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Several people have asked me what haggis is. In brief, it is a sheep's stomach stuffed with all the other parts of the sheep one would not normally eat, chopped up and mixed with seasoning. I've been told that it tastes like sausage. But I've had British sausage.
Since I was up late Thursday night, I slept in Friday and was basically a bum until after noon. I then caught the train into London. I grabbed a tube day pass and walked up to Fleet Street. Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese is an historic pub. It had been closed for remodeling on my previous visit four years ago, so I had to go and have a pint of Samuel Smith's bitter. The bartender was from New Zealand. I hopped on a convenient bus and rode the 200 or yards down to St. Paul's Cathedral. It is a very pretty cathedral, but I'm sure the ghost of Christopher Wren will forgive me for balking at the admission fee and just checking it out from the lobby and the street outside. Besides, it was getting late, and I wanted to get to the Tower. Next I walked east to the Bank tube station, through about 24 miles of underground passages and steep flights of stairs to the Monument station, then road 20 or so feet to the Tower Hill station. At the entrance to the tunnel between the tube station and the Tower was a vendor selling postcards and other souvenirs. He had classic ones. I bought 10 for a pound. I especially liked the one featuring a naked blonde in a pay phone with the caption "London Calling". The thing I hated most about the Tower of London was not just being another bloody tourist but being another bloody American tourist. I didn't like the American tourists. They were rude and condescending. I don't like being grouped with them. Yes, perhaps I am crude and obnoxious, but I am not condescending. At least I don't think so. They act as if everything was put there for their amusement, and the locals are just like Mickey Mouse and Goofy at Disneyland. The crown jewels (almost no line) and the Roman wall and the other old things here are well worth seeing, but I won't describe them here; you can look them up yourself. I could tell that, at times, there are huge lines here, since there was room after room roped for queues, with big video screens showing coronations and the like. Some people were stopped in every one of these rooms, but I figured they were just to give you something to do when the wait was long, and the wait wasn't long, so I passed them by. The White Tower was closed for renovations, but I got to see the Roman wall outside it, and I walked along much of the wall around complex. In the gift shop I picked up several postcards of members (or former members) of the royal family. It surprised me that there were Di postcards but none of the Prince of Wales. Near the Tower of London is an old bunker-looking building packed with fast food restaurants, like McDonald's and KFC. Also near the tower was what claimed to be London's biggest souvenir store. It was OK. I didn't buy any postcards here, but I did pick up some tilt pens. These were obviously made by that unknown company that makes all the new tilt pens in the world. I thought I had found something at http://www.floaty.com, but I don't think it is them. After I left the Tower it was after five, and most touristy things were closed, so I caught the tube for Picadilly Circus, which seemed as good a place as any to go. When I got there it was after six, so I called to see if Jon was home and what they were doing. Debs was already home. We decided to meet at a place called the Hedgehog and Hogshead just outside the Sutton (not West Sutton) train station at eight. I went into the Picadilly Tower Records, which conveniently has an entrance in the station, and found the singles section. There I found the yellow vinyl version of the new Slingbacks single. They didn't have either CD version. I hope that means they were sold out. I braved the traffic and actually walked all the way around Picadilly Circus, gawking at the Times Square-like signs before dropping back into the tube station and heading south. I thought, by looking at the maps and reading the schedules, that I had figured a way to get where I was going. I would take the Bakerloo line to the Elephant and Castle station, where I would walk to the British Rail station next to it and catch the same train I'd been taking all along. The way was not clearly marked, however, when I got to Elephant and Castle, but I finally found, by looking at the area map at the tube station, a way to cut through a shopping center and get to the train station. The announcer said that a train that had just pulled up was going to Wimbledon, and from there I could switch to a train that would take me to Sutton, so I hopped on. However when I got to Wimbledon, I was informed that the train to Sutton had been canceled. This route had a loop at the end, on which lay Sutton and Wimbledon, among other stops. The official at the station suggested, as near as I could figure (I didn't want to ask him to repeat himself twice), that I go back where I'd come from to the stop before the loop. That way I could catch a train going around the loop in either direction. This made sense, so I did. Back at another station, I waited for another train to come by, which the announcer clearly said was going to Sutton. So I got on. When we again got to the Wimbledon station, I was again told that I had to get off and switch trains. But this time, 20 minutes later, a train to Sutton actually arrived. It wasn't 8:00 when I got to the Hedgehog and Hogshead, it was 8:30, so I really wasn't waiting at train stations for the five hours it had seemed. Debs and Jon and their friend Alan were waiting for me at a table conveniently located by the bar. I said howdy and we got another round. They finally let me buy one later, but only by slipping Debs a 20 and begging as she headed for the bar. Above the bar was a clock featuring two hedgehogs. The clock movement made one of them move, so they appeared to be rhythmically wrestling. We left this bar and walked down Sutton High Street, a pretty pedestrian mall line with shops. We stopped at a new bar in the area, the Cock and Bull (I think. Something and bull). This was a Fuller house, I believe. It was very crowded. Here Alan and I began a lively discussion of the merits of the recent CAMRA (http://www.camra.org.uk) clash with the European Commission over British law which states that, while brewery houses must have guest beers (thus breaking their monopoly in pubs they own), they must be UK beers. We continued until Jon and Debs started making really horrible faces. (The Cock and Bull apparently uses loo placement as a sobriety test, since they are located up a narrow winding staircase.) We left this place and went to an Irish pub (apparently all the rage in the UK) and had a pint of Guinness or two, then decided it was time for dinner. Besides, it was after eleven. We went to a curry place that they said they had been to before. I just let them order for me, since I had no idea what was what on the menu. I was assured that the food would be hot, but not dangerously so. Now, don't get me wrong. I like hot food as much as the next guy, and I did eat everything I was served. But it required some effort. We were gasping for breath between bites. I was sweating. My nose was starting to run. This was hot. About this time Alan started doing an imitation of one of those novelty drinking birds. His head lowered in discrete steps toward his plate, where it would hover briefly, before slowly rising up again to repeat the process. I have pictures. We hired a minicab from the office conveniently located next door and made our way back to the flat. |