Day Tripping and Fly Tipping

Some days I like to catch flies and tip them. The tip is "Make an advance directive: If drowned lay on salt."

Visiting London is better than living there.

On the Saturday just gone, plans to visit friends were broken. Plans made to tally stuck. Off to London we tootled, friendless but not mournful.


Act One: Borough Market

If you are ever near London Bridge, you must visit Borough Market. It puts other markets to shame. Some ten years ago, it was almost dead. Love, enterprise and goodwill has made it special once more. Beautiful stalls proffer the freshest of fruit, vegetables, sea fayre, meaty carcasses and bread. Rare beers, fabulous fungi, Brick Lane tofu and meze style treats entice the hungry caterpillar in everyone.

Borough Market is a place to drop the jaw and drool.


Act Two: The South Bank Trail

I love this walk, but the word about the South Bank is out. Not yet summer, Saturday’s South Bank was the busiest that I've seen it. Charm may diminish with too many, but, for now, the masses are tolerable and the promenading remains good and wholesome.

Never one to miss the chance to piss in Shakespeare's Globe, I did. Manga versions of his works say "Hey children, Shakespeare is cool". Never a fan, overrated, says I.

With a choice between Shakespeare and the Wild Poland Exhibition I’d choose the latter.

In September of 2007, whilst cycling through Hungary - all on my oddy-knocky - I met a German couple who were touring too. That day, the rain was relentless and the side winds fierce. As wet as I, the couple were also equally unsure of the way. Their misery, and not their faces, remains etched in my memory. In the woods, my small talk was welcomed like ripe fart. I was polite, not needy, but who were they to know. The sorry Berliners gave me the gift of joy on that cold, wet day, just by being miserable.

Deep inside, at the place where stomach and lungs make friends, a internal laugh echoed out, without sound, tingling through my many cells. To be so wet, so far from home, with no knowledge of bicycle maintenance, was absurdly stupid, wonderfully funny and blissfully free-range. Hungary is quite beautiful, like Norfolk in the seventies, even in the rain. The two faces before me reminded me of this. Looking to the past and trapped in a short conversation with yours truly, the downhearted duo told me of better days in Poland and cycling there.

I decided I would go to Poland too, one day. I left them cycling in the rain. That evening I cycled around Lake Tata. I was wet inside out and equally enamoured.

I renewed my vows to cycle through Poland last Saturday. The photographs were outstanding.

As was the exhibition that isn't really an exhibition in the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern. Captured on film, by William Forsythe’s 'City of Abstracts', I watched myself move in slow motion. My body dragged itself horizontally, head, then body, then legs. I found myself transfixed by the distorted memory of me, just some seconds ago.


Act Three: The London Duck

I'd visit Cromer, Bournemouth, or Linz, for little more than a ride on the tourist train. Such giant road-riding toys, dressed to look like trains, make my stomach bubble with childish, wholesome excitement. I beg to climb aboard. "Can we go? Can we go? Can we?" With as much class as a rubber band, to me the road trains are quite charming. They are what they are. I wave at those we pass, bounce up and down in my seat, and giggle at the absurdity of it all. They are ridiculous and this is what makes them great.

One-day word got to me of the Liverpool Duck. You can imagine my reaction. It might be the home of The Beatles, the 2008 European Capital of Culture and a monument to maritime days, but the amphibious tour Duck is the attraction that could really make me go. It puts Liverpool in my crosshairs. A brightly coloured tour vehicle that rides on land and water is so very, very enticing.

Part of me is a little sad that I didn’t ride on my first Duck in Liverpool, but - woo hoo - I was grinning from year to year in London last Saturday. Ducks live in London too.

Now hear this, the ducks are not the giant toys that silly old me had them pegged for, they are historical wonders. The DUKW vehicles were World War II transportation vehicles and, amongst other tasks, helped with the D-Day landings. Imagining this, whilst looking at the old instrumentation onboard, my brain filled with sights and sounds so vivid that my ears tingled.

The tour was outstandingly brilliant. There were no headphones. There was no pre-prepared speech delivered by an automaton with a tape recorder. A real Cockney stood before us. He filled my ears with facts, had me laughing at embarrassingly brave sing-alongs, told saucy jokes, made up stupid quizzes and demonstrated a genuine passion for his heritage.

I learnt that:

• The phrase ‘money for old rope’ comes from the children – mudlarks – collecting rope on the shore of the Thames to sell.
• Green Park is so named because, or so it is told, because the wife of King Charles II suggested he pick a flower from the park and give it to the lady he loved. He did pick a flower, but to his Queen it did not go. In fury, the Queen ordered that every flower in the park to be shoved up the King’s fat arse. And so it is: the Green Park is green and the King’s bum smells lovely.
• Handel’s Water Music was composed for a great water party, held on the Thames on 17 July 1717, in the days when the South Bank was undeveloped and greener than Green Park.
• The Thames used to be so busy with cargo, that people could get across by jumping from barge to barge.
• The concrete barges, still bobbing about today, were built in the World War 2 because steel was hard to buy.
• There is still a snack shop on the Thames for boatmen to use.

The best part of the tour was being on the Thames. It was really quite something. We dived in from the MI6 slipway and, from there on in, we sat so low in the water I could have had a wash. To the Houses of Parliament we went, and back again. Yes, I did say MI6.


Act Four: A Free Self-Guided Walking Tour

The London Walking Tours website is a gem, and Richard Jones deserves great praise. We opted for the the Secret City Tour, which took us through the heart of The City, on a Saturday, when all the bankers are in their mansions in other parts of the world. It was all ours.

My favourite parts of the tours were:

• The hidden alleyways and green squares.
• St Olave’s Church with its pirate like gate, or as Dicken’s said ‘It is a small churchyard, with a ferocious strong spiked iron gate, like a jail. This gate is ornamented with skulls and cross-bones, larger than life, wrought in stone; but it likewise came into the mind of Saint Ghastly Grim, that to stick iron spikes a-top of the stone skulls, as though they were impaled, would be a pleasant device. Therefore the skulls grin aloft horribly, thrust through and through with iron spears…’ They still do.
• Finding out that the home of the G20 protests once housed ‘Father Ignatius’ a great anti-capitalist. In 1868, during a sermon, the father called the traders on Lombard Street worse than Jericho. The riot back then was somewhat different. A week later, thousands of people armed with apples pelted Father Ignatius and his congregation. Apparently, the police saved the day, instead of making matters worse.
• The Temple of Mithras, a relic of the first city of London and home to an intriguing religion. Christianity stole a certain festival from Mithras. Does 25th December ring any bells?
• The National Memorial to Heroic Men and Women in Postman’s Park. Touching plaques included: "Richard Farris, Labourer, who drowned in attempting to save a poor girl who had thrown herself into the canal at Globe Bridge Peckham, May 2, 1878", "John Cranmer, Cambridge, Aged 23, a clerk in London County Council who was drowned near Ostend whilst saving the life of a stranger and a foreigner, August 8, 1901", "Henry James Bristow, aged eight, at Walthamstow on December 30 1890, saved his sisters life by tearing off her flaming clothes but caught fire himself and died of shock and burns." There are lots of empty spots for new plaques, so I think there should be an internet campaign to add a new plaque each year, as voted for by the public.
• Learning about the Scratching Fanny of Cock Lane, just for the name.

If you find a recently drowned fly, lay it carefully on salt. It will come back to life.

Fabpants Recommends: Sam Isaac has put two pals and moi on his guest list for tonight. Kyte are headlining. It should be fun. So listen to Sam. Listen to Sideways if you can. I can’t find it to stream here, but it's on a brilliant CD I own called 'Sticker Star And Tape'.

These tracks are good too:

Download MP3: Sam Isaac – Sticker Star And Tape (indierocker.net)




Download MP3: Sam Isaac – Come Back Home Tonight (sorry, this link has died)




Sam is very good live. I saw him at Truck 2007 and at Komedia 2008.