Didn't realise how tired I was after the last four days. Slept in until after 9 and then realised I wasn't going to get to ANY of the London ANZAC events in time, not Hyde Park Corner, not St Paul's, not the Cenotaph, not even Westminster Abbey. Spent the day going for local walks and pulling the last dozen pages of this diary into shape, which I guess had to be done. Then down the pub tonight to watch Spurs lose the plot against Arsenal.
26th April, 2005
Better aim to get some use out of this London Pass thingy this week and weekend; it's probably the last time on this trip that I'll be in London for a long enough stretch to make it worth the trouble. Jumped through the necessary hoops to get that validated in Regent Street, loaded myself down with further brochures about groovy locations, then walked down through Waterloo Square and the side edge of St James' Park. A sign told me that Horseguards Parade was closed until 2.30pm, and there were a lot of police about on the corner near Admiralty Arch. Turns out it was Her Majesty unveiling a police memorial, an event that's been promised since 1985 and the murder on duty of Constable Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan Embassy. All I saw, of course, were the woodentops. Through the arch and into Trafalgar Square, where the front of the National Gallery was unphotographable due to a massive building scaffolding. Raining by now too, so not much scope for standing around the Square on my own getting wet trying to get pictures. Went into the crypt at St Martin In The Fields, where they have you in their tourist sights well and truly as soon as you reach the bottom of the stairs. Thence to the craft (and tourist tat) markets on the side lot of St Martin, and on to the world's largest postal queue at Trafalgar Square Post Office. Then I went in search of the aforementioned elderly gentleman who sold me two prints from his amazing collection of London photographs dating back to the 1940s, when I was here in 2000, at the daily collectors' market on the back area of Charing Cross station. He apparently used to be a newspaper photographer for many years, hence most of his amazing collection of negatives over several decades. He is sadly no longer trading there, the other stallholders saying he gave it up three or four years ago and was thinking of taking the business online instead, but they had no recent news. A little ominous, that. :(
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