St. Paul’s
and St. John
Thursday May 17
Among the street performers are a number who dress
in Halloween costumes and ask for cash in return for having their photos taken
with visitors. One that we saw on Southwark Bridge on Sunday and again on
Millennium Bridge today is supposed to look like the Queen. But I don’t know.
The mask has a long nose and beady eyes. I think it’s Richard Nixon in drag.
Today we got into St. Paul’s. This is another of
those places crammed with illustrious dead. Nelson and the Duke of Wellington
are in neighboring chambers in the crypt. The walls throughout the building are
lined with plaques and statues naming distinguished officers.
I came away with the impression that most of the
monuments are to high-ranking officers who died in combat. There are plaques
and statues commemorating generals who fought in America and died in India and
other places of colonial oppression.
A particularly smug-looking Cornwallis faces a
monument to Nelson in the nave. Cornwallis died in Benares on the way to take
command of an army in India.
The crypt holds a chapel dedicated to the Order of
the British Empire.
The apse of the church contains a shrine behind the
altar dedicated to the American dead of World War II. Their names are listed in
a huge roll book.
I learned that there were two British generals,
Edward Pakenham and Samuel Gibbs, “who fell gloriously on the eighth of
January, 1815, while leading the troops to attack the enemy’s works in front of
New Orleans.”
Or as they say in the States, “We fired our guns
and the British kept a’comin’. There wasn’t nigh as many as there was a while
ago.”
Photography is prohibited in the cathedral, as it
is in Westminster Abbey, so I can’t show you how glorious the mosaic ceilings
are. They probably wouldn’t have come across in photos anyway—at least not in
mine. The colors are deep and highlighted by metallic bits that catch the
light.
We climbed up to the Whispering Gallery. It is
rumored that if one person whispers, another can hear the sound on the other
side. That is not true because the place is filled with chattering school kids.
I saw people whispering and all I heard was my tinnitus.
A guide leading a group past John Donne’s effigy
identified him as an English-language poet and added that when he was thirty,
he married a girl of 13. Joanna said it was a 16th century Lolita.
After imbibing all this history, we headed for the
sybaritic part of town, Covent Garden, where there are more bars per block than
in Hoboken. We watched a juggler ride an eight-foot-high unicycle and toss
three prop machetes. He later stood on a table and juggled a tennis ball, a
fake machete, and a very real chainsaw. Kids, don’t do this at home.
We stopped at the Nag’s Head owned by a brewery
called McMullen. McMullen bitter and A K (I asked but nobody knew what the
letters stand for) were quite good. Mouth-filling and nutty flavored.
We had dinner at Henry’s Cafe in Covent Garden.
Joanna ordered fish and chips and I had beef cheek, which tasted like the best
pot roast I ever ate. The draft beer selection was limited, and I had two
familiar ones, Brains SA and Guinness stout. The Gran Espiral Rioja from Spain
had a dry, acidic flavor that went well with the cheesecake we had for dessert.
Another good day on the road.
Mummies day
Friday May 18
We left the hotel a little past nine and crossed
Russell Square to the British Museum. I wanted to see the Lindow Man. Not
nearly as old as the Ice Man, the Stone Age man found frozen in the Alps, this
is a natural mummy dug from a peat bog about 30 years ago. His upper half and a
leg are preserved in a case way off in a discreet corner of the Early Britain Room.
I must have walked past it two or three times among the bones and swords
without seeing it. The sides of the case that face the room are solid panels
and are unmarked. I had to ask a museum guard where it was. He had to walk me
to it.
It’s behind glass and has been preserved by drying
and being soaked in a polymer that has replaced the remaining moisture and will
keep new damp from getting in. He has holes in his head were he was bludgeoned.
He may have been stabbed in the neck. (No one is sure about that.) His neck was
broken, and researchers believe that’s what killed him. So just like the Ice Man, he is the
victim of violence, and just like the Ice Man, no one knows if he was set on by
muggers or if he was getting his just deserts.
The museum points out that Lindow Man died sometime
in the first two centuries A.D. Human sacrifice was outlawed by that time
because the Romans were in charge. But I remember Leo McKern in “Help.” Some
habits are heard to break.
Actually, Joanna and I got to the museum early. The
lobby and rotunda were open, but when we went to the stairs, there was a rope
across them. We were looking for a way around when a guy in uniform across the
lobby started hollering something, but all I could hear was echo. So I went to
see him. How do I get up to the good stuff?
By those stairs, when the museum opens. When does
it open? Like I said, at ten.
Oh, so that’s what he said.
So we sat in the rotunda, where the reading room
used to be and photographed a lion that came from a tomb built in 250 B.C.
The reading room, by the way, is where the
philosophers and scholars used to study and write. The journalists worked in the saloons. Like today. The
British Library next to St. Pancras Station a few blocks away has all the books
and manuscripts now. That’s where we went to see the Magna Carta.
The Egyptian rooms at the British Museum are where
Boris Karloff’s mummy drank the tana leaves. The Brits dug up all kinds of
people in Egypt and brought them home in the old days.
Joanna meets the mummies.
Early Egyptian burials, especially of regular (as
in not royal) people, were in baskets and wooden crates. You can see a few, and they are just
bones. Like the burials of the Beaker People back near Lindow Man. (The Beaker
People are called that because nobody has a clue who the hell they were, but
they buried their dead with a ceramic pot or vase.)
There was an Egyptian who apparently had been left
in the sand and was naturally mummified. Then you get into the professional
work—salt and bandages and glittering sarcophagi. You’re deep in Universal
Pictures territory now.
Having had our fill of mummies and old swords, we
made our way to the nearest pub, the Museum Tavern, directly across Great
Russell Street from the museum. This is where Karl Marx used to come to unwind
after a hard day of bashing capitalism in the British Museum.
We had the pork snack platter—pieces of roast pork,
pork sausage, and cracklings with apple sauce and chili sauce on the side—along
with some fruit drinks. Joanna had a mix of citrus fruit and I had some Magners
hard cider.
We had an hour to kill at the National Gallery,
where we were able to take in some Rubens and Rembrandts, a Vermeer, Titians,
and assorted Spanish and Italian Renaissance works.
There is a special exhibit built around Titian’s
“Flight Into Egypt,” with examples of paintings, etchings, and drawings,
including pieces by Durer, that may have had an influence on Titian at the
time. No, no. It’s not this boring. It was really fun.
We made it to the airport with plenty of time for
beer. This was a matter of research. We compared Murphy’s Irish stout to
Guinness. Both are creamy and much drier than the English stouts that I also
enjoy and often drink. Bombardier English bitter is lighter than stout but
stronger in flavor than Stella Artois. And I know all this from research at
that one bar.
Bitter always ends with a nutty flavor in my mouth.
The Stella has that Belgian herbal touch. It can’t compare with Chimay, but
then it’s not five bucks a bottle or nine for a pint on draft.
This entry was written on the airplane over the
Atlantic. The gang at British Airways, being appropriately British, were
handing out drinks of all kinds, including the can of Fuller’s London Pride
that’s waiting for me in the seat pocket.
Bye for now.
Harry
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