Friday 11th May The ship arrived at Harwich at 6.30 – the
windows were terribly salt-encrusted. Went through customs and waited on the
London train, waiting till it left at 7.30; read newspapers of Australian
couple next and opposite me.
The train arrived at Liverpool St Station at
9.10 after travelling through English towns and countryside, fields and fields
of yellow rape [what you have to call canola now], chestnut in bloom.
At the station I put my luggage on a trolley
and pushed it around for something to do and then caught the tube to Edgeware Road
Station. I carried my suitcase down it and around for ages until I found the
Norfolk Plaza Hotel and the Colonial Club. I checked in and had a shower. Then
I went out to lunch, at a Wimpy Bar, walked down Edgeware Road and popped in at
the Victory Services Club where I left a note for Mum and Dad [who were staying
there, obviously]. Then I walked down Oxford and Regent Streets to Trafalgar
Square and then to St. James’s Park, where, unlike further east in Europe, the
daffodils are finished. But there were other flowers in bloom and going out of
bloom, like the tulips.
 |
| Norfolk Plaza Hotel (where the flags are) |
In the Park there is a character who
probably goes there every day to abuse Pakistani and other such immigrants,
Canadian geese and other select water fowl, and give guided tours to visitors
who are all right, like Australians and Americans – those whose native tongue
is English, I suppose. He’s an old gent with a stick and probably was in the
military – the sort of doddery old fellow like the Major in Fawlty Towers. He
waves his stick in the air, and at the geese and ducks (actually chases them, “Go
on, get out of the way”), does horse riding impressions of the Horse Guards
riding down Pall Mall, points out the wonderful Buckingham Palace and urges us
to hurry along to see the Changing of the Guard at 4 o’clock.
 |
| The Major |
We were a group of Kentuckian students in
London to study British government for a few weeks, and I tagged along for
interest’s sake. So we watched the Guards change from behind the back entrance
of the courtyard (behind the white line). Them riders walk sorely after they
dismount, they’s surely do.
I didn’t wish to follow the gentleman any
further, and neither did some of the Americans, so we slipped away.
I went into Insight Travel on Cockspur St
(off Trafalgar Square) to see if Catherine Pritchard was there. [She was someone I
knew from Canberra who had been a cellist in the Canberra Youth Orchestra. I
later saw “Starlight Express” with her.] She wasn’t there, so I left her
a note and walked back to the V.S.C. where Mum was waiting. We waited for Dad
and then we waited for Michael [my brother, who had been living and working in England for
a while] and then we had dinner. They went off to see “Noises Off” and I
went back to the hotel and fell asleep instead of writing in this diary. And
that’s as far as my notes go so anything that is written after this is heresy and
hearsay, relying on an unreliable memory.
REMEMBRANCE When we returned to Moscow from Leningrad,
Trevor Mullins’s suitcase went missing, probably went off with a departing
group in the luggage foyer of the hotel. It hadn’t turned up by the time I
left, but the Mullinses had that extra day in Moscow so hopefully it was
returned to him.
[Well, that's the end of Volume One. There's a break of a couple of weeks as I didn't keep up the diary until heading off for Greece for three or four weeks. During this break, I spent six days travelling to the Republic of Ireland with my parents and Aunt Dorothy, with my brother driving his car (a green Citroen). We took the SS ST David over to Dun Laoghaire/Dublin, went to Waterford, Rock of Cashell, Blarney Castle, and other places in the south, and set Dorothy off on the plane at Cork Airport.
Back in England, we visited and stayed with Ilona Main in Farnham, and visited my cousin Carolyn when her twins Katie and Sarah were about 2 and Andrew was a wee baby - they're all (including later addition Allison) living in Austrlaia now, except for Andrew.]
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