Dead boring

17 February, 2012 at 1:50 pm | Posted in Avoid like the plague | 3 Comments
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Quatermass and the Pit

It’s the stuff of a science fiction writer’s dreams. Excavating in London one finds something buried that should have remained entombed forever.

In the late 1950s BBC Television transmitted the Quatermass trilogy, culminating in Quatermass and The Pit, in which a dangerous object is unearthed at a building site in Knightsbridge (of which more later). Bringing this film genre up to date the 2002 film Reign of Fire has London Underground construction workers penetrating a cave in which a hibernating dragon is awoken.

Next month tunnelling commences on CrossRail, Europe’s largest construction project, to bore over 26 miles of tunnel beneath London, a city which has after two thousand years many buried secrets.

The Black Death of 1348-49 wiped out half of London’s population and put such a strain on traditional churchyards two new internment areas were created. “No Man’s Land” was located just outside Smithfield and its annex at Spitalfields which is was reported swallowed over 50,000 souls.

The plague of 1665 was for London much worse. At least 68,000 people perished, that was out of a population at the time of half-a-million. To put that into context, should it occur in modern London it would equate to 800,000. With London having grown exponentially in the succeeding years since the Black Death, by 1665 it was now one of the world’s largest cities. The cramped and unhygienic living conditions, coupled with one of the hottest summers London had known, meant that plague spread fast, and this was not helped by the culling of cats and dogs who had helped keep down the rat population, the carrier of the infected fleas. Although recent research has hypothesised that humans were the main culprit of the plague’s spread.

Within just a few months, with graveyards overflowing, plague pits were sunk in Fulham, Gypsy Hill, Tothill Fields, Westminster and Kensington – the site of the fictionalised Quatermass Pit. Another, the Great Pit of Aldgate, measured 40ft x 15ft and was 20ft deep which consumed 1,114 bodies within a fortnight.

In modern times when the Piccadilly Line was being constructed, in a scene reminiscent
of Quatermass, workmen found that the section between Knightsbridge and South Kensington stations had to be rerouted to avoid a plague pit, this has resulted in the line swerving dramatically.

Modern Aldgate station is built above the Great Pit of Aldgate, while at Green Park during tunnelling for the Victoria Line the boring machine ploughed straight into an unmarked plague pit. On the Bakerloo Line at the south end lie two tunnels; one exits to the line at Elephant and Castle, the other to a dead end to stop runaway trains and behind the end wall is another plague pit.

The majority of records for the location of burial pits are piecemeal and parochial. Most parishes had to resort to larger pits simply because of the sheer number of bodies they had to dispose of. These pits can be traced in the parish churchwarden’s accounts, where payment for digging was recorded. A rather illuminating if gruesome map has been produced by Public Grief Junkie.

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Chinese Takeaways – Second Helpings

2 August, 2011 at 1:14 am | Posted in Avoid like the plague | 2 Comments
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Hamleys

Be it Boris; Ken; Bikes; or Cabbies, nothing it seems polarises Londoner’s opinion more than rickshaws. When last writing about these three-wheeled wonders I received more comments than for almost any other subject. So at the risk of being accused of self-interest and ignoring the environmental advantages of using this mode of transport in the Capital, I offer this advice before you decide to be taken for a ride.

Are the vehicles safe?

There have been no major collisions which have resulted in death involving rickshaws, however the ride can be very hairy when traffic is busy, for example during the rush when the theatres finish their performances, or riding at speed around Hyde Park Corner. The rickshaws owned by the large companies who run them, known to them as pedicabs, are all members of the London Pedicabs Operators Association (“LPOA”) and abide by their own code of conduct. They claim to have regular safety checks carried out and a well maintained fleet of vehicles. Unfortunately only their voluntary code of conduct protects the public and therefore is not subject to external scrutiny. The London Taxi Drivers Association (“LTD”) commissioned the Transport Research Laboratory (“TRL”) to undertake an independent safety evaluation of the type of rickshaw most commonly operated on the streets of the capital. TRL concluded that rickshaws provided “little or no protection in the event of almost any accident and posed a significant risk of passengers being dragged along in direct contact with the road surface”; indeed the vehicles were considered to be so dangerous that TRL banned its technicians from testing them at speeds above 9 miles per hour.

Road safety?

The community police make regular checks to ensure that their lights function are turned on and give these vehicles a cursory check when they have the time, which in the West End at night, is rarely done. Rickshaws usually have seat belts, usually lap belts, and are not designed to carry more than three passengers; if there are four or more passengers you should use a second rickshaw. If you do need a second rickshaw, be warned, do not allow them to race; they always seem to want to outperform their colleagues, much to the horror of oncoming drivers. This rickshaw habit of racing around the streets of London at speeds far in excess of 9 mph prompted the LTDA to commission a further study by TRL to enable the handling and stability of these vehicles to be tested by means of computerised simulation, thereby eliminating the risk of physical injury to TRL technicians. Their conclusions reinforced their original findings.

Insurance?

Contrary to popular belief, the rickshaws run by the main companies definitely carry full public liability insurance; this is part of their voluntary code of practice. However, if you exceed the stated number of passengers you may invalidate the insurance. In addition, unlike all other types of regulated public transport an insurance certificate is not displayed on the vehicle so potential punters have no means of checking.

What do they charge?

The fare is a matter of negotiation between the driver and the passengers. Most of the rickshaw companies charge a basic flat rate fare per passenger (between £3.50 and £4) and then the driver negotiates his fee on top of that. How much more you pay is dependent on your negotiating skills and how far you are going. It’s no different than when travelling in a Third World country; you agree a fair price before you get in the cab and then stick to it and don’t listen to the excuses for increasing the fare at the end of your journey. You will find they expect a tip as well, 10 per cent is more than adequate.

Who are the drivers?

The drivers are thought to be mostly young “foreign students” trying to make a bit of money to help fund their studies, very few will be English students, but with university fees set to rise who knows? A few may have shadier backgrounds and unlike drivers of any other transport, they don’t have background checks even though they regularly carry children. If working for one of the larger companies they will have received training via the LPOA. This includes complying with a voluntary Drivers Code of Conduct and training to level three of the National Standards for cycling. The driver should be wearing a name badge; follow the road rules and make sure that passengers are buckled in on every ride. I have yet to observe this in practice.

How legal are they?

In 2003 the LTDA, in an attempt to rid the capital’s streets of rickshaws, launched its own landmark private prosecution (“Oddy v. Bugbugs”). The Association’s challenge eventually progressed to the High Court where Justice Pichford ruled that, due to loopholes in the law, the antics of rickshaw operators and riders were surprisingly, entirely legal, despite the risks which they could pose to unsuspecting passengers. The High Court ruled that an ancient Metropolitan Carriage Act defined rickshaws as “stage carriages” which is the loophole that permits them to legally ply for hire. There is not yet an officially recognised “vehicle definition” for rickshaws and at the present time they are still officially classed as pedal cycles which is another loophole and automatically exempts them from insurance and parking restrictions including standing on pavements and obstructing theatre exits.

There are thought to be 800 rickshaws (double the number two years ago) plying for hire in London, again that cannot be corroborated as the operators are not required to keep records – at least it’s not as bad as Dakar who have approximately 800,000.

Some have suggested that rickshaws be restricted to the Royal Parks as a fun ride for tourists, but commercial vehicles are prohibited from using the parks, again another grey area, are they commercial? Unfortunately Parliament would have to introduce primary legislation to ban them from London or specify their role in providing transport, and MPs it would seem are more concerned with their involvement with newspaper editors than ensuring the safety of rickshaw passengers.

Love them or loath them rickshaws are here to stay for the foreseeable future.

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Boney’s Body Parts

22 July, 2011 at 1:42 am | Posted in Avoid like the plague | Leave a comment
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All cabbies know the location of Napoleon Bonaparte’s nose but few would have realised that at Christie’s in 1972 an appendage belonging to the Emperor of a more personal nature appeared at auction.

Bonaparte died in May 1821 and with claims as to the manner of his demise no fewer than 17 witnessed the autopsy which was carried out the day after he died by his own doctor, Francesco Antommarchi in the company of seven English doctors and two of Napoleon’s aides, a priest named Vignali and a manservant. The Emperor instructed that his heart be removed first and sent to his wife Marie-Louise but that vanished before it could be delivered. The stomach was examined next and it was generally agreed that cancer was the cause of death, although recent claims include the suggestion that he was poisoned. Nothing else is recorded as having been removed during that surgical examination.

Decades later it was commonly rumoured that Napoleon’s penis had been cut off and had been stored away carefully during the autopsy. No recorded confirmation exists of this and if true one can only suppose that when all 17 had their backs to the corpse Boney’s manhood was quickly snipped off with nobody noticing afterwards he had something important missing.

However, in a 1913 lecture, Sir Arthur Keith, conservator of the Hunterian Collection at the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons (certain Napoleonic organs were supposedly in the museum’s possession), ventured what seems to be the indisputable opinion that, given the number of witnesses, the brevity of the autopsy (less than two hours), and the fact that the guy was, come on, Napoleon, the loss of the penis would not easily have escaped notice.

Napoleon’s friend Vignali who administered the last rites was left a large sum of money in Napoleon’s will as well as numerous unspecified “personal effects”, and later Napoleon’s manservant claimed In a memoir published in 1852 in the Revue des mondes that Vignali had indeed been the culprit who removed the body part, although the claim was never corroborated.

In 1916 Vignali’s descendants sold his collection of Napoleonic artefacts to a British rare book firm, which in 1924 sold the lot for about $2,000 to a Philadelphia bibliophile, A. S. W. Rosenbach. The inventory at the time refers to “the mummified tendon taken from Napoleon’s body during the post-mortem”.

During the 1930s A. S. Rosenbach was displaying the “tendon” in a blue velvet case and describing it as Napoleon’s penis. It later would be the centrepiece of a display at the Museum of French Art in New York, how that could have been described as art is anybody’s guess – but Damien Hurst get away with it. A newspaper at the time contradicted Napoleon’s assertion that he was well endowed describing the exhibit as “something like a maltreated strip of buckskin shoelace or shrivelled eel . . . one inch long and resembling a grape”.

At Christie’s the London auction house in 1972 the putative penis was put up for sale complete with the velvet-lined case, but having failed to reach its reserve price was withdrawn - probably not for the first time when it was in full working order – leading a scandal mongering British tabloid to trumpet, “NOT TONIGHT, JOSEPHINE!”. Eight years later it popped up again in a Paris auction house and was brought rather appropriately, by John K. Lattimer, a retired professor of urology for $3,000. At the time of writing the penis is still, as it were, in the family of the late Professor Lattimer’s hands.

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Rats in a trap

12 July, 2011 at 1:25 am | Posted in Avoid like the plague | Leave a comment
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ratsOld petrol stations never die . . . they just refill; or so we have seen these past few years in London. First they display their shiny yellow, green or blue and red corporate colours, and then some convert to a less well known petrol brand. The next stage is for east Europeans to take over the forecourt and use it as a car wash. The premises then lie dormant for a period before the bulldozers move in and before the next fuel hike a shiny new block of “executive” flats will have been built with one of the ubiquitous Tesco Metro stores below. Where once stood somewhere cabbies could refuel now occupying the site are 20 flats.

Every small piece of land is now ripe for high density development and in so doing increasing London’s population exponentially. In my area small blocks of disused garages – which its local residents would prefer to leave full of junk while putting their cars in the road – the local authority has sold to developers to well . . . develop.

All over London there is evidence of its burgeoning population growth. Utility companies have to upgrade their networks to accommodate demand; new traffic management systems created trying to reduce congestion; and a public transport system unable to cope.

In a study many years ago rats, which are social creatures and like to live together, were put in an enclosure sufficient for their needs. Over time this enclosure was reduced in size forcing the rats to live closer to each other than would have been natural in the wild. At first the rats were happy in their environment, but as their conditions became more cramped they started to fight and eventually killed each other.

Everyone wants a piece of the action that London can offer. Graduates migrate towards the capital for that elusive top job, European workers know that their best chance of seeking employment is here, and of course the foolhardy still believe that our streets really are paved with gold. With London’s population now above 12 million, and growing, population density can only increase.

That is our problem, with such a diverse population we don’t have shared values. Andrew Marr’s recent three part documentary Megacities identified 21 cities in the world with more than 10 million inhabitants and predicted that by 2050 over 70 per cent of the world’s population will live in a city. I’m not a lover of London’s rickshaws so how would I cope in Dakar were people leaving rural areas are attracted to the Indian city and their first job is as a rickshaw rider – there are over 800,000 of them there.

Tokyo for instance has mostly an indigenous population with little immigration, with their shared cultural manners friction was kept to a minimum, while in the melting pot that is London and most other Megacities, as in the rat experiment, our aggression lies just below the surface.

Overcrowding, poor public transport, unemployment, with this combustible mix one day it might be more than a traffic jam that we have to contend with.

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Paris Syndrome

1 July, 2011 at 12:43 pm | Posted in Avoid like the plague | 1 Comment
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te-paris_taxi_sign

For some Japanese tourists their first taste of Europe has proved overwhelming. Coming from a culture that espouses civility and respect, they had expected European capitals to have the same degree of controlled manners as that of Tokyo’s 33 million inhabitants.

For someone who drives daily on London’s roads, experiencing the rude and aggressive attitudes of my fellow road users and some of my passengers, it came as a surprise to learn that some Japanese have been hospitalised by this culture shock.

It was a Japanese psychiatrist working in France, Professor Hiroaki Ota, who first identified the syndrome some 20 years ago. Named the Paris Syndrome from where this condition first surfaced, presumably after a Japanese tourist took a ride in one of its capital’s famously grumpy cabbie’s vehicles, Japanese tourists are now being forewarned before embarking on a European tour.

Paris Syndrome affects around 20 tourists a year, mainly women in their 30s with high expectations of what may be their first trip abroad. The Japanese embassy has a 24-hour hotline for those suffering from severe culture shock, and can help find hospital treatment for anyone in need. This year alone, the Japanese embassy in Paris has had to repatriate four people with a doctor or nurse on board the plane to help them get over the shock.

It appears to spring from the shock of the disparity between the popular image of Paris – of accordions, flowers and cobbled streets seen in the film Amélie– they do not realised that within our lifetimes, those cobble stones have been prised up and thrown in anger.

Around a million Japanese travel to France every year. However, the only permanent cure is to go back to Japan – never to return to Paris – next time visit London where cabbies are courtesy personified.

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Rich men’s basements

2 November, 2010 at 1:02 am | Posted in Avoid like the plague | 4 Comments
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Recently I was taking a couple home after they had been to the theatre. They were the quiet, courteous generation that grew up in the 1930s and 40s, expensively well dressed in a subdued way rather than the vulgar and scruffy apparel favoured by the rich today.

After a short conversation about their theatre visit, I was directed to their home in Belgravia. Travelling down Chester Row my customers directed me to stop just before a house shrouded in builder’s hoardings and with a large skip outside in the road.

“I see your neighbour is having some work done”, I remarked when we had stopped.

While his wife said goodbye and thanking me as she walked towards her front door, her husband approached my driver’s window to pay, upon which he metamorphosised from a genial gentleman to Victor Meldrew. “These houses weren’t built with deep foundations, they are digging under the house and we can hear their work all day, the noise is driving my wife made and I’m just waiting for my house to subside, cracks have already appeared in our walls”

A sad fact is that a new generation is moving to Belgravia nowadays and many are doubling the size and value of their houses by burrowing underground.

chester row

 Now my customer’s predictions would seem prophetic, for while adding an underground cinema and a gym to a perfectly respectable late Georgian house in Chester Row a skip has fallen into a hole in the road outside the house, spewing water out of the hole and flooding the neighbouring properties in the process.

Why would you spend the sum of a respectable semi, to live underground if not for a vast profit? Who would want to live underground we’re not moles. Already predictably there is the threat of legal action as the conversion was originally opposed by most of the road’s residents.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing but a little research of Belgravia’s history might have given the developers cause for concern.

The land owned by Lord Grosvenor was originally marshy land with the River Westbourne running through it. In the 1820s Thomas Cubitt was granted the right to develop the houses that we see today. The nomenclature “Speculative Builder” given to the developer should tell you everything you need to know about Cubitt’s Belgravia. Built for a quick profit, much like today’s developers, they would not have been expected to last nearly 200 years. The lax building regulations of the day almost certainly precluded the insistence of adequate foundations, load bearing joists and cavity walls.

When building a single story kitchen extension my borough planners wanted me to dig three metre footings, enough to support St. Pauls Cathedral, so why cannot the same be applied in conservation areas?

A neighbour commenting summed it up perfectly:

This entire fiasco represents a massive collective failure for all involved in designing, approving and attempting to build overly ambitious, vulgar additions to listed buildings in a conservation area.

How much misery do residents have to endure before we learn to properly balance long term interest against reckless pursuit of short-term profit?

 

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Raising the dead

3 September, 2010 at 1:08 am | Posted in Avoid like the plague | 3 Comments
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Just outside the City’s northern boundary on City Road you will find Bunhill Fields Burial Ground, where office workers go to eat their lunch. Here in this little oasis of tranquillity the small path traversing the graveyard appears to have sunk below ground level.

Dame Mary Pace In the middle of the 19th century London’s population was buried into just 218 acres; and when poet William Blake died in 1827 and was buried at Bunhill Fields, along with 120,000 other individuals, he was placed on top of three others; later four more were placed on top of him. Where the National Gallery now stands on the north side of Trafalgar Square was once the burial ground of St Martin’s-in-the-Fields church, about the size of a bowling green interred within it were 70,000 bodies.

In 1859 it was decided to clear the crypt of its thousands of bodies (the underground space is now a rather good, if not creepy restaurant) and the exhumed bodies were lost to posterity. Among them are furniture makes Thomas Chippendale; royal mistress Nell Gwyn; scientist Robert Boyle; painter Nicholas Hilliard; and the original Winston Churchill father of the first Duke of Marlborough.

The City church’s main income came from burials, at the Eron Baptist Church, now the site of London School of Economics, 12,000 bodies were interred in its cellar in just 19 years. It was a rare service in which several worshipers didn’t faint from the smell of rotting flesh.

No one in their right mind would go to Bunhill Fields graveyard to witness a burial; apart from the sight of the odd decaying limb the putrid smell was downright dangerous.

A Dr Walker testified to a Parliamentary inquiry that graveyard workers before disturbing a coffin would drill a hole in the side, insert a tube, and burn off the escaping gases, for “to inhale this gas undiluted with atmospheric air, is instant death”, the committee solemnly later reported.

The problem was solved in Victorian London with suburban cemeteries, site on sandy or gravel soils, allowing the bodies to decompose naturally. In 1843 John Claudues Loudon published a guide to these new cemeteries, which essentially were parks. Three were built, unfortunately he could not avail himself of their benefits, dying before his idea was put into action.

While Londoners nowadays might go to a football match at weekends, Victorian’s weekend recreational activity was to stroll, take the air (if that was the right phrase) and have a picnic beside their deceased family member’s mortal remains.

London Necropolis Terminus By 1854 the impressively named London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company had a dedicated private railway station near Waterloo to their cemetery at Brookwood in Surrey, offering three classes of funeral service and two stations one for Anglicans and the other for non-conformists, railway workers dubbed it the “Stiffs Express”. All there is now to show for this Victorian enterprise is the sad entrance pictured.

So as you chomp into your brie and rocket on wholemeal sandwich courtesy of Prêt a Manger while strolling in Bunhill Fields look for the grave of Dame Mary Pace (pictured above) who died 4th March 1728 and “In 67 months she was tap’d 66 times. Had taken away 240 gallons of water; Without ever repining at her case or ever fearing the operation”. And thank you lucky starts it’s the 21st century.
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Groundhog Day

2 February, 2010 at 2:32 am | Posted in Avoid like the plague | 8 Comments
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As you go about your busy lives, you might be forgiven to having missed this important date, for today is Groundhog Day. The day, according to American folklore that if a groundhog emerging from its burrow on this day fails to see its shadow, it will leave the burrow, signifying that winter will soon end. Only in America could a ceremony like this about a rodent have been dreamed up, and made an annual holiday to boot.

Like Bill Murray in the 1993 film of the same name, I seem to be experiencing a recurring nightmare. Every day I go to work or sit down to write for CabbieBlog, it’s the same problem over and over again, yes it’s that Rickshaw post again.

RickshawsAs unbelievable as it seems, in London in the 21st Century there is still a major problem with Rickshaws. Whilst the third world is doing all it can to lose the last of these degrading pedal powered contraptions, some unscrupulous operators are clogging up the streets of the Metropolis with these dangerous and sometimes illegal vehicles.

It’s not a matter of “if” rather than “when” a serious accident or fatality involving a London rickshaw takes place. The rickshaw drivers do not have criminal record checks, and are not tested on road safety or their knowledge of London streets, with the result that the streets of Soho and Covent Garden have become a dangerous free for all with over 400 plying for hire and already one London pedicab driver has been convicted of raping a passenger.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that riders include illegal immigrants, foreign students who are ignoring the terms under which they are in the country by working longer hours than allowed and others who, under any sensible licensing regime, would be considered unsuitable for this kind of work. Do they have a rickshaw rider recruiting office in Krakow, because their numbers seem to rise exponentially by the week?

The safety of these vehicles is horrendous, the Transport Research Laboratory looked at the possible safety implications of allowing the continued use of these vehicles for hire and reward in London. Its scientists warned that “any impact with a motor vehicle” was likely to result in “serious injury to both passengers and riders”. Transport Research Laboratory also warned that “The standard of braking for a Rickshaw fell well short of that expected of a car”. The London Taxi Drivers’ Association are calling on Westminster Council and the Greater London Authority to bring a halt to London’s further decline into third world status and seek statutory powers to ban Rickshaws from the streets. With health and safety becoming a mantra to every council employee, how is it that these contraptions are ever allowed to ply for hire in London’s streets? They congregate in large numbers outside theatres, shops and restaurants blocking the entrances and exits as well as the pavements outside, forcing pedestrians to negotiate the traffic as they walk in the road and blocking fire escapes.

As a result of the media attention into all the problems associated with the Rickshaws and serious concerns over their safety, the Rickshaw operators are pushing for a simple licensing system that would allow them to continue working unhindered. London’s taxi drivers along with bus operators and drivers have to contend with the traffic problems and congestion and feel that the only way forward is to “Ban! Don’t License”.

Boris should stop worrying about his bike hire scheme and concentrated his attention on why London councils allow three or four children at a time to balance on these death traps and then be driven the wrong way up a one-way street.

I’m going to lay down now, I feel so tired after that rant, but I’ve got a good idea what will confront me when I wake up.
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Wish you were here

8 May, 2009 at 12:35 am | Posted in Avoid like the plague | 1 Comment
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Union Jack Hat If you go on holiday to London don’t, I repeat, don’t buy me a souvenir as a memento of your visit. The poor tourists who come to these shores face a bewildering array of souvenir crap to purchase. But it doesn’t end with the legitimate shops which proliferate on our capital, walk across Westminster Bridge and you are confronted by the delights of figures made from bent wire, a busker playing the bagpipes or whistles to imitate birdsong.
Do you want a T-shirt with the worn joke on the front “my Dad went to London and all I got was this lousy “T” shirt”? Well, if you received that, thank your lucky stars. You could receive a cardboard policeman’s helmet, or how about a Union Jack umbrella. If you really want to stand out in the crowd try wearing a fur top hat in red, white and blue.

If this is not to your taste, go upmarket to the Buckingham Palace gift shop there are expensive reproductions of the Queen’s china, just like she uses at 4.00 every day for afternoon tea. There is something to be said for receiving a tea towel, naff, but useful, if only to mop up after the cat, and admittedly some Buckingham Palace gifts are tasteful, even if of dubious practicable value. They at least have the virtue of giving one a warm Regal glow, when partaking of one’s afternoon tea.

But who would treasure a gift of this rubbish. Forget receiving a postcard of Big Ben; send them a 20 year old picture of a spotty punk rocker.

These shops are so revered by the middle classes; they even had a competition instigated by The Institute of Architects to design a replacement souvenir shop when Hungerford Bridge was being improved.

But London isn’t the worst, not by a long shot, I recently went to Italy, and coaches have to pay over €200 just to park for a few hours in these tourist traps. At Pisa (of leaning tower fame) you run the gauntlet of dozens, and I mean dozens, of Africans selling fake designer goods, and the authorities had the temerity to put up a sign that read “it is illegal to purchase fake goods; offenders are subject to a €1,000 fine. Maybe London isn’t so bad after all, anyone want a die cast model of a taxi, going cheap?

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Pooh and the pig flu

2 May, 2009 at 2:45 pm | Posted in Avoid like the plague | Leave a comment

pooh

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