If you didn't read the last post (and I'll admit, it was long and rambling, much like my day), then let me summarise:
- I got on an open-top bus and toured the sights of London - an experience which reminded me that this city has been overcrowded for most of its history.
- I got off the open-top bus and visited the Tower of London, which was freezing, and amazing. The Crown Jewels were sparkly, the Tower Green (where Catherine Howard and Anne Boleyn. among others, were publicly separated from their heads) was moving, and I, squeamish to the core, had to pop in to a medieval torture chamber to keep warm.
- Then I got on a boat with a thousand other people and their loud children, and took photos of the sunset over the Thames while one of the crew made terrible jokes.
- After that I walked back from Westminster, through London, via Piccadilly Circus, Regent Street, Oxford Street, the Bayswater Road and a very poorly lit Hyde Park.
Then my feet ached.
I also alluded to something that happened today that made me feel scared, alone and upset with this famous old city. In a few minutes, you'll see that it wasn't the city's fault at all, but at that particular moment, with a troubled face and feet that felt like they were on fire, I was ready to blame the blessed Romans themselves for settling here in 50-odd AD, and causing the whole thing to have happened to me. But happen it did. And it happened like this...
Because my feet ached, I decided this morning that I would go round the bit of the bus route that I hadn't seen the day before, having alighted at The Tower. So I did. I got on the freezing bus again and listened to the commentary teach me about the architecture of John Nash, the heroism of Admiral Nelson and the foresight of Florence Nightingale. I decided I would get off the bus at a point where I could walk back if I had to, without it feeling like it was too far.
So, when we finally reached that point, I excused myself past the row of ladies who were busy humming the tune of Land of Hope and Glory into their headphones, and I stumbled off the bus at Buckingham Palace.
There was an argument taking place between some Americans about what it means when the Union Jack is flying above the palace. I decided not to get involved. Instead I quietly unzipped my bag to get my phone out and take a picture.
But my phone wasn't in my bag.
And it wasn't in my pockets.
And it wasn't in my coat pockets either.
Panic set in. I quickly swung my rucksack onto the ground outside the black iron railings and started rifling through it. Charger, yes; iPad, yes; bottle of water, yes; house-keys, yes; paracetamol, yes; empty pack of jelly babies, yes; one Maryland cookie of an uncertain vintage, yes. There was even a street-map of Dublin! But what there definitely didn't seem to be... was my phone.
I quickly made three plans. One, go back to the bus stop and find a tour guide. Two, find a phone box (if such a thing still exists) to actually ring the phone, and three, find a shop and get my network to block it. I tried hard not to think about the photos, contacts and hundreds of notes I might have lost. I hurried back to the bus stop.
Pain shot through my feet and into my knee. I ignored it.
"I'll radio through and see if anyone's found it," said the tour operator, thankfully standing at the bus stop. Nobody had. He recommended getting on the next bus, which arrived within a minute and getting back to Marble Arch as quickly as I could to search the bus that would have got there first.
I didn't argue. Adrenaline makes me compliant to authority. I climbed on, sat in the disabled seat and searched my bag one more fruitless time.
Nothing. And nothing at Marble Arch either. I searched the first bus I'd been on, as soon as I arrived.
"Have you tried ringing it?" asked another tour guide. I reminded her that I'm here on my own and that the device required to apply her solution had caused the problem in the first place by way of its mysterious absence. She reminded me that we were standing next to a bank of red telephone boxes.
The next few minutes are a bit hazy. I can say this though - red telephone boxes in London are 95% for display and 5% for vandals. I found one that worked - it wouldn't take the new pound coins. I hobbled to the next one - it was smashed up. I limped across the road, getting more and more teary about the whole situation - it turns out the waistcoated staff members in Patisserie Valerie don't understand the universal hand gesture for telephone and thought I was looking for bananas.
Eventually, I found 60p, a telephone box that actually made a dialling tone when you picked up the handset, and I punched in my own number. I was still expecting my bag to start to vibrating as I held my ear against it. But if it didn't, I had a plan of exactly what I would say to anyone who answered - the exact words to placate a thief, or connect with a kind stranger who'd found my phone on a London tour bus.
It wasn't needed though. Nobody answered my phone. It rang for a bit and then went into voicemail. I breathed out slowly, hung up, and then sighed sadly as I realised the trail had gone cold. It could only be irretrievably lost, or stolen.
So much for plans one and two then. Only three remained.
And so it was, instead of doing all the things I'd planned today, I ended up sitting in an uncomfortably cold EE shop while a teenager sorted out my phone situation for two hours.
I'm not going to go into all the detail of that. It was dark when I came out of there with a brand new phone, and I was hungry and annoyed and sad, so I headed for the brighter lights of Oxford Street in the hope of finding somewhere to rest my exploding feet and get a cup of tea.
That of course, is how I found myself in the world's busiest Starbucks, perched on a stool between a young girl who wouldn't like me elbowing her coffee cup, and a little boy in a furry hood. I still had my iPad with me, so I wrote, and I drank the tea, and then packed up, ready to head to the next thing - the Barbican, for the concert I'd booked tickets for weeks ago.
I hope you won't think me a turncoat on my original principles, but as I hobbled out of Starbucks and into the swarm of Christmas shoppers, I decided categorically that I would take the tube. And so the tube from Oxford Circus, I indeed took.
-
"You missed a wonderful first half!" chimed the couple next to me in seats J41 and J42. "The pianist was simply incredible. She combined such elegance and strength in her hands, and was out-of-this-world!"
Urgh. My thoughts let me down. My mouth said I was glad that they had enjoyed it.
I explained that I had had to limp from the tube station and had been six minutes late - too late to be let in. I didn't tell them that I'd happily stuffed in a chocolate muffin in the entrance foyer, waiting for the interval. It somehow didn't seem 'classical', and I was already dishevelled enough.
As it turned out, however good the first half was (and part of me really doesn't want to know, thank you) the second half, Liszt's Faust Symphony 108 as played by the LSO, was marvellous. For a brief moment, I was able to close my eyes and be somewhere else altogether.
I of course, took the tube back. It would have taken an hour and a half to walk it from there. Soon, I was ripping off my coat, unwrapping my scarf and collapsing onto my hotel bed. But not before... tipping out my rucksack.
You know what's coming. I don't even need to tell you, do I?
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