SE10 - The Cutty Sark

Hello people,

Today I have come to SE10, Greenwich. It’s no exaggeration to say I’m standing in one of the most famous places in the world. Whichever country you are in, or even if you’re travelling across sea, or through space, you set your watch according to Greenwich Mean Time. Before GMT was invented, the world lived by Paris Flamboyant Time. PFT was hugely impractical, lunch breaks would last for days, and time would stop whenever somebody fell in love, this annoyed the British as this made it impossible to know when last orders at the bar was. So we invented GMT, and it was internationally adopted at the International Meridian Conference of 1884. Another reason GMT is so important is that ships traveling all over the world rely on it to calculate their longitude while out at sea; ships like the Cutty Sark.

The Cutty Sark was a British Clipper Ship built in the Clyde in 1869. In her day she was the fastest ship in the world. She used to bring tea from China back to the UK to be sold, it’s estimated that in total, the Cutty Sark sailed the same distance as travelling to the moon and back twice. The ship is a museum now, where you can learn all about how it was built, where it travelled, and the people who sailed in her.

People love the Cutty Sark, mostly because people love tea. My Nan Bet lived for 77 years on a diet of nothing but milky tea with 2 sugars, rich tea biscuits, and occasionally, a nice slice of ham. And she was not unique - we in Britain consume 65 million cups of tea each day. Which probably explains why the Cutty Sark is loved by so many people, and why there was such sadness when in 2007 the ship was damaged by fire while undergoing conservation.

The fire was explained as an accident, but I’ve always suspected foul play. It seemed to me that some very influential people stood to gain an awful lot by the disappearance of the Cutty Sark. With it gone, it would free up space to build some 1 bedroom apartments, or maybe even a Tesco Express, right in the middle of some prime real estate. My suspicions were confirmed when there was another - this time less successful - fire in 2014. I’ve gone to the police with my suspicions, but they weren’t interested. I asked all the staff at the Tesco’s Express on Trafalgar Road if they were arsonist. They either denied it or had the security guard escort me from the premises. It seemed my investigation was destined to be fruitless. That was until last Saturday, whilst walking though Hays Galleria by London Bridge, I stopped off to have a pint in the Horniman Pub, and – it being a nice day – took my pint outside to sit by the Thames, and that’s when I saw it. The thing that stood to gain the most from the Cutty Sark’s disappearance, the HMS Belfast, another museum ship in SE London. With the Cutty gone, there would be no competition left.

I now had a lead, but I needed proof. I wrote a letter to the Curator of the HMS Belfast, a Mr A Sailor, pretending to be a journalist from the Maritime Journal. I told him I wanted to interview him for the magazine and asked him to meet me in the cabin quarters on the top deck of the Cutty Sark at noon on the 22nd of November. I hoped that by tricking him into returning to the scene of the crime, and confronting him there, he may slip up and confess to arson. I sat waiting in the cabin quarters for him to arrive. Eventually a man with a peg leg joined me in the room. He wore an eye patch, had a hook for a hand, a parrot resting on his shoulder, and was sucking on a pipe. Something told me, that this was my guy. I stood up and said.

“Are you Mr Sailor?”

“Ay” he replied “I guess you be the talented young writer from the magazine?”

“You won’t find any talented writers in here Mr Sailor.” I responded, “But what you will find, is a reckoning.”

“Shiver me timbers!” He yelled, “What is this, a trick?”

“No trick, just justice.”

“Blister me barnacles!”

“I know you set fire to the Cutty Sark, you resent the fact that it gets so many visitors. You thought with it gone. All big boat loving tourist would come to the HMS Belfast instead.”

“Crucify me cabin boys!”

“You had the perfect motive. And thanks to the pipe you smoke, you had the perfect means to carry a lit flame aboard the ship without creating suspicion.”

“Dangle me dinghy’s!”

“Do you deny it?”

“Ay, I deny it” he said, “I’d never harm a steadfast boat like the Cutty Sark. I’m a lover of large vessels such as this one.”

I sniggered.

“Plus I welcome the competition from the Cutty Sark. it keeps me on my toes, smooth waters never made a skilled sailor. And as for me pipe, tis just an E-Pipe, no flames needed. Just a stylish way to ingest poison.”

I was deflated. “So it wasn’t you?”

“No laddie” he replied. “You were wrong about me. But you’re not wrong in your suspicions. I too suspect foul play.”

“But from where?” I asked.

He removed the pipe from his mouth and pointed it towards a middle aged woman in a red duffel coat taking a photo of the ships sails on her i-pad mini. I looked at her and my blood ran cold.

“You bitch” I said. She looked surprised. Then she walked over to me, and hit me round the head with her i-pad mini. As she walked off Mr Sailor said.

“No, not her, look beyond boy.”

I looked up again, and that’s when I saw it.

“The National Maritime Museum, of course! With the Cutty Sark gone, they would get all the tourists for themselves!”

“Ay, tis a bunch of scurvy dogs that run that museum for sure.”

I shook his hand, and we departed friends. As I left the cutty Sark I made a vow to find out who in the National Maritime Museum started the Cutty Sark fire in 2007. Obviously I won’t find out who did it today, I’ve already gone way over my word count. And not in the next few weeks as I’ve already planned all the places I want to visit over December. But soon, early February at the latest. But I promise dear readers, I will find justice. This ship just got real.

The Cutty Sark is 145 years old today, and she’s still looking good, so why not give her a visit http://www.rmg.co.uk/cuttysark

SE23 - The Horniman Museum

Hello people,

I’ve noticed that lots of London Bloggers write about food. More specifically, they write about food sold in nice restaurants. There are two reasons why someone would write a food blog:

1. food is their passion, and they want to help promote quality restaurants that might otherwise be overlooked; and

2. to blag free food.

I too have a passion for food - I eat it every day. I’ve probably eaten around 5,000 tuna and mayonnaise sandwiches in my lifetime. Basically, I think I have a lot to offer. Also I want free food, so I’ve decided to get in on the act.

All the best food bloggers blog anonymously so they can be really shitty about a meal they didn’t like and still face no come backs. I want to be a good food blogger, but also I want restaurateurs to know that I’m a food blogger (that way they will give me free stuff), so I write nice things about them. For that reason, I disguised myself as a deep-sea diver. This was a master stroke. Dressing as a deep-sea diver not only protects your anonymity, but it also makes everyone notice you. When you walk into a restaurant dressed as a deep-sea diver, people see you and think, ‘Why is that man dressed as a deep-sea diver? I wonder if it’s because he writes a secrete food blog?’ Genus.

I headed to Forest Hill for my first attempt at food blogging, because I'd heard there was a nice chicken shop next to the train station. I very slowly walked out of Forest Hill Station, using all my effort to drag myself to Favourite Fried Chicken store, when a sign caught my eye. It read, ‘Horniman Museum up the hill.’ I wiped the steam from my goggles to make sure I’d read it correctly, but I wasn’t mistaken. I thought to myself, ‘A Horniman Museum? The dirty beggars! The people of Forest Hill should be ashamed of themselves! Still, I’d best check it out.’ So I did. 

The museum is 10 minutes walk from the  station. Two and a half hours when walking in a deep-sea divers suit. It has a beautiful clock tower, and surrounding the building is a huge garden filled with exotic plants from all around the world, and local wildlife. But what caught my eye most was the Totem Pole by the main entrance. I’m no expert, but I could see the pole was about thirty years old, and made from red cedar wood, so I assumed it was made in America. I also noticed that on the pole were carvings of a girl, and a bear. There’s a famous Alaskan legend of a girl who married a bear, so that narrows it down a bit. Finally I saw the carving of a Thunderbird at the top of the pole; which – if my memory serves me correctly - is the family symbol of the famous Alaskan artist Nathen Jackson. So he probably carved it in 1985, as part of the American Arts Festival going on at the time. But like I say, I’m no expert.

As I stood admiring his work, a lady in a white coat carrying a large black sports bag walked past me. She looked me up and down and said, “Why are you wearing a deep-sea diver’s outfit? Are you a food blogger?”

“Yes” I replied, and then I asked, “Do you know what this place is?”

“I should hope so” she said “I work here. This is the Horniman Museum, founded in 1901 by Frederick Horniman. The museum has a large collection of stuffed animals, musical instruments, an aquarium, plus many other objects of anthropological interest from around the world, including a torture chair, and some Benin Plaques from Nigeria.”

“Did you say stuffed animals?”

“That’s right, we have stuffed monkeys, birds, rodents and even a walrus. I’ve got a dead albino badger from Bromley in my sports bag right now.”

“There are albino badgers in Bromley? I asked

“Yes, lots of them,” she said. And then, looking at her bag, continued, “Well… not so many now.”

And with that I abandoned my plans to be a food blogger. I could never give up this blog, I love finding out all the crazy things out about South East London too much. 

The Horniman Museum is well worth a visit. In fact you could visit it every day for a year and still not get bored, there’s something different and exciting around every corner. So I recommend you go see for yourself. Deep-sea divers outfit, not necessary.

Imagies from

Wolves in London - http://wolvesinlondon.com/2014/08/21/trips-to-the-horniman-museum/

http://www.horniman.ac.uk/

Wikipdia

SE18 - Firepower, the Royal Arsenal

Hello people,

Last Friday was Halloween, and it’s got me in the mood for a ghost story. There’s no better place for a ghost story than Woolwich.

Recently there were a number of sightings of a lone rider-less horse galloping through Woolwich town centre. Some say the horse had simple gotten lost from its stables in Abbey Wood. But others believe it was an apparition from when Woolwich was a Roman lookout post, and that the horse was trying to get to Londinium to warn of Vikings, or British rebels, sailing up the Thames to invade the city.

Sadly we will never know which of these stories are true because the horse bolted out of the front doors of Tesco, across the main square, and over the horizon quicker than you could say ‘every little bit helps.’

I’d heard that Firepower - the Royal Artillery Museum located in the former buildings of the Royal Arsenal - was packed full of ghosts. Not surprising really, the museum has been there in one form or another since 1778, so that’s where we went in search of a fright. We were shown round by the manager of Firepower, Richard Smith-Gore. In his time working in the building he’s gotten to know all the ghosts pretty well.

Firepower - the Royal Artillery Museum

The first ghost he told us about was a young boy who’d worked in the old gun powder factory called Piggy. Children were often employed to work in the factory because their small fingers were ideal for stuffing gun-powder into shells. The downside of getting little children to do the work, is that they produce a ridiculously high amount of bogies. Some of the shells that made it to the front line were so covered with bogies; that the soldiers refused to touch them. In one of his letters back to his superiors during the boar war, 1st Earl Kitchener complained ‘our men have not returned fire for over 7 days. They refuse to touch the artillery shells, believing them to be minging, and possibly containing the lurgies.’

Piggy got his name by pulling the pig-tails of the little girls he worked with, and making them cry. One day Piggy decided to play a nasty trick on one of the boy’s in the factory. He got two pieces of flint, placed a small amount of gun powder on one of them, and banged them together next to the boy’s ear to make a loud bang. But Piggy was too young to understand, that the factory air was saturated with gun powder. So the small bang he had planned blew him and his victim to pieces. To this day Piggy haunts the factory, pulling the pig-tails of little girls visiting the museum.

The old gunpowder factory by night - haunted by Piggy

It seems a strange way to spend eternity to me. But I guess pulling pig-tails is what little boys did back then, and if it’s what he loves, then who am I to argue? When I was a little boy I desperately wanted to be a WWF wrestler. So I’d have probably haunted Firepower by drop-kicking people, shouting ‘Oh yea,’ and super-slamming them, before declaring that, ‘Hulk-a-mania will live forever.’

The second ghost was a prostitute - let’s call her Julia - who haunts the basement of the old officer’s quarters. Julia had been discovered by one of the guards, naked, in the Duke of Wellingtons bed. It’s not clear if Julia had gotten there using her own initiative, or if the Duke, who was due that day to arrive at the barracks after attending to matters in another part of the country, had arranged for her to be there waiting for him. Either way, the guard was terrified he would get in trouble. So he took her down to the basement, wrapped only in a bed-sheet, gave her two bottles of wine to keep her quiet and, after promising to return shortly, shut and locked the door. He, however, never returned again. When Julia was discovered some time later, she was dead, and half eaten by rats. 

The Royal Arsenal

These days men who walk into the basement, have complained about feeling their hair being touched. Or finding the buttons of their trousers have become undone. Purely for reasons of science, I walked into the basement. But felt nothing. Feeling a little rejected I asked Richard why Julia had snubbed me. His answer was brutally honest. “Because you look poor” he said.

I haven’t time to talk about all the ghosts, but this last ones worth mentioning. There’s an impressive medals gallery in the museum. The collection serves as a memorial to those who have ‘Served the Guns’ since the foundation of the Royal Artillery in 1716, and to the tens of thousands who laid down their lives.’

The coats of arms of all the division of the UK Army - on display at Firepower

In the medals room is the ghost of an old woman. She has been seen many times, by many different people, and she is always in the same spot, staring at The Memorial Plaque - otherwise known as the 'dead man’s penny', which was issued after the First World War to the next-of-kin of all British and Empire service personnel who were killed in WW1. No one knows who she is, or what the medal meant to her. Maybe it was given to her because she lost her husband, son, or father.

To be honest, I don’t really believe in ghosts. But 1,355,000 plaques were issued, that’s far too many lives lost, and far too many heartbroken people left behind. And if it takes a silly ghost story to remind us of that, then I’m all for them.

Firepower

If ghost aren’t your thing then you can still enjoy firepower by learning the story of artillery and role of the Gunners in our Nation’s history. http://firepower.org.uk/