By Barbara Rice (of Shasta County)
upon request by A News Cafe
This royal throne of England, this sceptered isle,
This earth of majesty… this happy breed of men, this little world…
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.
I don’t know what makes me so sappy about England but nevertheless, there it is. I am besotted with the place and always have been, back to my pre-teen years when I heard the Beatles first. No matter how often I visit, I can’t wait until the next trip.
We arrived to coincide with the G20 Summit. I like a good riot as much as the next person but I don’t want to be personally involved, so at the advice of the woman running the B&B we’re staying at, we avoided the Square Mile, Threadneedle Street, and the Bank of England, perferring the coward’s way out. Instead we took the tube to Oxford Circus and worked our way down through Soho, Piccadilly, Haymarket and into Trafalgar Square, where by early evening it seemed quite tame.
The London Eye was lit up in the sky and we crossed Millennium Bridge to the South Bank and walked along toward it. It looks bigger and bigger the closer you get. The friendly guard at its base told us it is 135 meters or 445 feet tall, and has 32 pods that can hold up to 30 people each. The pods are numbered 1 through 33 – skipping unlucky 13.
Crossing Westminster Bridge, we walked up Whitehall, and that was when we noticed a very strong police presence. Groups of five or six here and there, walking with purpose and the occasional automatic rifle – when we came to Downing Street, there were at least a dozen police on either side of Whitehall. There were several kleig lights in front of Number 10. |It turned out that First Lady Michelle Obama and the wives of the G20 ministers, as well as luminaries such as “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling, were having a dinner prepared by Jamie Oliver. I had the distinct feeling that snapping a picture would be very unwise, so after gawking a few minutes we moved on toward the Sherlock Holmes pub for a pint of Old Speckled Hen to cap off the evening.
Photo courtesy BBC
A policewoman working crowd control at G20 Summit protest march.
Barbara Rice is a native Igonian. Upon discovering the Beatles at age 9, she picked up an atlas and figured out how far England was and how long it would take to get there (5371 miles, 12 hours). Though gainfully employed, she regards work as a necessary evil to finance vacations. In her spare time she looks up cheap airfares and daydreams about her next trip. She never did meet Sir Paul but she knows where his office is.
