Sue’s sister Hilary dropped us in Guildford at the railway station, and we caught an early train up to London. We took our gear around to Lucy’s, then caught the Tube over to Russell Square, where we met Joe and Rhonda at their hotel. We went to Covent Garden for lunch, then wandered along the Strand to Trafalgar Square, then down Whitehall to Horse Guards.
We sprawled out in the St James Park for a while, then caught a random bus which took us out to Golders Green and back. On the way back, we got off at Marble Arch, where Speaker’s Corner was in full cry. We spent a time listening to some of the nutters, including a little man in a tweed cap holding a butterfly net with a card attached to it, which read, “We must search for world peace.” No one was paying him any attention, nor was anyone talking to a man who insisted he would not talk to anyone who wasn’t intelligent, which meant he wouldn’t talk to anyone.
Out in the middle of Hyde Park, a huge rally was in progress in remembrance of the 1984 siege of the Golden Temple at Amritsar. Sikhs from Gurdwaras all over the UK were there, wonderfully dressed and shouting slogans such as “India out of Khalistan” and “Stop killing Sikhs.” I also talked to some Iranians who claim to represent a well-armed group called the NLA, the National Liberation Army, whose aim was to overthrow Iran’s Islamic government.
That night, we went for drinks at the Red Lion.
FOOTNOTES (written on a scrap of paper at a pub in Salisbury)
Travel is all about waiting. Waiting in bus stations, waiting on railway platforms, waiting in airports, waiting while children watch what you’re doing, waiting while people come and go. This is a note that I wrote at some little pub in Salisbury.
This bloke in the Stag Pub near Salisbury came up to us and gave us some photos of horses. One of them, a black shire horse, he said he had had to have put down. “I was working for the local blacksmith at the time,” he said, “and he died of leukaemia in 1971. Still, there you go, eh?”
“Are you a proper Australian,” he asked, after I told him I was from New Zealand.
CurseOfTheTraveller 