so I got my picture of the Cutty Sark and set off in search of the big line. They'd told us that everything we'd want to see was within a ten-minute walk, so I was optimistic it'd be easy to find.

It kinda wasn't.

I followed the signs to the National Maritime Museum and wandered around the neo-classical (?) buildings and columns for about fifteen minutes before I saw, far in the distance, my destination.

I could see it up there on the hill, but it was so far away it wasn't even immediately apparent that's where I was headed. However, I found some more signs and went where they pointed, and after some more hiking it was looking good. It was hardly easy going, though; at one point the path went up a steep hillside. Like, I dunno... 40 degrees? Seriously. And not short, either. I hope there's disabled access somewhere. Even from halfway up, I had a spectacular view of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, and even the rest of London in the background. Beautiful day for it.

The Observatory was pretty packed, but the funny thing is all the commotion is on the outside. Inside, where all the, y'know, exhibits are, it's nearly deserted. All anyone wants to see is the big line.

Schoolkids everywhere, from several different schools, by the looks of them. I managed to make some room on the line and get a picture of my feet.

As you can see there, Greenwich is at 00°00" longitude, as are (more or less) my feet.

Inside (SFX: WIND blowing) are various exhibits about scientists, astronomers, astronomical instruments, and the manufacturers of those instruments. You can also go up a dangerous, rickety, iron spiral staircase to a cupola of sorts that houses a 28-inch telescope.

I spent some time poking around in there before making for the exit (via the gift shop, of course -- they always route you through the gift shop). Outside is a statue of General Wolfe, a British military officer who fought against the French in Quebec. Guess who won that one!

On the back, carved into the pedestal, it says, "This monument, a gift of the Canadian people, was unveiled by the Marquis de Montcalm." Which is really something, because I used to live, like, three blocks from Montcalm Street in Vancouver. Coincidence?

Despite the vacation-like quality of my visit to Greewich, I still had reading to do, and it seemed appropriate to me to read Through the Looking Glass at the Royal Observatory, since Charles Dodgson, a.k.a. Lewis Carroll, had been such a renowned mathematician (when he wasn't photographing young girls, that is). I settled down on the hillside in General Wolfe's field of view.

The chapter I settled down to read bore an uncanny resemblance to my attempts to reach the observatory, in a way.

"I should see the garden far better," said Alice to herself, "if I could get to the top of that hill: and here's a path that leads straight to it -- at least, no it doesn't do that --" (after going a few yards along the path, and turning several sharp corners), "but I suppose it will at last. Now how curiously it twists! It's more like a corkscrew than a path! Well, this turn goes to the hill, I suppose -- no, it doesn't! This goes straight back to the house! Well then, I'll try the other way."

And so she did: wandering up and down, and trying turn after turn, but always coming back to the house, do what she would.

So that was fun. While I was reading, a young teacher (I'm guessing) brought a truckload of what looked like kindergarteners over to roll down the hill. They were all up for it at first, but about half of them just couldn't figure it out, and two of them got so badly tangled up in each other that they came to a crying halt. It was all pretty funny. I should've gotten that on video. Oh well. Next time!

All that reading and hiking gave me an appetite, so I headed back down into town to take care of that. On the way, I found an everything-must-go bookstore that was selling the scripts to "The Office" for £2 each! Cover price: £9.99. So... profit on that. Yeah? I was pretty pleased by that find. I remember in 2002, the first time I came to England, on my first day in London, I wandered into a bookstore, saw the script for some show I'd never heard of called "The Office," and idly flipped it open to read a page. A minute later I said to myself, "I must own that." And now here we are.

Sorry, where was I? Oh yes -- food. Always about food, isn't it?

This is basically an open/covered market where you can buy anyting from a djembe to a Monkees record to a chicken sandwich. I got the chicken sandwich, leaving the djembe and the Monkees to other patrons. It was a "tasty morsel," as Jill would say, and huge. I took a picture of it, which must've made me look like a freak, but sadly, it didn't really turn out, so I looked like a freak for nothing.

I had less than an hour left before the boat departed for Westminster again, so I wandered over to the Cutty Sark to be in the general vicinity. Our guide had pointed out these two small, domed buildings on either side of the river: one in Greenwich and the other on the Isle of Dogs. I remembered the Isle of Dogs as one of the places I hadn't been able to visit on my From Hell Tour '02. Apparently, the domes mark the openings of a tunnel that runs under the Thames between the two, so I figured I'd take care of some old business and finally see the Isle of Dogs for myself. He'd also warned that the Isle of Dogs wasn't somewhere you'd want to be caught after dark, but if I were him I would've added the tunnel itself to the list of "Places To Visit Only In Daylight."

It must've been a good ten or fifteen degrees cooler under there, and it smelled pretty much like you'd think it'd smell. The elevator was broken on the Greenwich side. I feel like they probably should've just shut down the elevator on the other side. May as well. There's no way someone who couldn't handle stairs could make it up or down either side anyway. The Thames isn't exactly shallow.

The Isle of Dogs didn't really live up to the guide's warning. I guess it's like the opening credits of Monkey Dust, where as soon as night falls all the innocent-looking features of the city turn dangerous and ugly.

Monkey Dust? Anyone? No?

You can barely see the other dome in the distance, off on the right, by the water. That's obviously the Cutty Sark there, and to the left of the frame is the Queen's House. I don't know what that is, really; I'm relatively sure she doesn't live there. Could just be a name. I didn't check it out. Probably shouldn't even mention it, really. Just stirring up more questions than I can answer. Google can probably help you out. Or Wikipedia. Wikipedia's pretty good, most of the time.

Shortly after I made it back to the other side, I heard what sounded like brass, glockenspiel, and snares, so I followed the sound and discovered that a special boatload of high-falutin' guests were arriving for the Queen's visit to the accompaniment of a military band. I tried to take video of it, but I couldn't get very close. Also, the sound is terrible, and you can't really see anything, but... enjoy!

Then it was back on the boat and the whole thing in reverse. I slept most of the way back. Still need to return to London and check it out in more detail. I just got an email from Jed Ireland, whom I've known since elementary school, that he has a six-hour layover (oh, poor baby -- six whole hours!) in London in August, so maybe I can combine seeing him with seeing London. We'll see.

Again, sorry this update took so long to get out there. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a paper to write. Final's due on Thursday, then it's on to Irish literature after that.