Berna Cox’s honeymoon in London 20 years ago was ruined when a drunk man barged into her hotel room. Recently she returned to discover that first impressions aren’t always accurate
You don’t, they say (whoever ‘they’ are), get a second chance to make a first impression. First impressions worm themselves into your brain, and you take on a bias. If the first impression is a bad one, chances are you’ll carry it with you all your days and never change your mind. Right? Maybe not. I’ve just firmly put to bed a poor first impression that had coloured my thinking for 30 years.
The first time I went to London I hated it. Mind you, I don’t suppose I went there under the best of circumstances. I was on my honeymoon – which, I hasten to add, was not a bad circumstance – but I was there with my new husband who considered himself to be something of a London expert.
I had visions of being swept from one exciting venue to the next and living it up big time. Theatre, ballet, museums, and oodles of culture at every turn in the road.
Dainty afternoon teas by day and fancy eating out every night. I reckoned the biggest annoyance I’d have would be deciding whether we’d dine pre- or post-theatre.
Self-professed expertise
The reality was different. The extent of his self-professed expertise didn’t really stretch to anything approaching sophistication. If I’d wanted to go to a rugby match or a football match or a pub that had a really big telly for watching sport of some description, I’d have been elected. But when it came to nice places to stay, nice places to eat and nice places to go, he hadn’t a notion.
Any London experience he possessed had been garnered from trips to Twickenham, Cup Final excursions and pub crawls. He had enthused about the feat of engineering that was the Tube system and how convenient it all was. It wasn’t until I stood in the middle of Piccadilly with a face on me that would have turned milk that he realised I wasn’t really having fun.
And the hotel. Mother of God, the hotel. It was easily the worst place I’ve ever stayed. He and his mates always thought it was a great place because it had an excellent central location and was right beside a Tube station. But I hated it. It was cheap and nasty. Relatively expensive because of the location – but cheap and nasty. (I don’t need to name it for you here because, mercifully, it doesn’t exist anymore). On the second night of our stay, we were awakened by the sound of someone actually coming into our room.
It was double booked and some very drunk man started bellowing at us to get out of ‘his’ room. We managed to get rid of him and lock ourselves in but it amounted to yet more yuckiness as far as I was concerned. I sat on the bed and howled. I just wanted to go home. And, if memory serves, that’s exactly what we did. Cut short our stay and bolted.
The honeymoon crime
Interim visits to London have been infrequent and of a business nature, and I’ve always kept them as brief as possible. It was always a question of grit your teeth, get in there, do what you have to do and get out. Himself, therefore, was surprised and worried in equal measure when I announced I wanted to revisit the scene of the honeymoon crime.
This time, though, we got it right. The ghost of the bad first impression has been firmly laid to rest. In fact, I’ve done a bit of a u-turn. I spent five really good days in London and thoroughly enjoyed it. I’d go back in the morning.
The germ of the idea of revisiting the scene was born out of a bit of genealogical digging. Himself is attempting to trace a family namesake – his great, great grandfather – and all roads were leading to the National Archives in Kew. For years he’s been saying he must make the pilgrimage and see what he can find out.
It seemed like an ideal opportunity to twin it with a bit of a break. But this time I had my rules: good hotel; central location; no Tubes; at least one theatre evening.
Minimum requirements as far as I was concerned. If he was going to desert me to trawl for ancestors in Kew, I wanted a good central base with everything I wanted within walking distance.
The gods smiled. Not only did I get all I wanted but I got good weather as well. The carefully chosen hotel — the Cavendish – is located on the site of the original hotel of the same name run by Rosa Lewis, the legendary Duchess of Duke Street.
Situated on the corner of Duke Street and Jermyn Street, and across the road from Fortnum and Mason, it is an unbeatable location and ultra comfortable. Within 10 minutes’ walk in any direction, I had the loveliest time.
Royal Academy of Arts
At the top of the street on the Piccadilly road is the Royal Academy of Arts whose courtyard is home to The Tall Tree and the Eye – a most amazing sculpture of polished steel by Bombay-born artist Anish Kapoor. Seventy-six steel spheres bubble up into the sky, and the most engaging thing about it for me was the reflection of the world around it. It sees and catches everything.
Two minutes’ stroll away on Jermyn Street is the back entrance of St James’s Church, Piccadilly – a beautiful Christopher Wren building damaged extensively during the War in 1940 but sympathetically restored. As part of its ongoing restoration fundraising, a vibrant and colourful arts-and-crafts market occupies the church grounds on weekdays.
Within, the building is home to lunchtime recitals, evening concerts and so on.
Between activities, it’s simply a church – a beautiful, calm oasis with a charming candelabra and a prayer tree. Visitors can light a candle, write their cares and woes on a little sheet of paper (pens and paper provided) and place it on the prayer tree. Or you can just sit and drink in the history and the calmness.
The Queen’s grocers
Fortnum and Mason’s flagship store in Piccadilly is quite charming and famed the world over for being ‘the Queen’s grocer’. Strolling through the place is educational, with food and fare of all descriptions on display. That’s as may be but what fascinated me about it was the bees. From our hotel room, we overlooked the roof of the Piccadilly grocers, and I was tickled pink to see a row of beehives. F & M keep their own bees. In central London. Who’da thunk it? Apparently, the F & M bees target all the nearby parks and make very good honey indeed.
The theatre night was a visit to the Playhouse Theatre on Northumberland Avenue to see La Cage Aux Folles, which ticked all the boxes – song, dance, laughs… and walking distance. Within walking distance also is Foyles bookshop on Charing Cross Road where I spent a delicious afternoon browsing and wishing I could work there (but with no customers, of course).
A stroll along the Embankment was also very pleasant, and I sat in a nice little park for about an hour and watched the world go by. Back then to a cute little deli café down the street from the hotel for my afternoon treat of tea and glorious chocolate cake. Another day was a ramble around Trafalgar Square and a visit to the British Museum to marvel at the Assyrian wall sculptures.
A second chance
So London got a second chance to make a first impression. And it’s a good one. I didn’t really do the traditional ‘touristy’ things, but I found little gems – like St James’s Church – that never really make it into the touristy brochures. I found the people charming too and had very pleasant conversations with fellow diners at mealtimes and fellow chocolate cake lovers in the afternoons. Good customer service too is alive and well and hotel staff, deli staff and shop workers couldn’t have been more helpful and polite.
And himself, I’m happy to report, found the ancestor in the archives in Kew. Thirty years on, we both got our buzz out of London. Complete with unexpected busy buzzy bees. I’m finally impressed.
About Greg Baxter
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