Bill Sykes' Newsletter
from America.
(Midsummer 2004)
An ex-Brit gives his views-(without fear
or favor)---of the American Scene
London, England - (The city where very little
English appears to be spoken these days)!
Our last four days of vacation in England were
spent in renewing acquaintance, after many years, with
the city of London and what did we find upon arrival, a
distinct lack of the English spoken word - sadly, the spoken
word appears to have changed to Urdu, Hindu, and every
other du which appears to have become the national language
of parts of the London I so loved during my many trips
there during and shortly after World War Two.
My connection
with London in the late 1940s was with a family who
lived in Cricklewood in north west London - their son,
(who has lived in Tasmania for many years), and I served
together with the Parachute Regiment in Palestine and
upon a couple of occasions came on leave together. When
he got married and moved out of the house I replaced
him by becoming a sort of adopted son, or so I like to
believe.
Incidentally I was best man at his wedding and
he reciprocated by being our best man when Sheena and
I were married in the town of Marlborough in 1948.
Time to get back to the original story.
Sheena and I
booked into a hotel just off Bayswater Road, adjacent
to Hyde Park, within a few minutes walk of Queensway
and Bayswater underground stations, which gave us easy
access to all the tourist attractions of the city. First
of all we took an all day "on-off" bus tour
in order to see the highlights of the city and refresh
our memories as to what highlights we could fit in during
our visit.
We spent a busy four days visiting as many
of tourist attractions as we could during the limited
time available. These visits included a trip on the London
Eye, (the huge Ferris wheel, which is located across
the River Thames from the Houses of Parliament), Kew
Gardens, Covent Garden - (which is now a large fleamarket
and incidentally has the best Cornish Pasty Café outside
of Cornwall), Piccadilly Circus, (which is of course
for the uninitiated is not a circus), Leicester Square,
(the centre of London’s theatre
land - unfortunately we didn’t have time to get
discount tickets to one of the many show - mostly musicals),
Trafalgar Square, a trip up the River Thames from the
Tower of London to Westminster - we tried to gain entrance
to the Houses of Parliament but the line was too long
- thought that maybe I could get an audience with Prime
Minister Blair and point out the error of his ways in
his association with President Bush.
We went to Buckingham
Palace to see the changing of the guard, (didn’t
see Christopher Robin and Alice), and at the other end
of the spectrum we visited Petticoat Lane on the afternoon
of Sunday the 20th June and this is where the caption:
"The city where very little English appears to be spoken" comes
into play.
The Cockney barrow boys who used to
throng Petticoat Lane and entertain the crowds with
their humorous and many times outrageous banter, have
been replaced by Cockney Pakistanis, Cockney Hindus,
and other various nationalities who now appear to represent
the Cockney population, but it would certainly surprise
me if the current members of the so called current
Cockney populous were born within the sound of Bow Bells.
We welcome feedback about any of the contents of these
newsletters. Please send all correspondence to bill_sykes@huddersfield1.co.uk
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