Sunday December 1st 2013

And good evening and welcome to the house of germs. Jools is sick with some kind of flu, and I am going down with it too. Or I may be having another allergy attack. I will take whisky and drugs and see if I can sleep in a while. The sun has shone outside today, but we have stayed inside, either doing our hobbies or watching Monster's University, or whatever it is called. and listening to football whilst doing our hobbies or cooking dinner whilst listening to the inquest into the day's football.

Yesterday, we went back up to London. It's been a few weeks, and we had tickets for a tour round the old aldwych Underground station on The Strand. The tickets were expensive, really, £25 each for an hour's tour, but to be able to go down a closed Underground station and see how time is eating away at the station would, if nothing else, be interesting.

And photogenic.

Of course.

We had all week to plan our day in London, decide where to go and what to see. And, and I know this will be hard to believe for those of you who have never travelled to London or maybe just been a handful of times, we could not think of anywhere else we really wanted to go. We found it hard to look at maps or guide books. And so come Saturday morning, we decided to catch a later train into the city. So we had the chance to do some chores in town, and make lunch so we would not have to buy food during the trip.

So we got on the quarter to eleven train, bought two coffees so we could drink whilst we ate the rolls I had made as the countryside slipped by.

We arrived in London and left st Pancras to inspect how much progress had been made in the clearance of what is left in front of Kings Cross. In truth it looks worse and more like a building site than it did a couple of months back when Boris declared it open or something. I took a snap from the terrace at the front of St Pancras and I asked Jools what she wanted to do now.

She didn't know.

And so I suggested we go into the Betjeman Arms for a drink and a think. This we did, and watched the unfolding horror of the wreckage of a police helicopter falling onto a crowded pub in Glasgow on Friday night. Eight died, but at the time not much was known at all, and the search for survivors went on. That it was on a half hour loop on BBC News meant that for a change they had real news to report on, but it still felt like voyeurism to me. People not knowing if they had lost friends and family.

We made our way via the Circle Line to Temple Station, and went to investigate the area west of Inns of the Court. We found some interesting stuff, quiet back alleys leading into the Temple area, locked gates and ghostly steps. It was all very good.

We walked along The strand, past the High Court, to St Clement Danes, the church of the RAF. I went in as yesterday was when my old trade celebrated St Barbara's Day, she is the patron saint of armourers, and there was a piss-up in Lincoln which I could have gone to. But, well for one we had tickets for the trip to Aldwych, and two, I really don't like to dwell too much on the past. I don't feel defined by the 15 years i spent in the mob, and reliving the old days of drinking to excess, well, doesn't interest me that much. Well, not as much as a good photo-op!



we walked up aldwych, having checked out where we had to be for the tour at the old station in The Strand, and then wandered into theatreland, past the Theatre Royal and onto Covent Garden. It was heaving, I means so crowded, that we stood behind a gate and just looked at the people coming and going, the rich, the fashionable and the criminals, there to prey on the unwary.



Time for a drink! But all the pubs were crowded, so we walked back along Aldwych, stopping to admire Boris' new buses, and back along The strand to The George where there always seems to be room and a fine selection of ales. Also the rugby league world cup was on, so over a couple of pints of porter we chilled the afternoon away until it was time to head to Aldwych Station for the tour.



We queued up outside, our names were checked off, marched inside for the health and safety lecture: don't lick the rats, and that sort of thing. A talk on the history of the station, then a walk down the 160 steps to the platform level. The station closed because the branch from Holborn is only 450 yards long, and the lifts in Aldwych needed to be replaced, and it was deemed to be uneconomical. So the station closed in the 1990s.



There are two platforms down there, we went to look at both, and at the faded posters on the walls. Heard some more history, took loads of photographs before it was time to walk back up the 160 steps back to the London night.



We did it, only running out of puff, where we thought we were halfway up the steps, but in truth were just ten steps from the top, so imagine our surprise after restarting the climb to see the landing just a few steps ahead of us.

we had planned to walk to Regent street to see the festive lights, but in truth our hearts were not in it; we flagged down a taxi and told him to take us to St Pancras so we could catch the seven twelve train to Dover. We had time to go into M&S for a salad and a sandwich to eat on the way home, so we did not have to cook once home.

The journey was made lively by half a dozen pissed Dover Athletic fans shouting and singing all the way back to Priory. Soon enough we were back in the car and heading home for a cuppa and our beds. Such is our rock 'n' roll life.