If we’d planned to insert ourselves into the middle of the royal mess of the logistical nightmare that knotted London’s streets for many blocks following the death of Her Majesty, we’d have picked the St. James Hotel as headquarters.
But we didn’t. Plan, I mean. We booked a flight and a hotel back in August during a time Queen Elizabeth was trotting about the Balmoral hillsides with her dogs and with no one suspecting her number was up.
So, the St. James. Room 532, for historians wanting accurate details. The St. James is near creaky old pubs serving ales and bitters, clothing shops, a bookstore ‘round the corner, banks and an occasional police officer ambling about.
And just over there, Buckingham Palace.
Now back that way, a block or so around the corner, you’ll see Westminster Abbey.
Readers who absorb British mystery novels like Brits devour pints know the St. James Hotel is between the two most important buildings in the week surrounding the Queen’s services. And what a week it was. Lasted a month.
One afternoon prior to any obvious planning for the official event(s) wife Trophy and I took a morning taxi to the British Museum, a building that was old even before the Queen was born. It’s stuffed with jewels, statues, pieces of ships and boats, knights’ armor and several tons of other remnants that leave me mentally exhausted after 30 minutes.
We were in the museum for hours, emerged blinking into strong sunlight, and began our long but leisurely walk home. (It’s a Yea to the “long” walk part, Nay to the “leisurely” one.)
We’d planned the hike home from the comfort of the hotel lobby, aided by a knowledgeable concierge who said our walk would be along a simple scenic pathway.
It was merely a matter of following the route with a few turns at a few corners, a roundabout here and maybe a lunch there. Then the “blinking into strong sunlight” stuff before skipping down hundreds of steps leading to the museum. Away we went.
For about 300 feet. We were stopped by helpful police officers leaning on metal fence-like barricades. The cops cheerfully re-directed us a couple blocks that way, then to the left and we’d be right on course. On course?
On course for a looping, backtracking maze of more barricades, many more officers, and instructions (security purposes you understand) to avoid this particular thoroughfare, and instead go back the direction we’d come, but turn at the gate opposite.
Or some other gate. Didn’t much matter to the smiling cops, nor the next ones we met at the intersection to which we’d been directed. Sorry and all that, but the road’s closed until Thursday. Best bet is around that way, under the overpass and clockwise through the roundabout, which oughtn’t take much beyond mid-Tuesday.
This written account is quick and easy in terms of sentences and paragraphs, but it was rather more lengthy and arduous by the third or fourth hour of trudging about London’s thoroughfares and boulevards, all lined with those damnable movable metal barricades. Tiresome, actually, and if I weren’t a brawny lad, stout of heart, brimming with vim, vigor, grit, determination and wearing Crocs, I might have wept.
I’d sure like to see a city map of dear old London with a dotted line showing the route(s) we took that turned a 45 minute walk (concierge’s estimate) into a trek that took us through London’s Playhouse District, the Big Ben clock tower, House of Parliament (twice), a brewery, miles of metal barricades, a farm with barn, cows, and a tractor, a train station, the British Museum (?) and two pubs where we were revived with pints of healing liquids.
Just then: What Ho! We spotted the dear old St. James Hotel, only to be told by a band of merry officers that security measures required our heading back the other way through those arches, and once beyond the brewery to go ahead and kill ourselves.
We did make it home that evening, but not in good moods. Two days later mobs of British citizens, six deep, crowded the sidewalks behind metal barricades in front of our hotel.
Trophy and I sat in the hotel lobby watching it on TV.
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