Letter 11 from Europe RV trip

The next day we opted for a tour of churches. We visited Christopher Wren’s St. James Church on Picadilly. We had visited before. It was, of course, still beautiful. Our picnic lunch was eaten sitting on some steps in St. James Park, there being a great dearth of park benches. Then there were more churches to visit. We went to St. Martin in the Fields, and then we decided to visit the furthest one first. That was Southwark Cathedral. (Another Britishism. You pronounce that as if it were spelled Suthuk.) It was beautiful, of course, and was getting ready for a lunchtime concert. There was a high school band getting ready to play. They turned out to be from Georgia! We didn’t stay to listen because we needed to get back to Brixton Library for another internet try.

We’ve noticed that all the churches have auxiliary activities to help them in maintaining these very old buildings. St. James concentrates on New Age activities and helping the poor in London and all over the world. St. Martin in the Fields also has charitable activities, but it also has a big shop and lots of musical activities. Neither of us remembers any such direction at Southwark, except for charitable work in London and across the world.

The bus we had taken to Southwark Cathedral had left us on the “wrong” side of the river – so we walked across London Bridge and were able to see both the tower of London and the Tower Bridge off to our left. Everyone needs to walk across one bridge in London at least once. But by the time we walked across that bridge, and toured the Cathedral, it was getting late enough and hot enough to cancel all interest in the other places we were considering. We searched the map of bus routes until we found a bus that would take us to a place where we could catch “our” bus home.

The next day we decided on the Natural History Museum. One thing that offsets the high costs of visiting London is that the museums are free, and when you go to as many as we do that is a big offset. When the bus left us off, we were in front of the Victoria and Albert Museum – one of our favorite places. We walked a block and found the museum. We’d never really registered that place before though we should have. The building itself is a not-to-be-missed affair. It is a huge, quite extravagantly patterned-brick building with a number of towers and animal and plant sculptures built in. Very beautiful and very impressive!

It was a terrific museum, with excellent dinosaur displays and information as well as the usual assortments of stuffed birds etc. The English were all over the world collecting stuff before most other western Europeans got there, so the British have terrific museums. This was no exception. The dinosaurs were wonderful but so were the stuffed dodos!

There were a lot of amateur British collectors during the period of the Enlightenment, i.e., the 17th and 18th centuries, and they left their huge collections to either the Natural History Museum or the British Museum, which concentrates on archeological collections. The latter was our next day’s journey. We’ve been there before, but you cannot go there too often!

This trip we tried to see what we had not been able to see before. We did visit the section labeled “The Americas” which was about native American cultures, and we found that the British Museum has a collection of very beautiful artifacts, especially totem poles from the Northwest territories and garments from the Plains Indians. What fascinated us, however, was the series of rooms called “The Enlightenment”. There were case after case of collections donated by the aforementioned 17th and 18th century amateur scientists mixed in with crowded bookshelves of their books. They not only collected things but also invented systems to describe and classify the things they collected. Along with the books were shelves of the things they collected--Roman artifacts, Greek vases, Egyptian ware, Mid-Eastern artifacts, Oriental objects and all kinds of pottery, ancient jewelry--and more. Let me tell you that it was impressive.

One evening during our stay we changed our pattern. Usually we get back to the RV at 5 or 6 pm, make and eat dinner, and collapse. Instead, one evening we went to visit some young friends in their new home in London. We got good instructions over the phone, and went by bus towards London. As the bus turned right onto one of the main streets in Brixton, we got off, walked across the street and got a bus going away from London on a different route. A short ride, a short walk and we were there. Al and Laura live in a part of London called Tulse Hill, which is semi-suburban and remarkably quiet. We had dinner and a lovely evening, and we left early so we could get “home” before dark.

We listen to the BBC every day, getting most of our news from them. The “presenters” frequently refer to the current government of the UK as “The Nanny State”, a reference to the long tentacles of control that distinguish the British system. Al told us that he read that any person in England would find himself on closed circuit television (CCTV) hundreds of times a day. There are cameras on highways and streets and you can’t help being on TV. Every bus in London has a sign saying that there are cameras in the bus. It is amazing to Americans, but the English don’t seem to have much of a problem with it. Ron wants to know how come, if this is a “Nanny State”, the government doesn’t do something about the contents of sausages. We bought what purported to be Italian sausage the other day – and found they were more like wheat mixed with a bit of pork with the wrong kind of spices!

On our last day in England we visited the Imperial War Museum. Ron wanted Adelle to see a display of a 1940’s house which he had seen on a previous, solitary visit to the museum. The museum was very interesting, not the least because there were a number of school classes visiting. Their comments to each other made us aware again of how different the world is now.

We didn’t stay very long because we were planning to visit the Banqueting Hall at Whitehall in the afternoon. We got there about 3 p.m. only to find that the Hall was closed that day. It was too early to go “home”, so we decided that we’d go find one of the churches we had missed the other day.

A number 15 bus would take us close to St. Mary-le-Bow Church. If you are born in London and can hear the bells of the Bow ring out, you are called a cockney. The church had been mostly destroyed during WWII, but had been rebuilt using Christopher Wren’s plans. So it is new and old and lovely. It’s other claim to fame is the huge rood (cross) with sculptured figures that hangs from the ceiling.

When we were trying to find the church, we were a little uncertain about where to turn off the main street, so we asked a young man on the street. He said the church was just ahead to the left, but turn at the next block because that’s a nice, old street. And it was. But it was more than that.

We crossed a side street called Watling Street. Not too long ago, we watched a show on TV where the presenter talked about the Roman Road that went northwest from Londinium, ending near the end of the Roman part of Britain. He said that Watling Street is still the basis for many roads leading north.

As we walked along this ancient street, which goes directly to St Paul’s Cathedral, a huge roar came from the sports pub on the street. There had been a goal in the soccer game of the World Cup that was being played in Germany. It wasn’t even a game in which England had a team. Football is a big and important part of life in the UK! The St George Cross flag, a red cross on a white background and the symbol for England, is everywhere. The media are full of soccer, so full that one radio station promotes the fact that it is soccer free, guaranteed, in prime time.