Linda has a cold so I left her to her own devices for the day and set off into The City¹ to find out a bit about my relations. My first stop after getting off the tube at Blackfriars was the College of Arms² to see James Woodcock, the man who researched the title. It turned out that he was away in India. Next stop, after a couple of photos, was Mansion House³, closed for Easter, then the Bank of England on Threadneedle St. I looked round the museum there , then went in search of the Guildhall. I found it quite by accident and went inside. The hall itself, where the Corporation of London holds banquets, is a huge cavern of a place with stained glass windows at each end and lovely, ornate wood carved panelling around the walls. On the bottom right-hand of the window at the far end of the hall is the name BLAKISTON and the date 1760. The names of every Lord Mayor for the last 800 years are inscribed on the windows.
I left the Hall and caught a bus round to Whitehall where I spent an hour on a fruitless search for information on James Gillingham.⁴ Not having had a very successful day with my reli-hunting, I caught a tube back to Paddington & went round to the London Walkabout Club⁵ & got some brochures on African safaris then went home.
¹London’s central business district, which is also the oldest part of town, is known as The City.
²The College of Arms is the office where titles and lineage are maintained. In 1977, after the death of my father, Norman Blakiston, it was a person from the College of Arms, James Woodcock, who had proven my right to succeed as the 9th Baronet.
³Mansion House is the official residence of the Lord Mayor of London.
⁴My mother’s brother who was killed in Italy in 1993.
⁵A long-standing travel agency specializing in providing travel services for Australians and New Zealanders.
CurseOfTheTraveller 