In the mean time, here’s a picture from my new Dutch friend Alex that might just whet your appetite…

Keep your fingers inside the bars

I came back just in time for Christmas with about a squillion photos on CD (God bless digital photography) which I put carefully into a CD wallet and therefore never got out again. Today I decided they deserve to be seen. And laughed at. So I’ve published them. 206 photos largely of people whose names I can’t remember in places whose names I can’t remember. And this is the edited highlights. So why bother at all? Well, contained within the selection are some memories of events, people and places that I could never forget.

Enjoy. I did.

Australia - 2004

A ten month jolly generates a fair few photos. This, believe it or not, is just a selection of them.

205 Photos

 

Being a tourist in your own country is a slightly different matter. Not necessarily any less enjoyable, but unavoidably different.

For starters, leaving from your own home to get a train, making sure you’ve opened the curtains, shut the windows, fed the cat (I don’t have a cat, but you know what I’m getting at), put the hall light on a timer and locked up after yourself is not the same as rolling out of your hotel room smelling of free shampoo and taking a five minute stroll to the venue in question.

Then there’s public transport. I’ve travelled on trains on four continents, and in a lot of cases the carriage I was in could well have been full of unsophisticated individuals (not to say Chavs, which is apparently offensive to, er, Chavs) comparing notes on the love lives of minor celebrities, but since I can’t understand them, I don’t care. In England I don’t have that luxury. I could honestly care less what’s happening to Helen and Paul from Big Brother 2 – but if that’s what the person next to me on the train wants to talk to their mates about, there’s not much I can do about it. Except move. But I’m generally too stubborn. And lazy.

All of which could make you believe that I don’t enjoy indulging in a bit of tourism in good old Blighty. If you believed that though, you’d be wrong.

Because I love it.

In Britain, I don’t have to embarrass myself trying to remember to say please and thank you in the appropriate language, only to have the waiter/receptionist/shop assistant smirk and address me in perfect English with a smug and somewhat satisfied smile. I fact, more often than not, I’m pleasantly surprised if the waiter/receptionist/shop assistant is actually capable of addressing me in perfect English. I know exactly what I’m paying for the unnecessary tat they always manage to sell me, and exactly how much I’m being ripped off. Most important of all, I can (usually) go home at night and sleep in my own bed, and not have to run the daily gauntlet of picking someone elses pubic hair out of the hotel sheets. Yes, I know I’m obsessive and paranoid, but don’t tell me you’ve never done it.

I love it so much in fact, that I’ve decided I should do it more often, and it was this resolution that found me getting up at 7.30 on Saturday morning to catch a train to London for a good old fashioned day out.

Legend.

To explain slightly, my friend Louise and I are (or should that be were?) rather big fans of one Steve Irwin (we never met him, before you ask, although we did once have a conversation with his wife Terri about their pet alligator, Allison). We were both so traumatised at his death on September 4th 2006 that we seriously considered taking the day off work as compassionate leave. I in fact asked my manager, but when he laughed, I figured he wasn’t going to be sympathetic to my plight. Since then, we have held regular Steve Irwin Memorial Days, which most often involve a trip out somewhere and a nice lunch.

On this particular occasion, since we are now mere days away from the second anniversary of the day Steve was done for by a Stingray (of all things), we thought we ought to do something special. In age old tradition we couldn’t think of anything so I suggested a trip to the Tower of London. I’d never been and Louise hadn’t been for about twenty years so we thought we’d give it a go.

Apparently someone proved it...

After a trip on the world’s slowest tube line (surely it’s actually quicker to walk than attempt to go anywhere on the District line?!) we arrived at Tower Hill station and joined the queue. We were immediately handed a leaflet bearing the promise ‘History Makes You Hungry’.

Now, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about me, but in a situation where there’s a lot of walking to be done, quite a few stairs to go up, and where I’ve had to get up early (and therefore have my shreddies early too), it’s not necessarily going to be the history that makes me hungry. I was however prepared to test the theory and delighted to see that a wide variety of cafes and snack places had been provided to remedy the unwanted symptom should it occur. So worried were we about it in fact that we purchased and consumed some sandwiches before we went in, just to be on the safe side.

I wouldn’t normally do this, but I have to comment on the price. Just for me (one adult, no discernible discount inducing features) to get in was £16.50. That feels like a lot of money, but I look at it in terms of value for money. For my £16.50 I get to spend all day in there. From opening to closing that’s potentially 8 hours of amusement (we didn’t arrive till lunchtime but that’s not the point).  It’s a couple of DVDs (about 4 hours entertainment), half a premiership football match if you’re lucky (a measly 90 minutes entertainment) or three trips to the cinema without popcorn, a situation so unlikely to arise I won’t even bother calculating it. So on reflection, not too bad (discounts existed for students, old people, people who are unemployed and disabled people. They were crap discounts, but they were there).

Tell me when my jokes are funny

Greeting us just the other side of the entrance gate (where I gladly opened my bag wide for the security man to see the disarded Murray Mints, train tickets and waterproof clothing I was carrying) was a short man in a strange looking uniform who turned out to be a Yeoman Warder called Steve. I never thought of this at the time, but now I come to think of it that was surely a sign from Mr Irwin that we were doing the right thing.

He turned out to be all part of the service, providing us with a guided tour around the major sights of the tower (including Traitor’s Gate, the Bloody Tower and the Chapel, which boasts 9 Catholic Saints, a claim that made me far more excited than it had any right to). This was clearly something he did all day, every day, and was a job he very much enjoyed. His jokes were rubbish (to be expected), but he delivered them with such a complete lack of shame that nobody really minded. I think he was slightly disgusted at our lack of historical knowledge, but I’m sure he gets that all the time. This is Britain after all, there’s a lot of it to know.

Off with his head!

After the tour we mooched round for a bit, enjoying the man in a box in a funny hat the most, doing the tourist thing and taking photos of him, which is probably really annoying for him but everyone does it so why not. We had a look at the crown jewels (disappointingly you don’t actually get to see the Queen’s crown, you have to make do with the Queen Mother’s, all of which you only get to see while standing on a conveyer belt type escalator thing, quite exciting on it’s own). Those particular shiny things didn’t do much for me, but it’s all part of the experience.

At one point we ended up squashed into the White Tower, looking at plastic horses and guns in all shapes and sizes. Not quite sure what the fascination was about that so we ran away as fast as our little legs would carry us.

Having emerged from the White Tower we realised that, incredibly, the claims were right. We were starving. History, it seems, does indeed make you hungry. We were amazed. Who would have thought such a thing could be true? Our amazement was quickly superceded however by the general empty feeling and loud rumbling noises (not even deafened by the ‘Costumed Interpreters’ who were beating the crap out of each other with rubber sticks for at least the third time that day).

Being British, in this most British of places, there was only one thing for it.

We set off in search of tea and scones.

There’s a whole sub story that comes with this cream tea which includes remarkable phrases such as ‘That’s not it’s original head’ and ‘Is it hollow like in the Trafford Centre’, but frankly you had to be there, and since you probably weren’t, you won’t get it, and if you were, you know what I’m talking about. Either way, it won’t translate to text… For that reason, I’m just going to leave it here.

Tower of London - August 2008

Being a tourist at home rocks. You understand all the signs at the attractions and they serve cream teas.

12 Photos