The flight down from Edinburgh was smooth, but I had earache during the descent into Heathrow. When we were waiting for our luggage I saw Miss Stein, she was my teacher when I was in P5!

The express train into London Paddington is very fast, it only takes 15 minutes to get right into central London, then we took a taxi to a pub called ‘The Queens Head and Artichoke’, just across the road from our friend Dan’s flat.

Dan was waiting on the pavement, so we went into the pub for lunch, then across the road to Dan’s flat, which is in a basement but is bigger than I thought it would be. After about 30 minutes, me and Grandpa walked across and into Regent’s Park, a really nice place and quite large, with tennis courts and a big lake, also some cafes and places where you can eat. Grandpa showed me a flowering cherry tree, the blossom smelled really sweet. We saw a tame squirrel, he came down the tree and right up to us.

Later, we all went out for a meal at Pizza Express. I had an ordinary pizza and a glass of sprite, it took a long time but it was fun. Later still, Marcia said she would take me for another walk into the park, going a different way, but in fact we walked to Oxford Street and back. On the way we saw some ‘bendy buses’, things that bend in the middle and which are the size of two ordinary buses.

Day Two

Just finished breakfast and now we are going to the Imperial War Museum, then on to the Adelphi Theatre to see ‘Joseph and his TechnicolourDreamcoat’.

Marcia let me borrow her camera and I got some good pictures at the Museum. There was loads of interesting things to see, including a Bofors anti-aircraft gun, exactly like the gun used by my great grandfather during WWII.

My Grandpa could tell me about most of the things there, he was born in 1939 and was a child during the war. We saw what it was like for children who lived then, including information about evacuation and posters from that time.

Upstairs, we old tanks and artillery guns, I loved the whole thing! We went into a section which was all about the ‘Secret War’, it was all about MI6 and the SAS and the secret codes that both sides used. The Germans used a special ‘enigma’ coding machine, they thought their code was unbreakable, but Britain broke the code when we got our hands on an enigma machine from a u-boat.

After lunch, we went in to see the presentation on what happened to the Jews in the concentration camps. The pictures and writing proved that the Germans were cruel to the Jews.

After leaving the Museum, we went to Westminster to see Big Ben and to book our tickets for the London Eye and a cruise on the River Thames. Later, we took a taxi down the river to see HMS Belfast. It was huge, with many rooms and big guns. Grandpa told me that if the Belfast was moored in Largs it could fire shells that would accurately reach Greenock! The rooms on the ship were great, with writing telling you the history and what each room was for. The ship has steel ladders instead of steps, and if you were a sailor then you had no privacy, sleeping in a hammock slung over the tables and sharing the same room with lots of other men. The sailors had to wash their clothes in a bucket, then hang them up to dry wherever they could, nothing was really white, everything was mostly grey. A half-pint of rum was issued each day, very popular!

The Belfast played an important part in WWII, she was involved in shelling the Normandy beaches on D Day and played a big part in sinking the German battleship ‘Scharnhorst’.

After the Belfast we took a taxi across the river to Garfunkels restaurant next to the Adelphi Theatre, I had a cheeseburger and a glass of coke, then we went in to see the show. ‘Joseph and the amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat’ was wonderful, with dancers and singers full of energy and life. The music was great, but I couldn’t see the orchestra, because they were in a pit in front of the stage. The singing was great too, there was one character who was supposed to be Elvis and the actor was perfect for it! I really enjoyed the show, because I’m not used to such amazing props and actors.

Day Three

This was our day for the London Eye. We took a taxi from the flat, arriving ten minutes before we were supposed to, but they let us on without any problem. The weather was good and the views from the pod were amazing,

I took lots of photos of the river, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. After the Eye, we had sometime to spare, so we had an ice cream then walked across to get a better view of the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey, then walked back for the trip down the Thames. I enjoyed the trip; a guide told us about the history of the famous buildings that are on both sides of the river.

On the trip, we passed under several bridges and saw the Tower of London, the Parliament buildings and went down as far as London Bridge. On our return, we had a hot dog, then headed off to the Science Museum. The Museum had some really interesting exhibitions, but there were loads of screaming kids and so we didn’t stay at the activity bits for very long. In the bookshop, I bought the second Darren Shan book ‘Demon Thief’.

Day Four

We decided to go to Greenwich, which meant going on the underground and the Docklands Light Railway. When we arrived, we visited the National Maritime Museum, quite interesting and full of old Navy stuff, including a five metre model ship and ots of smaller models. After lunch, we climbed up to the old Royal Observatory. This was great, we could see the Prime Meridian and I could stand with one foot in the Eastern Hemisphere and one foot in the Western Hemisphere!

We saw the different timekeepers that a Mr Harrison has made to try and win a prize of 20,000 pounds (more than 1 million pounds today) that the government had promised to anyone who could make a really accurate timekeeper that would help ships to fix their longtitude. After the Observatory, we went back across the river to Oxford Circus, then asked a cab driver to take us to Hamleys Toy Shop on Regent Street. The driver gave us directions to walk to the shop, but it was so busy that I could hardly keep up with Grandpa! We finally made it to the biggest toy shop in the world! The basement was my favourite part, because it is all about interactive games.

The ground floor seemed to be mainly stuffed toys, another floor was magic tricks, the third floor was girls toys, the fourth floor was for boys. We returned to the flat after Hamleys, then after tea I went for a walk with Marcia went for a walk to Chinatown, then to Tesco where she bought me some Percy Pigs, then on the way back she bought me a MacFlurrey at MacDonalds.

Day Five

Our last day. At 0930 we took the tube train to the Tower of London. This was really good, with gruesome stories and much information about the Royal Families over the ages. There is a medieval Palace with information on ancient Kings, including Edward I and Edward II, the ‘Hammer of the Scots’. We walked along the walls, stopping at several points.

We went into Martin Tower, inside were old crowns without any jewels. After Martin Tower we had lunch in the cafe, mainly because the queue to see the Crown Jewels was HUGE. After lunch, we joined the queue and it took fifty minutes before we entered the vault where the jewels are kept. The jewels are worth seeing, there is a huge diamond and many rubies and sapphires. There was a story in the guidebook about someone who tried to steal the jewels about 400 years ago. When the thief was caught Charles II pardoned him!

We waited in another queue to get into the White Tower. The display was mainly about weapons and armour used by Henry VIII. As Henry got older, he also got fatter and by the time he died he had a 52 inch waist!. There was also an old chapel and displays of different types of armour used by knights. Finally, we waited in yet another queue to get into the Torture Chamber, after a long wait we were disappointed, there were only one or two things on display.

That’s it, my journal about my Big Trip, I hope you enjoyed reading it.

cartoon by bigeyedeer

Not usually very observant, I had noticed that the Big Issue sellers on the usual pitches seemed to have changed nationality – and that some of them were a bit more aggressive than usual, but a chance look at Steve Clarkson’s blog focused my attention on a disturbing trend.

What seems to be happening is that large numbers of Romanian immigrants have moved (quite legally) to the UK , and, predictably, without marketable skills and with minimal fluency in English, some of these people have found problems in finding jobs and accommodation. According to street gossip, a Romanian ‘Mr Big’ has developed a new business model, whereby he buys bulk supplies of The Big Issue and distributes these to pseudo-employees, folk who then go out onto street corners and sell the magazine in the traditional way. Nothing illegal about it – and the magazine itself is bound by the terms of its charter, as Big Issue Scotland national sales manager Michael Luby explains:

“It’s homelessness in general they are trying to find a solution for. When the EU expanded its borders, in many ways they left us to pick up the pieces. Over 7,000 Romanians have arrived here in the past year. They expected the streets to be paved with gold, but they aren’t, and a lot of them quickly found it difficult to find a home, just like the local sellers did. In that way, the Romanians met our criteria, and nobody who meets our criteria will ever be turned away. If their only other options are begging or stealing, I’m proud that we’ve given them a chance.”

Predictably, there has been a fair amount of pushback from displaced local Big Issue vendors. Popular press and blogs have commented too: click these links to see what I mean -

• Scottish Daily Express
• Channel 4 Forum
• Boardreader.com
• Liberal Burblings blog

Of course, the situation could be read as an indictment of the entrepreneurial flair of Scots Big Issue vendors. At another level it appears as organised abuse of a goodwill system designed to help the less fortunate, something that sticks in the craw of most decent folk.

The last word from Steve Clarkson sums it up very well -

“In a largely depoliticised society where popular culture is more prone to discuss Pepsi v Coke than most wider issues, many people simply pop up their umbrellas to shelter from the drizzly political weather. But if you buy Big Issues make sure you know exactly where the money is going, or else the meagre profits of many in “homelessness or vulnerable housing” will be buried in the January frost”.

Think about it if you are looking forward to the warmth and love of a family Christmas, and send a reply if you have strong opinions on this topic.