London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
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And, from London a very good morning to you, wherever you are. It’s August 20th, 2024.
Today’s pin…I have to ‘fess up. I missed one. This past week, August 12th to August 18th was Afternoon Tea Week. I didn’t know there was an Afternoon Tea Week. But come this time next summer I’ll be all over it. But here’s a London tip that’s a sop of sorts – anything to make amends. A London tip that’s a great fit for our Westminster Abbey Tour. How does afternoon tea in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey sound? And what makes it particularly special at the moment is it’s themed after the Abbey’s 900-year-old garden. Afternoon tea with views of the Abbey for a piffling £36. Less than half of what you’ll have to fork out for the Afternoon Tea Experience – as they call it – at the Ritz.
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Moving on, today’s Random – make that today’s Randoms – I’m serving up two of them today.
First off the mark, ‘Fraid not, Winston. It ain’t the case. Winston Churchill was fond of saying, “all babies look like me.”
No no no no no. It wasn’t so. It isn’t so.
I’m thinking of Alain Delon, the French actor and heartthrob who died a couple of days ago. He was extremely handsome. And such was the case from the get-go with him. Apparently he was such a beautiful baby his mother had to put a sign on him that said, ‘Look but don’t touch.’
And for a second Random, another cat story. Offered up as another soupcon for the ne plus ultra of niche walks, Ann’s Cat Tails – A Feline Take on London History. The next time Ann’s catwalk is on the catwalk is September 8th.
Anyway, working this same vein, yesterday, we got to grips, so to speak, with the expression ‘not enough room to swing a cat.’ I explained its British maritime origins. That the cat in the phrase was the ‘cat-o-nine-tails’. What that invaluable resource, the 1801 British Mariner’s Vocabulary, defines as “nine cords about half a yard long fixed upon a piece of thick rope for a handle, having three knots on each at small intervals, nearest one end.” And that horrible detail about the prisoner being forced to make the thing up himself, tie each of those 27 knots.
Well, let us continue our onboard tour. A Royal Navy ship is like London, to see it you have to hear it. And what I want you to hear now – hear it so you can see it – is the phrase, “let the cat out of the bag.” If a sailor was found drunk on board he was ordered to whip up – I think we can put it that way – he was ordered to whip up a cat-o-nine-tails. Tie those knots. It was also called making a rod for his own back. When he’d got it ready, the cat was put in a leather bag. In the Royal Navy it was always a red baize bag. Come the appointed hour, the cat was let out of the bag. And, well, you know the rest. That usually happened on a Monday. It was called Blue Monday. So if you’ve got the blues of a Monday morning, well, let’s get things into perspective, shall we.
Ok today’s Ongoing.
This one’s personal in places. Our best American pals, David and Margie, discovered London Walks nearly 50 years ago. They were living over here. We were great friends then, we’re still great friends. It was David and Margie who introduced us to London Walks. It was life-changing for us. And indeed for the dozens of people nesting in this little tree. Hundreds of people if you count their families. I don’t know whether London Walks would be around today, had it not been for David and Margie. It certainly wouldn’t be around in its present form.
Anyway, got a note from David yesterday. He’s very excited. He said, ‘we’ve been invited to meet Kamala and Tim tomorrow.’ That’s properly meet them. Shake hands with them. Talk with them. So pleased for them. Pleased for Kamala and Tim, as well as for David and Margie. And hugely looking forward to our Sunday evening Skype session, hearing all about it.
And then, as sometimes happens, I had a little riff about it. Thinking, in the first instance, David and Margie are in Chicago for the Democratic National Convention. Chicago, the word, the name, comes from the Algonquin word ‘shikaakwa’, meaning ‘striped skunk’ or ‘onion’. It was an area of lakes and streams and woods. Lots of wild onions and garlic growing in the woods. And the pungent odour of the garlic and onions was like the whiff you get from a skunk. The Algonquins were a group of native American tribes that included the Illinois, the Miami and the Ojibway peoples. Let’s do some quick American history here. Chicago is in the state of Illinois. The word “Illinois” comes from the Illini Indian word “iliniwok,” which means “best people” or “warriors”. And then some more history in that word because the tail end of it, ois, o-i-s, is French. Remember, the French were the first Europeans to explore in through there. And then as long as we’re at it, the next state up from Illinois – Chicago’s just over the border – is Wisconsin. And Wisconsin is another word from the Algonquin language – it’s an Ojibway word meaning “Land of the Gathering Waters.”
And we’re just getting started. This is one of those riffs that takes wing, soars. Kamala Harris’s mother was Indian. She was born in Madras, in British India. And of course the old, all-purpose, one-size-fits-all, and incorrect word for native American is Indian. Having crossed the Atlantic and coming ashore in the 15th century, those first Europeans in the western hemisphere thought they’d reached India. And that in consequence the indigenous people must be Indians.
But the matter goes a lot further. Resonates a lot more. Kamala Harris’s father came from Jamaica. His ancestry was Irish, Scottish and African. One of his ancestors, an Irishman named Hamilton Brown, came to Jamaica from County Down in Ireland. He became a slave owner. He never married. But he fathered children on some of his female slaves. One of those children Hamilton Brown begat on a slave girl – yes, begat, its the biblical term – one of those children Hamilton Brown begat on a slave girl was an ancestor of Kamala Harris’s father.
And now finally we can think about this date, August 20th. It was on August 20th, 1619 that traffickers brought the first enslaved Africans to Jamestown, Virginian.
This is one of those nodes. I am breathtakingly ignorant about quantum physics. But I like the sound of the word quark.
Quark, which Wiki defines as an elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter.
Well, surely today is the historical – and indeed cultural equivalent of a quark. It’s simultaneously centrifugal and centripetal. Centrifugal, time exploding outward from August 20th, 1619. And centrifugal in the other dimension: space. Ireland, Scotland, Jamestown, Africa, India, Chicago and, yes, thanks to our friends David and Margie, London.
Everything going in every which direction, pulling out from the centre. But it’s also centripetal. Comes back together in the person who I strongly suspect will be the next president of the United States. The first woman president. Somehow in her person she pulls all that together, pulls together that coming ashore in Jamestown on this day in 1619, pulls together her Irish and Scottish ancestry, pulls together that strand of her ancestry in India halfway round the world and pulls together the past and the experience of the land of her birth. The climactic moment for that centripetal force will be Thursday when she formally accepts the Democratic nomination. She’ll draw the sword from the stone in the city whose very name is a coalescence of the past of the indigenous people who were misnamed Indians.
And I think because of David and Margie, London Walks is a tiny filament that’s part of this extraordinary tale. Hitching a ride so to speak.
You’ve been listening to This… is London, the London Walks podcast. Emanating from www.walks.com –
home of London Walks,
London’s signature
walking tour company.
London’s local, time-honoured, fiercely independent, family-owned, just-the-right-size
walking tour company.
And as long as we’re at it,
London’s multi-award-winning walking tour company. Indeed, London’s only award-winning walking tour company.
And here’s the secret: London Walks is essentially run as a guides’ cooperative.
That’s the key to everything.
It’s the reason we’re able to attract and keep the best guides in London. You can get schlubbers to do this for £20 a walk. But you cannot get world-class guides – let alone accomplished professionals.
It’s not rocket science:
you get what you pay for.
And just as surely,
you also get what you don’t pay for.
Back in 1968 when we got started
we quickly came to a fork in the road. We had to answer a searching question:
Do we want to make the most money? Or do we want to be the best walking tour company in the world?
You want to make the most money you go the schlubbers route. You want to be the best walking tour company in the world
you do whatever you have to do
to attract and keep
the best guides in London –
you want them guiding for you,
not for somebody else.
Bears repeating:
the way we’re structured –
a guides’ cooperative –
is the key to the whole thing.
It’s the reason for all those awards, it’s the reason people who know go with London Walks, it’s the reason we’ve got a big following,
a lively, loyal, discerning following – quality attracts quality.
It’s the reason we’re able – uniquely – to front our walks with accomplished, in many cases
distinguished professionals:
By way of example, Stewart Purvis, the former Editor
(and subsequently CEO) of Independent Television News.
And Lisa Honan, who had a distinguished career as a diplomat (Lisa was the Governor of St Helena, the island where Napoleon breathed his last and, some say, had his penis amputated –
Napoleon didn’t feel a thing – if thing’s the mot juste – he was dead.)
Stewart and Lisa –
both of them CBEs –
are just a couple of our headline acts.
Or take our Ripper Walk. It’s the creation of the world’s leading expert on Jack the Ripper, Donald Rumbelow, the author of the definitive book on the subject. Britain’s most distinguished crime historian, Donald is, in the words of The Jack the Ripper A to Z,“internationally recognised as the leading authority on Jack the Ripper.” Donald’s emeritus now but he’s still the guiding light on our Ripper Walk. He curates the walk. He trains up and mentors our Ripper Walk guides. Fields any and all questions they throw at him.
The London Walks Aristocracy of Talent – its All-Star team of guides – includes a former London Mayor. It includes the former Chief Music Critic for the Evening Standard. It includes the Chair of the Association of Professional Tour Guides. And the former chair of the Guild of Guides.
It includes barristers, doctors, geologists, museum curators, a former Museum of London archaeologist, historians,
university professors (one of them a distinguished Cambridge University paleontologist); it includes
criminal defence lawyers,
Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre actors,
a bevy of MVPs, Oscar winners (people who’ve won the big one, the Guide of the Year Award)…
well, you get the idea.
As that travel writer famously put it, “if this were a golf tournament,
every name on the Leader Board would be a London Walks guide.”
And as we put it: London Walks Guides make the new familiar
and the familiar new.
And on that agreeable note…
come then, let us go forward together on some great London Walks.
And that’s by way of saying, Good walking and Good Londoning
one and all. See ya next time.