Day 34 - London in the rain

Well, I guess it had to happen eventually – my first day of seriously inclement weather – and I suppose that it would come as no surprise to many that it would happen here in London. The showers were actually only intermittent but some of them were fairly heavy, and even in between it was fairly windy and cool.


My day’s outing didn’t start until about 10:30am as I was waiting on a phone call to confirm a rendezvous tomorrow with another friend. After visiting the Post Office I caught the tube to Leicester Square to start my day of exploring London. My first assignment was to find my way to Neal’s Yard, a small courtyard north of Covent Garden that used to contain a shop which sold excellent frozen yogurt. I found that it is still quite a trendy – and brightly painted – little place with a nice looking eatery, but sadly no frozen yogurt. Oh well, it was a long shot!

I headed next in the direction of the British Museum, since being the philistine I am I had never made it there previously either. However along the way I stumbled across the small but interesting Cartoon Museum and spent some time looking around there. It included a special exhibition on Dr Who comics of all things.

Inside the British Museum

When I did make it to the British Museum I was quite amazed. It turns out that the building had a serious makeover about 10 years ago when the British Library, which used to be part of the museum, scored its own accommodation and moved out. A huge transparent roof now covers the core in the centre (the old library) and creates a vast well light atrium which extends to the surrounding exhibition halls. It is now worth a visit to the British Museum just to see the building itself. Especially given that admission is free!

It should come as no surprise that the holdings of the British Museum are fairly extensive, given the amount of the world that the British Empire was in charge of looting at various times over the last few hundred years, so I was never going to be able to see all that was on offer in one afternoon. As it happened there was a special Australian Season exhibition going on, covering both Aboriginal weaving and prints and sketches by Australian artist from the 1950s to 1970s, so I made a point of having a look at those first. The exhibitions were interesting, though I have to admit that I just don’t “get” the minimalist art. (I mean, what’s so special about nine lines drawn on a page with a piece of charcoal?). The other exhibition I checked out was the Egyptian one, including the famous Rosetta Stone (which for anyone who didn’t already know, was the key to deciphering the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics).

The local RTA are on the ball!

With my cultural appetite now sated, but my culinary one rather less so, I abandoned the Museum in favour of a rather late lunch. With that appetite sated also I started a sometimes wet and freqently blustery walk via Leister Square, Piccadilly Circus, across The Mall and through St James Park to Victoria Station. Along the way I had a look near Piccadilly Circus for the Ceylon Tea House which used to serve the world’s best apple pie, but sadly that is another institution which seems to have failed the test of time. On the way past Madge’s place (Buckingham Palace) I noticed that the ornate trellis archways seemed to have had their trimmings tarted up with some fresh gold paint. Getting ready for the Olympic year I guess.

I caught the train from Victoria to Clapham Junction (Britain’s busiest station in case you were interested to know) as I needed to go shopping nearby for a new spare spare spare pair of reading glasses. (I am already down to using the spare spare pair I bought in Reykjavik). Afterwards I had to go window shopping for a while as the day’s heaviest shower came down, but once it had eased off I completed the walk back to Balham Manor in about 15 minutes.