WALKING BIGLY, WITH BEN

As I walk around London in mid-November, especially at night (although “night” starts at about half past four), I’m struck by how much of it is lit up.  Some of it is in honour of the approaching Christmas, but by no means all.  County Hall and the London Eye (which if you’re in the right frame of mind can look like the portal to another dimension) are evidently illuminated to compliment and contrast with each other.  They look great.

I’m reminded of a time when I was a student, and I brought a friend down to London from the boonies to show him the sights, even though my own knowledge of the sights was extremely limited at that stage.

The friend was a man of, let’s say, very specific imagination. London disappointed him at every turn because it wasn’t exactly as he’d imagined it. He’d thought the Thames would be much wider, Buckingham Palace far more palatial, and specifically that Big Ben would be much, much bigger.

I think he probably had a point with Big Ben. The name is confusing, chiefly because the bigness originally referred only to the bell inside – which is indeed very big and impressive, but since you can’t see it from outside, it’s easy to understand somebody's disappointment.

Now it so happened that last week I walked over Westminster bridge and back.  I walked south in daylight (pushing through crowds of tourists and selfie-takers) and north in (illuminated) darkness, by which time there were fewer self-takers, but still a surprising number.

Big Ben is currently being refurbished, and not set to reopen to the public until 2021, so the whole thing is wrapped up, like something by Christo, and at night it's all lit up; not exactly like a Christmas tree, but I suspect it’s never looked better:

And then I was in Dalston at the weekend and walked past a furniture shop that had this in the window:

It had no price on it, perhaps in a “if you have ask …” kind of way, but on this occasion it looked surprisingly like the “real thing.”  My friend from the north would still not have been impressed, I’m sure.  But I'm thinking that maybe I should dash back to Dalston and buy it - damn the expense.