Today in Comics History, October 2, 1888: The Best Jack the Ripper Walking Tour Ever

from Thunderbolts (1997 series) #167 (Marvel, February 2012), script by Jeff Parker, pencils and inks by Declan Shalvey, colors by Frank Martin, letters by Joe Sabino

Pearls, sales, and grails

I like shopping, sure. But not enough to fight my way through the crowds on the High Street to get half off. SkyNews on the hotel telly is reporting this has been the busiest Boxing Day sales shopping ever, and there were hundreds of people lined up outside the main branch of Marks & Spencer's on Oxford Street this morning...at 3:30 AM, six hours before they officially opened. I like my Marks & Sparks Y-fronts just fine, but when you're a little stuffed bull you are wary of screaming, grabbing crowds. I might wind up going home in someone else's shopping basket! And much as I would like to live in London, I would not like doing it that way very much at all.

Instead, I hopped on the Tube (Circle Line, transferring at Notting Hill Gate to Central Line), and hied my tail over to St. Paul's Cathedral for yet another excellent of the London Walks I've been enjoying so much: the Christmas Cockney London Walk! I had actually taken my big bright orange highlighter and circled the two walking tours London Walks were giving yesterday on Christmas Day—a Charles Dickens walk and a Samuel Pepys walk—but I wound up instead just enjoying walking around Kensington on my own. The two Christmas walks met at Trafalgar Square, and since no tubes or buses were running, my choices were to walk there (about three miles, not impossible) or take a taxicab (easy enough, there's a large rank of them at all times outside the hotel). In the end I decided for a quieter day, and especially after a bellyful of turkey, sausages and Christmas pudding, I was glad I did. But I still regretted not going for a special Christmas walk, so this one looked a treat.

And it was! I've never been disappointed by a London Walks tour or any of their friendly, knowledgeable, entertaining guides, but how could I pass up this tour when I read this description of the guide in the fold-out London Walks brochure:

Your host and genial guide for this morning's walk, our very own Londoner par excellence, Jean, will be decked out in her Cockney 'glad rags'—her splendid Pearly Queen costume. With stories and snatches of popular songs from the nostalgic age of the Victorian and Edwardian Music Halls, she'll be telling you the colourful story of London and its inhabitants. You'll be welcome to sing-along-a-Jean if you want to, and if the festive mood really grabs you, a little gentle knees up Mother Brown would go down a bundle too!

Golly! If you know anything at all about me, it's that I'm a little stuffed bull who believes sing-a-longs are great fun. (Don't you always hate when people are too shy to sing? I like singing as loud as I can.) And a guide in Pearly Queen costume? That's great value for money already, and we're not even taking into account the tour itself. Sign me up for that, post-haste!

The tour was one of the busiest I've ever been on in my several trips to London—it felt like closer to sixty people (and a little stuffed bull), but Jean was cheerful and ebullient and kept us marching along merrily as we explored the area around St. Paul's and the old City of London. Jean is not a tall woman, but she was easy to spot as we traipsed along: full pearly regalia and feathered hat bobbing through our crowd made her an easy person to follow. At each spot we stopped she climbed up on steps, benches, or stairs to address us, so her melodious voice clearly rang out even if you were on the outskirts of the tour group. And her voice was indeed lovely, and she did indeed sing: songs and melodies of the Cockneys and costers of London, traditional market ditties and wonderful ballads. She told us a marvelous anecdote of coming with her mother to see a concert in St. Paul's yard after the war, when Jean was seven, and hearing Noel Coward sing "London Pride," which has long been one of my favorite London songs, but when Jean sang it, it was absolutely beautiful. I truly wish I had videotaped her singing that song; when she sings, out flies the spirit of London.

London Pride has been handed down to us
London Pride is a flower that's free
London Pride means our own dear town to us,
And our pride it for ever will be.
Woa, Liza,
See the coster barrows,
Vegetable marrows
And the fruit piled high.
Woa, Liza,
Little London sparrows,
Covent Garden Market where the costers cry.
Cockney feet
Mark the beat of history
Every street
Pins a memory down
Nothing ever can quite replace
The grace of London Town

I did videotape her telling us about the Cockneys and the costers (the street market hawkers) of London, complete with short snippets of their selling songs. If I've done my YouTube wizardry right, here 'tis. It's a wee bit longer than I wanted (I'm having trouble editing video on the laptop), so if you want a shorter version, skip to around 3:40 and start there to hear Jean talk about the costers and then sing some songs. But the whole bit is a bit of all right, mate!:



The walk was truly great fun and absolutely delightful, one of my favorite mornings so far on this holiday. The day was in weather cold and grey, but you simply can't feel cold and grey inside when you're seeing and hearing about the history of the Guild Hall and the Old Bailey and St. Bartholomew's Hospital and Smithfield Market, or gazing up at the Golden Fat Boy statue that was erected as a warning against gluttony following the Great Fire (gulp! I guess I had better lose some weight) and the beautiful Church of St Anne and St Agnes. I learned how important the Lord Mayor is, about the real Dick Whittington (maybe he really did have a cat, after all!), that people really do live and don't just work inside the City proper (and that number has been growing in the last few years) and why there's a statue of Henry VIII near St. Bartholomew's...accompanied by Jean guiding us all in a group sing-a-long of "I'm Henry the Eighth, I Am." As you all know I am a bull with a very good eye for value and although I've been gushing about every single London Walk I've been on to the point you surely must think I'm a shill for the company (I only wish), I'll tell you that this was the most fun couple hours you can have in London on your feet. The tour itself isn't part of the regular weekly schedule, but Jean does run it semi-regularly, so check the London Walks website or email them if you're going over to London and ask when the Cockney Walk featuring the woman dressed as a Pearly Queen with the voice of a London angel is going to run. Believe me, it was triffic.

After that morning o' delight in the crisp winter air the best way to continue the day is with a hot pub lunch, and I settle in a booth at a pub near St. Paul's and scarf down a pork pie and chips and a pint of bitter. It's not especially healthy food, but I am on holiday, and oh how good it tastes. There is nothing like pub food to warm you up and give you energy and comfort to get through the rest of the day; it knows just where to fill in the hungry spaces and I relax and even close my eyes for a moment, so comfy I am in the warm pub. But I push myself up and back out into the cold; there's much more to do on the London agenda today.

Next stop: Charing Cross Road. I'll dive tentatively into the half-price Boxing Day sales, yes, but with a specific plan of attack. First off: prioritize. What I'm interested in is books, so the top end of Charing Cross Road is the perfect place to head. Within a few hundred yards you have the London main branches of Blackwell's and Foyle's, a pretty-good-sized Waterstones, and even that Borders I warned you against earlier. The Borders is always worth a visit because it has a restroom (or should I say "loo"?) on the first floor. They've got plenty on sale, but when I step across the street I see Foyle's has the books I've been looking for and more. Between Foyle's and Blackwell's I pick up, for a relieving 50% off, Box 18: The Unpublished Spike Milligan, Michael Palin's Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years. There was a Two Ronnies retrospective marathon on ITV-3 telly all day on Christmas and Boxing Day, a show I haven't seen since the 1980s, so I happily picked up Ronnie Corbett's autobiography And It's Goodnight from Him.... Yes folks, I'm a British comedy-obsessed little bull.

Suitably loaded down with parcels and packages so I could hardly see or walk on the pavement, it was time for a swift drop-off at the hotel, and whew! it felt good to be unloaded again. In the blink of an eye we were all back at Charing Cross Road again, for another special Christmas treat that John had cooked up for himself, me and Marshall: we were all going to see the matinee of Spamalot at the Palace Theatre! Hoorah! What a perfect show for a British comedy-obsessed little bull...see, I told you! We had very good seats up in the dress circle that John had bought on the Internet before we left, as they certainly don't sell Spamalot tickets at the official Tkts Half-Price Booth in Leicester Square. (Not that that stops tourists in the queue ahead of us from asking every time we visit there.) Oh no! Despite the fact that he's booked to play King Arthur, Tim Curry is the aptly named "Sir Not Appearing in This Play" today, and we'll be seeing his understudy. A lot of people at the box office are rather less than chuffed and are trying to return their tickets. I like Tim Curry a lot and am very slightly disappointed we won't be seeing his chiseled chin and hearing his rich buttery voice but his absence certainly isn't going to keep me from wanting to see Spamalot, oh no no no.

There is a kiosk just inside the theatre simultaneously selling souvenirs and lining the pockets of Eric Idle. John says that we can buy a programme and that he will buy us one souvenir each. What a treat! Marshall and I rush up to the kiosk and examine each Pythony toy in turn. For a while I am tempted by the can of French garlic SPAM with the Terry Gilliam cartoon on the can, but eventually Marshall chooses a pair of half-coconuts so she can pretend she is riding a horse in the house, and I pick the Vicious Rabbit Stuffed Toy with Pointy Pointy Teeth. He immediately takes to me and we soon become quite attached. I still can't get him off me:


The play is dead brilliant! We larf and larf. Even though I have memorized Monty Python and the Holy Grail by heart, and much of the play's action and dialogue comes straight from the film, there is still plenty of new jokes, twists, and hoof-tapping songs, plus the fabulous Laker Girls. The scenery is straight out of a Terry Gilliam cartoon, and our replacement Arthur is pretty good—not quite up to Tim Curryish levels, but certainly an Arthur that holds his own even alongside the late great Graham Chapman. Eric Idle's script additions to the movie's dialogue are often quite silly rather than the usual Python Dadaism, but in this venue it works perfectly, and the audience is roaring along in laughter. Plus, there's a triffic audience bit at the end where they find a clue to the Grail in the form of big Gilliamy stone letters that say "DONE." The kniggits eventually deduce (I'm hope I'm not giving away a valued West End stage secret, like telling you that the murderer in The Mousetrap is the Inspector...oh dear. Don't pay any attention to that bit) that it actually means D-One, and that the Grail must be under the seat of the audience member in lucky seat number D-1! And guess who that was! Yes! It was yours truly, the little stuffed bull! I got invited on stage and got to get an award for helping King Arthur and his brave knights find the Grail, and they all sang a little song in my honour and said I was quite the best stuffed bovine they have ever had in the show, and that included the big stuffed cow they toss with a catapult at the end of Act 1. I went back to my seat to the sound of applause and (Editor's note: As usual, at any play in which a specific audience member is chosen to participate on stage, Mister Bull often projects himself into the role of the actual winner and attempts to paint a portrait of himself on stage receiving acclaim. Please humour him.) everyone was...oy! Quit interrupting me! A little bull can dream, can't he?

Now we are back in the hotel room relaxing after our busy day. ITV is running two of the movies based on the bawdy and silly but still funny comedy series On the Buses, and it makes good background while I blog away, looking up periodically to see authentic long-gone London Transport Routemasters in action around mugging British comedians. It certainly makes the blogging work pass by faster, and it's not easy blogging with hooves. And with a vicious rabbit's jaws clamped firmly on my arm.

Before I climb into bed for the night I fire up the website for the BBC 7 "Listen Again" schedule and note to my delight that yesterday's programmes are available for download and listen, including Christmas episodes of I'm Sorry, I Haven't a Clue and "The International Christmas Pudding" episode of The Goon Show. It is lovely lying in bed with the lamp off and the glowing lights of London shining through the window, listening to Humphrey Littleton give Tim Brooke-Taylor, Stephen Fry and company silly things to do on radio, but around the time The Goon Show starts up, I'm starting to yawn and nod, and by the musical Max Geldray number eight minutes into the show, I'm asleep and dreaming of my busy day, dreaming of pearls, sales, and grails.

Also, I have the oddest dream I have my arm caught in a bear trap.

Hoofing it: Posh west, working east, and Diagon Alley

If you're here to specifically read about the totally brilliant Harry Potter London Walks tour, I talk about that in the very last paragraph of this post. (But there's some nice stuff in between, too!)

Wandering is the watchword for Bully in London today: It's Christmas Eve and it's Sunday, so by British shop law, stores can be open no more than six hours today. That means lots and lots of Londoners cramming every moment of Christmas shopping into a few hours, frantically bustling to and fro, big shopping bags swinging dangerously close to a little stuffed bull's head. I think I'll stay off the High Street today and do some exploring.

You all know how much I love the Underground, but there are some places the Underground won't take you. One of them is the far side of Chelsea, at the bottom end of the King's Road, and that's the perfect place to start today. No worries, I'll simply take a bus. I used to find the bus routes confusing and intimidating (at least in comparison to the Underground), but a few years ago Transport for London initiated a radical redesign of bus maps and signage at major stops that's made it exceptionally easy to find out where you can catch the exact bus you need, what route it will take, and where you need to get off. They did this by designing bus maps that are essentially overground versions of Harry Beck's famous and much-copied Underground map—using clear and comprehensive graphic lines and ticks to explain the routes and bus stops. It takes me only a moment to realize I want is the number 49 bus, that it stops at bus stop "A" on the High Street, that it'll be along in three or so minutes, and all is good and well in the world. Three and a half minutes later, I hop on a number 49 bus, wave my Oystercard over the touchpad and take my seat in the upper level, as the bus zips along through the streets, carrying me merrily along with it. I very much miss the old-fashioned conductor-manned Routemaster buses, but I'll actually settle for knowing where I'm going so much more clearly than I ever did before on a bus.

The far end of Chelsea is a posh, upscale residental area. Even on the King's Road past Sidney Street the shops are shuttered for the holiday and there's little to no motor or foot traffic. It's very quiet here; I take my headphones off for a while and enjoy the silence punctuated by my hoofbeats on the pavement. I swerve down side streets and start to explore. There are gorgeous old houses here that I'd love to live in, if only I could save that many pence. A lot of the doors are decorated with beautiful Christmas wreaths and I start taking photos of them, hoping no one will burst out of their house and yell at me. (They don't.) Many of the buildings have beautiful old-style street signs still mounted on them, and there are plenty of the famous historical Blue Plaques as well, showing me where famous people have lived in London at one time or another. (The largest majority of Blue Plaques in London are in Chelsea—Sure, all the classic names are here: Thomas Carlyle, Bela Bartok, Tobias Smollett. But I'm pleased as punch to find one for Mick Jagger in a quiet, unassuming house overlooking the Thames just off the Chelsea Embankment. I bet he threw some great parties there. Another treat for a little stuffed bull is the Old Dairy Building, which features a lovely painted mural of grazing cows on the side and a life-size stone gargoyle cow head far above the door. Maybe that's where I should live.

Down the Embankment then, and up and across the King's Road (it's getting busier now the closer I get back towards Sloane Square Tube Station) and I cross into one of my favorite residential areas just north of the King's Road: an area where many of the houses are painted in brilliant, cheerful pastel or bright shades, in many cases alternating like crayons down a single street. My very favorite is No. 23 Godfrey Street: now that's where I want to live. It's a brilliant shade of blue, sitting at the bottom of a slight slope leading down from King's Road, quiet and peaceful neighborhood only a few steps away from the bustle and fun of Chelsea. I consider knocking on the door and asking if they will let me live there, but then I see some other interesting houses and stroll away to explore further.

My travels take me up and down in a curlicue pattern, following the not-quite-straight streets back in the general direction of Sloane Square. I stumble on a small quiet square of closed shops by accident and am surprised to find a shop I'd intended to visit when I was planning my trip but crossed it off my list on realizing I probably wasn't going to get there: Traditional Toys. It looks like a beautiful toy shop free of the usual plastic tat that populates chain stores and I'm sorry it's closed. There are several friendly looking stuffed animals in the window that I bet wish they could be home with a cheerful human this Christmas, and I consider how lucky I am. And vow to break them out later if I can.

Eventually my hoofbeats take me to Sloane Square Tube Station and I hop on board the Sunday-service Circle Line to take me to a station I can't actually remember having gotten off at: Liverpool Street. It's also a British Rail main line station and the place is filled with holiday travellers. I prefer the old-style station style of Paddington, but Liverpool Street has done a nice job of modernizing and the designers have kept the original arching iron girder roof intact above. A handful of steps away is Spitalfields Market, one of the top craft and antiques markets in London. I find Portobello Road too crowded and a little hectic, so maybe this will be a pleasant change. I can't ever remember having been here before so I step through the elaborately designed and decorated market gates (seriously folks, they look like the gates to Graceland), and I'm pleased and surprised to find it's actually quite fun: busy and crowded, but still easily navigable. It would be an excellent place to Christmas shop if I hadn't finished up already. I'm most interested in a booth that is selling a large variety of British hardcover comics annuals. There's also several food stalls and restaurants under the old market's roof, and I pop a steak and Guinness pie from Square Pies (yes, they actually are square!) into my hungry mouth. It's absolutely delicious! You can't get a good meat pie in New York like that. (Oh, stop it with the "Why is Bully eating steak?" outrage!) With a bit of mash and gravy it's just what I needed and I'm up and off again in my wanderings. There are several trendy shops near the market and I stop in design shop OneDeko, which has the ultimate Christmas present for me: a glass-topped coffee table with the London Underground map illuminated from within. The best coffee table ever! Cost?£1500. I check my change purse and I don't quite have anywhere at all near that. Something else for my wish list.

I start to walk towards the Geffrye Museum of Historical English Interiors, which doesn't have a tube station immediately adjacent. I expect to be in for a short walk but that short walk turns quite long indeed and I suddenly notice I'm getting into what looks like the dodgy end of Shoreditch. I've been walking for almost twenty minutes and I think I'm still ten minutes or so away. Now take a look at the Museum map and tell me if you don't think that looks like quite a short walk from Liverpool Street! They didn't tell me it was going to take that long. I'm overcome with indecision and am uncertain whether to forge ahead into what looks like very run-down territory or head back. As if on cue, a London bus approaches me heading back towards the Tube station, and I wave my Oystercard and climb aboard wearily to cut my losses for the afternoon. On the bus I check my A-Z map book and see I was actually within sight of the museum. Oh well; I'm not upset. As the bus drives we pass by Petticoat Lane street market, a destination I had been considering in place of Spitalfields, and I'm relieved to see I made the right choice: Petticoat Lane looks like a New York City street fair, full of horrible cheap souvenirs and clothing. All it needs is the guy selling tube socks and it is so a Manhattan street market.

Back to the hotel, then. A quick hot meal at the pub (pork and apples, yum) and I'm ready to call it a day. "It's a day!" I proclaim triumphantly. But John smiles and has another surprise up the sleeve of his soft wool sweater. He bustles me and Marshall with him back onto the tube and we're off to Embankment Station via the Circle Line for a marvellous nighttime surprise: the London Walks tour "The real World of Harry Potter: Wizards, Werewolves & Vampires" It was, to quote Ron Weasley, dead brilliant! Alan, the tour guide, was a magician and did quite a bit of theatrical slight-of-hand (sparking wands, glowing ears, disappearing sweeties) as he walked us through some dark and winding passages and telling us how J. K. Rowling was inspired by actual people, events, and places in London to write the Harry Potter books. I had been wondering beforehand how much of a London walking tour could actually cover Harry Potter (very little of the books take place in London, and we aren't even going anywhere near King's Cross Station), but it's a solid and entertaining couple of hours that winds around some twisty mews and alleys, made all the more spooky at night, while Alan recounts history of London and tells us tales of Rowling's inspirations, including some fascinating stuff on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Dracula's roots in British theatre, before ending up in an alleyway near Leicester Square that's the inspiration for Diagon Alley. He was especially good with the several kids on the tour, playing to them and appointing one small girl to be his assistant Hermione for the trip. Now I want to read the books all over again! Maybe Father Christmas will bring me the British versions. Except I already have them. Marshall and I quite enjoyed it; it was a wonderful end to a magical Christmas Eve. May your day have been as full of adventure and magic!

An eye-popping grand day in St Albans

I'm not certain if I've said it before, but I'm sure to say it again: one of my favorite activities in London is to just walk around and take in the history and culture of the city. It's been cold, but not as freezing as I'd feared, so it's actually perfect walkin'-weather: brisk enough to keep your moving, cool enough to not make you sweaty (and you folks don't wanna smell a sweaty little stuffed bull), and cold enough so that when you stop for lunch or a cup of tea it's a major sensory delight all of its own. I've come equipped with walking tours carefully Xeroxed out of books (why carry the whole book when all you want is a few pages!), on my little walking-tour cards (handy and clever, but not very detailed), audio walking tour podcasts downloaded to my iPod (here's a great site for those). You learn a lot and you come away with a much deeper appreciation and understanding of the history of the city. Not to mention sore hooves.


Like ironing shirts and building masonry, however, there's no beating a professional when you really want to do things up right, and a walking tour is no exception. That's why I continually recommend to anyone who is going to London, without reservation, The Original London Walks, a long-running, definitive organization which runs well over a dozen different walking tours of different parts of London most every single day of the year. (Even on Christmas Day they offer two walks, and I hope to take at least one of 'em!) Take a gander at the linked website if you're heading to London: London Walks offer authoritative guided tours, most about two hours and a mile or two in duration for the (cheap) price of around £6, on such subjects as In the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes, Ghosts of the Old City, The Beatles's Magical Mystery Tour, pub walks, ghost walks, walks that cover nearly every single part of London, plus the most famous and the best Jack the Ripper tour out there. I can't recommend these folks highly enough: in my many travels to London, every single walking tour I've taken has been a delightful fun excursion, and leaves you feeling like you now know some wonderful history and secrets about London you don't learn in the guidebooks. You can't go wrong with 'em.

They also offer special out-of-London "Explorer Day" excursions with full-day tours to Oxford, Stonehenge, Bath, Hampton Court, Leeds Castle, Cambridge, and the proverbial many, many more. (Here's a full list.) They're a little more expensive and involve taking (and paying for) a BritRail train trip out of London, but you still get plenty of value for money. I'm a little stuffed bull who is very careful with his pounds and pence, and yet I gleefully forked over my ten pound note and a chunky pound coin for the chance to have an Explorer Day today in historic St Albans in Hertfordshire, barely twenty minutes out of London but a world away. I mean, how could you resist this write-up in the ubiquitous London Walks brochure?

The most fascinating small city in England is just 20 minutes from London. St. Albans is England in miniature, an essence of England. Here you see it all—from the Legions of Julius Caesar to the dynasty of the Churchills. These streets are corridors in the vale of time. Here's the only Roman theatre in Britain; here's the oldest street market in this sceptered isle—it dates back to the Saxons; round this corner there's a 600-year-old Moot hall; round that one a clutch of mediaeval and Tudor coaching inns; hard by, a rare curfew clock tower; up these lanes a sprinkling of half-timbered Elizabethan houses; over there, streets and buildings that are essays in Georgian England; here, a Victorian prison. Let alone all sorts of hidden, curious places and things—and a skein of enthralling history. Not to put too fine a point on it, St. Albans is London's best-kept secret!

But the kicker was the note just below this:

Ding Dong Merrily on High! This Explorer Day is timed to coincide with St. Albans' Christmas street market—the oldest, longest, bestest traditional Christmas street market in England!

To coin a phrase: holy cow! Sign me up for that!

I hopped on the Underground this morning, heading towards the rendezvous point, and I had a very lovely moment of serendipitous synchronicity when, as the Circle Line train pulled into the Baker Street Underground Station, Gerry Rafferty's classic song "Baker Street" began playing, quite at random chance (well, sorta: it was on my playlist). That's the sort of moment that I take as a portentous sign of a wonderful day: as my "London Song of the Day" features hopefully show you, I place great importance and delight in my London musical soundtracks.

I met up with the rest of my group at West Hampstead Tube Station (on the Jubilee Line), including two very friendly and pleasant people I got to talking with on the train out to St Albans, Chinese-Australian Vivian and Australian Peter. It was quite fun chatting with them (they did not at all seem surprised to see a little stuffed bull on the trip) and we swapped tales of travel and our lives back home. I let them know a lot about New York City and they told me all about Australia. Now I want to go to Sydney on my next vacation!

Our guide for the day was the cheery and knowledgeable Hillary, her professional tour guide blue-badge proudly displayed, and she guided us into the town with periodic pauses to tell the history and evolution of the town. As I'd never even heard of St Albans before it was all fascinating new info to me, including the fact that St Albans was once the number three Roman city in Britain (known then as Verulamium). I'm a big fan of all things historically Roman, especially the Lindsey Davis mysteries featuring Marcus Didius Falco, the Asterix comics, and of course all those gladiator movies, so this was a great delight to me. The town looked incredibly sleepy, however, as we wandered in from the station. Where was everyone? Had we stumbled upon a deserted ghost town? Where oh where were the denizens of St Albans?

Every man jack of 'em was at the St Albans' market, of course! It stretched on for street after street after street—crafts and food and gifts and books and toys and drinks and clothing and jewelry and more of everything else every step you took! Holy (again) cow! I'm not certain if it's the biggest street market I've ever seen, but it certainly was one of the longest. Everyone was out Christmas and holiday shopping, and our group slid our way through the crowds. Hilary warned us "Don't start shopping now!...we'll never find you again!" (She did tell us there would be plenty of time to shop at our leisure after the afternoon portion of the tour.) Reluctantly I tore myself away from a booth featuring some football club scarves (including the team I back, Chelsea...Blues forever!) and trotted along to follow the rest of the tour.

We broke for lunch and I wandered off with Vivian and Peter for a hot meal in a busy and bustling town centre pub: it felt great to get out of the cold, off my hooves and shovel some savory bangers and mash into my hungry stomach. I don't eat or like peas at home, but there's something about having them in a big bowl with sausages, mashed potatoes and gravy that make them perfectly palatable to me, and I cleaned my plate of everything, including little round green vegetables, and washed it all down with a pint of bitter. We had a grand time talking about ourselves and each other, and suitably rested and fortified, the tour group reassembled and Hilary led us ever-onwards.

St Albans is crowned by a cathedral on a hill, which made it beginning in medieval days a leading destination for pilgrims and because of its proximity to London, a major stop-over location for travelers of all kinds, both religious and secular, heading in both directions. (Even today it's mostly a commuter town; mainly populated by people who work in London and commute in on rail. Oh, so it's the Croton of Hertfordshire, then!) It was for many centuries the first overnight coach stop to and from London, which explains why in those days, Hilary explained, seventy-two coaches a day passed through St Albans! All those coaches need lots of coaching inns, and she guided us down a picturesque and gently sloping road leading in/out of town and pointed out all the sites of many, many inns: they're evident by their arched entrances leading to the back or inside lots. (Now serving as garage access for everyone's Austin Minis.) Many of those inns are still extant today as pubs; I counted more pubs in a quarter mile than most everyplace else in the British Isles I've been to (Well, except for some sections of Dublin).

We come to the bottom of the sloping hill and make a gentle curve back towards town to discover a tiny stream that was once a river so large Roman ships came up it from the Thames. I look over the bridge and find it hard to believe; it's barely the size of Mud Creek way back in Clay, New York. Either there's been some serious setback to the size of the river or these were mighty tiny Romans, perhaps along the size of Asterix. These Romans are not only crazy, they're absolutely microscopic! Hilary assures me the river was much, much wider and deeper in those days, and walks us all down to the reason it's so much smaller now: a peaceful long artificial lake built by the unemployed marchers from Jarrow to London protesting the loss of their jobs in the North, but who stayed behind to create the lake on their way to London—sort of a British version of a WPA project. That's why there's still so many families in St Albans who can trace their heritage to a Geordie North: they are from the Jarrow men who stayed behind because they were offered work, and never left St Albans.

Hillary points over the lake to the last remnants of the Roman wall that surrounded the vast settlement of Verulamium (it was the largest and most important Roman city that wasn't a military garrison). She shows us a map of how vast and expansive the Roman city was, but only a small portion of wall remains. Peter and I wonder "where did all the Roman stones from the rest of the wall go?" We hypothesize that they were carted off by the villagers after the fall of the Roman Empire and that many a house was built from Roman brick. As usual, my guesses about history are spot-dead-wrong, and it turns out the use of the brick was less personal and more spiritual.

We hike back up the gently sloping hill and St Albans cathedral comes into view, a compact but grand sprawling medieval cathedral (with some curious but not-offensive Victorian additions designed by the man who engineered the Big Ben Bells, Hilary tells us), and the sight of the brick cathedral tower instantly turns a little lightbulb on over my head. "That solves the Mystery of the Missing Roman Brick!" I declare to Peter, and sure enough, Hilary confirms that's what happened to the Roman city and wall: St Albans is built on poor rock for mining or construction, so the building of the cathedral used the extra material at hand, carted up the hill with wheelbarrows, wagons, and no doubt a good amount of ironic contemplation that materials used by pagan Romans was to now be used to build a cathedral to the Christian God.

Before we enter the Cathedral, Hillary tells us the history of St. Alban, the first Christian martyr of Britain. Alban sacrificed his freedom to help a Christian priest hide from the Romans, and converted to Christianity while speaking to the Christian priest (now that's a persuasive preacher!) The priest escaped but Alban was captured by the Romans and sentenced to execution. Legend has the first executioner assigned to chop off his holy head refused and was executed himself immediately after, thus becoming the second British Christian martyr. Funny things, British Christian martyrs, just like London buses: you wait for centuries for one, and two come along right after the other.

The second executioner was so aghast with his own deed at chopping off the head of this immensely revered man that (and again Hillary pointed out she's recounting legend, only possibly maybe history) his eyes immediately and violently popped out of his head into his hands. Whoo-wee! I might have paid more attention in Catholic school if this had been the kind of story they taught us. The best-seller in the Cathedral gift shop, especially among touring schoolchildren, is a postcard reproducing the gory event, right down to the eye-popping action. (And people say saints are boring!)


It was getting on to near-dusk by the time the tour ended, so I said my goodbyes and made my way back into town to check out some shops and the market, which was winding down but still as busy as before. I was only able to see a fraction of it before my hooves got so weary I had to hop on a bus back to the train station to return to London, but I was utterly impressed by not only the high Christmas spirits of everyone but the range and variety of gifts, food, clothing, jewelry and crafts at the market. You see a street fair in Manhattan and it's the same as every other street fair: the funnel cakes and the guy selling the big plastic bags full of tube socks. I didn't see a single tube sock, but I saw lots of cool stuff, and even though I didn't buy anything, looking was as fun as buying.

So, I spent twelve pounds for the tour itself, three pounds sixty for the railway ticket, eight quid for lunch, and 30 p for a postcard: a little under fifty bucks for a grand day out: several hours of informed and educational touring, a wonderful introduction to a historically significant town I never knew existed, a hearty and filling lunch with two new friends, a knowledge and awareness of British, Roman, and Christian history, and a postcard of a guy with his eyes popping out: priceless.

So yes, I say it again: these walking tours are a bit of all right, whether you do a short two-hour London walking tour or a more ambitious Explorer Day. I highly recommend 'em and give them the full Bully seal of approval: two hooves up and a bold, green-fonted "fun"!