Off to London to celebrate a friend’s birthday. With regard to writing in general, a diary is meant to be a recollection of what I have done but it’s a little bit more than a Dear Diary….   I’ve tried to make it interesting and relevant by imagining the sort of advice I would give people and this is especially applies to matters of travel.

So we took the 10.20 am Flixbus from Bristol for the staggering sum of £2.99 per person single. It is difficult to get my head around this because I pay more than that for a latte.  There are about 55 seats on the bus. 55 x £3 would not even cover the diesel.

The way they make money is from people who book late or for same day travel in which case you will spend the best part of £20 actually £19.49 but even for same day the price reduces as the day goes on so if you wanted to catch the one o’clock to London it would be £10.49.

Don’t even think of taking the train. Dynamic pricing means that you pay according to the particular train as I have written previously and it ain’t cheap. The train is quicker at about 1 hour 20 minutes but the coach is 2 hours 50 minutes on a good day so I say ‘spend the money you save on a decent meal’. What’s an hour here or there?

Due to the kindness of the friend we were able to stay at the fairly pricey Premier Inn in Hampstead. It’s a bit strange when Hole in the Wall machines replace receptionists but if you get stuck, the staff who are always on duty will help.  Our room was quiet as a grave having had double glazing windows installed recently and the air conditioning was a whisper. 

No need to bother with tickets

Off we go on our first afternoon through the South Bank.  I don’t bother with travel tickets anymore, I use the system introduced in September 2014 of using your credit card instead of any sort of ticket and that includes Oyster cards.  You are billed shortly after the end of the day for any travel by train, tube or bus.

That is all done for you and price caps do apply depending on the zones you travel through. It is very expensive not to tap out because the system could assume that you have traveled a long way within a much larger transport system so you really will get whacked, and there is no appeal.

An unexpected experience.

We turned up at the Royal Festival Hall which incidentally was where I experienced my first classical concert at the age of 10, I recall Dvorak’s New World Symphony. My sister took me and little did she know that this  started my interest in classical music. Anyway we were greeted with a sea of faces. They were all dressed in academic gowns of various ilks and accompanied by doting parents.

This was the annual event of the University College London and no less than 6,000 graduates were inaugurated in five batches.  Such was the profile of the students there I could as well have been in Hong Kong. I almost wanted to search for an English face. Anyway the buzz was there and we enjoyed it.

Off to the National Theatre which has two actual theatres and large spaces for entertainment plus a restaurant plus an art gallery of sorts, more informal gatherings of painting on available walls.  What was noticeable was the huge amount of desks space allocated to people with computers who use this as a private or public work space

British Film Institute membership is very popular and this was supported by large illuminated advertisements as you see above.

We then went to the Queen Elizabeth Hall which again supports two theaters. This evening at 6 p.m. a band  whose name I have forgotten was entertaining us.  The drums were very loud and I couldn’t hear a single word of what they were singing about but whatever it was was delivered with great enthusiasm. I went to the bar and ordered two medium glasses of white wine for which I was charged the princely sum of £21.50

We decided to escape the so-called music and took a tube back via Chalk Farm from which we walked to the library. The subway contains advertisements that you would not see elsewhere so here a couple of examples.

Next up, a talk given by the Belsize community library “ talking cartoons” by Kipper (Christopher) Williams. About 20 of us watched him give a demonstration of actually drawing a cartoon and we discussed various other well known artists and their contribution over the decades.

The light was still in the sky when we left at 9:00 PM so back to the hotel and an early night. You can pack quite a lot into a few hours if you plan your trip in advance.

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