Wilfred In The UK: Southend on the Sea

Hello! It’s me, Wilfred! It is March already and I am still in London with my two dads!

Last week, at Ravenstone Prepartory, Mrs. Heath announced at an assembly that Friday we would have a special day to raise money to help nurses look after people with cancer. Everybody was supposed to wear something yellow and bring £2. I told Mrs. Heath, I didn’t have anything yellow and she said, I could just put a daffodil in my button hole.

There are lots of daffodils growing in London. Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens are covered in them. But Dad said I was not to pick one. Instead, after school on Thursday, Dad and I went to the flower stall by Gloucester Road Station where they have buckets of daffodils. I asked Dad if we could get a bouquet – one for my buttonhole and the rest for Mrs. Heath. I thought Mrs. Heath should have flowers because whenever someone misbehaves, they get two warnings and then they have to go to Mrs. Heath’s office, instead of going to swimming or Battersea Park or the long garden where we sometimes play, and then they have to think about their DISGUSTING behaviour and write a reflection. There have been a lot of reflections in Mrs. Heath’s office lately (but not me – I like playing more than reflecting).

On Friday morning, Dad pinned a daffodil on my jumper (which is what the English call a sweater) and Poppy and I took the rest of them to Mrs. Heath. I think she liked them. She was surprised, anyway.

My daffodil (I took this picture!)

That day, we painted “Mini-pots of Care”, which are really flower pots with daffodils in them and we brought them home.

I took this picture -- and I painted the Mini-pot of Care!

While we are in London, Poppy is doing his work. He is visiting different theatre schools here to see what they are like. This week, Poppy went to a school outside of London at Southend on the Sea. Poppy thought that I would really like Southend on the Sea, because they have the longest pleasure pier in the world and to get from our place to the end of it, we would have to take THREE different trains! Poppy knows what I like.

The first train was the Underground from Gloucester Road to Tower Hill Station. Tower Hill is in the oldest part of London. The Tower of London is there and the old, OLD Roman wall.

Me at Tower Hill Station

Me and Dad and the old wall

The streets are really narrow and windy. Poppy says no one lives there anymore – it is just where a lot of bankers work. So there are also a lot of new office buildings… but VERY close together.

London has lots of different train stations. We finally found Fenchurch Station (it was hard, cause those windy streets are confusing and the entrance Poppy used before was CLOSED!) and that is where we caught our second train – the C2C.

Me at Fenchurch Station in London

The C2C at Fenchurch Station

The C2C is a commuter, like the GO in Toronto. We bought our lunch in the station and ate it on the train. There were lots of stops, as we went through the docklands and the suburbs and then little villages along the Thames River. Every once in a while you could see big flats of mud. That was because it was low tide. We looked at all the buildings and fishing boats and we even saw a ruined CASTLE. It only took about 45 minutes to get to Southend, which was lucky, because the train only had one lavatory and it was OUT OF ORDER!

Southend on the Sea is on the Thames “estuary”, but the Thames is so wide there it almost looks like part of the sea. There were lots of sea gulls and fish and chip shops.

Poppy pointed out the campus where he visited, which was right next to the train station. We walked across the town, which Dad said looked like Barrie, but on the sea. When we got to the seaside, there was a huge amusement park with rides and a pirate ship and the longest pier you ever did see. It sticks out into the estuary over two kilometres. It is so long, that you need a train to get to the end! That was our THIRD train for the day. Can you even believe it?

Me and Poppy at Southend Pier

The pier is over a hundred years old. Boats used to come to it from London and it had to stick that far out to reach deep water at low tide. In the old days, they first had a tram pulled by a horse. Then they had a steam train, and then a diesel. They still have one of the old fashioned trains out at the end of the pier.

There was a chilly breeze blowing down the estuary, but it was snug and warm in the old rail car. That's me, driving!

The train goes every half hour and you can buy a return ticket or you can walk one way. Dad and Poppy wanted to walk one way. I wanted to take the train both ways. I got out voted.

In old times there used to be restaurants and dancing places and arcades on the pier, but they burned down. They also had a life boat station with a big bell that was rung in case of emergencies. Now, they don’t ring a bell, they dail 999 (what the English dial instead of 911), but the bell is still there. I showed Poppy how to ring it.

Today, they still have a working lifeboat station, where they keep the fast craft to rescue people near to shore. The people working there gave me a magazine for kids all about water safety. Dad read a display to me that said lot of people walk out on the mud flats at low tide and get caught when the tide rushes in.

It is funny looking out on the mud flats at all the boats waiting for the tide to come back.