The Routemaster

The red double decker bus is one of the most beloved of London's icons.  You'd have to be living under a rock to avoid them (And if you are, I hope you're not paying more than £500 per month, because despite the high cost of rent in London you should be able to find a nice rock in Zone 2 within walking distance of a tube station for somewhere in the neighbourhood of £450/month, not including utilities of course.)

When I lived in London in 1988 I used to take buses a lot and back then a red doubledecker bus was almost always a Routemaster (Pronunciation note: the "route" in "Routemaster" rhymes with "hoot" and "toot" not "out" and "about".)  The Routemaster was first introduced to London's streets 1956, and is best known for its distinctive open rear deck.  The driver is completely isolated from passengers in his own little cab, accessed from a separate little door on the traffic side of the bus.  The design of the buses was quite innovative for the time, using lightweight aluminum* and aircraft building techniques honed in the Second World War. This meant that, despite being 3/4 of a ton lighter than previous models, the Routemaster carries 65 seated passengers vs. the 56 of previous models.  Its light weight also made it more fuel efficient and therefore cheaper to run.

A classic Routemaster, showing the driver's compartment

Because the driver was isolated in his own cab, a conductor was needed to issue tickets to passengers and generally make sure the level of mayhem on the bus was kept to a minimum.  Tickets were printed with a lovely little hand operated mechanical 'Gibson' ticket machine which hung around the conductor's neck and spat out paper tickets when the handle was cranked around.  This all seems quite charming now, but I do recall that it was a bit of a pain needing change for the bus all the time.  And the exceedingly open style made for a drafty, wet, cold ride sometimes.

However, all this was more than compensated for by the inestimable pleasure of being able to dash up to a departing Routemaster, grab the vertical bar and swing up onto the deck as the bus was pulling away.  Better still, you could hop off the back of the bus any time you wanted: in between stops, in traffic, when the bus was moving, whatever.  It was brilliant. Honestly, I can't think of anything that feels quite so perfectly LONDON-ish than hanging off the back of a Routemaster bus with the wind in your hair, waiting to hop off whenever the mood strikes you.  Preferably with Big Ben tolling in the background and a pint of real ale in your near future.

Alighting from a Routemaster the boring way, with it stationary at its appointed bus stop.

Naturally, anything so excellent could not last.  Despite the fact that the design was remarkably robust (Routemasters outlasted several replacement designs) the last of the famous breed were withdrawn from service in 2005.  Several reasons were cited for this: newer designs without the open rear deck could be operated by the driver alone, carried more passengers, and allowed better disabled access.  (Interestingly, the last route to operate with Routemasters was the 159 between Marble Arch and Streatham, which goes right past my house.)  

However, the TFL also recognised that a complete lack of Routemasters on London's roads would be a tragedy to great to contemplate, possibly resulting in riots, or at least frequent tiresome moaning about the good old days when the post came twice a day and the pubs closed in the afternoon and you could get a proper cup of tea and a first class stamp cost 13p and blah blah blah..."  They therefore contracted for the operation of "heritage routes" that would operate Routemasters in parallel with regular buses along short sections of two routes in central London.  Thus it was that I set out on a rainy Saturday to catch the #9 from High Street Kensington to Trafalgar Square.

The #9, arriving at exactly the right moment to pick me up, which is lucky indeed since it was indeed a very rainy day.

They don't issue tickets with the magic machine anymore, but the conductor did come up to the top deck to check my Oyster Card.  It was an uneventful but really satisfying ride.  The old Routemasters are such solid beasts.  There's no plastic in sight, and the staircase that winds up the back of the bus is just how I remembered it, though I suppose I can see why people these days might be a bit wary.  A tumble down those stairs would pitch you right out into traffic.

Taken from the top of the stairs of a moving Routemaster

I had the top deck to myself for a bit so naturally I sat right at the front for the best view through the rain-speckled, foggy windows.  I think it's almost a crime to sit on the bottom deck of a doubledecker bus.  Especially on a sleepy Saturday when you're on your way to nowhere.

The top deck, blissfully empty.  Because it's a popular attraction, the Routemaster on the #9 route attracts a lot of tourists.  It wasn't long before I was joined by a large crowd on the upper deck, including a nice enough Italian couple, one half of which conducted what sounded like a pretty credible running commentary that went like this: "Italian Italian Italian Italian Italian Buckingham Palace Italian Italian Italian Royal Albert Hall Italian Italian Italian Italian Italian Italian Italian Kensington Palace Italian Italian Italian Harrod's Italian Fayed Italian Italian Italian Picadilly Circus Italian Italian Italian" etc...

As the clever Italian man implied, the #9 passes alongside Hyde Park, taking in the Royal Albert Hall, the Albert Memorial, Hyde Park Corner, Marble Arch, and Green Park, before ending up at Trafalgar Square, where I alighted (alas, while the bus was stopped).  The other Heritage Route (#15) starts at Trafalgar and passes St. Paul's en route to the Tower of London, also a highly worthwhile trip.  As I was getting off at Trafalgar I took a picture of the conductor, who was a pleasant enough guy, but more accustomed to taking photos of other people with his bus, than having his photo taken.

Interestingly, the death of the Routemaster has a bearing on a very current political debate here in London.  There's a mayoral election in London next week, on May 3rd.  I'll actually get to vote in the election, which I'm kind of keen about. The two main candidates are the current incumbent, Boris Johnson (Conservative Party), and the previous mayor, Ken Livingstone (Labour Party, known colloquially as "Red Ken").  Ken Livingstone was the one who started phasing out of the Routemaster in 2004 for all the reasons I've already mentioned.  He's also the one who introduced the single-decker articulated "bendy bus" to London's streets.

Alternatively, Boris Johnson is partly known for his election promise to introduce a new, modern version of the Routemaster to London's streets.  These new buses do have the open rear deck and the distinctive rear staircase, but the rear opening can be closed off during slow periods, meaning that the bus doesn't require a conductor at those times.  The bus also has doors at the middle and the front, and an additional staircase, which frankly seems excessive to me.  However, I like the swoopy sort of design.  Three of the New Routemasters are currently in service on the #38 route from Victoria but sadly they aren't used on evenings and weekends, so I couldn't try one out on my Routemaster Day.

The new Routemaster.  Not bad.  Ironically, when Johnson was elected in 2008, he started scrapping Ken's bendy buses.  Now Ken is threatening to halt the roll-out of the new Routemaster if he's elected on Thursday.  It's Busgate, I tell ya.

And there you have it, a little look at one of London's icons.  I'd definitely recommend a ride on an old Routemaster the next time you're in town.  It's a fun, cheap treat and a bit of a time warp.  Just make sure to get off while the bus is moving for maximum effect. (Note from the GSWPL Legal Department: Go Stay Work Play Live bears no responsibility for any injury of death resulting from following the above recommendation.) (Note from the GSWPL Fun Department: Do it do it do it!) (Note from the GSWPL Peer Pressure Department: All the cool kids are doing it.  Come on, you know you wanna...) (Note from the GSWPL Extraneous Notes Department: Sorry about this, sometimes I just get carried away.)

In other vehicularly-related news - I passed my driving test on Wednesday, which is an immense relief.  Though I was very very nervous, I did have the lovely Mohammed with me this time, so instead of a harrowing two-hour last-minute lesson-cum-Spanish-Inquisition before the actual test, I had a very empowering, confidence building spin around the Hither Green area with Mohammed, and still had time for a sandwich and a coffee before the test. And when it was all over, the examiner actually complimented me on my driving. Yay for me!

In other Pam-related news, we passed the 100-days-to-go-to-the-Olympic-Opening-Ceremony landmark a short time ago, which everyone I speak to has been mentioning incessantly, which is simply rubbing salt into the wound, thank you very much, because I eat, sleep and breathe that schedule.  The workload continues to increase, and evenings and weekends off are fast becoming a rarity.  This is not unexpected, but I've come to realise in the last few weeks that I need to start cutting out all extraneous activities, which basically means everything except work, grocery-buying, laundry and the occasional moment sitting staring at a wall doing NOTHING.  Running, socialising, hashing, and, err... blogging... they've all got to happen only when I've genuinely got the time and the brain energy and the desire simultaneously.  So while I'll continue to write when the stars align, please don't be crushed if new blogs appear less and less frequently.  Just know that I'm engaged in A Great Work, and please tune in on July 27th.



* Ok, time to talk about The Great Aluminum / Aluminium Debate.  In North America, it's aluminum (Ah-LOO-min-um).  Here, it's aluminium - note the extra syllable (Ah-loo-MIN-ee-um).  This catches me out all the time, but is one place where I've kind of dug in my heels on the basis that the guy who first identified the element (Humphry Davy) settled on the name "aluminum" in 1812. 

But the same year, an anonymous contributor to the Quarterly Review, a British political-literary journal, in a review of Davy's book, objected to aluminum and proposed the name aluminium, "for so we shall take the liberty of writing the word, in preference to aluminum, which has a less classical sound." (Wikipedia)

What a poncey git.

The Games People Play: Place Your Bets!

This Saturday was the annual running of the Grand National horse race at Aintree Racecourse near Liverpool.  The National is a famous and simultaneously beloved and reviled event that excites comment even among those who never watch horse racing at any other time of the year. Far from a standard, somewhat dull, single trip around a boring oval racecourse, the Grand National is a steeplechase, meaning that the horses race over a series of fences and ditches. Considering that 40 horses and riders start the race, this makes for a mad, crushing, insane, extraordinary sort of melee that is exciting and terrifying at the same time.

For reasons that are not clear to your humble blogger, the Grand National is the one race every year that gets everyone out to the betting shops (Well not everyone, but loads more people than would every normally darken the door of a bookie's). Newspapers all publish the odds on each horse in the field and often print a blank column for people to fill in for use in office sweepstakes, much as we in Canada might do for a Grey Cup pool. According to Grandnational.org:

Nearly half the UK adult population have a flutter on the Grand National staking a total £300 million, at an average of £8 per bet and Grand National day is the one day of the year when women close the gap on men in the betting stakes – one in every three Grand National bets is placed by a woman. 

All this gave me an excellent opportunity to place a few bets of my own, which is something I've been wanting to try out for ages but haven't had the guts to pursue on my own. Even though you can't walk down any High Street in England without passing at least three bookmaker's shops, it's always seemed like a highly arcane and certainly dodgy kind of thing to me. Luckily, the occurrence of the Grand National this year coincided with the return of the Crossword Tutor Patrick from foreign exile, and Patrick has some experience with semi-scallywag-ish things like betting shops. Thus, I had a native guide to act as an escort, explain the system, and take pictures of me at the betting window. (None of which turned out looking anything other than blurry or weird, so too bad...)

We put a cap on our betting for the day at the princely sum of £6.00 per person, and each decided to split our money among three horses. And, to increase our odds even further, we bet "each way", meaning that instead of paying out only for a win, if any of our horses came second, third or fourth, they'd also pay out, though at a lower odds. An "each way" bet costs double a standard "to win" bet, but of course the odds are much better. For my £6 I got three £1 "each way" bets at a very friendly Ladbroke's on The Strand in the West End. Ladbroke's are one of the biggest chains of betting shops, and it turns out that they're not particularly creepy or scary at all. At least that one wasn't. This one had friendly clerks wandering around in bright red t-shirts emblazoned with "I'm here to help". (I think it was smart for me to try this whole betting shop thing for the first time on the busiest betting day of the year, when the shops are expecting a lot of inexperienced punters to come in to place their yearly bets.)

So Patrick and I poured over the charts and made highly scientific determinations of which horses to bet on, based on important things like whether the name was funny, and what colour the jockeys might be wearing. I chose the favourite, Sychronised, and a horse called Organised Confusion (which reminded me of work), and one called Calgary Bay (of course). Patrick put his money on Deep Purple, Sunnyhillboy and According To Pete.

Our betting slips showing the name of the race, the bet (E/W stands for Each Way), the name of the horse and the total stake.  When you take these to the window you have to specify whether you want them "priced", which means the printout of your bet will display the odds as they were when you placed the bet.  If the bet is not priced, then any payout would be according to the odds at the moment the betting closed.  Since the odds shift around constantly until the start this could work for or against you.

After we forked over the grand sum of £12, we wandered off to find a nice pub in which to watch the proceedings.  On the way we went through Trafalgar Square where they were holding some kind of "Happy Holland Day" festivities that seemed to involve wearing a lot of orange and eating french fries.  More interesting / terrifying to me was to see the big countdown clock in the square that's ticking away the days, hours, minutes and seconds until the Olympic Opening Ceremony.

104 days??? How the hell did that happen???

I certainly needed a drink after that, and we eventually settled ourselves at the Cambridge Pub where there was a reasonably sized screen, a respectable number of real ales on tap, and an empty table.  (Interesting aside: Showing most sporting events in pubs requires that the pub pay for a special license, but the Grand National is one of a very short list of events that is required to be broadcast "free to air".  Others include the FA Cup Final, the World Cup Final and, of course, the men's and women's Wimbeldon Championships.)  It seems quite a few people in the area had the same idea we did.

Everyone looking at the big screen.  Except that guy at the bar who might be checking his betting slips, and the guy on the phone at the back, who is probably just a loser.

Finally, after a bizarre incident in which the favourite, Synchronised, threw off his jockey during the warm-up and had to be rounded up and reunited with his rider, and after an odd amount of time spent stretching out the starting tape, they were underway.  And, as you'd expect from a free-for-all involving 40 horses and 40 riders and 30 fences, it was mayhem.

Yes, horses fall.  Badly.  All the time.  

It really is crazy. As you can see from the above photo, it's an incredibly dangerous race. With so many horses and those crazy fences, falls are expected, and bad falls are standard. Though 40 horses and riders might start, fewer than half that number are generally expected to finish, and it's commonplace to see riderless horses galloping along with the rest of the pack on the course.  This year 16 of the 40 starters actually finished the race (in 1928 there were only TWO finishers).  And, worst of all, there are an average of three horse DEATHS every year at the Grand National, which makes me (and lots of other people) question whether it's really something that we should keep doing.  That's the really divisive, contentious thing about the race.  Organisers have recently redesigned some of the more dangerous fences, but horses continue to be badly injured.  This year two horses suffered broken legs and had to be put down, including Synchronised, the who had been favoured to win going into the race.  There really has to be a better way.

Nonetheless, it was impossible not to get caught up in the excitement.  My horses were all out of it fairly quickly, except for Calgary Bay, who at least managed to finish (though well out of the running).  On the other hand, one of Patrick's horses was involved in the closest finish in the history of the National.  Sunnyhillboy ended up leading coming off the last fence and looked like he had it won but an astounding surge by Neptune Collonge meant that our boy lost by, literally, about half a nostril.  And for the first time ever, a female jockey placed in the top three - Katie Walsh, on Seabass.  (The whole race is on Youtube, here.)

And so our hopes of a big payout were dashed (and when I say big, I mean £22.00). Instead, we had to content ourselves with a tube ride back to Brixton, where Patrick collected his generous winnings for the second-place finish.

Patrick and his fiver, patiently posing for a photo in the Brixton Ladbroke's, which was not nearly so nice as the one on the Strand where we placed our bets, and hence not really a place you want to hang around having your picture taken with a £5 note.

And that was my first Grand National.  I'm really of two minds about the whole thing.  It was fun to place the bets and exciting to watch the race, especially with that photo finish.  It wasn't until a while later that we found out that two horses had to be put down, which certainly put a damper on matters.  I don't know what the solution is, and people who love horses and racing obviously don't know either.  It's definitely a British institution, but I really don't know how much longer it can last in its present form.  It could be that the Grand National's days are numbered.  If so, I'm glad I had a little taste, though really I would have been more glad if Sunnyhillboy had a slightly longer nose...

Apropos of Nothing, revenge of the son of the sequel

Another completely random selection of thoughts...

Quirky Budget Day Traditions on Two Sides of the Atlantic:

The government presented a new budget last week and just like in Canada, where they've also got a new budget, the media coverage was er... extensive.  In Canada the budget is presented by the Finance Minister.  Here in the UK the minister responsible for all financial and economic matters is called the Chancellor of the Exchequer, currently George Osborne.  The presentation of a budget is all pretty familiar stuff, but there is one tradition here that is quirky enough to make it worth blogging about: the red box.

Red boxes are the traditional cases used by British government ministers.  They look like little red briefcases, and are meant to be used to carry official government documents from place to place.

The design of ministerial boxes has changed little since the 1860s. Covered in red stained rams' leather, it is embossed with the Royal Cypher and ministerial title. The 2 or 3 kg boxes are constructed of slow-grown pine, lined with lead and black satin and, unlike a briefcase, the lock is on the bottom, opposite the hinges and the handle, to guarantee that the box is locked before being carried.

The colour red has remained the traditional covering of the boxes. The lead lining, which has been retained in modern boxes, was once meant to ensure that the box sank when thrown overboard in the event of capture. Also bomb-proof, they are designed to survive any catastrophe that may befall their owner. (Thanks again, Wikipedia!)

Fun, eh?  The most famous red box is the one used by the Exchequer to carry the new budget.  Unsurprisingly, it's called the Budget Box.  It's traditional for the Exchequer to pose for photos with the Budget Box outside of 10 Downing Street (the home of the Prime Minister and the UK equivalent to 24 Sussex Drive).  It is impossible to get through the week that a budget is presented without seeing at least 739 different photos of the Exchequer and his little red box in front of Downing Street.

I will spare you the other 738...

And, for my 4 UK readers (Patrick, Anne, Paul, Jeremy... I'm talking to you) here is a fun Canadian budget fact: In Canada there is an inconsistently followed tradition that the Finance Minister will buy or wear new shoes on Budget Day.  There's even a Wikipedia article entitles "New shoes on budget day".

Jockey Wheels and Monkey Sprockets:

I'd like to take this opportunity, once again, to thank Cycle Training UK and Lambeth Council.  I've mentioned them both before, but their generosity regarding all manner of cycle training really deserves another nod.  Astute GSWPL readers will remember that I had two sessions of one-on-one cycle safety training in the fall, which made me eligible to take a full day bicycle maintenance course at no extra charge.  So that's 4 hours of on-road training and about 7 hours of maintenance training all for the grand total of £8.00.  I honestly still can't believe that.

I also can't believe how shockingly low the pressure in my tires has been, more or less forever.   That's just one of the things I learned last Sunday when I spent the day in a nice little workshop learning all about my bike.  It was a very small class of people - me and two other women, and a female instructor - which meant that we got to do much more hands on stuff with our own bikes than if there had been a class of 12.  I've already mentioned that I had an impromptu flat tire fixing lesson a few months ago, but we went over all that again on Sunday, and then got into some more interesting stuff.  I now know how to correctly apply a patch to an inner tube, and how to get my back wheel in and out without touching the chain, and I can replace brake pads and cables and adjust the brakes in two different places.  I can even make a stab at some gear adjustments.

Leila and Sarah, trying to adjust something on Leila's vintage racer bike, which was charming, but had lots of quirky old-fashioned parts that were making both of them sort of crazy.  My bike may be boring and heavy, but it's also pretty easy to fix.

I even rotated my tires, because the back one was terribly worn, especially considering I've had the bike for less than a year.  I must be cycling much much much more than I even have before.  Or possibly my tires, like the rest of the bike, are just kind of cheap and crappy.  No matter, the now-rock-hard tire pressure, plus a slightly higher seat, plus tuned up brakes, made the ride to and from work on Monday seem like a breeze.  I was cruising comfortably in gears I've barely used before and have cut about 5 minutes off my commute time.  I suppose the most surprising thing was how simple most of this stuff is.  The whole thing was ridiculously empowering.

As for jockey wheels and a monkey sprockets: one is a real bike part that needs occasional attention, and one is completely made up!  And I know which is which now.

Bike bits from the training room.  Not pictured: jockey wheels.  Also not pictured: monkey sprockets

The Zoology of London Road Crossings:

I've already mentioned zebra crossings, which are always marked with a Belisha beacon.  But since I've lately been forced to delve into the murky world of the Highway Code I've discovered that there is a whole zoo of crossings out there.  As a reminder, the zebra crossing is the one with the white stripes on the road and the magic flashing lights where you (theoretically) can just stride confidently into the road and everyone should stop. (Once again I'm compelled to point out that here it is pronounced ZEB-ruh.  Not ZEEB-ruh.) 

One down from the zebra crossing is the pelican crossing. No, I am not making this up.  Have a look at the Highway Code yourself if you don't believe me... it's gripping reading.  Pelican crossing are what the Brits call the ones where you have to press a button to make the little green man on the other side of the road come on.  Fairly standard.

Moving on from pelican crossings we have the puffin crossing.  They work the same way as pelican crossing except that the little red and green men are not all the way across the road, but instead are just above the button.  Puffin crossings are also equipped with "pedestrian detectors" that determine how long the keep the green man on.  Interesting.

Even more interesting are the toucan crossings, so named because they allow cyclists to cross at the same time as pedestrians without getting off their bikes.  So two can cross at the same time... get it?

Green Man and green bicycle!  There are toucan crossings on my cycle route to work.

And finally, rounding out the menagerie is the very rare pegasus crossing, which I have not yet encountered in the wild.  Pegasus crossings allow controlled movement not just for pegasuses but also for any other of your hybrid mythical beasts including, but not limited to: griffins, manticores, centaurs, hippogriffs and minotaurs.  

Ha! Not really.  A Pegasus crossing allows people on horseback to cross the road, and have buttons mounted much higher up so you can reach them comfortably from horseback.  And of course they have little green horse-and-riders.

Cute!

The Big Brother Effect:

The UK is, I think, the most surveilled society in the world. (Karen - am I right about this?) CCTV cameras are everywhere.  I've always known this in an abstract sort of way, but on Sunday read a statistic that said the average Londoner is captured on camera 13 times every hour.  That made me sit up a bit straighter (not least because I didn't want to be caught slouching from eight different angles).  I did a bit more digging and came across a very interesting article in the Guardian (which is a very popular paper that I might actually be inclined to buy and read, except the crossword is bloody impossible) about some research done in Cheshire and extrapolated out to the whole UK.  That research figured the number of surveillance cameras in use in the UK is more than 1.8 million, or one for every 32 people.  

I admit I did not actually take this picture, it's from Wikimedia.  You can tell I didn't take it because the sky is NEVER that colour here.  Though on Tuesday it was a pleasing shade of much lighter blue, and the sun was shining and I ate my lunch outside along the Lambeth Cut Canal, which was really nice.  Footage of my lunch break is probably already up on YouTube.

More alarming still is the fact that apparently a huge majority of these cameras are owned by private companies.  This was a surprise because I assumed (as, I think, do most people) that it's the government that's watching our every move with cameras outside buildings like the ones pictured above.  Instead, it seems most cameras are indoors.  In the sample in Cheshire of the 12,333 cameras counted a mere 504 were run by public authorities.  That's just kind of creepy.

Also creepy: this photo I took on my walk to the Tube:

A Lambeth Council CCTV Enforcement vehicle.  Apparently they roam around behind their mirrored windows taking photos of parking violations and people driving in bus lanes and such.  Then they issue the tickets, sorry - Penalty Charge Notices, by mail.  I'll probably be getting a £50 PCN for illegally blogging about an enforcement vehicle without previously applying for a Lambeth Council Social Media Dispensation Approval (Form 127-A)

Less creepy, but still interesting, is the fact that the Tube system has 11,000 CCTV cameras across the network.  This doesn't bother me much though, partly because it means that when people do stupid things on the Tube it's possible that they'll get called out by sharp Tube staff.  For instance:

Tube Driver:  Stand clear of the doors please.  Mind the closing doors.  (Pause)  Please keep clothing and personal items out of the doors.  Do not obstruct the doors.  (Pause, Pause)  The train can not move out of the station until the doors are clear.  Please do not obstruct the doors. (Pause, Pause, Pause)  Would the lady in the third carriage who has inserted 3 wheelie suitcases, a picnic basket and a schnauzer between the doors please remove them?  You are causing a delay to the service.

And that's all I've got for you this week.  If you're lucky, and the stars align, and I get a long weekend off for Easter I may get to blog from some exotic near-London destination.  If not, I'll just rant some more about my driving test.  Stay tuned!

Driven to distraction

It was a tough old Monday morning here at Go Stay Work Play Live HQ back on March 12th, which will not be news to those of you who follow my on-again, off-again Twitter feed.



Yes, I had my driving test. No, I did not pass my driving test.

A little background is probably required here. I have been driving in Canada since 1985, and I think it's fair to say that is a respectably long time. To give a bit of perspective, when I got my driver's licence Ronald Reagan was President of the United States, Live Aid was raising money for famine in Ethiopia, and "Back to the Future" (the first one) was a summer blockbuster. So I think we can agree that I am not new to the whole business of safely piloting an internal-combustion-engine-driven conveyance around the roads. I've never even had a bloody speeding ticket. And because of Canada's preferred status as a Commonwealth nation, I was allowed to exchange my Canadian driver's licence for a UK one in a straight swap. Handy.

However - and this is the maddening, hair-pullingly frustrating thing about this whole business - UK licences are issued according to the type of vehicle in which you passed your test. If you drove an automatic transmission car in your test, you are restricted to driving automatic transmission vehicles only and there will be a little notation to that effect on your license. Want to drive a manual? Pass your test in a manual. When I tell people here that Canadian licenses don't differentiate and that the Canadian system assumes that if you don't know how to drive a manual transmission car you simply won't drive a manual transmission car their reactions range from mild incredulity to scandalised shock and disbelief. It's as if they envision an entire nation of drivers grinding their gears into fine iron filings and rolling backwards into other cars, cyclists, passing pedestrians and the occassional stray puppy. I promise, it's not like that.

At first I thought there might be a way to get some kind of documentation from Canada that would prove I was not new to the clutch and the gear stick. Something, say, that showed I owned, registered and insured a series of manual transmission vehicles for more than 20 years in Canada, perhaps? I got in touch with the UK authority for this kind of thing, the DVLA (Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency). After politely asking what sort of document might solve this thorny issue, I was told I'd need to provide proof of having passed my test in a manual in Canada. But wait, I said, no one records that kind of information in Canada because NO ONE CARES. Was there not something else I could send?

Here is the response I got:

Unfortunately because the Canadian Authorities do not record the type of transmission used in a test, when a driver exchanges a full Canadian licence, the British licence will be restricted to automatics unless the driver can provide confirmation from the relevant licensing authority that a manual test has been passed.

Yours sincerely,

XXXX XXXXXXXX
Customer Service Representative
Driving Standards Agency

Is it just me, or is this circular logic? Here's how I read this: "We know Canada doesn't keep track of this stuff. Nevertheless, you have to produce a document (which we know does not exist) to prove this thing that no one wrote down 25 years ago. Thanks for playing."

Nonetheless that's how it is. If I want to be legally permitted to drive a manual transmission car - and almost all cars over here are manuals - then I have to pass a UK driving test in a manual transmission car. So I decided I'd just have to grit my teeth and take the test. However, I was not so arrogant as to think that, 25 years after I last took a driving test, and in a country where they drive on the wrong/other side of the road, that I'd be able to manage a pass without taking a few lessons.

So that's what I've been doing for the last few months. I booked a test date - March 12th, 9:07 am, at the Hither Green Test Centre (which sounds like it should be a sylvan paradise and is in fact a faceless London suburb somewhere to the right of Peckham). Then I booked a package of 10 hours of lessons with Red Driving School. The practical test fee is £65. The lessons were £250. This is not a cheap business.

It turned out that my instructor - Mohammed - was a lovely guy, and I got along with him really well. This is partly because he laughed at my jokes, and partly because he was pretty damned patient with me, and my sloppy haven't-had-to-pass-a-test-in-25-years driving habits, and my incredulousness about all kinds of quirks in the UK driving system.

 

The lovely Mohammed, and the tiny black car.

Mohammed quickly determined that he didn't need to teach me how to drive, he needed to teach me how to pass the test, which are two very different things. There are lots of things to trip up on. For instance in North America the habit is to signal first, then check mirrors and shoulder check, and then carry on. Here the mantra is "mirrors, signal, manoeuvre". It's iron-clad. Signal before you check and you'll be assessed a minor fault during the test. 15 minor faults and you fail. Four minors of the same type and you fail. And if you cause another driver to slow, swerve, stop or swear (the four Ss) that's a serious fault and you might as well pack up and head home. One serious fault and all is lost.

Of course you've also got to demonstrate proficiency with a number of manoeuvres like the dreaded parallel park (here called reverse parking). There are five manoeuvres, one of which you'll be asked to perform during the test.  They are: reverse parking (parallel parking), U turns, bay parking (backing into a parking spot), emergency stops, and the baffling Left Reverse Around a Corner. Yep. You have to prove you know how to BACK UP AROUND A CORNER, a move that would likely see you clapped irons if you tried it in any Canadian city.

So Mohammed and I worked away on a series of Saturday afternoons. I drove and drove and drove, and he drilled me on the mirror-signal-manoeuvre business, and tried to get me to stop riding the clutch (a minor fault), and helped me get used to shifting with my left hand (weird!), and quizzed me on theory questions, and guided me through countless roundabouts, which are a bit confusing.

 By the time we got to the last lesson on the Saturday before my test, I was feeling pretty confident. Mohammed and I parted ways and he promised to pick me up at 7am on Monday morning so that I could drive to the test centre and then have a solid hour of warm-up, practice my manoeuvres, and a zip through a few roundabouts before the test at 9am. All in hand.

On the Sunday night before my test I was out at a lovely event with friends when I got a call from Mohammed who informed me that something had come up at the last minute and he would not be able to accompany me on my test the next morning. But I shouldn't worry because he'd arranged for another instructor from the same company to be there, in the exact same kind of tiny black car, at the same time, so it would all be fine. Suuuuuuure. I was nervous enough to begin with, and this did nothing to boost my confidence.

The next morning Omar arrived as promised, and off we drove. We did not get far. As soon as I'd moved off (we don't call it "pulling out" over here) he told me to pull over.

Omar: Did you notice that I'm not wearing my seatbelt?
Me: Er... no, I did not.
Omar: This is your responsibility as the driver.
Me: No one has ever mentioned that before.
Omar: Mmmm.

It turns out Omar said that a lot. "Mmmm." As in:

Omar: Why are you indicating right? (Translation:"Why are you signalling right?")
Me: I'm getting ready to move off right, so I'm indicating right. ("I'm getting ready to pull out right, so I'm signalling right.")
Omar: But there is no one to see you indicate, so this is unnecessary.
Me: I was taught to indicate when moving off.
Omar: If you indicate when it is not necessary this can confuse other drivers.
Me: That's not what I was taught.
Omar: Mmmm.

And:

Omar: Do you always grip the gear stick this way? We call this "The Claw". Do you know the "Palm Method"?  It is the preferred method.
Me: (grinding teeth) I've been shifting this way for 25 years. Perhaps 45 minutes before my driving test is not the best time to try to change this.
Omar: Mmmm.

And don't even get me started on the "dry steering" and the reverse parking manoeuvre. So you can imagine that I was not filled with confidence going into my driving test after two hours behind the wheel with Omar. I'm not in any way implying that Omar was not a good, competent instructor. It's simply apparent that there are different schools of thought about some of this stuff, and Mohammed and Omar are in different schools. It's also apparent that the time to change schools is not on the morning of your driving test, because by the time we got back to the test centre after the warm up my confidence was lower than the parking garage under the ninth level of Hell.

Given all that, I thought the test went fairly smoothly except for two things, which naturally were two things too many.  I don't really want to get into exactly what happened, but let's say that in one case there was honking on the part of another driver, and though no one ended up in an ambulance, I suspect that at least two of the four Ss were involved (swerving and swearing, I think).  It was not just a serious fault, but a dangerous fault.  Game over.  Of course the examiner was right to fail me on that, no doubt about it.  But damn, I can't help but feel that I was not in the best head space for that test.  It would have been stressful even with the lovely Mohammed in the car.  After dealing with Omar and his Mmmms it was headache, dry mouth, about-to-burst-into-tears, off-the-charts stressful.

I know I'm not even remotely objective about this, but it seems to me that the UK driving test is - and I think this is the technical term - bloody hard. 54% of all tests are failed, and only about 20% pass on their first attempt. People take an average of 44 hours of lessons before passing, though to be fair, most are new drivers who are figuring out everything for the first time.  I've talked to people who had to retake the test SIX TIMES, and these are not mouth-breathing cretins, these are normal intelligent friends and colleagues of mine.  (Incidentally, the record is 36 unsuccessful attempts at the practical test.) One friend failed the test for NOT driving in a bus lane when it was available to her.  I'm telling you, they take no prisoners over at the DVLA.

But here is the thing that makes me really crazy about this whole business. I HAVE A VALID UK DRIVING LICENCE. Her Majesty's government has deemed that I can be trusted on England's roads. In fact, before I traded my licence I could have driven any damned car I wanted, automatic or manual, on the strength of my Canadian licence. The minute I surrendered my Canadian licence for a UK automatic-only one I was suddenly no longer fit to drive a manual transmission car. Nothing changed about my skill level or experience, but now I'm a danger to myself and others if I get behind a gear shift. What the hell is that about? 

Ok, ok, ok, I just have to keep breathing calmly and get over this.  I'm taking a bit of time to cool off about this, and then I'm going to phone those dragons at the DVLA and book another practical test.  And then Mohammed and I will have another go at it.  And if we're all lucky, I'll pass the next time and I'll be able to put this all behind me and you won't have to read another two thousand words of me ranting about the injustice of the whole stupid thing.

Let's all just keep our fingers crossed.

Clever bicycles on a sunny Sunday

I was supposed to go on a bicycle tour of the City a week earlier than I did, though this was not because I was particularly burning with desire to do a Sunday morning cycling tour of the City of London.

(I suppose here I need to explain the difference between the City of London and the city of London, which is something I don't think I've done yet.  The city London, or Greater London, is the whole shebang, (or conurbation, a word I just learned, thanks to the crossword...).  Generally meaning anything inside the M25 motorway, Greater London's population is about 7.7 million.  The City of London, usually just called The City or sometimes the Square Mile is the historic centre of London, originally settled by the Romans, whose boundaries have remained almost unchanged since the Middle Ages, and which is now the financial, legal and business hub of the UK.  Sometimes people say "The City" in the same way they say "Wall Street".  The City also has some odd political differences, like the fact that is has a Lord Mayor, and its own police force.  More about The City's oddities in another post perhaps.)

So as I was saying, I booked and paid for a cycling tour of the City not because I was particularly burning with desire to do a Sunday morning cycling tour of the City of London.  I booked it because this particular tour is conducted on Brompton folding bicycles, and I am dead keen on Brompton bikes.  I'm seriously thinking about getting one, but realised I'd never actually ridden one before and figured it might be a plan to do that before forking over the usurious sum of £800, which is the going rate for a basic Brompton.  And then I discovered that there's an outfit here called Spoke 'n Motion that does cycling tours on Brompton bikes so I could try the bikes, get a tour, and maybe squeeze a blog out of the whole thing for a relatively measly £19.  And when I discovered that the tour ended with a free pint in a nice pub... well you can imagine it didn't take me long to get out my wallet.

(I was going to have a little rant here about the grammatically dubious "n" bit of Spoke 'n Motion... and then I got it... ha!)

So as I say, I was all set to go a week earlier, and even SET THE ALARM ON A SUNDAY MORNING to get there on time, but when I woke up and heard the rain and then checked the forecast for the rest of the day my heart sank a bit.  Cold, rain, drizzle, mist, and then a bit of a downpour, just for variety.  No matter, I steeled myself and decided to go anyways.  London is the kind of place where you just have to accept that you're going to get wet some days.  Then as I was eating breakfast my phone rang and it was the guy who owns the company calling to tell me that if I wanted to skip the tour and take a refund or a credit, then that was totally fine.  How's that for customer service?  I was happy for the reprieve that day and toddled off to the Science Museum for the afternoon, which I intended to blog about, but which honestly didn't really fire me up much.  I told Ian (Mr. Spoke 'n Motion) that I'd take the credit and see him on the next sunny Sunday.

So I set the alarm again the next week, which promised to be a much finer day, and rode my normal, boring full-sized bike out to Bermondsey, where the tour started.  Ian was there, as promised, along with the only other participant in the day's tour, a pleasant but quiet guy from Singapore whose name I don't remember or wasn't told, so he shall henceforth be known as Singapore Guy.  First, Ian introduced us to the bikes, which were my main reason for being there.  Bromptons are exceedingly clever, and Ian demonstrated the famous folding system.

Singapore Guy and Ian, with my partially folded loaner Brompton, named Helga, in the foreground.  Ian's unfolded light blue bike is in the background.  When practised a bit the whole folding action takes about 20 seconds to go from functional bike to suitcase sized package. Watch the video on the website!

We walked over to where the bikes were stored, and I got to have a go at the fold, and take a short spin to get used to the riding characteristics of the bike.  Since the wheels are so tiny (just 16"! Cute!) a Brompton handles a bit differently than a bike with full-sized wheels.  They're not as stable, but are definitely what most people describe as "responsive" and "zippy".  It took a little getting used to, but soon I was totally comfortable.  Other interesting features are the fact that, because the main framing bar is so low, it's really easy to get on and off the bike, and they don't need a kickstand because that half-folded state pictured above - which takes as long to achieve as it takes to deploy a kickstand - will stay upright on its own.

So, in a word, the bikes are: cool.  But what about the tour?  Also, in a word: cool.  Though it was billed as a tour of the deserted City, we started on the south bank of the Thames and wended through a few interesting spots there before crossing into the City on Southwark Bridge.  We learned that Patrick Stewart (yes, THAT Patrick Stewart) was a nearby resident and part of the fight to prevent a giant new sewer outfall from besmirching the riverbank in the neighbourhood.  And we stopped at St. Saviour's Dock, where the subterranean river Neckinger meets the Thames.  It's also the site of the infamous Jacob's Island, a notorious Dickensian slum made even more infamous as the site of the fictional death of Bill Sykes, the villain in "Oliver Twist".

The Neckinger at low tide, and the buildings of modern-day St. Saviour's Dock.  Now it's super-expensive real estate.  Just to the left in this photo is apparently where a famous scene in "A Fish Called Wanda" was filmed.  It's the one where Kevin Kline dangles John Cleese out the window.  Ian even pointed out the exact window in question.  

We also stopped at another interesting site on the South Bank, near Tower Bridge.  However, it was so excellent and quirky that I think it deserves a blog all its own, so you get nothing more here beyond that tantalising snippet.  I will tell you that we also saw the only bar in London that does not require a liquor license.  Known as a "free vintner" the Boot and Flogger is allowed to sell wine (but not beer or spirits) inside the City and three miles beyond, and claim to have been granted that privilege in 1567 by the first Queen Elizabeth.  I know I say it over and over again, but these are the fun, interesting, offbeat things that crop up all the time in London.

Once we finally made it into the City we hit a lot of the usual hotspots.  Since I've done quite a few guided tours of one sort or another many of them were places I've visited before.  For instance, we stopped at St. Mary-le-Bow church, home of the famous Bow Bells (ironically, closed on a Sunday, like most churches in the City).  The Bow Bells are famous because, in order to be a true Cockney, it's said you have to be born within the sound of the Bow Bells.  (By the way, Bow rhymes with grow, not how.  Just so you don't embarrass yourself the next time you're there.)

We also had a stop at Postman's Park, which only recently reopened after being closed due to the Occupy movement protest near St. Paul's.  Many of the lovely small patches of green in the City were closed during the protest, to prevent people from pitching tents on them.  However, you loyal GWPL readers have been au fait with Postman's Park for ages, so no need to flog (or blog) that horse again here.  And of course you'll all recognise this landmark:

Looking particularly fetching on a sunny afternoon, I must say.

We also pedalled over to the Smithfield Market area, near St. Bartholomew's Hospital.  Barts, as the cool kids call it, is the oldest hospital in London, having been founded in 1123.  Famously, it is the site of the first meeting of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson (in "A Study in Scarlet").  More recently, it was the scene of the (apparent) suicide of a modern-day Holmes in the oh-my-God-sooooooo-good-you-must-watch-them-all-NOW BBC series "Sherlock".  The Barts/Smithfield areas is also the place of the martyrdom of the famous Scot William Wallace, who was hung, drawn and quartered in 1305.

Ian, ably demonstrating the "hung"part of hung, drawn and quartered, next to the plaque commemorating Wallace's execution outside Barts.

I haven't mentioned Smithfield Market before here - it's the city's main meat market, and has been so for, oh, 800 years.  Many shops and restaurants in London get their meat at Smithfield's, which is the only "grand" market left in central London (Covent Garden flower and produce market and Billingsgate fish market moved out to larger digs ages ago).  It operates from 4am to noon every day and nearby are the only pubs in London that are allowed to sell alcohol in the morning - for workers coming off the night shift.  There's also a pub called the Fox and Anchor which serves a breakfast so popular that you need to make reservations to secure a table.  Along with the usual full English breakfast offerings, it adds things like lamb's kidney's, calf's liver, kippers, and other Smithfieldian treats for a eye-watering £16.95.  Vegetarians beware.

After wending past a few more familiar spots like Guildhall and the Gherkin, it was finally time to turn our snazzy little bicycles southwards across Tower Bridge.  The whole tour took a little more than three hours, and though I'd visited many of the spots before, Ian had a lot of new stories and facts that I'd never heard.  And though the morning started out a bit grey and chilly it ended up being a glorious sunny day.  So when we got back to Bermondsey and Ian stowed the bikes away for storage and asked if we'd like to go down the road for a pint, which was included in the cost of the tour... well I think you can guess what the response was.

From left to right: the Thames, my beer, Ian's beer, Singapore Guy, Ian, and in the background, the Angel pub, Bermondsey.

I haven't made any decision yet about whether I'll be buying a Brompton bike.  But the Spoke 'n Motion tour definitely whet my appetite for them, so I think I'll plan to rent one for a week so I can see how those tiny wheels fare on my eight and a half mile commute and what it's like dragging the folded bike onto the train when I simply can't face the ride.  And the fact that I got to try one out, and have a very well curated tour of the City and a credible pint of real ale in the bargain means that I can heartily recommend a Spoke 'n Motion tour the next time you're in London and looking for something a bit more interesting than the same old hop-on hop-off double decker bus tour.

Off the tourist track: The Sir John Soanes Museum

Despite the fact that the pace at work is edging towards relentless, and the fact that I'm spending two hours every Saturday in driving lessons (more about that another time), I did manage to squeeze in a visit to a small but lovely museum in the Holborn area this Saturday. Saturday was lovely and sunny and quite warm, and I got to spend an agreeable amount of it sitting in trains traveling to and from my lesson (which went quite well except for one frustrating dash through a roundabout, which we shall not speak about again).  It's a lovely thing, I find, to sit in a train on a sunny day (a real train, mind you, not a tube train, where it is understandably difficult to appreciate sunniness) with just enough time to have a bash at the crossword, but not enough to get bored or restless.  And if that train happens to deliver you across a sparkling Thames River, and you get a quick glimpse of Big Ben as you look up from 19 Down before you glide into Charing Cross station, and if you then get to wander through the West End and find your way to Lincoln's Inn Fields and Sir John Soane's Museum... well, that's a damned fine way to spend a bit of your Saturday afternoon, I'd say.

 The Lincoln's Inn Fields, across from the museum.  It's a remarkably quiet spot that's just a block away from a busy street and probably worthy of a short blog post all its own, considering it has a Coronation Tree (planted in 1953), a memorial to the Royal Canadian Air Force, a picturesque drinking fountain, and a history of homeless occupation in the 1980s, among, I'm sure, a few other diversions.  I tell you, London is just full of this kind of thing.

Sir John Soane's Museum is, unsurprisingly, a museum housed in the former home of the 18th century architect Sir John Soane (1753-1837).  The house itself was designed by Soane, and is interesting in itself, having been established as a public museum by an Act of Parliament a few years before the man's death.  However, the contents of the house are the real treat because Soane positively crammed the place with his collections of artwork, architectural models, classical sculpture, salvaged decorative ornaments from buildings, antiquities, and one perfectly excellent ancient Egyptian sarcophagus (more about which later).

The house is small-ish, and, as I mentioned, rather overstuffed with historically significant and fragile things, and there is no admission charge, which is probably why there was a queue to get in.  I did hesitate a bit about standing in the queue, but then realised if I bailed out I'd have nothing to blog about so I persevered.  There was a docent at the head of the queue letting small groups of people in as previous visitors were leaving.  Large bags had to be checked at the door (and by "checked"  mean "placed in the floor in the entrance hall with a small numbered tag attached to them").  Smaller items had to be put into plastic bags and carried in the arms.  You were not allowed to carry your coat.  Mobile phones had to be switched off.  And no cameras were permitted.  It all seemed a bit draconian, but it's their house, so they get to make the rules.  And as we will see later on, they have good reason to be twitchy about things.

The Library and Dining Room are the first set of rooms you enter, and they are likely the most conventional part of the house.  Properly panelled and painted and arrayed with 7,000 leather-bound volumes in glassed-in shelves, they are the kind of rooms you'd expect to see in a good costume drama.

The Library and Dining Room.  No, I did NOT take any pictures.  Instead, I paid £2 for the small printed guide to the house, and then scanned the pics in that, so that you'd have a bit of a clue what I'm banging on about.  That's why the quality of some of these pictures is so mediocre.

I say these were the most conventional rooms, because at the back of the house you come into the Collonade and Dome, where things depart markedly from normal domesticity.  Here's where the bulk of the ornaments and statuary are kept, in what would have been (for the time) quite well-lit conditions.  Soane is known for his use of skylights in architecture and is noted for his design of the Dulwich Picture Gallery, which was the first purpose-built public art gallery in the country and introduced the use of skylights and interconnected display rooms that we come to expect in galleries today.  Soane was the one who did that first!  (Aside: The Dulwich Picture Gallery is right across from Dulwich Park, where I often go running.  They recently finished an exhibition of Group of Seven paintings that was hugely popular, even though it was a bit weird to listen to Londoners "discovering" the Group of Seven for the first time, as if they were new and exotic.)

In Soane's house, the Collonade and Dome rooms still feel a bit dark - the house doesn't employ a lot of artificial light, I suppose to give visitors an idea of what it would really have been like in Soane's time.  But the skylights add oodles more light than would have been possible from conventional windows, especially considering the house is completely hemmed in on two sides.

 

A fuzzy, scanned glimpse of what the Collonade looks like, filled with statuary, antiquities and countless bits and bobs.  You can see what I mean about the light. And the somewhat OTT level of decorative excess.  Imagine stumbling through here in the middle of the night when you're just on the way to the bathroom... (CRASH! "Damn! What was that?  Oh drat, the Ephesian Diana... not again!")

The famous Picture Room is also on the ground floor.  It's a small room, but in it are hung more than one hundred paintings, including three by Canaletto and the famous "Rake's Progress" by Hogarth.  This density of art is accomplished in the small space partly by hanging all the way up the tall walls, but also with clever panels built into the walls. What look like ordinary walls are, in fact, large hinged panels that reveal more paintings on the walls behind them, and have paintings mounted on their reverse sides.  One half of the room even has a double-stacked set of these panels, the last of which opens to reveal a view through to another room, and a lovely if slightly titillating statue of a nymph (hidden from modest eyes by the clever panels).

It's in the basement, though, that I found my favourite part of John Soane's house.  The lower level is actually referred to as the Crypt, and was designed by Soanes to have an atmosphere reminiscent of Roman burial chambers or catacombs.  It's quite excellent, and there were even a few candles burning in some of the smaller anterooms, which gave a lovely, eerie tone to the place.  The museum actually opens one evening each month when they light the house entirely by candlelight.  Apparently people start queuing at 5pm to get in.

The best bit in the crypt is undoubtedly the massive ancient Egyptian sarcophagus displayed under a Victorian-era glass cover.  Housed in a room engagingly called The Sepulchral Chamber, the sarcophagus is thought to be that of the Pharaoh Seti I (1303-1290 BC) and may be one of the most important Egyptian antiquities ever discovered.  Soane bought it in 1824 (just a few years after hieroglyphs were first deciphered) from a former theatrical strongman turned Egyptologist who unearthed it in the Valley of Kings.  It was originally offered to the British Museum, but they balked at the £2,000 price tag, and so it sits in Soane's basement.

It's a magnificent thing.  Carved out of a solid piece of Egyptian alabaster, it's covered with engraved hieroglyphs inside and out.  Time and London's dodgy air quality have turned the stone a yellowish shade, and the blue paint that once highlighted the engravings is long gone. But it's still incredible to see.  Apparently Soane was so taken with it when he first acquired it that he held three nights of parties and hired 300 oil lamps to light the house while a thousand people visited.  The docent who was with the sarcophagus was particularly keen and talked endlessly about the piece and translated a few of the hieroglyphs and revealed that for special events burning candles would have been placed inside the sarcophagus, making the whole thing glow a rosy pink colour.  He even had a little flashlight that he held up to the glass and indeed you could see the light through the wall of the sarcophagus.  He was great, that guy.

 

The sarcophagus of Seti I in the Sepulchral Chamber, as shown in the 'Illustrated London News, 1864

Not so great was the next Soane Museum guardian I encountered, and it's because of him that I have one bone to pick with the good folks at the Sir John Soanes Museum.  I turned off the ringer of my phone when I entered the house, but was using it to take a few notes for the blog, as is my habit.  Most of the docents like Mr. Sarcophagus didn't bat an eye at this, but this one guy asked me to turn the phone off.  When I pointed out that I was just taking notes, he said that didn't matter.  Phones had to be off.  "That's why we asked you to turn them off at the door."  I resorted to scribbling notes in my £2 printed guide, but I honestly can't see what harm I was doing to the house, the other visitors, or the cranky docent by quietly tapping out a few notes. It honestly put me off for a bit, until something much more exciting happened.

I was in a side room of the Crypt called the Monk's Parlour when the sarcophagus guy came over and shooed us all out to close the room.  I overheard someone say there had been "an accident in the Picture Room" just above the room I'd been in, so I hung about trying to figure out what had happened.  It's worth saying here that the house is old, and the people that run it are fighting a constant battle against time to keep it in one piece.  I noted with sadness that Soane's famous skylights are covered one the outside with a layer of cheap corrugated plastic through which lengths of sticky tape could clearly be seen holding things together.  And the parquet flooring in parts of the Crypt has dried up so much that the individual pieces of wood in the pattern are no longer stuck down, giving one the impression of walking on a carefully laid out pattern of Jenga blocks.  On Saturday, the poor people at the Soane's Museum lost another battle.

As near as I can tell a bit of the orante carved ceiling in Picture Room simply gave up the ghost and fell to the floor.  I can't say this for certain, but there was a fair bit of quiet rushing about, and a dustpan and brush were fetched, and museum staff were overheard muttering things like "I heard a cracking noise" and "Falling apart. The house is falling apart." The room was closed off, and a big chunk of plastic sheeting was laid out on the floor with a grey blanket on top of it.  The facade next door to the house is currently obscured with scaffolding, and there was further muttering from museum people about the building work next door causing vibrations.  All in all it was a dramatic, if hushed event.  As I was leaving the Picture Room was closed until further notice, so I suppose I should be grateful I got to see things at all.  And I can understand why they are touchy about people carrying things through the house, if it's all that fragile.  I was glad I'd coughed up £2 to the effort when I bought my little guide. (But honestly, I still don't understand what hazard my iPhone posed in the whole scenario.)

The John Soanes Museum facade, at number 13 Lincoln's Inn Field.  With scaffolding shrouding number 12, which is also part of the house, and is undergoing a major restoration.

And that was my visit to the Sir John Soane's Museum.  It certainly worth an hour or two of your time if you're looking for a diversion and are in the area.  (Holborn Tube, Central Line, in case anyone is planning a visit.)  Look out for the tomb for poor Fanny, the devoted lapdog of Mrs. Soane.  And the sarcophagus, of course.  And a word to the wise: you might want to think about bringing a hard hat if you're planning on visiting the Picture Room.  

GRUB!: Chocolate Tiffin Cake

Time for some more food, in the form of tasty make-at-home treats.  Our last foray into the kitchen was to whip up a batch of flapjacks, some of which are still languishing in my freezer five months later. (Note: this is NOT because the flapjacks were inedible.  Au contraire!  It's just because I wisely tucked them away in the freezer to prevent myself from eating the entire batch in two days.  And out of sight... well, you know the rest.)  This time, it's Tiffin Bars. Also variously known as Chocolate Tiffin, or Chocolate Tiffin Cake.  Like flapjacks, Tiffin Bars also fall squarely into the category of er... squares, and have the advantage of not requiring baking, which is handy indeed, especially if you're still trying to work out the symbols on the oven dial.  Tiffin Bars are a chocolatey, crunchy sort of a thing, with the added bonus of raisins and chocolate topping.  You're going to love them, unless you're one of those freakish people who doesn't like chocolate or raisins, in which case you probably also don't like puppies or rainbows or nice cups of tea or fuzzy socks and you should just leave now.

First things first: I have no idea why they're called "tiffin" anything, and they seem to have no relationship with the stackable Indian food containers.  Wikipedia goes on a bit about tiffin being a light lunch or snack, with the term originating in India under British rule, but again, I have no idea how this relates to the confection.

NOT Tiffin Bars.  Though they could certainly contain Tiffin Bars, which would be kind of cool. 
(On a totally unrelated but fascinating note:  Check out this Wikipedia article about the dabbawalas in Mumbai, who are, essentially, tiffin delivery men.  They fetch full tiffin boxes from the homes of workers all over Mumbai and deliver them to people in their offices in time for lunch, and then deliver the empties back to the workers' homes in the afternoon.  It's amazing.

But back to tiffin bars.  I've never seen them outside the UK, so I feel justified in including them here.  Also, they are yummy.  And they consist largely of a very very British thing: the Rich Tea biscuit.  Rich Tea biscuits present a real paradox.  They are, in fact, the dullest biscuits imaginable, so how did they ever end up being described them as "rich"?

See what I mean?  They don't exactly set the biscuit world on fire with their indulgent deliciousness.

I could go on and on about rich tea biscuits, but I think I'll leave that to the experts.  Here's an excerpt from the now-defunct blog A Nice Cup Of Tea And A Sit Down, which was dedicated to all things biscuit.

The Rich Tea presents us straight away with a paradox. If these are 'Rich' tea, where are 'Poor' tea biscuits and what on earth do they taste like? Well they would have to be fairly ropey old affairs because the Rich Tea itself is not exactly a self contained one biscuit flavour festival. What flavour it does manage to achieve comes from the various sugars in the recipe, sucrose, maltose and some glucose plus a little bit of salt...

There are attempts at turning Rich Teas into something more palatable, covering them in chocolate or sticking some sort of cream up the middle, but it's all a bit hopeless really. So what are they good for? Dunking of course. The Rich tea can drive even the staunchest anti-dunker to dunk. The Rich Tea then comes into its own, convincing you that you have done the right thing by giving the eater the reward of sloppy hot Rich Tea, which is actually better than what you started with.

What else are Rich teas for? Humility. Through Rich Tea biscuits we learn that not all biscuits have been blessed with a fantastic taste, and that there is space in this world for dry bland biscuits that you can dunk in tea.

I couldn't have said it better myself.  Rich Teas may be dull beyond belief (imagine a bland arrowroot cookie sort of thing), but they do make an excellent base for Tiffin Bars.  What else goes into Tiffin Bars? I'm glad you asked, because I took a carefully stage photo for just this occasion:

The Golden Syrup is back, along with cocoa powder, butter, raisins and a whole lotta chocolate for the topping.

And now for the recipe.  Note: this recipe includes metric measurements and weights, because I'm gradually getting all metric-ified with cooking.  Also, I now have access to a nice little digital scale in the kitchen.  This is because my housemate Paul, who previously only ventured into the kitchen to microwave something that came frozen in a black plastic dish, or to get a plate for his pizza delivery, has recently undergone a total cooking transformation.  He now owns (and shares) the aforementioned digital scales, and a meat thermometer, and a cast iron griddle pan, and a cupboard of herbs and spices AND two different cookbooks, including one by Heston Blumenthal. He also admitted that he has looked into the cost of a sous vide cooker. This is roughly the culinary equivalent of going from driving a tricycle to piloting the space shuttle.  Way to go Paul!

Paul's scale, and other good things.

Chocolate Tiffin Bars, adapted from a recipe at Allreicpes.co.uk

Ingredients:

110g (4 oz) butter (half a cup?)
2 tablespoons white sugar
3 tablespoons golden syrup, 1 reserved (Again, I caution you: coat the spoon and yourself with a bit of oil before you open the golden syrup tin)
4 teaspoons cocoa powder
225g (8 oz) Rich Tea biscuits, crushed (This is exactly 26 regulation-sized Rich Tea biscuits.)
1 cup raisins
250 grams chocolate divided between dark, milk and white. (That's about 3 large bars, don't scrimp!  You could probably substitute chocolate chips here, but don't get me started on the availability of chocolate chips over here again...)

Method:

1. In a saucepan, melt the butter, sugar, syrup and cocoa over medium heat, stirring when it seems appropriate.
2. Put the Rich Tea biscuits into a large ziploc bag (or other bag) and crush them until the pieces are, on average, about the size of a large pea.  Some will be bigger, and some will be dust.  That's all good.
3. Add the biscuits and raisins to the saucepan when everything is melted. Stir to combine. 
4. At this point I decided that everything was a bit to dry and crumbly to hold together, so I struck out on my own and boldly added a bit more golden syrup.  (It's a genetic thing.  I think my mother has never met a recipe she didn't "improve".)  So: stir in the last tablespoon of golden syrup.
5. Pour the mixture into an 8x8 cake pan lined with foil or parchment paper and press it all down.
6. Melt the different chocolates individually and swirl them together over the mixture in the pan to create a pleasing and tasty marbled effect.
7. Put the pan in the fridge and leave for about 1 hour to set. 
8. To serve cut into about 20 pieces.

The completed yummy Tiffin Bars

And that's all I've got for you tonight.  Frankly, I'm a bit surprised I found the time and energy to make anything today, let alone photograph and blog the whole business too.  Work in getting busier and busier and I honestly just felt like vegetating all night.  However, I'm glad I didn't.  Not as glad, though, as I am to be going to bed.  Right now.