When I had my show on CKNW I always did a travelogue and was always criticized by the station for doing so – which simply encouraged my view that it must be a good idea! I nearly always had positive feedback.

Last May, Wendy came to me as I was glued to my computer and said “you’ve aged 10 years since we were last in London in January so it’s time to go again”. I needed no persuasion and immediately went to work booking our usual room at the Kensington Hotel (formerly Jurys) and hitting the web for cheap airline tickets. This was quickly achieved so on September 2 we flew Air Transat (Thomas Cook) to Gatwick. The tickets were about $1000 each but we paid a couple of hundred extra for “Premium Class” on the way over hoping that the wider seats would help us sleep. They didn’t but that was mostly because we left so early that even a little pill didn’t help.

I hate the Airbus 330. They are cattle cars – uncomfortable as hell but as one of the employees cheerily said – and he was right – “gracious flying went out with the Flying Boat”.

The service was, however, outstanding both ways and the food a little more edible than most airline meals.

In recent years my back and knees have become so bad that we hire transport from the airport to the hotel but Gatwick, being much further from the Kensington is especially hard on me because one must get the bags to the train, off again at Victoria Station thence a cab. This time I decided to book a “saloon” with a company called ExclusiveAirports which meets you at the airport, gets you and your bags to a neat clean car and takes you to your hotel. On departure day it picks you up at the hotel and takes you to the airport. The cost, for two return was £110.

Expensive, but worth it if you have bad knees and a bad disposition. You can, of course do it much more cheaply from all airports by the underground then a taxi from the nearest station to your hotel.

We go to London with the advantage of being frequent visitors so we have no need to worry about the inevitable question, “What! You went to London and didn’t see ***! While I’m often surprised, after more than 100 visits, that I still often see something new we’re under no pressure to see anything.

The Kensington is a marvellous place for us. We’ve been going there for 17 years, 2-3 times a year, and we’re greeted like family when we arrive. There was the manager, the reservations manager, the food and beverage manager all there to welcome us and it would be even better than going home if only Chauncey (our chocolate Lab) were there too!

I’m often asked why I go to London so often and the overriding answer is simple – Wendy and I love the place. There is another reason, though – no one knows me; I’m amongst 8 million strangers. London is, then, our Maui but without British Columbians. Don’t get me wrong – I love my fellow British Columbians who have provided and still provide an interesting and profitable living. I just think both of us need a break from one another from time to time.

It was mid morning when we arrived and it’s our habit to stay up until bedtime UK time – to sleep on arrival means you’ll never adjust to the 8 hours time change – so we took off for one of my favourite small book stores, BookThrift, just around the corner where we’re also greeted with open arms and a good array of new books at a premium, and the better class of remainder. By that I mean books that obviously aren’t remainders because they were shit to begin with but a surprising number of books that I had passed up at full price a year ago. (Considering how many I buy, that takes some doing!)  I found a book of letters from Arthur Ransome, the great writer of children’s books who is better known to me as a flyfisherman who wrote beautifully on that subject. I love books of letters. I also found a neat book on the 6 Queens regnant of Britain. Two books in the first two hours – not a record but not bad.

After this, we walked the 15 minutes to Harrods and surrounding stores except it was nearly ¾ of an hour for me as my bad back joined my terrible knees to slow me up considerably such that we took the tube back home.

We set out to get a couple of pairs of jeans for me at the “Big and Tall” store and were unsuccessful because I’m not big or tall enough. My problem seems to be that I’m the only person in the male world who is 5’11″ and 205 pounds. Overweight yes, but no Sumo wrestler. My size falls between the stools but we finally got the job done at Harrods. We split while Wendy cased Harrods and I went to their book department, run by Waterstones, on the third floor, where I found The Battle of Britain by James Holland. This is a different book on this subject which is a hot one now, being the 70th anniversary of that seminal event. It’s different because it does two things – it covers the entire period of May-October 1940 and does it from all three – German, French and British – camps. I read it over the week and it is excellent. (This trip only 7 books, about 5 less than usual!)

The next day we stayed pretty close to home because we had tickets to the BBC  “Proms”, the famous concert that plays at the Royal Albert, just a reasonably short walk from the hotel. It’s a product of the BBC Orchestra and well worth attending.

We did a second bit of “culture” and went to the Globe Theatre and saw a wonderful production of the “Merry Wives of Windsor”. This is a funny play but this performance really had us all with sides splitting. If you’re in London during the “season”, make the effort to go to this wonderful theatre modeled after the original Globe which was the idea and effort of the late Sam Wanamaker, actor and director. The theater has covered seats (under a thatched roof) and a “pit”, an open area for the “rabble” as in days of yore. Quite often the “rabble” heckle the players, the favourite demon being, of course, Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice”. Usually Shylock is redeemed by the end when it’s obvious that for all his many sins, he’s the only non-hypocrite in the play.

Wendy and I have two special days in London – one day is devoted to her ogling the expensive stores on Bond Street and environs and me doing the used book stores, meeting at Frankies Restaurant in Selfridges Department Store, where, believe it or not, you can get the best pizza in London; the other has us walking the parks starting at the top of Kensington Gardens, through Hyde Park with a stop for lunch at the Lido on the Serpentine, through Green Park and St James’s to Westminster.

One of the things I’ve always admired about the Brits is the way they give the finger to stupid laws.

We were sitting by the Long Water in Kensington Gardens near to the Peter Pan statue, underneath a sign that says “no dogs allowed in the water”. We were sitting next to an English lady and Wendy remarked on how often we’d seen dog owners throwing balls or sticks in the water for their retrieving dogs and that it was too bad there were none today. I wondered whether the English had lost a bit of that independence we loved so well when, almost as if on a signal, three Labrador retrievers appeared, two chocolate like our beloved Chauncey and one yellow. No sooner had balls and sticks been thrown then more magic! Three more dogs appeared and they all had the merriest time stealing sticks and balls from each other and racing each other to get to the thrown object first. Labradors are all so friendly, of course, and it was like home as we were snuggled by three sopping wet Labrador Retrievers! Our day was made.

(One of my favourite memories of British contempt for stupid laws came one day in the Piccadilly Circus tube station at the bottom of the second escalator where a large black saxophone player busked away to his heart’s content under a sign saying “No Busking Allowed, £200 fine.”)

There was only one disappointment. Because of the ability to download on the internet, the CD stores are vanishing and even those which remain like HMV, have a lousy selection, getting lousier every day. I probably typify their customers as I go to them only to make note of individual songs to download.

Only a week – but a great one with the love of my life in the city which, Vancouver excepted, is also the love of my life.

Sour grapes?

Not a bit of it; just a prediction of what will happen during the next four years. How sad it is that the environment movement was hit by the defections of David Suzuki and Tzeporah Berman. The long term cost to the environment is incalculable. What happens next is not hard to predict. The Bute Inlet project will bring civil disobedience as the company, with the help of the government, will get court orders which will be enforced against protesters. What a sorry pass we’ve reached when people trying to protect the environment from ravishment and save our wonderful public power system will be thwarted and jailed by those who put their own enrichment ahead of our environmental values and are able to abuse the legal system
to enforce their greed and help elect their accomplices.

London is in a strange economic situation these days. In the four blocks between our hotel and our tube station, 13 businesses large and small have gone bust since we here at New Years yet the signs in the real estate offices show a 2000 square food flat, with no view selling for just under 4 million POUNDS! The smallest of the 25 or so ads we looked at for flats was just under 1 million pounds! Unemployment is the highest in decades, money is tight yet there is a market for multi million pound apartments.

Wendy and I are often asked why we are constantly visiting London. A day a fortnight ago was one reason. We went to the top of Kensington Gardens for regular our walk which takes us through Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, Green Park and St James’s Park to the Houses of Parliament. Because of my terrible knees (when you get a bit older, the knees are the second thing to go!) we did a lot of sitting and watching the au pairs and their prams, dogs chasing but never quite catching squirrels and people feeding the birds right next to the sign that says “please don’t feed the birds”. This lese majeste is repeated on the Long Water where Labrador Retrievers chase sticks into the water next to the sign that says “no dogs permitted in the water”. The Brits are never much for obeying silly laws with the best example being the big black busker in the tube station playing a most agreeable tenor sax under a sign saying “No Buskers Allowed, 200 pound fine”.

Lunch at the Lido on the Serpentine, an ice cream at Buck Palace, through St James’s, the prettiest of them all and we’re at Parliament Square with the marvelous statue of Churchill facing defiantly towards the east seeming to say, come on Luftwaffe, do your damndest, we’re ready! As ready he and Britain were.

The papers and news channels are non stop about MPs expenses which have become a huge issue. Prime Minister Brown can thankfully point out that the Tories are also certified fudgers. The pounds involved are far from petty cash and sometimes get into six figures. The official documents released on the Parliament website run to more than a million words, most of which has been blackened out or redacted as they call it. The Speaker had to resign, Ministers are falling like leaves in the autumn so that one gets the feeling that no one is in charge which, to more than one Brit, is actually a comforting thought.

I committed my usual sins buying, in excess, books and compact discs. To our great consternation, Zanni’s music stores, which took over from Virgin, went broke since we were here at New Years and they had a marvelous supply of low priced standard jazz stuff that is hard to find – at least in stores. I don’t like shopping online – however easy browsing online has been made, it’s just not the same as in a store. Online will win the war, of course, and I suspect that the three HMV main stores will be the next victims of cyberspace.

I wonder about book stores. While you can download books and, of course, browse the online “stores”, the book stores seem to be doing well. Waterstones on Piccadilly and Foyles on Charing Cross Road are huge and apparently busy as are the wonderful Charing Cross used book stores. I managed, after assuring Wendy that “there isn’t much out there”, to buy a dozen books!

One place book lovers dare not miss is the open air used book stalls on the South side of the Thames near the National Theatre. In all the paperback dross there is the occasional gleam of gold hard cover which begs to be bought.

Speaking of the South Side and theatre we always go to the New Globe when it’s in season. This time it was As You Like It, a marvelous and very funny version. We first visited the Globe on its second night a decade or so ago and it’s super value for the money. Under the guidance of the late American actor San Wanamaker, the new Globe, made as the original was with split oak and thatch, is a considerable event in itself. The theatre, as in the bard’s day, has covered seats and an open pit for the “rabble”, nowadays mostly young people having a ball. As in days of yore, the “pit” often interplays with the players providing extra unrehearsed fun.

Next door is the New Tate Art (?) Gallery, which, if you fancy toilet bowls and such like as art, will fill your heart with delight.

It’s at this point you can cross the Thames on the Millennium pedestrian bridge which opened in 1999 which was, of course, the wrong year for as all who can do simple arithmetic know; the millennium came on January 1, 2001, In any event, just as Wendy and I were about to cross on opening first day there was a semi collapse as if the bridge was saying to the engineers, “you dumb buggers, we told you it wasn’t time to open me!” It’s fixed and gives great views up and down the Thames and as you walk north, a view of St Pauls which begs to be photographed over and over again.

The political scene is reminiscent of BC in 1972 under Bennett I, 1991 under Bill Vander Zalm and Rita Johnston and in 2001 under Ujjal Dosanjh when governments looked like the gang that can’t shoot straight. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, having been handed the poisoned chalice by Tony Blair, has lost control of events. Cabinet resignations take place, a new cabinet is formed, Mr. Brown asserts that all is now well, another minister, caught with his pinkies in the jam jar, resigns, a new cabinet is formed, Mr. Brown asserts etc etc and so on.

That inspired spawned this prediction (have I ever been wrong?) – as the Basi-Virk case unfolds, as BC Hydro starts it’s inevitable break-up and the public learns the full truth about the government’s appalling policy on fish farms and sees just what it’s rivers policy means, Campbell will be seen by all, including his MLAs and supporters, as the political fraud he is and, after the Olympics, will go and the heir apparent, Colin Hansen, will become the latest BC version of the Right Honourable Gordon Brown.

Wait for it, folks.