Leadenhall Market

JUST back from a weekend in London, that infamous hellhole. I took a spare Rolex in case one was stolen. That’s a joke, naturally, as I am more likely to wrap a cobra round my wrist than a Rolex.

It has to be said that the lawless ruined city of Nigel Farage’s stove-top imagination, that seething place of rampant wokeness and people cowering indoors for fear of being robbed, or perhaps for fear of bumping into Mr Farage out with a GBN microphone and a phalanx of bodyguards, was looking on top form.

Fearlessly did we walk the streets of Southwark on the Friday afternoon to the Old Operating Theatre and Herb Garret.

On the way there we stumbled on Crossbones Graveyard and Memorial Gardens. This post-medieval graveyard stands in memory to the 15,000 paupers thought to be buried there. A magically chaotic place, part garden, part artwork, almost at the gleaming foot of the Shard.

The woman on the door directed us over the road to Red Cross Garden, designed by the Victorian social reformer Octavia Hill, one of three founders of the National Trust, another good discovery.

The Old Operating Theatre offers a fascinating delve into surgical history and is only occasionally gruesome. It’s housed in the attic of the early eighteenth-century church of the Old St Thomas’ Hospital, and the operating theatre itself stands as a medical chapel.

The second part of the museum’s name refers to the drying of herbs, although you have to admit that Herb Garret would be a cool name for a jazz musician.

On Saturday morning we went early to Borough Market before the arrival of the lawless mobs (otherwise known as people from all over the world having a good time).

After that we crossed the river to the City, visiting St Dunstan in the East, above. The church, built around 1100, was severely damaged in 1666 by the Great Fire of London, then bombed in the Blitz of 1941. The ruins now form an enchanting place of peace and greenery, with shining towers all around.

After that it was on to Leadenhall Market a grand covered market, where we had a grand cup of coffee.

The City looked amazing in the sunshine, and this visit upturned my preconceptions. I’d always believed there are now too many sky-scrapers, those glittering monuments to the inequities of capitalism (or something else equally woke). Well, perhaps. But here’s the thing – these giddying, glass-spun structures look amazing next to old London, and they befit a capital city; don’t they?

A walk over Millennium Bridge, above, another great architectural achievement, took us briefly to Tate Modern, before going to see Twelfth Night at the Globe theatre. The tickets were a birthday present for me from our three grown-up children, and the production was properly funny and delightful.

We spent our last day getting lost on the way to Kew Gardens, thanks to incompetence, and also to Waterloo station shutting the moment we stepped through its portals.

But we got there in the end. Kew was wonderful. The tree-top walk is a great addition since my only previous visit somewhere down a crevice in time.

I was a student in London, lived there for ten years or so, and love to return to this city of many cultures and people.

Although the usual suspects bellow that the capital is becoming more dangerous, the crime figures indicate otherwise. Listen instead to the senior police commander Andrew Featherstone, who said to the Guardian the other day that there was “no doubt” it suited “some people, organisations and others” to suggest London was crime ridden.

“When you look at the actual facts, that is not true,” said Featherstone.

Ah, yes – actual facts. You know, things that are known or proved to be true. As we know, politicians of the right constantly deny facts and twist the truth into any shape that suits their purposes (a certain US president even fabricates lies in order to send troops into cities he disfavours).

London has its problems, where doesn’t, but the right-whingers hate London because it’s a multicultural city that works – and as such stands as a riposte to everything their mean souls hold dear.

We’ll be back. My only gripe, incidentally, concerns the shortage of decent pubs around Blackfriars. A beer desert but never mind.

Yes, exactly that…