Well, here we are. The end of the road. Full circle, and all that.
I’m sitting here, writing, back in Minneapolis. I turned my Pandora radio on (a station I called, “Soft, Slow Classical”), and the second movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 8 began playing, quite apt considering that the publisher dubbed the work Grande sonate pathétique because of the emotionally moving music that it is.
Back to reality, then, but not before a final few trips around London.
Following the remarkable experience atop St. Paul’s Cathedral, viewing London from an incredible vantage, all in the open air and not in the suffocating confines of the London Eye that was much too expensive, I met up with Mum again where we sought out what is claimed to be the best fish and chips in London. We did have something to compare it to, after all, when last week we ended our final night in Ilminster ordering fish and chips from a takeaway place. (And we weren’t very impressed.)
Poppies, though, a wonderful fish and chips restaurant in the Camden neighborhood of London (the’ve also got one in Spitalfields), surely did not disappoint, and we were right to be unhappy with the quality of the takeaway fish and chips in Ilminster.
Poppies is a wonderfully nostalgic little place, their decor very kind of 1940s/1950s, a long narrow frying area separated from the dining space by a shiny metal and glass warming buffet for cooked fish that was atop a counter in light blues and creams with chrome slats, men dressed all in white busy frying away behind the counter, waitresses bustling about in black dresses designed with cherries and apples and other red fruits, wearing bold, red hats that sat askew to one side on the head, rock music from the 1950s blaring overhead (could’ve done with turning the volume down a bit, even though the music itself was fantastic, my mother herself familiar with all the tunes they played), and all the while tables busy with people eating and chatting away.
This is another one of those places (in addition to climbing all the way atop St. Paul’s) that you simply must go out of your way to find and enjoy some really quite wonderful food, quite wonderful atmosphere, quite wonderful staff, and quite wonderful times.
Following this, much in the way we went out of our way to see Piccadilly Circus because it’s one of those areas you just have to see, we went out of our way via Charing Cross to see Trafalgar Square, with the famous four lions that sit at each corner of Nelson’s column, the Portrait Gallery situated smartly behind the monument. And, as usual, it never fails: I’ve visited Trafalgar Square twice, now, and each time I thought of “The Dalek Invasion of Earth,” the montage scene where Jenny, Barbara, and Dortman are trying to make their way across London without being seen by the metal monsters, that fantastic percussive music of drums and anvils playing in the background, Dortman in his wheel chair, Barbara elaborately coifed with an entire bottle of hair spray, and Jenny with her ridiculous balaclava.
By the next morning, it was quite difficult not to live in the moment and appreciate the time we had left when the following day meant departing back to Minnesota and to reality. Still, we made the best of it, checking off a few more landmarks essential to any visit to London, after considering possibly going to the British Museum, but instead vetoing that in favor of letting our minds continue to rest from assimilating more gobs of artifacts in minutiae and appreciating some final, famous spots all on their own without the detailed museum placards.
So, to the old BBC Television Centre we went. And how surreal it was to finally see that building in the flesh, as it were.
The BBC has since closed the centre down after moving things to other facilities, but the centre is still a wonderful place to visit, where they made such wonderful shows like Doctor Who, Blue Peter, and Fawlty Towers. To stand outside the building and to know that within those wall those programs were filmed, that if I were to choose a Doctor Who episode at random, watch it, and marvel at the fact that it was most likely filmed or taped in that building is magical (keeping in mind, of course, that sometimes they went on location or filmed at Ealing, Riverside, or Lime Grove). Even still, in a word, fantastic!
It was sad to see the building without the BBC of the BBC Television Centre label on its walls, but it was fantastic to see those immediately recognizable brown bricks that make up the majority of the building, the curved donut section with the rectangular glass windows, the atomic, white dot design on the western side of the building, and the red and white barred gates by the front security booths outside. It’s nice to know that they will still be calling it Television Centre following the refit (which is why they didn’t move those letters from the building’s label) and converting it into a hub for entertainment, offices, and homes.
Moving on, then, we made one final stop to visit, the site of the Battersea Power Station, which, again, will always remind me of “The Dalek Invasion of Earth,” where the Doctor, Ian, Barbara, and Susan land in a future London taken over by Daleks, and while the Doctor and Ian search a nearby warehouse to search for a blow torch to cut through a heavy metal girder that fell in front of the TARDIS doors preventing them from entering and leaving, Ian looks out a window, notices Battersea Power Station with its iconic four towers at each corner of the large, rectangular building, and remarks, “What’s happened to those two towers?” because two of them were nearly totally gone, fallen over due to disuse or blown up by who knows what.
As we marveled at the building, we also noticed the typically brown, brown waters of the River Thames, wondering whether fish could at all survive in such a horribly dirty river where garbage floats by, from tennis rackets and tennis balls to empty plastic bottles and deprived, square boards of styrofoam, and chip bags and strange blue pieces of unrecognizable bits of something formerly whole wash ashore and stick to rocks and boulders of concrete. Fortunately, a nearby placard gave us our answer (even outside a museum we couldn’t escape a placard), that apparently as late as the mid 1960s, no fish could survive in the water due to the horrid state of the polluted water (the “Great Stink,” as it was known), but thanks to some serious cleanup, fish and other wildlife (including seals!) have returned to the river. And, apparently, it’s the cleanest city river in all of Europe, which would be difficult to believe if you judged by the appearance of the river alone and didn’t read up on the true state of things.
We made our way across the Vauxhall Bridge, a characteristic bridge of London with several arches of vibrant red and yellow, to cross the Thames by foot one last time until next time, boarded the Underground at Pimlico, made our way to Russell Square to visit a Waitrose (it’s like a fancier, cleaner version of Cub Foods, but cheap, and not as snotty as a Kowalski’s) to buy some biscuits (that’s cookies, mind) generally coated in chocolate, admired a festival outside the Waitrose where you could buy confectionaries, used books, and other things (but we weren’t hungry and didn’t have any more space for anymore souvenirs to bring back), and then grabbed a loaf of bread from our hotel room we bought days earlier and wouldn’t be able to finish before we left, and made our way back to where it all started: Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park to feed some birds (even though signs tell you not to, but everyone does it anyway).
Aaaah, yes. Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, at sunset, silhouettes of birds against quickly darkening water, squirrels that come right up to your feet and look up to you with longing eyes, their pupils hiding all trace of the iris, because they see the plastic bag you’re carrying that probably has something in it for them to eat (but some of the squirrels will be slightly choosy), geese and swans and ducks that come right up to you from out of the Long Water or the Serpentine and eat directly from your hand, pigeons that might actually land on you if you’re still enough, children running amongst flocks of birds that disperse in a flutter but quickly return within seconds to enjoy some more scraps of bread and other junk, bikers biking by with their flashing lights and ringing bells, gorgeous runners in short shorts sweating away as they make their way around the park, lovers lying in the grass beneath trees, and (if you don’t miss it) a sculpture called The Arch by Henry Moore, a tall structure resembling giant, dense bones that frames a setting sun.
And that is London. At sunset. On the eve of a sad day.
And William Hartnell said it best, in that all-time classic serial, “The Dalek Invasion of Earth,” as he closed the TARDIS doors, spoke to his granddaughter Susan before leaving her on Earth for her to start a new life (forgive the very slight paraphrasing, but I think you’ll like it):
“One day, I shall come back. Yes, I shall come back. Until then, there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties. Just go forward in all your beliefs, and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine. Goodbye, London. Goodbye, my dear.”