11th
January Streets of London Ralph
McTell
One science department school trip I do
remember was when a young boy named Howard decided that he did not want to see
the museums. What he wanted to see was Buckingham Palace. Fair enough you might
think but at the age of eleven, sneaking off in the opposite direction to the
rest of us. when in the Underground tunnel that runs parallel to the Science
Museum, sneaking onto an Underground train in order to travel to see the Palace
and causing two teachers to spend the night in the capital with the police before
being found, should not have been on his itinerary that day. I have more cause
to remember his brother though, Vincent, name Vinnie by his friends, than
Howard. During a break-dancing session, taking place in one of my more creative
biology lessons, I turned my back on Vinnie’s performance. On turning back
around I was whacked in the chest by his foot during a fast head-spinning
movement. One broken sternum was the result of the impact and this was to cause
me pain for many years. Two brothers I remember well! Howard, I also remember,
had a crush on my second wife Jane, who worked at that time at the same school
as me. Howard used to send parcels and letters professing his true love to her!
Interestingly their sister, Paulette became
an international hurdling athlete of some renown. A truly lovely family, one of
many I had the privilege to get to know during my teaching time at Coppice High
School, Wolverhampton.
Back to Kew Bridge, the Thames had a sizeable
number of ducks on it, a couple of hundred or so Tufted Duck and Pochard
mostly. A little way more and there I was cycling towards Barnes. What an
evocative name for me now but more about that later, especially when I get to
my Fair Isle days but that is a long way ahead. I was to reach Fair Isle in October
in fact, so do not expect me to write about why Barnes is special to me anytime
soon. I soon found the entrance to the amazing and wonderful London Wildfowl
and Wetland Trust Reserve at Barnes. What a brilliant reserve to visit and
in the centre of London too! Its bird list proudly boasts regular Bitterns.
Indeed four of them had been seen the day before I arrived, so the large visitor’s
centre’s noticeboard declared.
I was greeted at the desk by Brenda, Evey, a
half French girl with no French language ability and John, who was to kindly
show me around the reserve after taking me for coffee upstairs. It was a lovely
welcome and very much appreciated. There was a present for me too, a lovely
thick and warm WWT fleece. With such freezing weather, ice everywhere and still
some snow on the ground, the extra clothing was very much appreciated.
The reserve itself was totally frozen with
the large lakes mostly ice-bound, therefore bird life was down in numbers on
the usual amount to be found at this superb reserve. Now some years ago I had a
fantastic girlfriend named Diane, who back in 1990 lived in nearby Putney. This
was a few years before I met my beautiful wife, Karen. Well, Diane and I used
to come to a pub near to here for the occasional evening out. Back then Barnes
was a huge concrete basin of a reservoir. What it had become now is little short
of a miracle as well as outstanding. Instead of brick-lined walls and very deep
water, there was now a professionally landscaped panorama of reedbeds and
scrapes, lakes and hides and a fabulous visitors’ centre.
John and I went into a hide which gave a view
over the only piece of unfrozen water. This small area of ice-free water had a Little
Grebe, Great Black Backed Gull on
it and a Cetti’s Warbler did a Mozart phrase from deep in some
bankside vegetation. [72-4] A couple of Ring-necked Parakeets [75] flew overhead.
There was more of the reserve to see and enjoy. Then an interview with the
local newspaper had been pre-arranged. The photographer arrived, found John and
I and asked me to stand in one of the reedbeds and pretend I was looking at a
bird! He even had me climb a tree at one point.
Once alone after the interview, with John
having to go back to his office desk, it was time for me to explore the
reserve. I went into some hides and had fabulous views of two Bitterns. One of
them had a metre-wide piece of ice-free water next to a reedbed, from which to
extract his meal, which he did, expertly catching what looked like small Rudd. On
the way back to the centre to say goodbye and profuse thanks, a Chiff Chaff [76] was flitting around
some bushes.
Into the cafe and a delightful meeting with a lovely lady who has been following my adventure, Yvone Simmonds.
I left Barnes and went along beside Barnes
Common before I reached the Thames again and crossed over Putney Bridge. Now
twenty years ago, 1990, high as a kite after dancing all evening at a huge
Rolling Stones concert at Wembley Stadium, the Urban Jungle Tour I believe, I
had walked over this bridge carrying a number of large Rolling Stones concert
posters, taken from off the roadside crash barriers. I was singing my head off
despite the late hour; well, early morning hour and on my way to meet up with a
nurse I had only met a few days before in Wolverhampton, that fabulous
girlfriend to be, Diane. I had been walking to the main railway station there
after a day at East Park Junior School, Wolverhampton; this being after a day
of teaching a Year Six class. One of my pupil’s parents picked me up. She,
Sylvia was sitting in the front passenger seat and she introduced me to the
driver, Diane. Diane said that she was nurse in London and with time limited as
they kindly took me to the station, I told Diane that I was coming to London
that very weekend to see the Rolling Stones.
Diane insisted that I stayed at her flat in
Putney after the show. So at 1:30 a.m. or thereabouts, sticky with sweat after
leaping about in my usual manic way at a concert and carrying the
afore-mentioned posters, I banged on Diane’s flat door. Unbelievably she
actually let me in! The rest of the night was spent talking and boy, could
Diane talk!
Diane was more than a nurse. Diane, one of the most fabulous women I have ever met, was a
Senior Sister no less at the prestigious and expensive Portland Hospital in Central
London. She had travelled a lot and her talk was of life in Saudi Arabia, where
her passion was for PADI night diving in the Red Sea. Diane also talked about
some horribly unpleasant incidents in Nigeria.
Come the morning, her car would not start so
what could I do but try to fix it. By some miracle I actually got it going and
as a reward, Diane took me for a meal at a restaurant in nearby Putney Centre.
Two weeks later we were together again, at a Rolling Stones concert, this time
at Maine Road; Manchester City’s old football ground. We were so close to the
stage I swear we could have made out Keith Richard’s nose hairs! Brilliant!
Sorry. I digress. Must be the
Gemini in me, me being born on June the 18th. 18, three sixes, the
sign of the fallen one, yet now you know my birthday, you can all from now on
be so kind as to send me a birthday card.
OK, I was once more on the bike and back in 2010.
I had crossed the bridge in a better condition than on the evening of the
Rolling Stones concert twenty years previous. I rode my bike over the River Thames,
over Putney Bridge before I turned up the Fulham Road. An hour or so later, I
had cycled past Buckingham Palace, past the Houses of Parliament, past an area
where I could see the Millennium Wheel on the opposite side of the river and
cycled along The Embankment to reach St Paul’s Cathedral. This was not for me
to go into that famous landmark but to in order for me to get to the Youth
Hostel across the road from there. I had stayed in this Youth Hostel before,
back in 1981, the night before the wedding of Princess Diana to Charles. That
had been when I was accompanied by my first wife, Joy. We had just been to Hyde
Park to see the Royal Wedding firework display and Joy wanted to see the
wedding itself. Well where could be closer (and cheaper!) than St Paul’s Youth
Hostel? Answer came there none so there we were. Up early on the wedding day,
we were just across the road from the steps and had a splendid view of the
event. Now it may seem odd to some but my favourite memory was of Harry Secombe
and Spike Milligan who arrived by a taxi that stopped just in front of us.
Meeting them was far more of a highlight than seeing the Royal couple!
After the Royal Wedding, and once we had
collected our heavily laden rucksacks, we went to Charing Cross Station and
within a couple of days we were in Monte Carlo; an Interrail month was ahead of
us both. Interrail was a wonderful cheap way for under twenty-six years olds to
travel around Europe back then, 1980. For ninety pounds one could travel on any
train in Western Europe. Joy and I went straight through France, explored the
major sites of Italy and Greece before we headed back through what was then former
Yugoslavia. Then we visited Venice before heading back north through
Switzerland, Germany and Belgium.
The Youth Hostel on this cold January evening
of 2010 did not seem to have changed much, though thirty-odd years had passed.
(and my family know how odd those thirty-odd years have been for me!) It still
had the extremely high ceilinged living rooms and a large dining area
downstairs. What had changed though was the quality of the food. Yet that was
not to be until the following morning.
And say for you that the sun don't shine?
Let me take
you by the hand and lead you through the streets of London
I’ll
show you something to make you
change your mind
26.18 miles 592
feet elevation up 628 feet down
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