Our first full day in London was a late start for us. It was Remembrance Parade Day in Whitehall, so we watched it on the TV in the flat. I’m not really a flag-waver, or someone who makes a big deal about veterans and service, but I do like the annual ceremony that takes place here in London. Indeed, I try to watch the one in Ottawa, but that’s often during the week as it’s marked on September 11th rather than the following Sunday as it is in the UK.

Perhaps it’s time to say that I’m uncomfortable with the growing sentimentality around Remembrance Day and the wearing of poppies, so I devote a little time to think about those young lives lost in the many wars inflicted upon us, and to think of the families that lost their men (and women, of course), especially when war became industrialised. It has become more poignant for me as I discover more ancestors in my family tree who perished, particularly in the First World War.

Anyway, leaving later than planned, we caught a bus into the City of London. It stopped short of our intended target, St. Paul’s Cathedral, so we walked from the Barbican and London Wall. Walking was a good idea because we came across a number of things that we’d kind of earmarked to see. First it was the church of St. Botolph-without-Aldersgate, now the London City Presbyterian Church, and the wonderful Postman’s Park on what had been the church’s burial ground. We had been watching John Rogers’ fabulous London Walk videos on YouTube, and this was one of his stops on his Churches series.
There was a service just finishing inside the church, and the park was one of those green corners of calm that you find all over London, but this one is special because of an art installation, the Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice. It’s a roofed bench with a series of painted enamel tiles on the wall that describe, well, acts of self-sacrifice. It’s by the artist G F Watts and was unveiled in 1900. The people mentioned on the tiles are not well known people, just ordinary folk doing ordinary jobs, but doing extraordinary things. This was a great way to start the day.

Then it was down to St. Paul’s (I never appreciated the size of the place), just to mooch around as it’s not open to tourists on a Sunday, and quite right, too. The Remembrance Day service had not long finished so the gardens were full of commemorative poppies, which were a nice splash of red on a dull day.

I should say that I’m not really a church enthusiast, or religious, but the City of London is defined by its churches. There were over 100 in the Square Mile prior to the Great Fire of 1666, but that number is much reduced these days. However, Sir Christoper Wren, and a few other architects, rebuilt many after the fire. A few have been lost to German bombing, and a few more through the need to expand the business heart of London, but there are still 59 churches in the City, and you can’t turn a corner without finding one. They are undeniably beautiful, standing or ruined, and make a brilliant contrast to the steel and glass of the modern structures that surround them.

We sat in Paternoster Square, on a very cold stone bench to eat our lunch, then rambled though the Square Mile to find a shop to buy some stuff. We passed more churches, The Bank of England, The Royal Exchange, The Mansion House, and quite a lot of other stuff we didn’t recognise. This was all in a ten minute walk. It’s fantastic history, crammed into a very small area.

The shop in which we were buying stuff was TK Maxx, and very popular it is, too. The Canadian equivalent would be Winners. The place had way too much stock on the shop floor, there were too many people in there and it was a zoo. Stuff bought, we left.

We had a plan to be on Westminster Bridge for four o’clock, so hot-footed it to Bank underground and the long and winding walk, underground, to the District Line, which is in fact Monument station. A quick look at the map confirmed that it would have been far quicker to walk to Monument in the first place. Hey-ho.

We made it to Westminster on time, but I was a bit taken aback at the sheer numbers of tourists thronging the place on a cold November afternoon. It was probably thanks to the Remembrance Day shenanigans. We FaceTimed the Grand-baby so he could hear Big Ben, about which he was more excited than a three-year-old should be.

Eventually we fell into a pub on Whitehall, although not before admiring the poppy wreaths at the Cenotaph, and pulling faces in front of the MoD Main Building. Beer and a wee was on the menu, but the footy was on the TV, so we parked ourselves in front of that for a couple of hours. All the pubs down there were heaving with men wearing medals, and they’d done well as most had been there since the morning. The music in the pub was unnecessarily loud, although I may only have felt that because I am now officially an old git. Not a pensioner yet, though, that’s next year.