The Saturday of Mel’s visit was the lost day. I felt terrible and she didn’t feel much better. For the record, there was not a drop of alcohol consumed during her visit so the un-sunny disposition cannot be blamed on a hangover of any sort. During the visit I was also house-sitting so we only left the house to get some stuff to cook for dinner and then stayed in watching movies and commenting on British television. Being able to cook our own dinner and having more than three television stations was about as much excitement as I could handle on Saturday.
On Sunday, Mel wanted to do one of the open-topped double decker bus tours. We set out for the Marble Arch tube station and quickly found out that there are two competing open-topped double decker bus companies, right next to each other, vying for business. We selected the first one that we saw and waited for our bus to arrive. While waiting, Mel went to find a bathroom and I had the unfortunate task of being chatted up by the ticket guy for one of the bus companies. Even though I had no voice on Sunday due to my cold, he felt the need to ask me lots of questions about myself, which I could not answer. He then got into a fight with the other bus company’s ticket guy. When the tussle broke up, I had to hear about how much he hated the other guy because he had assaulted someone else at their company just last week. Is this really the picture you want to paint to someone supposedly visiting your country? And what is taking Mel so long?
Later in the evening we headed off to Tower Hill Tube Station to meet up with the tour guide of the London Walks Jack the Ripper walking tour. Even on a cold and rainy night, about 50 people showed up for the tour! We broke up into two groups and headed on our way. The tour was very good, focusing not so much on who Jack the Ripper was since no one knows for sure, but instead giving a very vivid picture of what East London was like in the Ripper’s time, and what life was like for the prostitutes he murdered. It was kind of eerie doing this tour on Sunday when just that week in the newspaper all of England read about the sentencing of the Suffolk Strangler, who also murdered five prostitutes in 2006.
The tour runs every night of the week and an additional day tour on Saturday. People who live in the neighborhoods in East London must know it well because we got several people, especially young men coming home from the pub yelling “Don’t let the Ripper get you!” There was also a child that looked about ten on our walking tour. I wonder what kind of questions the parents had to field on their journey home, “Mom, what are entrails, and why would someone have them pulled out and thrown over their shoulder?” “Dad, what’s a prostitute?” It wasn’t exactly family friendly material.
On Sunday, Mel wanted to do one of the open-topped double decker bus tours. We set out for the Marble Arch tube station and quickly found out that there are two competing open-topped double decker bus companies, right next to each other, vying for business. We selected the first one that we saw and waited for our bus to arrive. While waiting, Mel went to find a bathroom and I had the unfortunate task of being chatted up by the ticket guy for one of the bus companies. Even though I had no voice on Sunday due to my cold, he felt the need to ask me lots of questions about myself, which I could not answer. He then got into a fight with the other bus company’s ticket guy. When the tussle broke up, I had to hear about how much he hated the other guy because he had assaulted someone else at their company just last week. Is this really the picture you want to paint to someone supposedly visiting your country? And what is taking Mel so long?
Later in the evening we headed off to Tower Hill Tube Station to meet up with the tour guide of the London Walks Jack the Ripper walking tour. Even on a cold and rainy night, about 50 people showed up for the tour! We broke up into two groups and headed on our way. The tour was very good, focusing not so much on who Jack the Ripper was since no one knows for sure, but instead giving a very vivid picture of what East London was like in the Ripper’s time, and what life was like for the prostitutes he murdered. It was kind of eerie doing this tour on Sunday when just that week in the newspaper all of England read about the sentencing of the Suffolk Strangler, who also murdered five prostitutes in 2006.The tour runs every night of the week and an additional day tour on Saturday. People who live in the neighborhoods in East London must know it well because we got several people, especially young men coming home from the pub yelling “Don’t let the Ripper get you!” There was also a child that looked about ten on our walking tour. I wonder what kind of questions the parents had to field on their journey home, “Mom, what are entrails, and why would someone have them pulled out and thrown over their shoulder?” “Dad, what’s a prostitute?” It wasn’t exactly family friendly material.
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