Greenwich Time

Hi!  It is me, Wilfred!  And my two dads and I are still living in London. 

Last week was my half term break at Ravenstone Preparatory School and since Poppy was working, Dad and I did all kinds of fun stuff together.  We went back to the Science and Natural History Museums, because there is always lots to see and do, and one day we went to Regent’s Park and the London Zoo. But the trip I liked the best was down the Thames to Greenwich.

Greenwich is a part of London, but in the old days, it was a separate town down the Thames River on the way to the sea.  In olden times, Greenwich was the last stop for ships coming up the Thames to the City. Nowadays, Old Greenwich is on the eastern edge of London.  It takes about half an hour to get there by Tube, or train, DLR (Docklands light rail), or boat.  I love trains, but the funnest way to get to Greenwich is by boat.

Dad and I took the Tube from Gloucester Road Station.  Dad has an Oyster card that he bought at the station.  It’s like a credit card and gives you cheaper fares than paying with money.  Kids ride the Tube free with an adult, so Dad lets me swipe the Oyster card at the turnstile and we go through together.  

We got off at Embankment Tube stop and had to cross a BUSY street.  Londoners dash across when the way is clear, but I always make Dad wait for the green man crossing light, because dashing is NOT SAFE!   

We bought our ferry tickets at the wharf (Dad used his Oyster card again).  Soon, we were on the ferry and heading down the Thames.


                     (Me on the ferry in a front row seat) 

The Thames is what is called a tidal river because the direction of the water changes with the tide from the sea. 

We travelled down to Greenwich as the tide was coming in.  My friend, Adelle, told me the tide lets all kinds of sea creatures into the Thames.  Sometimes,  there are seals and dolphins and every once in a while they get a WHALE! 

(The whale I did not see.  Dad found him on the internet)

We didn’t see any whales, but we did see a lot of London from the Thames River – even though it was kind of a foggy London day.  We saw Big Ben and the houses of parliament, the London Eye (of course), the Tower of London and we even went right under Tower Bridge.  Can you even believe it?

After Tower Bridge, the ferry really picks up speed and we zoomed down to Canary Wharf, past lots of new office towers and condos.  And then on to Greenwich!

The ferry lets you off in the centre of old Greenwich.  Right next to the wharf is the Visitors’ Centre where they have all sorts of fun stuff for kids, explaining about Greenwich.  There have been people living here a long time but it was just a fishing village until kings and queens started coming here from London – like their summer cottage (or Grandma Phyllis’ beach house only for Henry the 8th). 

Out in front, they have a big cannon, because the British Navy has been in Greenwich for a long, long time.  They also have a statue of Sir Walter Raleigh, who was an adventure guy from the pirate days who laid his coat in the mud so the Queen wouldn’t walk in a puddle.  Crazy.  I like walking in puddles.  

(This is me being an adventurer with Walter Raleigh  Arrgh!)

Inside, they have exhibits and models and dress up clothes, armour you can put on and lots of buttons to push that make maps light up.

After the visitor centre, I was hungry, so Dad and I walked over to an old pub, called the Admiral Hardy.  The pub was so old, it didn’t even have any HEAT except FIREPLACES!  It was damp and cold outside and you could smell the sea.  I got us a table right in front of the fire.  Dad had scampi and chips and I had a hamburger with lots of ketchup.  I told our server I wasn’t from around there and she said, she KNEW.

When we were done lunch, we walked out of the Admiral Hardy and through the Greenwich Market that sells food and crafts and stuff and out into the old village of Greenwich.  There is an old church there called St. Alfege.  It is named after Alfege who was kidnapped from his church in Canterbury by VIKINGS!  Dad and walked through it.  The outside is all stone, but the inside is all wood.  Dad said a bomb landed on the church in the war, but they did a good job of putting it back together.

We walked back over to a kind of park, with big walls and huge, beautiful, old buildings.  Dad said that it was a music university, but it used to be a naval college and before that, a hospital for sailors.  It was built by Christopher Wren, the same guy who built everything after London burned down, but Greenwich didn’t burn.  There used to be an old palace here (remember, Henry the 8th’s cottage?).  After they tore it down, the queen in those days wanted to build a sailor’s hospital.  Only thing was, she already had a house here and she didn’t want anything to block her view of the Thames.  So Christopher Wren built the hospital in two halves so the Queen could see down the middle.  Now the Queen’s House is a part of the Maritime Museum.

(Sir Christopher's Painted Hall (R), Chapel (L), the Queen's House behind and on the hill the Greenwich Observatory)

On one side of what was the old hospital, Christopher Wren built a big hall, where they sometimes have parties.  It is all painted with the most beautiful painting you ever saw.  It is called the Painted Hall. 

(Me inside the Painted Hall)

(Dad in the Painted Hall - I took this one)

Across from it is an identical building but inside is a chapel.  It is pretty beautiful, too.

Dad pointed out the Royal Observatory on the hill above Greenwich.  That is the exact spot that marks the earth’s east and west halves.  It is called the Greenwich Meridian.  Dad said that every spot in the world is measured from this place and by knowing a place’s distance from here you know where to find it on a map.  It is called longitude.  Dad said it is sort of like mile or kilometer markers on a highway.  For the whole world, Greenwich is mile zero.  There is also a ball on the top of a spike on the observatory’s roof that falls every day at exactly one o’clock so that sailors on the Thames can set their clocks.  Nowadays, every clock in the world is set by comparing its time to the time in Greenwich.  They call that Greenwich Mean Time.  I asked Dad how time could be mean.  He says I will know when I’m older.  

Dad wanted to show me the observatory up close, but it is in the middle of a park and it was getting too late.  I am only six and my legs get tired.  And we didn’t even have time to see the Maritime Museum, so Dad said we would come back another day and bring Poppy.  We walked along the Thames to the wharf to catch the ferry home. 

By the time the ferry got us back to Embankment it was almost dark.   I was tired but I didn’t mind the long ferry ride.  Going to a place like Greenwich getting there really is half of the fun.

Talk to you next week.  Wilfred 

Half Term Week

Hello!  It’s me, Wilfred -- still living in London with my two dads! 

                                              

(This is me on our street)

This week is half term week at Ravenstone Prepartory.   At Ravenstone, the year is divided into three terms.  Fall term is September to Christmas, winter term is January to March and spring/summer term is May to July.  We get four weeks off in April (almost the whole month!) and we get a week off halfway through each term.  Winter term is already half over.  Can you even believe it?

The one sad thing about this half term break is that my teacher, Miss Moylan, is leaving us.  She is going to have a baby, so we will have a new teacher in Form 2 after half term.  On the last day of school before break, Form 2 had a big party for Miss Moylan.  We had lots of treats and dancing music and we wore funny masks that we made in art.  We are all sorry to see Miss Moylan leave, but she has promised to come back and visit us with her baby.

                                           

(Me and Miss Moylan)

Lots of my classmates are going away for half term week.  Mir Ali is visiting his brother at his brother's school in Scotland, and some of my classmates are going to visit their families in Paris, but Poppy and Daddy and me are staying in London.  This week, Poppy is busy with his work (he is a guest at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art), so Dad gets to play with me all day long! 

The first day of break started with a great big bang.  Our upstairs neighbour is having some work done on their flat, getting a new floor-- and guess what happened?!  A workman fell through my bedroom ceiling!  Dad and I heard a HUGE crash and we ran to my bedroom door and a workman’s legs were dangling through a big hole and there was plaster dust EVERYWHERE! 

(This is the hole in my ceiling after they blocked it up)

The next day, plasterers came to fix my room, so Dad and I had to find something fun to do to get us out of the flat.  I told Dad that I wanted to go to the Natural History Museum.

The museum is only two blocks from our flat, so Dad and I can walk there.  On the way, I showed Dad what I had learned in my pedestrian safety class.  When you cross the street, you have to find a safe place.  On our street, cars park on both sides and down the middle.   Every block or so, there is what is called an island crossing.  You look right, then left, then right again.  Listen and THINK.  If you can’t see  or hear traffic coming, you can cross to the island, where it is safe to wait and where you can look again.

Our street, Elvaston Place, takes us to a wider one, called Queens Gate.  On the other side is the Imperial College London.   There is a different kind of crossing there called a zipro crossing (because it looks like a zipper).   At a zipro crossing, the traffic has to stop for pedestrians to cross, but you still have to be really careful because not everybody stops – especially taxis!  There are lots of visitors to London from all over the world and not everybody is used to cars being on the wrong side of the road.  Daddy and Poppy say it is tricky remembering to check for traffic coming the opposite way you expect – so at intersections, the city has painted a reminder of which way to look.

To get to the museum Dad and I walk through the Imperial College.  In the olden days, the College had five towers.  In the 1960s, they decided to tear the old college down to build a modern one.  The people thought it was too beautiful to wreck, so they saved one tower – the Queen’s Tower.  It has bells in the top, one named Queen Victoria and the others named after each of her kids (she had lots).  On royal anniversaries, they ring the bells and it plays a song that goes on for an hour of beautiful bell music.  The Queen’s Tower is one of my favourite things.  I am glad they didn’t tear it down.

(Me and the Queen’s Tower)

Close by is the Natural History Museum!  It has all sorts of neat stuff that explains everything about nature.
                 

(Me at the Natural History Museum)

When you go in, you go up an escalator that takes you right through the middle of a big sculpture of the world.  The first exhibit is all about how rocks are made from lava.  It explains volcanoes and shows them erupting and has really cool displays with lots of buttons to push and things that light up.  My favourite part explains what an earthquake is.  It has a room that looks like a Japanese supermarket and the whole room shakes and things fall on the shelves just like a REAL EARTHQUAKE!

                                          

(Me in a Japanese Earth Quake)

There are lots of other displays that explain wind and water and oceans and animals (and BUGS).  The museum is very old.  One of the oldest exhibits – back from Queen Victoria’s days – is a whole room full of stuffed birds in glass cases.  Some of the birds don’t even exist anymore.

There are lots and lots of really interesting things, but sometimes, the most fantastic thing is the building, which has great walk ways suspended in the air that make it more modern. 


And sometimes, it is just huge and amazing – like Hogwarts in Harry Potter.

               

If you ever come to London, you should definitely go! 

(I took this picture of Dad)

That is all for now.  I will write you next week and tell you what other exciting things we did on the rest of my Half Term break.   Talk to you then, Wilfie.  

Chelsea weekend

Hello!  It’s me, Wilfred!  And I am still living in London with my two dads.  During the week, I go to Ravenstone Preparatory but on the weekends, Poppy and Daddy and I always try to do something fun. 

This week, I was excited for the weekend to come because I was having my first play date with a new friend from my London school.  My friend and I planned what we wanted to do and I asked Dad to email my friend’s mom to set it up.  My dad thought my friend’s name was “Merrily”, but Dad didn’t understanding me properly – because my new friend’s name is Mir Ali.  Mirali is from Karachi.  Karachi is in Pakistan which is as far from London as Toronto, but the other way around the world.   

Mirali’s mom dropped him at our flat and we played cars and Lego and then went to the Kensington Gardens to feed the ducks and swans.  Mirali was a little afraid of the swans because they came right out of the water and wanted to eat the bread before Dad could even get it out of the bag -- so we went over to the Princess Diana playground and played on the pirate ship.  Mirali was nervous about going up into the crow’s nest, so we pretended he was the captain and I was his pirate crew in the lookout. 

Mirali says Karachi is very poor and it is very different in Pakistan from here.  In London, Mirali lives with his mother and his sister, because his father died.    Mirali is still very sad about his dad and was very glad to see his mom when she picked him up.  He is a good friend for me.

There was lots of Saturday left and that afternoon, Dad and Poppy took me over to the Victoria and Albert Museum.  The museum is named for Queen Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert.  There is a big statue of Prince Albert near where we live.  Queen Victoria named a lot of things after him, because he died when he was young and she loved him and missed him, just like Mirali misses his dad.

The V & A is interesting, but it is mostly for adults.  There is some kid stuff, though.  A whole part of the museum is full of silver stuff and kids can make silver coins using a press.  

There is a display about the Crystal Palace, which was a big building Prince Albert had made out of glass, and you can make one of your own using clear blocks.   

And there are even some old fashioned costumes from Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s time that you can play with. 

 Poppy and me had fun getting dressed up, but Dad made us take them off.  He said they were for trying on and not for wearing all day.

On Sunday, I wanted to do something else fun.  Dad and Poppy think that going for long walks is fun… which it is not always, but it is okay if there are interesting things to see along the way.   In London, we live in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and Dad thought we should go see the boats working on the Thames along the Chelsea Embankment. 

We walked down Queen’s Gate (which starts at Kensington Gardens near the statue of Prince Albert) and past  the Natural History Museum.  Pretty soon we were into Chelsea.  In Chelsea, we went down Old Church Street.  It is called that because there is a church at the bottom of it by the river.  Dad explained that the Chelsea Old Church had been bombed during the war but that they had put it back together so that it looked just the same.  I saw some ladies tidying the church up after Sunday morning and asked if I could come in because I wasn’t from there.  The ladies laughed and said they could tell from my accent. 

They told me the church was very, very old.  Henry the 8^th married his third wife there and a man named Thomas More, who had a fight with King Henry, was buried there – except his head which was buried someplace else…    

After our church visit, we crossed the Thames on the Prince Albert Bridge, so I could show Dad and Poppy Battersea Park where I go with my school to play field hockey. 

We walked back over Chelsea Bridge and through the park around the Royal Hospital Chelsea.  It is a great big building built by Sir Christopher Wren, who built a lot of famous buildings after London burned down a long time ago.  It is very beautiful for a hospital.  Retired soldiers live there and there is a statue of one in the park that you can sit beside for a picture.

We walked up to Sloane Square, where there are lots of shops and a big theatre that Poppy wants to visit called, the Royal Court. 

At last we stopped in for a cup of tea and a snack.  Dad said we were almost home.  I was glad.  I like looking at London, but I’d rather take a bus.  My legs get tired. 

Talk to you next week.  Wilfred

Living life in London

Hello!  It is me, Wilfred! 

This week, Dad and I were on our own in London, while Poppy was in Bristol doing his work.   I was sad when Poppy had to leave, but Poppy said we aren’t on holiday for six months -- we are living our life in the UK. 

                                

(my room in London)

So the week that Poppy was away, that is just what Dad and I did!  We lived our life in London.  I went to school and Dad did… Dad stuff.  

This week, two exciting things happened.  One – I LOST ANOTHER TOOTH!!

                                  

(See my missing teeth?  Also, a diagram of a zamboni...

so you know I remember Canada.)

Luckily, the tooth fairy found me here.  The second exciting thing -- I will save for the end.  First, I want to tell you alittle about life in London.

There are FOUR times as many people in London as Toronto – 8 million.  The streets are very busy – taxis, double-decker buses and LOTS of cars, bicycles, motorbikes and lorries!  People are everywhere.  At Ravenstone, we learn pedestrian safety (more another day), but the rule is always “Look right.  Look left.  Look right, again.  Listen.  And THINK!”

 8 million people living close together means everybody has to take up less space.  In Toronto, Dad and Poppy and I have a house and a yard and a garage and we live on three floors.  In London, our flat is smaller than one floor of our Toronto house.  Here we have 2 bedrooms, a bathroom, a reception room (which is what English people call a living room – except we eat in there, too) and a kitchen just big enough for Dad to cook.  I like our Toronto house, but I like our flat, too -- because we're always close together!

When we went up to York last week, I saw a lot of power stations on the way.  Because there are so many people, they need a lot of power.  Dad says, it is expensive, so everyone tries to use as little as they can.

In London, people have smaller refrigerators – half the size of our fridge at home.  In our flat, we have a little fridge on the top and a freezer at the bottom. 

Because the fridge is small, Dad has to grocery shop two or three times a week.  Everything in the stores is sold in smaller containers so it will all fit.   The fridge uses less power, but we also make more garbage (what the English call, “rubbish”) and recycling.

We also have a little washer/dryer to do laundry.  One machine does both jobs and takes up less space.  I like watching it spin, because it goes very fast… but it doesn’t make things so dry as we are used to in Canada.  When
Poppy does laundry, he puts socks and underwear over all our radiators!

The radiators that heat our flat attach to a little boiler in a cupboard in our bathroom.  It also heats our hot water.  In Toronto, we have a big hot water tank in our basement.  In London, the boiler switches on whenever you turn on and off the hot water tap and only heats the water you need.  There is a timer on the boiler that Dad switches on every night.  The boiler is off all night but comes on automatically at 7 a.m. to warm up the flat before we get out of bed, and then switches off at 9 a.m. so the flat is not heated while we are out during the daytime.  When we come home, Dad switches it on again. I am not allowed to touch it.

So now, the second exciting thing – besides my tooth!  Miss Moylan told Dad I got a good behaviour sticker every day that week AND I got ten out of ten on my spelling test.  Dad was very proud of me for doing so well, eventhough we both miss Poppy.  So when Dad picked me up after school, he said he would take me to the Science Museum.  

There are three big museums just a block and a half from our flat: the Victoria & Albert, the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum.  I wasn’t sure if I would like the Science Museum, but Dad said he knew I would.  And Dad WAS RIGHT! 

The Science Museum is full of great machines! There are machines everywhere!  They have huge ones that actually work, running by steam.  

                                     

(me and Dad)

                                  

(I know a lot about steam engines, so 

I was able to explain them to people.)

There's a space room with real missiles.  They have a whole floor of real airplanes.  And another of model ships.  They have old cars and old trains! 

And guess what?  They actually have the first ever steam locomotive ever built -- "Puffing Billy"!  Can you even believe it? 

They also have a real space capsule, the Apollo 10, that circled the moon in 1969.  I was so excited, I knew exactly what I had to do that weekend. 

Come back again and show Poppy!

I will write again next week.  Talk to you then.  Wilfred