OK, this time it was for real. No more messing about with strange-side-of-the-steering-wheel car and funny gear sticks that didn’t want to move. I had to get to London, find parking, get to the Redbridge tube station, change at Mile End, end up in Westiminster station, walk to the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) and get myself registered. Luckily the London underground is just to big too big to implement any real security checks so I was spared the man handling I had to endure the previous day.
After that I continued in Green Park, then on Piccadilly where I got my regular dose of Polonium 210 at 167 Piccadilly and ended up in Piccadilly Circus. By then I was so nackered and above all it was getting arctic so I used the Central line to go back to Redbridge but remembered I have never been to St. Paul’s cathedral on the way – so I made another stop.
The atmosphere was quite special, I had arrived just as mass was starting, the choir was singing which produced a great sound effect in the cathedral. I must have stayed there for over half an hour. I must also have looked quite out of place sitting there – I had my suit on and didn’t look as any of the German or Japanese tourists or even as one of the church goers.
After that great experience I decided that that was enough and I should be reunited with my rented Jetta. But apparently I got lost again as I could not find the St. Paul’s tube station so I ended up at Chancery Lane. On the way there I saw a very familiar building from many of Sky News’s live coverages of court proceeding – the Old Bailey.
Catching a train at Chancery Lane proved to be a bit of a tricky affair as I seemed to have stumbled on the evening rush hour for that part of town and all the trains were so full-up I could’t get on any of them and the station was getting fuller by the minute. So I decided to try something else: I went to the other side of the station and drove the opposite way. The trains there were much more empty. Went a few stations to Oxford Circus and got on the train going in the opposite direction again. The trains there were not so full, but they were very full at Chancery Lane where I could see again that people could still not get on. I was surprised to find that other seasoned London transport users did not do the same. They probably just couldn’t be bothered.