Christopher Harrod

London
October 2006 - February 2007

Hello People,
In my last letter I talked about my trip to Paris in March. This letter can be considered a prequal, covering October to February.
So this is London. From October 2006 to February 2007 I didn't stir out of the city. In fact, it is possible to live years inside the city and never go out. Many people do! There are so many museums, shows, restaurants and places of historic interest, there is almost no reason to leave London. I got to my first English party - a Guy Fawkes affair, with as many Republicans as there must have been in the Gunpowder Plot. The place was full of teachers, geographers and archeologists. I felt right at home. On the way home several of us clung together in a group. Apparently the district (Manor House) was a bad area, but by sticking together and marching purposefully to the tube station we avoided the attention of the groups of drunk youths in the area. Apparently if you are living in an area and you are mugged three times in three months, this is constitutes a bad area of London.
It is useful here to offer a few words about London geography. Most of the city is only four stories high. It is built mainly from brick. Each of the little satellite towns were rebuilt in Edwardian times, hence in Edwardian style. The regions between the villages were abruptly provided with in-fill housing during Victorian times, hence in Victorian style � this being the obvious result of the explosion of wealth created by the British Empire.
Each village is now a district of the city, with the road through the centre called the high street (hence Hampstead High Street etc). As this street leaves each district, its name changes, depending on where it is heading to. Thus the Road that heads from Bond St, past Regents Park to Finchley is called Finchley Road, then Regents Park Road, then Finchley High Street (it later becomes Ballard�s Lane, and a section of it is called Baker Street, but let�s not dwell on this). As you might imagine, this is very confusing. Add to that the fact that there are no straight roads (there is a term � �London straight� � to denote a road that is only slightly windy), and that rich and poor areas might only be a street apart, with the architecture being identical, and you can see the city is designed to confuse. In fact, another necessary measure of how poor a region of the city is is by how many betting shops there are in the high street. More than four, and you had better get a taxi out of there immediately.
An early experience was a visit to the Tate Modern Museum, where �Torso in Metal from `The Rock Drill' 1913-14� really moved me. The seventh floor of the Tate has a bar that looks over the Thames to St Paul�s Cathedral (picture 1). The view is amazing.

(1) St Pauls Cathedral, London

East and hence downstream of the Tate Modern is a riverside walk called the Queen�s Walk. This runs past the Millennium footbridge, the rebuilt Globe Theatre, the Golden Hind (picture 2), London Jail, and Southwark Cathedral.
I also got to sample a few expensive restaurants (and got food poisoning in one of them - I was sick for a week), and was introduced to those bastions of English cuisine � the kebab, and the full English breakfast. For these read - bland, greasy and unappetizing. I was also introduced to Portobello Road and its markets and pubs.
London also specialises in pubs. One every two city blocks over a city that is about 25 miles across. That is a lot of pubs! In fact there is a drinking game that consists of taking the tube to each stop, surfacing, having a pint in a pub, and then taking the tube to the next stop etc. A few hobbyists take this to extremes with some having drunk pints at upon exiting every tube station (287 of them!). In my first few days in London, I drank at some pretty run down pubs, complete with buxom barmaids, rough talking patrons and dogs fighting and / or copulating under the tables. I keep seeing things that remind me that London hasn't really changed in essence since the times of Jack the Ripper and Charles Dickens.
I was also invited to a concert in the church of St Johns in Smith Square, which was a fantastic experience:
* Elgar at St Johns *
Creatures of transendant light.
Talented. Inhuman. Perfected. Incandescant.
No blagging here, simply talent, skill and practice.
Young. Older.
Concentrating.
Weaving sound into fabric
Enfolding listeners and decking
The columns about us.
The conductor, drawing the skein
From the players
Beautiful big liquid drops of sound
Sound ending in a single beacon of light
A single sustained note
And then it's over
And we leave, regrettfully
Shaking the droplets from our coats.

(2) Golden Hind, Southwark, London

And then it was December. This far north, in mid-winter it gets dark at 4 pm. Mid-winter in London is a pretty miserable experience, and I finally understand the mid-winter solstice rituals of the celts, and why it is so important to burn the yule log and set round fruit puddings soaked in brandy on fire.
On Boxing Day, four days after the shortest day, I went to Kew Gardens. Apparently people don't go to Kew in winter, because there are no flowers. Well, I did. It turns out that Kew in winter is cold and full of gaunt leafless trees, crows, and very confused looking ducks.The palm house was nice - with lots of palm trees, and an example of a coco de mer seed (picture 3). This is the world's largest seed 40 - 50 cm in diameter and weighing 15-30 kg. One of the worlds rarest plants, it is forbidden to eat the fruit (which I am told taste like coconut). Once thought to grow on a tree at the bottom of the ocean, or to be a seaborne dispersed seed, coco de mer is now known to only occur on two islands in the Seychelles. The seed only floats if it is rotten, so it isn't water dispersed, which begs the question - how is it dispersed? Wind dispersal? Or is it eaten by something and carried around in the body of something (and WHAT could eat a 30 kg seed?). Perhaps coco de mer is a dinosaur dispersed plant...
Outside the palm house at Kew are statues - about ten of them - called the queen's beasts. These are all the mythical dragons, unicorns and griffons that appear on royal crests.
Despite this, I am told it was a mild winter, and in fact it didn't snow until the 23rd - 24th of January (picture 4). I also got to ride the London Eye (overrated) and visit Madame Tussauds (pretty good). Tussauds is quite interesting, with waxworks of the Duke of Wellingotn (Arthur Wellesley) and Napoleon both standing over a model of the Battle of Waterloo (it is said that Wellington was obsessed by Napoleon in later years, often going to Madame Tussauds to stand for hours regarding his waxwork effigy).
With five airports, the Channel Tunnel and Eurostar, London is closer to Europe than it is to the rest of Britain. In fact it is fair to say it is a European city, with a large proportion of many different races and relatively few English. Another surprise was the presence of the Black British. When the British Empire ended, an unexpected side effect was the influx of former colonised peoples into the city. There are about 1.2 million people in Britain of Jamacian or African origins. Of these 98 percent live in London, which means seven percent of people are Black British.

(3) Coco de Mer seed, Kew, London

* Black British *
I was walking the streets of Finchley,
Surrounded by young jewish youths,
Laughing and shouting for the bus,
Vibrantly living,
As if there had never been any holocaust.

I see people,
Tall, dark and elegant,
Lean, fit and strong,
Walking the streets of London.
As if they owned it,
Which they do.
And acting as if they've earned it,
Which they have.

Black British -
That is the name they have for themselves.
It would make Oswald Moseley spin in his grave.
I think they should attach a dynamo to him,
And use it to light Brixton.

(4) Snow, London

A few days after the first snow I took up an offer to visit the London Museum. London is ful of museums - but the London Museum specialises in the history of the city. it is located at London wall and the Barbican - a street that parallells the original Roman London Wall (picture 5), and on the site where one corner of the wall was once defended by a barbican. Displays inside start with prehistory - mastodon teeth, chipped stone age tools and the skull of the local lion(!) Later displays are of iron age spears, Ancient Briton remains such as helmets and shields. Then on to Roman coins, gravestones and statuery (notably the remains of a temple sacred to Minerva).
But my purpose here was quite specific - I had been invited to the bone room. Whenever people died in London, they were buried in cemetaries outside the city walls. Of course the city had expanded to cover the cemetaries, and now whenever new buildings are built, old bodies get found. The latest attractions were the contents of a monastry hospital. All told the London Museum holds 1,000 skeletons, each in a box about the length of a femur (It is amazing how compact people's skeletons are once they are dearticulated). My guide showed me how to sex a skeleton based on the shape of the skull or parts of the pelvis. I then got to see the skeleton database where each skeleton was catalogued, along with over 200 medical conditions that can be identified from bones alone (Ricketts of course, but also Syphillis, tuberculosis and many other diseases too). One minute you are deep in scientific enquiry, fascinated by what the bones reveal, and the next moment, you realise the green skull you are intently examining was once a person.

(5) London Wall, London

Throughout this period I had been performing my secondary role as a wargaming life support for my friend and neighbour, Steve. This consisted of playing lots of games of Crossfire . This is Arty Conliffe's World War Two small unit combat game. Typically we played a company each side, Russian versus German. We had pitched battles over hilltops ( Introductory game), and through cities ( Karkov and Stalingrad ), and historical games where Russians infiltrated into the German lines along riverbeds ( Kodorov ). Invariably the result was the same - Steve won (though sometimes narrowly). This came as no surprise - we've been battling for twenty three years, and I don't recall beating him once in that time.
We played other games as well. We had a few games of De Bellis Antiquitatis ( DBA ) and Hordes of the Things ( HOTTS ). And it was during one of our HOTTS games, the great moment came (Picture 6). In the midst of battle, my Frankish Knights rode down the infidel, scattering Saracensleft and right, and I roundly beat Steve. My pleasure at this was only compounded when we switched armies to experiment with other aspects of the rules. I took a huge mob of angry medieval villagers (hordes) and a few bowmen (presumably soldiers who had thrown their lot in with the mob) and a cleric (the little stirrer who had obviously whipped this lot up into a frenzy). Bowmen are powerful in HOTTS, moving fast, shooting long distance, and unworried by close terrain like forests. Hordes (from which the game gets its name) are no great shakes in combat, but have one peculiar advantage. When they die on the battlefield, by expending a command pip they can be brought back on at the back of the board. Quite by accident, I had built a super army - with bowmen for teeth, and the immortality of being able to being back ones hordes again and again. I can report with delight that I proceeded to whup Steve another two or three times that afternoon while he tried to find the correct opposing tactic.
Well, that's about all this time round.
Kind thoughts,
- Christopher

(6) Wargame, London

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Hello People, In my last letter I talked about my trip to Paris in March. This letter can be considered a prequal, covering October to February. So this is London. From October 2006 to February 2007 I didn't stir out of the city. In fact, it is possible to live years inside the city and never go out. Many people do! There are so many museums, shows, restaurants and places of historic interest, there is almost no reason to leave London. I got to my first English party - a Guy Fawkes affair, with as many Republicans as there must have been in the Gunpowder Plot. The place was full of teachers, geographers and archeologists. I felt right at home. On the way home several of us clung together in a group. Apparently the district (Manor House) was a bad area, but by sticking together and marching purposefully to the tube station we avoided the attention of the groups of drunk youths in the area. Apparently if you are living in an area and you are mugged three times in three months, this is constitutes a bad area of London. It is useful here to offer a few words about London geography. Most of the city is only four stories high. It is built mainly from brick. Each of the little satellite towns were rebuilt in Edwardian times, hence in Edwardian style. The regions between the villages were abruptly provided with in-fill housing during Victorian times, hence in Victorian style � this being the obvious result of the explosion of wealth created by the British Empire. Each village is now a district of the city, with the road through the centre called the high street (hence Hampstead High Street etc). As this street leaves each district, its name changes, depending on where it is heading to. Thus the Road that heads from Bond St, past Regents Park to Finchley is called Finchley Road, then Regents Park Road, then Finchley High Street (it later becomes Ballard�s Lane, and a section of it is called Baker Street, but let�s not dwell on this). As you might imagine, this is very confusing. Add to that the fact that there are no straight roads (there is a term � �London straight� � to denote a road that is only slightly windy), and that rich and poor areas might only be a street apart, with the architecture being identical, and you can see the city is designed to confuse. In fact, another necessary measure of how poor a region of the city is is by how many betting shops there are in the high street. More than four, and you had better get a taxi out of there immediately. An early experience was a visit to the Tate Modern Museum, where �Torso in Metal from `The Rock Drill' 1913-14� really moved me. The seventh floor of the Tate has a bar that looks over the Thames to St Paul�s Cathedral (picture 1). The view is amazing.	(1) St Pauls Cathedral, London
East and hence downstream of the Tate Modern is a riverside walk called the Queen�s Walk. This runs past the Millennium footbridge, the rebuilt Globe Theatre, the Golden Hind (picture 2), London Jail, and Southwark Cathedral. I also got to sample a few expensive restaurants (and got food poisoning in one of them - I was sick for a week), and was introduced to those bastions of English cuisine � the kebab, and the full English breakfast. For these read - bland, greasy and unappetizing. I was also introduced to Portobello Road and its markets and pubs. London also specialises in pubs. One every two city blocks over a city that is about 25 miles across. That is a lot of pubs! In fact there is a drinking game that consists of taking the tube to each stop, surfacing, having a pint in a pub, and then taking the tube to the next stop etc. A few hobbyists take this to extremes with some having drunk pints at upon exiting every tube station (287 of them!). In my first few days in London, I drank at some pretty run down pubs, complete with buxom barmaids, rough talking patrons and dogs fighting and / or copulating under the tables. I keep seeing things that remind me that London hasn't really changed in essence since the times of Jack the Ripper and Charles Dickens. I was also invited to a concert in the church of St Johns in Smith Square, which was a fantastic experience: * Elgar at St Johns * Creatures of transendant light. Talented. Inhuman. Perfected. Incandescant. No blagging here, simply talent, skill and practice. Young. Older. Concentrating. Weaving sound into fabric Enfolding listeners and decking The columns about us. The conductor, drawing the skein From the players Beautiful big liquid drops of sound Sound ending in a single beacon of light A single sustained note And then it's over And we leave, regrettfully Shaking the droplets from our coats.	(2) Golden Hind, Southwark, London
And then it was December. This far north, in mid-winter it gets dark at 4 pm. Mid-winter in London is a pretty miserable experience, and I finally understand the mid-winter solstice rituals of the celts, and why it is so important to burn the yule log and set round fruit puddings soaked in brandy on fire. On Boxing Day, four days after the shortest day, I went to Kew Gardens. Apparently people don't go to Kew in winter, because there are no flowers. Well, I did. It turns out that Kew in winter is cold and full of gaunt leafless trees, crows, and very confused looking ducks.The palm house was nice - with lots of palm trees, and an example of a coco de mer seed (picture 3). This is the world's largest seed 40 - 50 cm in diameter and weighing 15-30 kg. One of the worlds rarest plants, it is forbidden to eat the fruit (which I am told taste like coconut). Once thought to grow on a tree at the bottom of the ocean, or to be a seaborne dispersed seed, coco de mer is now known to only occur on two islands in the Seychelles. The seed only floats if it is rotten, so it isn't water dispersed, which begs the question - how is it dispersed? Wind dispersal? Or is it eaten by something and carried around in the body of something (and WHAT could eat a 30 kg seed?). Perhaps coco de mer is a dinosaur dispersed plant... Outside the palm house at Kew are statues - about ten of them - called the queen's beasts. These are all the mythical dragons, unicorns and griffons that appear on royal crests. Despite this, I am told it was a mild winter, and in fact it didn't snow until the 23rd - 24th of January (picture 4). I also got to ride the London Eye (overrated) and visit Madame Tussauds (pretty good). Tussauds is quite interesting, with waxworks of the Duke of Wellingotn (Arthur Wellesley) and Napoleon both standing over a model of the Battle of Waterloo (it is said that Wellington was obsessed by Napoleon in later years, often going to Madame Tussauds to stand for hours regarding his waxwork effigy). With five airports, the Channel Tunnel and Eurostar, London is closer to Europe than it is to the rest of Britain. In fact it is fair to say it is a European city, with a large proportion of many different races and relatively few English. Another surprise was the presence of the Black British. When the British Empire ended, an unexpected side effect was the influx of former colonised peoples into the city. There are about 1.2 million people in Britain of Jamacian or African origins. Of these 98 percent live in London, which means seven percent of people are Black British.	(3) Coco de Mer seed, Kew, London
* Black British * I was walking the streets of Finchley, Surrounded by young jewish youths, Laughing and shouting for the bus, Vibrantly living, As if there had never been any holocaust. I see people, Tall, dark and elegant, Lean, fit and strong, Walking the streets of London. As if they owned it, Which they do. And acting as if they've earned it, Which they have. Black British - That is the name they have for themselves. It would make Oswald Moseley spin in his grave. I think they should attach a dynamo to him, And use it to light Brixton.	(4) Snow, London
A few days after the first snow I took up an offer to visit the London Museum. London is ful of museums - but the London Museum specialises in the history of the city. it is located at London wall and the Barbican - a street that parallells the original Roman London Wall (picture 5), and on the site where one corner of the wall was once defended by a barbican. Displays inside start with prehistory - mastodon teeth, chipped stone age tools and the skull of the local lion(!) Later displays are of iron age spears, Ancient Briton remains such as helmets and shields. Then on to Roman coins, gravestones and statuery (notably the remains of a temple sacred to Minerva). But my purpose here was quite specific - I had been invited to the bone room. Whenever people died in London, they were buried in cemetaries outside the city walls. Of course the city had expanded to cover the cemetaries, and now whenever new buildings are built, old bodies get found. The latest attractions were the contents of a monastry hospital. All told the London Museum holds 1,000 skeletons, each in a box about the length of a femur (It is amazing how compact people's skeletons are once they are dearticulated). My guide showed me how to sex a skeleton based on the shape of the skull or parts of the pelvis. I then got to see the skeleton database where each skeleton was catalogued, along with over 200 medical conditions that can be identified from bones alone (Ricketts of course, but also Syphillis, tuberculosis and many other diseases too). One minute you are deep in scientific enquiry, fascinated by what the bones reveal, and the next moment, you realise the green skull you are intently examining was once a person.	(5) London Wall, London
Throughout this period I had been performing my secondary role as a wargaming life support for my friend and neighbour, Steve. This consisted of playing lots of games of Crossfire . This is Arty Conliffe's World War Two small unit combat game. Typically we played a company each side, Russian versus German. We had pitched battles over hilltops ( Introductory game), and through cities ( Karkov and Stalingrad ), and historical games where Russians infiltrated into the German lines along riverbeds ( Kodorov ). Invariably the result was the same - Steve won (though sometimes narrowly). This came as no surprise - we've been battling for twenty three years, and I don't recall beating him once in that time. We played other games as well. We had a few games of De Bellis Antiquitatis ( DBA ) and Hordes of the Things ( HOTTS ). And it was during one of our HOTTS games, the great moment came (Picture 6). In the midst of battle, my Frankish Knights rode down the infidel, scattering Saracensleft and right, and I roundly beat Steve. My pleasure at this was only compounded when we switched armies to experiment with other aspects of the rules. I took a huge mob of angry medieval villagers (hordes) and a few bowmen (presumably soldiers who had thrown their lot in with the mob) and a cleric (the little stirrer who had obviously whipped this lot up into a frenzy). Bowmen are powerful in HOTTS, moving fast, shooting long distance, and unworried by close terrain like forests. Hordes (from which the game gets its name) are no great shakes in combat, but have one peculiar advantage. When they die on the battlefield, by expending a command pip they can be brought back on at the back of the board. Quite by accident, I had built a super army - with bowmen for teeth, and the immortality of being able to being back ones hordes again and again. I can report with delight that I proceeded to whup Steve another two or three times that afternoon while he tried to find the correct opposing tactic. Well, that's about all this time round. Kind thoughts, - Christopher	(6) Wargame, London