Craig Cross's Blog, page 4

London blog: Kensington Gardens

What is it with birds and their mating dances? I couldn't be faffed with all of that baloney, doing a dance every time I wanted a date. But there's not a lot to do in Kensington Gardens apart from walking around, sitting down and watching the birds. I sat here for months once, just watching the leaves turn from green to orange, watching my beard turn from brown to grey. When you've got knees like mine the benches act like way-stations, like medical stations on a marathon -- you walk around...

London blog: London Zoo

If you want to do London Zoo properly then you'll be walking around for 4-5 hours so you need to take it slow, because it's a proper zoo: there are no rides, no rollercoasters, no dolphins doing tricks with the kids. You just stand in front of the cages trying to find the animals, then you buy a stuffed monkey from the gift shop and go home. The aquarium is a nice peaceful way to begin your day. When you push open the door you're into a world of watery music and mushy pea green scenes, rock...

London blog: London Eye

I'm quite a fatalistic kind of guy and I can't help wondering what will happen if one of those flimsy little spokes snaps. I mean, look how flimsy they are. They are like wire cost-hangars. Are we 100% sure they knew what they were doing? The London Eye was built by some Italians, wasn't it -- the same country that built the Leaning Tower of Pisa. (I'll have to check that before I get on.) But I suppose I'll have to man up and ride it because I've got a review to write. Normally I'd buy my...

London blog: Postal Museum

My dad used to be a postman. Apparently he managed to deliver a letter once that didn't have an address on it, it was just a name -- that's how good he was. And he delivered another letter that didn't have an address or a name on it. It didn't even have a letter inside it. It was just an empty envelope. That's how good he was. But unless you happen to deliver letters for a living I'm guessing that a visit to the Postal Museum isn't exactly at the top of your list of fun things to do in...

London blog: London Mithraeum

Have you ever returned to your old hometown just to see what it's like? To see if anything has changed, see if your family house is still standing, maybe sit at a bus stop for five minutes and try and recognise your teachers? Mine is just charity shops and crappy cafes now. The rough pub I used to work at is a boarded-up barrow of skips and bricks with weeds curling through them. Imagine if an old Roman tried to do the same in London... apart from a few bits of the old city wall and the...

London blog: Big Bus Tours

I was going to have a midlife crisis at thirty but I figured that was ten years too early, so I patiently waited for forty three. That's why I haven't been to London for months. When I returned to the city today there were skyscrapers up that were still stone stumps six months ago. There were statues of people who weren't even dead last September. There were pigeons I'd never met before, new cycle lines all over the goddam place -- I felt like a tourist wandering around on their very first...

London blog: Greenwich Hill

I climbed my first hill when I was six (six or seven, something like that). Every hill I ascended before that was either on my dad's back or in the back of a sputtering car, but then my parents took me on a fun day out to Box Hill which turned out to be not so much fun. I only had little legs, little feet, a pair of flimsy plimsoles, and when I got to the top there was nothing to see. Just the tops of the trees as far as the eye could see. So nowadays if I climb a hill then it has to be...

London blog: One New Change

This is a great little place. You'll like this. And you'll like it even better if you're broke because it's free. But let's have a sit down in St. Paul's Churchyard first. Find the big column monument in the garden with St. Paul on top. Tourists are always taking photos of this column because it's got a bit of gold on top and they think it might be important, but it's just marking the spot of a long-gone preaching pulpit. Back in the days when the medieval St. Paul's was still standing this...

London blog: Royal Academy of Arts

You might find this hard to believe if you've read a few of my galley reviews, but I did actually go to art school once. And I really do mean once (I quit on the very first day). After looking around the induction hall I quickly realised that I wasn't cut out to be an art student because you need to smoke dope, have a silly hat or a tattoo or a silver stud in your nose, and basically look like you failed every single subject at school except art. I was imagining a place where painters could...

London blog: Tower of London

A bit of bad weather is good. If you can't visit the Tower of London at night then try and come here when it's wet. And I mean proper wet: getting drenched wet. Rain like grey paint that clears the crowds and shows you what it was like 1,000 years ago when the only visitors were prisoners. There are only three places in London where I genuinely dread the crowds: the London Eye, Madame Tussauds and the Tower of London. When you walk up to the front there'll be hundreds of them grouping up,...