Monday, February 20, 2017

Rover

Today

Yesterday I went to St Pancras in London for a rehearsal. Once I reached Waterloo everywhere was heaving.

"Hmph!" I grumped to myself, fighting my way down the escalator,  "time was, London was quiet on a Sunday."

In My Day

This was really true once upon a time, especially in places like the City or Holborn. Shops were shut on Sundays, so Oxford, Regent Street and Tottenham Court Road were all empty.


One of the ways in which David liked to entertain himself (and me) on Sundays was to buy a "Red Rover" bus ticket. These tickets allowed you to travel anywhere on London on any red bus for a whole day. Bargain!

As usual, David was in charge of operations. He was very knowledgeable about buses and showed me how to differentiate between RTs and RTLs and gloried in the magnificence of the new Routemasters. We'd jump on the first bus heading citywards. Armed with bus map and timetable, David would then orchestrate the day. We'd get off at places unknown to me or only from looking at underground maps.

We'd cover quite a distance, too. On one occasion I remember going as far west as Barnes Bridge and as far east as Saffron Hill in Clerkenwell. I made some sketches of Saffron Hill, which later I turned into an oil painting which I still have. I think it was after this trip that Daddy first told me that he'd been brought up in Clerkenwell.

David's choice of buses seemed to me quite random, which I doubt they were, at least in David's mind; he always being methodical in his fashion. And I saw lots of interesting unsung places in London.

One thing, however, the buses were pretty well all empty.