Greater London

I heard a dog groomer once say the biggest difference between grooming a dog and grooming a cat is this: when a dog gets upset or angry, you can give them a break, a treat, and then their good mood will be restored and you can continue the groom. When a cat is done,

It. Is. Done.

and there is nothing in heaven or earth that will return a cat to its good mood: no treat, no break, no distraction, no patting.

I definitely got into the feline spirit in Greenwich. I might have been sulky around Greenwich Park, but I was insufferable around the Cutty Sark and by the time we were at St Katharine's Docks, I was practically a wraith.

Still, there's no doubting that Greenwich has been my favourite part of London so far, and I will infuriate my partner when I recount for decades to come what a good time I had, when in reality I had absolutely no energy left to do anything but watch the inside of my eyeballs as if they were a cinema screen.

Because Greenwich is set up beautifully for tourists, but all the tourists had gone with Bank Holiday and the end of summer, the place felt restored to itself somehow. The Cutty Sark precinct of course felt like a theme park, but a theme park at closing time: nostalgic and depopulating.

I have been whingeing about how Queen Victoria has absolutely colonised London with her architecture and her propaganda, but Greenwich felt curiously 18th century, something not built for the likes of her. Walking through the observatory's hallways and stairways - all milk white, toast brown - and seeing the iron and brass instruments was properly transporting. The place was quiet, even with a busload of Spanish school kids giddy at the prospect of a good gift shop, which is after all the apex of any tourist experience, as every child knows.

Mum, Dad, and Stuart were all absolutely energised and reassuring, a pleasure to be around, while I was all vortex and debility. After the observatory - where the greatest observation might have been Dad spotting the editor of The Guardian Australia - I broke off from the group and went to the Kings Arms to draw some architecture in my sketchbook and drink an oversized Lemonade.

After that, a patrol around the cobblestones to look at Greenwich Market - I nearly bought a wooden watch with a teal face but then I remembered that it was 2022 and I didn't use a watch anymore, besides which I had the gorgeous one that Stuart gave me in 2018 which would not appreciate the infidelity. I didn't really want a watch. I just wanted the dopamine that comes from buying 1 x crapthing please. Yes I would like my crapthing giftwrapped.

I ordered an espresso in Waterstones Bookshop and a small chocolate bar which had oxidized to the point where it was no longer a food item but some brownish chemical quiddity. I just opened the chocolate bar wide and ate none of it, looking at it, feeling like it expressed my soul.

A ride on the brilliant DLR and then lunch at St Katharine's Docks in The Dickens Inn (named not after Charles Dickens but his (great?) grandson Cecil ) and the best burger anyone could have imagined did nothing to restore me to myself. You might as well have stuffed a beef burger inside an anatomical skeleton model for all the pleasure it gave me. But I was abstractly aware it was actually incredible.

Coffee and real edible chocolate at Mum and Dad's place was a very gentle affair. I could tell how much they had pushed themselves to get the very most of out this foreign rendezvous with me and Stu, and I was moved by it. Seeing them really was a once in a lifetime experience, and I know that because it has only happened once in my lifetime. Hugging them goodbye will be a core memory now.

That evening at home was a blur. The bathtub in our AirBnB doesn't work because the water doesn't heat up. And apart from that, the bath surface is grimy from a week of standing on it in the shower and we don't have cleaning products. Are we supposed to go to Tesco Express and buy bleach, pine-o-clean, sponges, and rubber gloves? The Virgo in me thinks this is a thrilling travel idea, practically the Virgo equivalent of bungee jumping. Cleaning in a foreign city? Where does the line start!?

A curious thing about the day was that I got to see the true size of London, first by ferry (the "Meteor" clipper) and then by DLR. The tube has a funny way of folding London up like a map ready to put in your satchel, but the ferry unfolds that map. Mum and Dad's place at Tower Bridge was much further away than I could have anticipated - a full half hour ride. I'm glad we didn't try to walk it. The DLR too showed us plenty of poverty and really sad social housing and buildings demolished by neglect - I needed to see this. London was starting to get out of sight, out of mind.

I was disconsolate by bedtime knowing that we had paid for two tours in a row the next morning, each 1.5 hours. I just wanted to stop.

The sleep train hit me like the Victoria line to Brixton: fast and impersonal.Read more