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Friday: shopping day. In which I discover Picadilly Circus, and Leicester Square; buy acupuncture and 72p stamps; visit esoteric bookstores and All Bar One.
Several of the parts of me that were jet lagged have now taken up being stiff, and other parts are sore, queued up just waiting for their turn to be stiff. Time for a cure I thought. So I headed into London Town, to the apothecary, and to do some retail therapy.
In my travels over the last few days I had spotted a traditional Chinese medicine purveyor, somewhere sandwiched between the entrance to the famous Savoy Hotel and a gentlemans tailor. Taking in the trusty 77a from Clapham, and walking the Strand I found it again, and went in.
Mason jars full of bark and dried samples of an infinite variety lined the walls to the the ceiling. Several charts showed the meridian lines and chi points on outlined human figures in different poses. In the back somewhere there were quiet sounds, indicating that perhaps someone was having those very points pricked and prodded.
I had a short consultation with an older Chinese woman. She might have been 50, but was of such quiet nobility and ageless beauty it was hard to tell. Maybe there was indeed something to be said for all those teas of tree root, and aromatic balms. I resolved to get their treatment special for upper back and neck pain, which included acupuncture and acupressure massage.
The cluttered shop was divided into tiny treatment areas by a folding screen, which didnt quite provide all the modesty required, but the dimness of its interior hopefully would. I lay down.
London is amazing in its variety. The modern and the ancient. The starchy imperialist British, and the eclectic culturally diverse. The latter is to be found interspersed all through the fabric of London, in markets, alleyway stalls and in the people you meet.
I recovered from my session at a nearby Cafe Nero coffee shop in Covent Garden, smelling strongly of whatever it was that the acupressure therapist had rubbed into my back. She'd offered me a bottle of it for £17.95 but as I couldnt read the ingredients list and couldnt afford it either. I tucked myself into a corner of the coffee shop with a cup of peppermint tea, and a slice of hummingbird cake.
A copy of the London Times that'd been left at the table led with the story of Margaret Hassan captured in Iraq. There are a lot of smokers in London. Half of the men and women in the cafe were smoking, and most bars and cafes despite any non-smoking area have a tobacco haze to some degree.
The air outside despite whatever you've heard however is pretty good - cool and clear. Car use in the city has been restricted by a congestion payment of £5 per trip, and wood fires are banned.
I wandered through the Charing Cross shopping area, and around the Markets in front of the St-Martin-in-the-Fields church. There was an amazing coat covered in tiny bells, allegedly from Tibet, and brightly coloured pashmina. There were "mum bought me this lousy..." t-shirts, and soccer souvenirs.
Seeing "50% off" on a placard, I went into a store whose signwriting styled it as a mountain clothing store, but which inside had discounted clothing, £6 Christian Dior tops, and Dolce & Gabbanna shirts, faux-fur jackets; all wrinkled as though just yanked from some shipping container. Hmmm. Maybe the mountain clothing place had moved, and these guys are fly-by-night types here for the now.
Off up Charing Cross Rd, I found Cecil Court, which was full of bookshops and related stores; full of rare and quaint items. There was a store called [Watkins|http://www.watkinsbooks.com/] which seemed to be doing rather well selling books on witchcraft and the occult, ley lines and crystals. The self-styled esoteric bookstore was full of esoteric types browsing books on rosicrucians, Aleister Crowley and alternative healing. Tucked in the corner a swami conducted readings, out of the way of the cash register.
A few doors up I wandered into "The Witch Ball" antiquarian print shop, specialising in the performing arts. The door stuck a bit on the shag pile carpet. A row of bins held old prints mounted in card. Some bore apocryphal information: "daguerrotype", "etched by <illegible squiggle>".
"Where do these come from?" I asked of the sole woman behind the counter.
She peered at me over half-moon glasses.
"I - errr - was just wondering where you get all these prints from". I pressed.
"Well, the framed ones on the walls are original prints." She paused, and I waved one of the card mounted ones questioningly.
"Mostly out of books".
"Oh". I'd seen a stall with prints like these on the Albert Embankment. It seemed that they must get old book collections, perhaps from deceased estates and slice out these engravings. They were rather amazing, but I felt sorry for the disembowelled books.
I was heading for the Circus and the Square, but there was the National Gallery. Its an impressive building (no pictures sorry, but my camera was at home recharging) that from its stepped plinth looks out over Trafalgar Square, though I approached it from the side at Charing Cross Rd. I went through briefly, but was most interested in the portrait gallery - amazingly intricate images, done with a workmanlike rigour, mounted in elaborate frames. One coronation image had a frame with its own crown to match that on the Monarch.
The Gallery had an excellent electronic gallery facility - a dozen or more 21" touch-screen terminals allow visitors to browse by artist and subject, find information and image details then take hard copies from a staffed print centre.
From the ancient to the modern again.
I bought some postcards all featuring that iconic image of Piccadilly Circus: the neon signs and London tube station entrance:
The Trocadero is a multi-level shopping and leisure centre, and when I found it, it was full of young girls and guys; some looked to be Indian, others from Arabic parts, and a great variety of others.
I sat in the Trocadero outside a store selling Moroccan food, and filled in my postcards. Then went in search of a post-office.
It turned out that wandering down the bowels of the Trocadero lead into and underground linking nightclubs, and shops, and eventually the Virgin Megastore. DVD's and CD's, books and posters tempted the moneyed London workers - not too many tourists in here. I asked a foppish youth behind the counter if they had stamps.
"Nah." I waved vaguely at their postcard stand as if that excused my enquiry.
"Any idea where I could get some?"
"Nah, nothing round 'ere. Nah".
I wandered up a few sets of stairs into the sunshine, and soon found a pillar box; but still no stamps. I asked a gentleman at an ATM, but with apalling timing did so just as he was trying to remember his PIN. Luckily and nice chap intervened and pointed the way to Rymans, a stationery chain store which had a post office in the rear.
This is another cultural difference - grocery stores, and other shops will have about 50 square meters in the rear set aside for 4-6 glass fronted Post Office counters. Its quite odd. Often there's a few characters there cashing benefit cheques, jostling with couriers and post staff laden with packages from Amazon.
Postcards away, with plenty of time to spare before the 6pm post.
The strip along Coventry and Cranbourne between Picadilly Circus and Leicester Square seems the vital heart of London, at least to the tourists and locals jostling for room on the narrow footpaths, dodging buses and taxis, and crowding into bars and cafes. There's not that many shops, strangely, but many theatres, cinemas and places to eat and drink.
I went into Lillywhites (or at least a store with that name on it) which had 60% off, 70% off placards. Inside Diadora jackets and Nike sweats could be had a for a few pounds. I picked up a £10 Diadora fleece jacket, but couldnt get close enough to the counter. Anyway it was time to start getting ready for our planned night-time entertainment, a trip to the movies.
There's a chain of bars here called "All Bar One" I found one and sat down. My native guide had bought tickets for an 8:30 showing - you cant just turn up as most everything is booked out hours in advance, even for shows that have been on for some time.
Typically "All Bar One" was smoked filled, and filled with locals who'd finished work and were meeting friends. I got an expresso.
Ted found me - after I got my Squares and Circuses mixed up - and after some fine Indian food we went to the Odeon. I think I've been to lots of cinemas called "The Odeon" but I suspect this may've been the first one. We had a seat in the "mezzanine" which was up 8 flights of stairs.
So that was Friday in London.
Next: 23 October - The Seaside
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