This weekend I went to London for the first time in nearly two and a half years. It’s a bit busy for my tastes – I’ve become a lot more claustrophobic than I used to be and I really hate crowds nowadays. But I’d been hanging onto a ticket to see Queen + Adam Lambert for nearly three years and it was time to use it. It’s the last ticket from pre-pandemic that was waiting for use and I’m ok with going to a packed o2 Arena in a medical mask. Same goes for the Tube, an absolute hotbed of uncontrolled germs but if I minimise Tube use and wear a mask, I figured I was ok with London by now.
Friday
In order to not be packed onto a train with strangers for three hours, I drove up to Richmond and got the train fifteen minutes up the track to Waterloo. It was incredibly hot, as you may remember, but at that time of day, the train was pretty empty and it had air-conditioning. My purpose in going to Waterloo was to walk up the road to cross Westminster Abbey off my Before It Burns Down list. I know it’s been more than three years since I started that and I’ve made precious little progress with it but if you don’t remember, after the Notre Dame fire of April 2019, I realised that the great medieval cathedrals of the world aren’t necessarily going to wait until I get around to visiting them. I’ve not made great progress: five medieval English Cathedrals, one Baroque, two I can’t quite put a period to but somewhere in between, two modern and also a couple of Gothic glories in France and Italy.
The thing is, I’m kind of accustomed to cathedrals not being packed to the rafters with tourists. Oh, it was so full! Remember that thing about being more claustrophic than I used to be? Hating crowds? Add in being cranky from the heat and you’ve got me ready to slap just about everyone in the building, which isn’t very Christian of me. In my defence, I’m not one, though. And it’s expensive! It’s twice the price of Winchester and it’s a one-off, whereas I get to go back to Winchester as many times as I like for a year. If I seem to be harping about Winchester, it’s my beloved, it’s the one I know best and it’s the one that’s most comparable to Westminster Abbey.
I was given an audio guide but by the time I’d been to the first listening point, I’d realised I could not visit this cathedral in such a big busy group. It doesn’t help that the first stop funnels everyone straight into an aisle, which is the narrowest place and not a good place for someone who’s decided it’s too crowded. I ripped the audio guide off and swore to do the reading later. Anyway, going where I wanted at my own pace was good.
So, Westminster has a big soaring Perpendicular Gothic nave. It looks a bit like Winchesters’s – tall, soaring (yes, I know I used that word only in the last sentence but it’s the only suitable description!) and so light and airy. But Winchester’s is bigger! It has the longest Gothic nave in Europe, I think. I don’t know if it’s just plain the longest nave or if it’s the longest of its particular architectural style. Then I headed east towards the middle and through a little archway into the quire. That archway was spectacular. It’s all reds and blues and golds and absolutely gorgeous. I’ve never seen anything quite like it except in Sainte-Chapelle’s Lower Chapel. Oh, I exclaimed out loud at the sight of it! When did I become a church architecture nerd? And when did I take a fancy to intricate Gothic?
Then we were funnelled around the east end and into the Lady Chapel which has lots of royal tombs but as far as I’m concerned, the best bit is the utterly glorious lace-like fan vaulted ceiling – pendant fan vaulted!. I think the east end of Christ Church has something similar but this is higher and bigger and just better. Stop and look up and just keep staring. I mean, it’s fascinating to discover that the bones of Elizabeth I are lying here but but but have you seen the ceiling?
I quite enjoyed Poets’ Corner – I hadn’t realised it was literally going to be a corner (of the south transept, to be precise) with large clean clear easy-read literary graves, or monuments. If you put too many graves under the floor of a medieval monument, your floor will colllapse and bring the walls down and you’ll also cause disease in the congregation: see what happened to Bath Abbey.
If that place hadn’t been so horrifyingly busy, I could have spent hours roaming around that Gothic magnificence. Because you go in via the north transept rather than the west door in the traditional way, it took a while to get my head around what I was seeing. The nave isn’t so long compared to the other ends that it’s immediately obvious which way round this church goes – or perhaps it’s the amount of stuff in the middle and the sheer number of tourists that confuses my brain. But I’m glad I’ve seen it and it is very beautiful.
I also popped into the Chapter House and I’m very glad I did. Most of the floor is covered with carpet but it’s covering up – aka preserving – a lot of medieval tiles. Once again, you’ll find a good pavement of these in various conditions in Winchester Cathedral. I’d have liked to see the entire expanse here but I accept that sometimes you have to cover things up for their own good.
Next I walked back to the river and got on the Clipper. Last time I was here they were sponsored by MBNA. Now it’s Uber Boat. All the blue signage has been replaced with monochrome signage and worse, the blue exteriors have been painted black. I’m accustomed to travelling east to west rather than west to east and I’m usually on first thing on Sunday morning rather than rush hour on Friday. Still, I naively expected everyone to pile off by the time we reached Tower Bridge, which is approximately when the driver puts the hammer down. Empty boat for the eastern end of the trip! But no. We remained packed to the gunwales all the way. At least I was in the open air and I love the feeling of that boat really going for it. Ask me for a London recommendation and it’s always the Clippers. I got off at Cutty Sark and took the DLR north to Pudding Mill Lane to stay in a hotel made out of shipping containers.
That was fun! It was opposite the ABBA Arena and probably constructed explicitly for that reason. Unfortunately, because it’s the only venue of any kind within walking distance, it’s become the location for the pre- and post-show parties so I arrived to the sound of deafening ABBA and a lot of Ladies of A Certain Age in tie-dye and flares. Still, I couldn’t exactly complain about people like my mum being stuck in the 70s because, as I’ve already said, I was here to see Queen. But at least I wasn’t there to see it the first time around!
Having sweated through my clothes, I had a quick shower, changed into my 2018 tour t-shirt and got back on the DLR. Yes, I do like to pretend to drive it!
Well, I didn’t have “fancy a 74-year-old” on my 2022 bingo card. I’ve seen Brian May live at least twice before in my life and while I adore Queen and know he’s a unique and brilliant musician he’s never tickled that particular corner of my brain before. Oh, Adam Lambert is wonderful and I loved his sequins and his crown but Brian May in a military-style jacket and a quiet smile… well.
I’d left the air conditioning on in my hotel cupboard so when I got back on a sweltering night, it was to a lovely cool room. True, the after-party was going on but between the noise the hotel itself makes and the AC on all night, I hardly noticed the party after I’d closed the door. It’s a tiny room. There’s a double bed with a bunk bed over the foot end and a bathroom smaller than the average hotel wardrobe. I’m reasonably happy with it for the price and for the vicinity to the o2 but imagine three people in this room!
Saturday
I got up in the morning, had my hotel breakfast (minus the toast, since it took until 9am for them to find some bread and butter) and then got on the Overground. I had been considering a swim and I’d thrown my swimming stuff in my bag and since I was heading for Hampstead with my swimsuit under my clothes, I didn’t really have any choice but to go to the Bathing Ponds. I’d been considering Brockwell Lido but I need the wild swim more than I need a lane swim so off I went. I had to get to the point where I couldn’t back out, you see.
Now. I don’t like cold water. I don’t like deep water. I don’t particularly like opaque water. I certainly wasn’t joining the adventurers in leaping off the platform. I took the steps, thank you. Nice and slow, pause on each one. The last one wasn’t as deep as I wanted so I hung onto the rails and slowly dipped. I don’t know if it’s a physical response to the cold water or a psychological response to “I’m scared of this thing” but cold water makes me hyperventilate. If I’d jumped straight in, I’d have inhaled several lungfuls of water in the first three seconds and drowned almost instantly. I know I do it and I deal with it. I hung onto the side of the steps so anyone who wanted to use them could still while I was clinging to them and tried to breathe like a normal human being. Got one arm under the water at a time, mostly because I was gradually lowering myself into the water and my arms kind of come where the rest of me goes. Once I realised I was hanging from the bar underneath the walkway, I realised I was as fully submerged as I was going to get, I was trying to get my breathing under control and it was time to swim. Two arm’s-lengths away was the bar under the side of the diving platform. It’ll take two seconds to swim over there. Let go and swim.
I did it. I hung on to the new bar for a moment before swimming back. I’m in the water. I’m swimming. I’m still inclined to be a little panicky but I’ve demonstrated to myself that I can swim in this as competently as in my warm crystal-clear swimming pool. So I swam out to the nearest life ring. There are several of them anchored around the pond for people to hang onto and socialise on, a bit like tables at bars. The nearest was only a few metres away so I swam to it. I can swim. I did swim. Once I’m swimming, I’m ok.
I stayed there for an hour. Three times I swam out to the far end and back. I can swim. I’m a competent swimmer. I’ve been a competent swimmer since I was about four years old. Once I’d got over the coldness and the idea that this is deep – yes, it is, but I can’t see it and if I’m swimming, I don’t have my feet on the bottom anyway – it was fine. I was quite proud of myself. I swam a mile on Friday morning before driving to London. It’s kind of silly to be proud of swimming 450m (it’s about 75m out to the far end) when 24 hours ago you did four times that just because the water looks different. Four times? If I’d swum out to the end twelve times, that would have been the equivalent of the 80 lengths I did on Friday morning? Well. Next time I’m in London, I know what I’m going to try.
And then I got the Overground back to my car in Richmond. There was rugby on at Twickenham so the journey was spent crushed up against most of London which put paid to my theory that the Overground is airier and less plaguey than the Tube. Still, I had my adorable dinosaur mask on. I admit, had I known it was going to be like that I’d have gone for the full medical mask but at least the fabric ones are close-fitting.
It actually felt like quite a lot to squeeze into 24 hours – I got back 15 minutes before I’d have fallen into the next pricing band at the car park and paid something truly awful. Westminster Abbey, a boat trip up the Thames, Queen and a wild (lifeguarded) swim. Well done me. And did I spend Sunday doing absolutely nothing? I don’t know – it’s still Saturday evening as I’m writing this even though it’s Monday it’s being published. I hope I replanted my radishes and had a good lazy day.