KYQ4: Solo London

Memorial to Democratic Follies

My first time away from home since last July was to visit the grandchildren during the school holidays. London without Aileen was going to be hard. On our many visits to London over the past fifteen years, we would be together most of the time, with our daughters and the grandchildren or visiting museums, parks, buildings and shops. We would take advantage of the multitude of restaurants serving food from all parts of the world. It was different from being at home where we would often be doing things separately whether at work, going to French classes, climbing hills, book groups, meeting old colleagues and local friends or just watching TV, blogging or maintaining the house and garden.

On my first morning in London Eva and I visited the South Bank with the grandchildren. We entered by the Albert Embankment below the Westminster Bridge. A memorial to the 200,000 people who died of Covid and a reminder of the slow and erratic response to the pandemic by Boris Johnson's government of flibbertigibbets. Across the river, a gleaming Big Ben put to shame the drab and empty Houses of Parliament, a monument to follies committed in recent years. It had hosted four consecutive failed governments that have been the source of the UK's sad demise in the social, economic and environmental structure in recent years.

The Southbank was mobbed with thousands of other families during the school half-term, a ritual that favours the businesses more than the customers. The crowds included phalanxes of French schoolchildren taking advantage of the devalued £ and feeding the revitalisation of London's tourist businesses. The former Greater London Council County Hall has become a vessel for several dodgy-looking tourist attractions alongside the London Eye. Even the cultural activities we witnessed in the Southbank Centre seemed stale but then beatboxing was never my thing. We returned home and I went cycling with Simon and Kit hurtling over speed bumps and checking out the new play equipment at the Brixton Windmill.

Later in the week, we visited the Lego and dinosaur exhibition at the Horniman Museum with other friends. We made a trip to the impressive new shopping centre that has been squeezed into the Battersea Power Station. The £9bn investment, like that at King's Cross, is astounding with the adjacent high-rise flats costing £millions. The whole complex is a different world, the play equipment was at another level. The highlight for me was the sheer scale of the brick-built power station, its battery of 1950s dials in the control room now part of a restaurant. Two nimble fitness instructors were teaching youngsters to use LED hula hoops. £5 for each youngster and about twenty in a class that lasted about fifteen minutes. When I did a similar job as a teenager at discos run by my father, it was free and lasted about 45 minutes, but we didn't have LED hula hoops. My father bought some hosepipes and we stapled eight feet lengths into a hoop using some dowelling, those were the days when inventive manufacturing was a home industry.

The only thing missing from the refurbished Power Station was a pig flying above the chimneys. The Pink Floyd album, Animals, used the pig as a symbol of people with wealth and power who manipulate the rest of society and encourage them to be viciously competitive and cutthroat, so the pigs can remain powerful. It would seem that the developers who repurposed Battersea Power Station have taken this Orwellian fantasy literally with pricing policies that are set at a level to keep the proletariat at bay.

On the last day with children back at school and adults working, I headed for the Olympic village in Stratford. It had been on my list of visits for years but involved three tube changes and Aileeen was not really interested. The great plans for after use of the site had become a bit of an albatross for the government and consequently, things had been allowed to drift. Boris Johnson promises rarely come to fruition. And so it proved, the Westfield shopping Centre has none of the razzamatazz of the original Westfield or Battersea. The much-vaunted Zaha Hadid-designed Aquatic Centre is not weathering well with the timber slats looking as if they have a limited life and the landscaping is in terminal decline. The Olympic stadium has been repurposed as West Ham's home ground and is surrounded by fast food outlets and shipping containers. The stadium itself has been graffitied with claret and blue signage that demeans the original stadium. A tour would cost £20 or £45 with a West Ham legend. I forego those options but was offered the chance to sneak in with a group from Murphy Scaffolding who were having a training day in the facilities. Unfortunately, I would not have convinced the doorman as I was too slim, too old and lacked an Essex accent to pass as a scaffolder.

On the way back to Stratford station I was pleased to see that there was a significant development taking place with new buildings under construction for a cultural quarter including the University of the Arts London College of Fashion, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sadler's Wells, and the V&A. Quite a lineup and, hopefully, it will help ensure that the landscaping around the Olympic village is brought back to a reasonable standard. I looked for a place to eat but nothing appealed so I returned to Bond Street on the new Elizabeth line. The over-engineering of the platforms and stations explained why Crossrail had greatly exceeded its budget, £20bn compared to the original estimate of £14.6bn. Bond Street Station alone cost £570m, five times its estimated cost. No wonder there is no cash left for upgrading the rail lines and rolling stock between the northern cities.

I alighted onto Bond Street and was pleased to spot John Lewis across the road. It is one of the few remaining department stores that seem to provide everything including a good cafe for some lunch. I had not been in a shop other than a supermarket since last July so enjoyed the chance to browse on a quiet Monday. I was even enticed into the in-house travel agent where the adviser recommended a holiday in Argentina and Chile, Japan or Costa Rica. On hearing that I would be travelling alone having lost my wife she asked if she could give me a cuddle. Customer care is never knowingly undersold at JL!

The next day I returned home, I had paid £10 extra for a flexible ticket but my booked train was from Euston to Stirling. I had forgotten and taken the tube to King's Cross but by virtue of the flexible ticket I was able to catch an earlier and faster train that got me to Stirling an hour earlier. There was time to buy some food before the bus home but even better I bumped into an old neighbour. She offered me a lift home and brought me up to date on the news from our old village. I thought it might be difficult returning to an empty house but I felt pleased to be returning home.