Exeat: Going Underground

Last week, one of the Giddy Biddies at the top of Winchester Cathedral tower asked me what castle tower I'd be going up next. As it happens, plans were to go underground instead. 8 of the stations on the London Underground network have deep bomb shelters, built to save lives during the war with an eye to using them as parts of new lines in the future. Eisenhower's bunker is under Goodge Street. But they're either empty or used for document storage now, and I'm not allowed in. But there are places ...

The taxi was wonderful because it only took 3 minutes and £3 to get us to the station. The train was big and open and fast and I liked looking through the fog and racing cars on the A3 road to London.
Just as we passed the MI6 building I decided I needed a sit-down toilet which was, like, 5 carriages back so I didn't get back until we were stationary in Waterloo.
Walking through to the London Eye, it was good to be back in town. The London Dungeons are based in the old GLC building next to the aquarium and we got there dead on time and waited in the dark in a prison corridor with a black light so my socks lit up.
Gradually we got to the front of the queue and you go in in groups of 20 and travel round the whole experience in the same group. Each room represents a different aspect of London life and history (and London has a whole bunch of history) and each room has one or more actors who go through their little routine in their own mini-kingdom. Henry the 8th (Brian Blessed) welcomes you in by saying you're a traitor, prepare to die tediously.
I can tell you that most of the men sound like Arnold Rimmer apart from Master Bates the geezer who captured Guido Fawkes 2nd time lucky. I can also tell you that all the ladies are Antipodean apart from Mrs Miggins in the pie shop. In between rooms are various corridors where they've tried to disguise the water pipes and aircon ducts. We all got lost in the hall of mirrors.
There are some tame rats in cages, they're strong on darkness, barrels, funny noises screaming out at you, and banging on doors. A couple of times air blasts hit you and it goes woosh and I got a bit nervous because you just can't see where you're going.
There is a boat ride and you go backwards in the dark and get splashed and you can't use flash photography. A nice prostitute told us that some of her friends have had their throats chopped and a judge with added clerk made some very rude and suggestive jokes about doing naughty things with a sheep and they like a bit of audience participation and kept asking a bloke called Craig to sit in the iron maiden or get hung at Tyburn or have his tongue torn out, as you do. The lady torturer explained all about how the expanding pear can fit in both ends of your body, and I bet they didn't wash it.
Because you go around in packets of 20, once the actor has done his/her bit, there's an embarrassing period while you all shuffle off to the next room and the actor has to fill the time by asking if you've enjoyed the plague pits and please move along.
Then they reset all the stage props. Mrs Miggins makes pies using human flesh and Sweeney Todd's chairs poke you in the back and tip backwards at the end and make you jump. I was too short to go on the Tyburn noose ride (min height 1.40), bummer. But I did get squirted by the bladder in the post mortem room and the leeches tickled our botties and they do stand right in front of you when the lights are off and go rargh when they come on again. The floor shakes in the cellars under the houses of parliament and there are fire-escapes everywhere where fragile people various left the party early.
In the shop at the end we didn't buy the official photo but got a red skull and some squashed pennies. The shop is strong on skull tankards but they have a sticker inside saying not suitable for use as a drinking vessel. On Westminster Bridge there were a lot of Turkish immigrants doing the stone-age 3-cup trick. Each one had a mate who wins some money off him pour encourager les autres and then he scams Joe the public who stands around the mini-arena making the pavement impassable.
I watched them a few times and just when he's finished moving the cups and 'The Mark' has paid his money and made his choice, he puts his arm over them and switches 2 cups.
So we strode on past Big Ben which I shall climb in 2 years time and wandered off through the heart of Whitehall, which is where the government lives, to the cenotaph where we saw signs to the Cabinet War Rooms.
The foreign office is having scaffolding and the chief workman came past on a Harley Davidson and all the guys in Hi-Vis jackets were right old Cockneys, Gor luv-a-duck. The queue went under the Treasury so we looked at St James' Park and could see the Queen's house at the other end.
We disappeared under the specially reinforced building and saw where Churchill sat with his wartime buddies and saved Western Civilisation. You can see the transatlantic secure phone line and the bedrooms and map rooms and the extra girders and sub-basement and the Churchill museum with bundles of artefacts.
He was a bit of a Jack-the-lad in his day and they have some of his personal guns.
I actually did love it all and that's not just a 9 year-old boy trying to say the right thing. Afterwards we got a medallion and some squashed pennies in the shop, looked at Horseguards Parade with its armed policepersons and re-crossed Westminster Bridge to go back to the London Dungeons and have a MacDonalds next door, of all things.
Breaking the usual habit of insisting on pizza, I found no room inside so I rested my poor tired feeties on the alfresco tables where we were attended by pigeons, starlings and the view of the Houses of Parliament, not bad I suppose. The Thames was at low tide.
Then we re-crossed my favourite bridge one more time, seeing some real live MPs by the river stairs. We went underground at Westminster Bridge station. I read the tube map and determined our course. The Oyster card we'd so carefully organised failed to work.
At 'Customer Enquiries', the man said we'd done it wrong so we believed him, for it was our first time. But it didn't work again and he actually came out of his booth-bunker and tried it himself and it didn't work and he said he'd never seen that error message before and gave us a new card.
Speeding across town, we hit South Kensington and 7 1/2 million Chinese tourists. They have a special underground walkway leading from the station directly to the NAT HIST MUS, the V&A and the science museum and there was a busker who almost played Stairway to Heaven and we emerged, blinking, at the Science Museum.
When you go to London you must always have a backup plan in case your first 2 plans are over too quickly, and you've come all that way after all. The Science Museum is big.

OK, the NAT HIST MUS is big too, but those naughty Victorians really knew how to educate the masses and it's yet another priceless part of the London tourist trail with collections to die for.
Now Bud was looking for a radioactive rock he saw 35 years ago and I wanted to see nuclear bombs and the liquid metal Terminator. In the end, neither of us got what we wanted but boy O boy we saw a whole bunch of other stuff that knocked a hot rock into a cocked hat.
I spent ages playing Pong (1972) and we laughed at the early washing machines and the Texas Instruments Talk'N'Spell and the ZX80 and the hoovers and the toilet cistern named Thomas Crapper and the V2 rocket and a porcelain bowl melted by the Nagasaki explosion and some cars attached to the wall and the truly massive steam engines and some 4th order 3D shapes and Babbage's Difference Engines and a Damascus steel sword (1000 years old and we still don't understand it) and even the glassblowing exhibit was cool.
There are more floors than we could visit and my poor little feeties fell off. Fortunately, the moon lander and the huge lit-up loop in the atrium and the shop rejuvenated me.
I bought a brightly-coloured plastic spring with Science Museum written on it and one of those pin-art blocks and a London Underground map, for I love it. I also squashed some more pennies, and I can heartily recommend the Science Museum penny squashing machines because they have a copper hopper full of bright new shiny pennies so you don't have to supply your own, just the £1 coin.
By this time, they were trying to close so we walked back to South Kensington overground, using actual streets, seeing the gorgeous NAT HIST MUS (looks good enough to eat), those quiet religious nutters that just try to hand out is-god-real pamphlets rather than engage you in paranormal conversation, the other 7 1/2 million Chinese tourists you'd forgotten about and some very modern trendy red double-decker buses and some 'Boris Bikes'.
We lost altitude and gained kelvins as we got back on the Metro and a girl gave up her seat for me because it was so busy I had to sit on the floor (tired feeties). But maybe this is because I'm handsome and she knew she was doing the right thing.
We deliberately changed at Westminster to get the Jubilee line to Waterloo, because it's deeper so I got to use more escalators. At Waterloo we signed out of London using the replacement Oyster card, bought some beer and Tuna Sweetcorn sandwiches in M&S and caught a train to Pompey with 1 1/2 minutes to spare.
The train was so full we had to sit on the floor behind the driver and then we discovered we'd got on the one via Basingstoke (add 40 minutes to your journey here) and I got the Science Museum spring fatally tangled after about 10 minutes and we sped home (via Winchester) through the night with big bags of booty and some giant chocolate buttons.
Even the toilet seat was funny.
Jof picked us up after 12 hours out of the house even though she was really tired and I ate some supper and went straight to bed, you know when you get in bed and you do the bicycle thing and just lose consciousness ...

In honour of another trip on the London Underground (my favourite tunnel network) I hereby reprint the lyrics from Amateur Transplants' "London Underground", a parody of 'Going Underground' by the Jam. They are 2 London hospital doctors who sing: we have 2 of their albums, very funny indeed but very rude also, ho ho.
Now, after my dear mother, bless her, suggested I watch Die Hard instead of Schwarzenegger films all the time, I no longer blush at harsh language. But there are 2 words, clumps and bankers, that are quintessentially English but I simply haven't met them because they seldom occur in 80s American action thrillers. Therefore I have redacted or modified some of the bad words in case any of my readers are girls.

Some people might like to get a train to work
Or drive in in a Beemer or a Merc
Some guys like to travel in by bus
But I can't be bothered with the fuss
Today I got to take my bike
'Cause once again the Tube's on strike
The greedy graspers want extra pay
For sitting their arse all day
Even though they earn 30k
So I'm standing here in the pouring rain
Where the fart's my farting train

London Underground (London Underground)
They're all lazy farting useless clumps
London Underground (London Underground)
They're all greedy clumps
I want to shoot them all with a rifle

All they say is, "Please mind the doors
And they learn that on their two-day course
This job could be done by a four-year-old
They just leave us freezing in the cold
What you smell is what you get
Burger King and piss and sweat
You roast to death in the boiling heat
With tourists treading on your feet
And chewing gum on every seat
So don't tell me to mind the gap
I want my farting money back

London Underground (London Underground)
They're all lazy farting useless clumps
London Underground (London Underground)
They're all greedy clumps
I want to shoot them all with a rifle

La-l-la-la, la-l-la-la

The floors are sticky and the seats are damp
Every platform has a farting tramp
But the drivers get the day off when
We're all late for work again
London Underground (London Underground)
Ba-ba-bankers, they're all bankers
London Underground (London Underground)
Take your Oyster card and shove it up your bottom