Aug 2008

I have felt quite recently like a maniac-despressive, my mood bouncing up and down. (Apologies to any one actually suffering from the very serious illness of mania-depression for trivializing it).

I had a vision in my head of what it would be like moving to London, and I must admit that it was a lot smoother in my imagination than it has turned out to be in real life. There seems to be a lot to bring stress into my life. Delayed interviews, hiring freezes, getting lost, tube delays and getting caught in the rain are all enough to make you retreat to your bedroom and crawl under the covers.

It isn't so much that lots of bad stuff is happening, it is just normal life, especially normal life for those looking for a new job. In my imagination prior to coming over, though, I imagined me getting a new job, making a bunch of new friends and finding an amazing place to live in a couple weeks. Of course that wasn't going to happen, but that didn't stop me from dreaming it.

For ever bad day and foul mood though, there are times of happiness and awe. The other day I was walking down the street and suddenly found myself giggling as I realized I was walking down the streets of the city I LIVE IN, and that city is LONDON! Awesome!

I recently was reading an article in the Toronto Star (online version, obviously) that mentioned that Forbes magazine ranked Toronto the 10th most economically powerful city. Cool for Toronto, I thought. I scanned the rest of the top 10, and there at the top was my newly adopted home of London. The most economically powerful city in the world, growing faster than any other cities in the G7.

"I live there, the most economically powerful city in the world." I thought. "How cool is that?" I was smiling for the next half a day at the thought. I'm in a place where stuff... really important stuff... happens. I may not be doing the real important stuff, but at least I am close to it.

A few days later, I was down again. I could feel the sweat pooling on my brow as the woman said, "I need your passport, proof of address and a urine sample."

Not exactly your average first date. No, I was making an appointment for a physical to register with a doctor and the National Health.

I don't like doctors and hospitals. They make me squeamish at best, and often downright nervous. That being said, I don't like paying for health care when it's needed either, so off to get a GP, a requirement for health coverage here in the United Kingdom.

That being done, now I am a legitimate member of the National Health, and don't have to worry about being covered in the event that I break a leg, get run through with a javelin by a practicing future Olympian or get fed through a woodchipper by angry Thais after a disparaging remark about their classical music in my last blog entry, but the day and a half leading up to the visit was quite nerve-racking. Even though I am entitled under the rules of my visa to be covered by the National Health, I was really concerned that I had missed some small administrivia point and they would send me away with no coverage. My heart was beating, my blood pressure was elevated and I was covered by a film of sweat throughout the entire appointment, which just lead to the nurse scolding me for being out of shape, which just made me more nervous, and raised my heart rate even more. Ugh.

That evening, though, knowing that I was covered and don't have to worry about it, I was up again. I had gotten an email about a job interview schedule for Friday and I had just met up with an old friend from high school back in Canada who now lives in London. Despite the nerve-racking doctor's appointment, the day turned out to be a good one.

I was walking home along Westferry, close to the Thames River. A fox darted out and crossed the road in front of me. It was a clear and cool night, stars and the moon lighting up the sky above the apartment flats lining the Thames River.

Ever since I was a kid, every night I have looked up and at the sight of the first star I see, repeat the same thing.

"Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight. Wish I may, wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight."

What I have wished for over the years has changed, depending on where I was in life. Lately, I've mostly been wishing for a job.

But that night, smiling and happy, I couldn't think of anything to wish for. I am living in an amazing city. I have a nice place to live. I am starting to make friends. I am making progress (albeit slow progress) on finding a job. That evening, I figured I had everything I needed.

"Give my wish to someone else tonight," I said, and whistled happy tunes to myself as I walked home.

I woke up to a sunny day, so decided to head across the river to Greenwich and catch a bit of the Thai @ Zero Longitude Festival. It's called such because it takes place in Greenwich Park, and thus is at 0 degree Longitude.

As these types of events are meant for cultural learnings, here's what I learned (or in some cases, had re-enforced).

Thai food is good food.

Thai women are very pretty...

...even if sometimes you aren't quite sure about their origins.

Thailand makes wine. Monsoon Valley Winery and Vineyards produces three wines from 3 different wine growing regions in Thailand. The wines have won awards at events in London and France. I had a glass of the red and can say it is fruity.

Thai boxing in London seems a very popular pursuit with people who are not native Thai, like the young boy inside the Thai ring today.

Thailand's classical music sounds, to my ears, much like the sound of a harp being fed through a wood chipper.

If it's a sunny day, it's good to just crash out on the grass and relax.

- - -

After a while sitting on the grass, I started to feel a little sluggish. Probably a combination of the food settling in my stomach, the wine going to my head (which was already a little fuzzy from a Saturday night drink-up) and the sun beating down on me, so I figured it was best to move.

I decided to complete a journey that I had contemplated the first time I was in Greenwich, and headed out to see the Thames Barrier. I took a short-cut, skipping over much of the industrial lands I went through last time, and picked up the Thames Path on the other side of the O2 arena.

Less industrial than the Thames Path between central Greenwich and the O2, the Thames Path from the O2 towards the Thames Barrier still has a somewhat rundown feel to it, mostly due to the fact that the tide was low and thus a good portion of the river bottom was exposed, leaving boats stranded in the mud and revealing the garbage of human contact with the river.

There was still some industry along the way, but mostly it was hidden behind large retaining walls. Every once and and while, though, you'd find a place where the industry had leaked out onto the recreational walkway of the Thames Path.

I can only assume this was a beach manufacturing plant, otherwise what would they use that sand for?

- - -

In my last entry, I talked about the Great Fire of London. Keeping up with the theme of disasters befalling London, there has been a number of floods to have damaged the city, mostly storm surges and high tides coming up the River Thames.

On 7 December 1663, Samuel Pepys (who we read some of in my last blog entry) recorded in his diary "There was last night the greatest tide that ever was remembered in England to have been in this river all Whitehall having been drowned". In 1236 the river is reported as overflowing "and in the great Palace of Westminster men did row with wherries in the midst of the hall".

The worst flood is perhaps the 1953 North Sea Flood, which killed over 2,100 people, including 307 in England. So it was that the Thames Barrier in Greenwich was constructed, completed in 1984.

The Thames Barrier is a flood control mechanism downstream of London that is meant to block storm surges and unusually high tides from flooding the city. That's good news for me, leaving as I do on the flood plain / reclaimed marsh of Isle of Dogs.

For something with such an important function, it sure is pretty, with its Art Deco-ish, shiny silver hoods poking up out of concrete pilings.

The barrier works by having a gate lying flat along the river bottom, allowing boats to pass through the barrier. If a surge is predicted, however, the gates swing up from the river bottom and rise up 5 stories in the air to block the oncoming surge. The gates have been raised over 100 times since opening in 1984.

(If you can't quite picture how the thing works, check out this webpage, which has a diagram of the gates and how they work about half way down).

So the 9 pillars and 10 gates of the Thames Barrier stand guard, like sentries, ready to protect their upstream charges, the city of London.

- - -

My walk wasn't quite over, but the portion on the Thames Path was. The Thames Barrier is the terminus of the Thames Path, that runs 108 miles from the start of the Thames in the Cotswolds down into London.

From the Thames Barrier, I headed towards Woolwich, picking up bits along the river when I could, but having to do a good portion of the walk along the side of rather busy roads.

I eventually arrived at the Woolwich Pier, and having walked somewhere around the equivalent of 10 kilometres, I was ready for an easy ride back.

There was a few different options. On the north bank of the River, the Docklands Light Rail runs back to Isle of Dogs, or I could grab a Thames Clipper boat and take a water ride back to my home. I choose the DLR, mostly because I wasn't sure where the pier for the Thames Clipper was.

As for getting across the river, I had two choices - the free Woolwich Ferry or the Woolwich Foot Tunnel. Another pedestrian tunnel under the Thames? Sign me up!

And so after another kilometre added to my walk for the day, I found a seat on the DLR, leaned against the window and watched the miles of Thames River I'd walked along today rewind. It's good to now that the Thames Barrier is there to ensure that all that water doesn't spill over its banks and wash away my new home.

In the early hours of September 2nd, 1666 a fire began at a the bakery of Thomas Farriner, baker to King Charles II. According to most accounts, it is likely that Mr. Farriner failed to put out the fire in his ovens, leading to an ember blowing out and igniting nearby straw. Sparks from the bakehouse showered surrounding buildings, and soon the fire spread to the Star Inn in Fish Street. From there, the fire quickly spread to the north, east and west. Only the Thames River stopped the fire from spreading to the South.

The fire, now known as The Great Fire of London burnt for days. Up to 430 acres were affected by the fire, much of them within the city walls. Over 13,000 houses, 87 parish churches, 6 chapels, 3 city gates, four bridges, 52 guild halls, a prison and many famous and important buildings had been destroyed, leaving ten of thousands homeless and ruined.

So important an event is The Great Fire in the history of London that they erected a monument to it. Unfortunately, you can't see it right now, because it is covered in scaffolding as part of a refurbishment, but it is there.

I won't describe in any more detail the Great Fire, because people much more eloquent than I described the fire in eye witness accounts, including Samuel Pepys. Mr. Pepys was a member of parliament who is now most famous for his diary of his life in London. Mr. Pepys described his view of the multiple days of the fire, which is available online at the European History About pages, taken from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, by Samuel Pepys, transcribed by Mynors Bright and edited by Henry Wheatley, London, 1893. On the 2nd day of the fire, Mr. Pepys was in his boat on the Thames River watching the fire. Eventually the heat, embers and ash blowing across the river was too much for Mr. Pepys.

When we could endure no more upon the water; we to a little ale-house on the Bankside, over against the 'Three Cranes, and there staid till it was dark almost, and saw the fire grow; and, as it grew darker, appeared more and more, and in corners and upon steeples, and between churches and houses, as far as we could see up the hill of the City, in a most horrid malicious bloody flame, not like the fine flame of an ordinary fire. Barbary and her husband away before us. We staid till, it being darkish, we saw the fire as only one entire arch of fire from this to the other side the bridge, and in a bow up the hill for an arch of above a mile long: it made me weep to see it. The churches, houses, and all on fire and flaming at once; and a horrid noise the flames made, and the cracking of houses at their ruins.

That little ale-house on the Bankside was the Anchor pub, the pub attached to the Anchor Brewery, established in 1616 by James Monger. The Anchor Pub still exists, and so we know that the view that Mr. Pepys would have had across the River Thames would have looked something this, however with different buildings, and most of them on fire.

The Anchor Brewery first came to my attention back in the spring of this year, right about the time I had decided to move to the United Kingdom.

I had picked up a booked called "Beer: The Story of the Pint; The History of Britain's Most Popular Drink" by Martyn Cornell. The book is a pretty heavy read, starting with the first known brews in ancient Egypt with a lot of scientific crap on how different types of beers are brewed and what the OG (original gravitity) of different types of beer are, so it took me many months to get to the half way point of the book, which in the timeline of the book brought me up to the 1700s and 1800s.

The author Mr. Cornell writes about how in the late 1700s a number of Quakers started to get into the brewery business. "Most profession were barred to them because of their beliefs, and an objection to tithes, the tax on farmers imposed by the Church of England, drove them away from agriculture. Once in business their integrity, and their willingness to help each other through difficult times, helped them prosper."

He goes on to talk about how by the end of the century (1700) that two of the biggest breweries in London (and probably the world) were run by Quakers, one of those being the Anchor Brewery in Southwark, which "a knot of Quakers" (according to the previous owner's widow) had bought. One of the names, and probably the most famous, would be the name of BARCLAY (yes, of the banking). According to legend, David Barclay, who was a Quaker banker, was walking across a Thames Bridge when he saw a "For Sale" sign on the brewery wall, and decided to buy the brewery so that his nephew Robert would have a career. The tale is probably urban myth as the brewery manager prior to the sale was John Perkins, who was also a Quaker, and as such likely was the one who alerted David Barclay to the sale, especially seeing as he became on the investors and co-owners of the brewery.

Four Quaker families went in to become partners on the purchase of Anchor Brewery (later renamed the Barclay Perkins Brewery) - Barclay, Perkins, Bevan (partners with Barclay in banking) and (potentially later after the sale) GURNEY.

That was the only mention of the name Gurney I found in the book. Gurney is not specifically mentioned in the original sale information about the Anchor Brewery on page 117, but mentioned specifically on page 172, where the book says, "Like other breweries, even the biggest, Barclay Perkinds was a family-run business. Even in 1889 the partners were all descendants of the Barclay, Perkins, Bevan and Gurney familes who were the original investors in the concern in 1781."

I couldn't find much on the Internet regarding the Barclay and Gurney connection, save for an article which talks about a bank in Norwich called Gurney and Co joining an amalgamation of 20 banks under the name Barclay & Co. Ltd. in 1896, though this would suggest that the banks merged long after any Gurney was investing with Barclay on a brewery.

According to another history of English breweries, the brewery was Barclay and Perkins until 1955, when it merged with Courage breweries.

The brewery finally closed in 1981. At that time, the site underwent a redevelopment and the remains of the ancient GLOBE THEATRE (yes, THAT Globe Theatre) were found in 1989, and "and after seven years of campaigning led by Sam Wanamaker, a reconstructed Globe Theatre was opened to the public in August 1996 with a performance of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, the first production held on the site for more than 350 years."

The site of the Brewery is now a Premier Inn, and the pub house itself has undergone a number of extensions and refurbishments over the years, but it still has a nice character, a large patio on to the River Thames and even a few hand pumped ales on tap.

Now, many of you (especially those not related to me) will probably wonder why I have done so much research into this brewery and the names of Barclay and Gurney. My grandmother, who was the one whom I claimed ancestry from when first coming to London, had the maiden name Gurney.

My father, uncle and a cousin have done a lot of research into our genealogy and as far as we know, I have no family connection to the Gurneys who were the bankers and brewers. Too bad for me, and lucky for the folks at Barclays Bank, I think. Otherwise, I probably would have already marched into the Barclays office to collect my inheritance and demand a job.

"Hey there, I'm here to see Mr. Varley about my job. I was thinking Vice President. No, no, you're right. That's probably a little too junior for me. Senior Vice President? Nah, probably want to stretch a little bit. Don't want to make a lateral move. Executive Vice President. That seems right. So, will Mr. Varley see me now?"

I could do it too. Barclays is headquartered at Canary Wharf. I could walk there in 20 minutes.

Greater London is split in two by the River Thames, running through it from west to east as it makes its way to dump its water into the English Channel. Getting from one side to the other has been a large preoccupation of the residents of this area for the past 2000 years. In 50 AD the Romans built the first bridge across the Thames near the site of present day London Bridge.

The city of London and the city of Westminster have the majority of the river crossings in London, including a number of bridges built in the late 1800s. Those downstream from London though had to rely mostly on boats to take them across the river.

In 1843, Marc Brunel built the world's first underwater tunnel, running between Rotherhithe on the South bank and Wapping on the North Bank. The Thames Tunnel was open for pedestrian foot traffic from 1843 until 1865, when it converted over to train usage.

The Thames Tunnel was still in use up until late 2007 as part of the East London line of the Underground. It is currently closed, undergoing refurbishment to reopen in 2010 as part of the London Overground network.

While not exactly a success as a pedestrian tunnel, the Thames Tunnel did inspire other tunnels to be built underneath the Thames, including one linking Isle of Dogs with Greenwich.

Originally I wasn't planning on writing a blog entry today, figuring that having written three entries in the past three days was probably enough for even the most voracious of readers. However, when the crack research team here at GregWTravels pointed out to me that today was the 106th birthday of the Greenwich Foot Tunnel, well, I had to go and check it out.

(Note: the crack research team here at GregWTravels consists of me reading things like Wikipedia, using Google and reading Londonist Blog Entries).

The Greenwich Foot Tunnel connects Greenwich Pier with Island Gardens.

The crack research team (i.e. Wikipedia) has this to say on the Greenwich Foot Tunnel, "The cast-iron tunnel itself is 370.2 m (1,217 ft) long and 15.2 m deep and has an internal diameter of about 9 feet (3 m). Its cast-iron rings are lined with concrete which has been surfaced with some 200,000 white glazed tiles. The northern end was damaged by bombs during World War II and the repairs include a thick steel and concrete inner lining that reduces the diameter substantially for a short distance." (Source: Wiki Entry on Greenwich Foot Tunnel)

The tunnel is about 10 minutes walk south from my house. You arrive at the tip of Isle of Dogs, and can see across the water to Greenwich, temptingly close.

Beside you, you will see the entrance to the foot tunnel, a large, round red brick structure with a glass dome roof.

If you look across the river, you can see it's twin on the other side (in the picture below, you can see if off to the very right of the frame). The ferris wheel, by the way, is the Greenwich Eye, the baby brother for the much larger London Eye near the houses of Parliament.

The tunnel is open 24 hours a day. There is a lift (actually two lifts, one on either side of the river), but the lift is only open during the day. At night, or for those wanting a little exercise, you can walk down a set of Spiral stairwells.

Have a quick glance back your last look at land on the north bank of the river.

Down into the tunnel itself. Crossing from Isle of Dogs, first you pass through the repaired section with the iron plates...

A "riveting view," isn't it? (insert groan at bad pun here)

Next, you walk through the tunnel with the white tiled walls. Above you is 50 feet of earth before you get to the bottom of the River Thames, where another large amount of water (depending on the tide depth) sits above that. It's a long way to go if you need to get a breath of fresh air.

The tunnel is very busy right now, not just with tourists, runners and cyclists, but just regular folks trying to get across the river, given that presently the DLR is not running between Island Gardens (on Isle of Dogs) and Cutty Sark (in Greenwich) due to repair work.

After a few minutes, you emerge on the other side, now on the South side of the River Thames. Coming out of the Greenwich Exit, you take a check turn and look back North across the river to Island Gardens, Isle of Dogs and the whole of North London across the water.

Happy 106th, Greenwich Foot Tunnel!

Settling into my new home for the past couple of days, I have had to put up with a lot of noise from planes overhead. No, it's not short-haul flights to Europe from the London City Centre Airport that are buzzing over my house (though I do get those too), rather it is a bunch of dudes in single engine crop-dusters out to prove who is the best pilot.

Red Bull (the energy drink company) sponsors a series of events called the Red Bull Air Race. The London event was held August 2nd and 3rd, and it is the 5th in a series of 9 races this season.

The event is described in a few places as being like Formula One for airplanes, though given what I have seen of the event on TV and this weekend in person, it's probably closer to a Super G Slalom skiing event than a car race. Of course, given that Red Bull sponsors two teams in the Formula One and (as far as I know) 0 ski racers, I can understand why from a marketing perspective they probably went with the F1 connection.

The competitors fly aerobatic planes with small wingspans (8 m) and high top speeds up to 426 kph. The course in London consisted of 8 gates which the competitors must fly through 4 times.

The event is a ticketed event (of course), but as it takes place over the Thames River, there are still free places to view the action. I went out on the 2nd and watched part of the qualifying. Situated on the west bank of the Thames River near the bridge on Preston Road looking over towards the O2 Dome, I was able to see a couple of the gates, including the start and end gate.

The planes pass through the start and end gate three times - (1) to start, (2) to turn around and complete the course again and (3) to end. On the second pass through the gate, the planes do a half-loop, with a roll at the top to get themselves right-again in a move called a Half-Cuban Eight.

I snapped some shots, which don't quite capture the kinetic energy of the event, nor the noise, but hopefully still entertain.

For those of you interested in such things, American Kirby Chambliss won the London event. He was the 2006 champion, and with the win today, he is in second place overall in the standings.

Now, if you will excuse me, I am off to my local Sushi joint to see if they have a Half-Cuban Eight Roll on the menu. If not, I guess I will just get a Salmon Skin Roll.