Llamas

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Buondì.

If you’re reading this on Wednesday, the day it’s published and emailed out to approximately eighteen thousand club members, I’ll be on my way to Stanstead airport (north of London, the one in Great Britain) to take a cheap flight back home to Bologna (the one in northern Italy, not the sandwich filling.)

England – I didn’t venture into Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland – seems much as usual, perhaps better. The trains were clean and modern, the people too. Prices are higher, as everwhere. I paid nearly seven pounds for a beer in a pub the other day, so was scandalised.

Also, the pub wouldn’t take cash! Many places don’t these days, apparently. The friendly bartender told me that if a customer has only cash, she’d take it herself then pay for their drinks with her own smartphone. She seemed the kind type, if absurdly young – my youngest daughter’s age.

Smartphones are, of course, ubiquitous. Even in Cornwall, where cash seems usually to be still acceptable, most people use them to pay for things in shops and bars. I’ve figured it out, too, but as my smartphone won’t recognise my fingerprint (we’re both old, and I wash a lot of dishes), I have to type in the five-figure PIN number each time before making the contactless payment.

Still, it’s pretty handy. My wallet has barely been out of my trouser pocket the whole time. In London (where I’m writing this, on Tuesday morning), they have what they call ‘Tap on, tap off” or ‘Touch in, touch out‘, depending on who you talk to. It works like this:

Picture me, just off the airport bus, still thinking in Italian and jostled by crowds, carefully making my way down the steps into the Underground (subway, metro) station.

Back in the day I’d have found a ticket machine, looked at the map on the wall to identify which ‘zone’ of London my destination station was in, then bought a ticket by feeding in coins or notes.

Clutching my ticket and any change, I’d make my way to the right barriers for the colour coded subway line, insert the ticket, and open the gate, hopefully remembering to take back the ticket and put it someplace safe. E così via! (I’d need the ticket to get out of the station at the other end…)

Now, invece, passengers touch their smartphones – which appear glued to the palms of their hands – to the contactless pad on the barrier, which automatically opens the gate, no faffing around with tickets required. And no cash changing hands, just an electronic signal. At the destination station you repeat the process to tap off (or touch out) and so end your journey.

Even with me holding up the smooth flow of practiced commuters while I type in my PIN (every bloody time) it’s extremely simple. The only thing is, you don’t know what you’re paying. The bank app on my phone will show me what yesterday’s public transport cost me – assuming I can remember my PIN for that one – but there’s no real-time notification on the phone, as happens in shops when buying Cornish pasties or real ale.

That said, in London at least, apparently there’s a ‘cap’ on daily travel costs, the idea being that however many buses, subway trains, or actual trains you tap/touch on/in during the day, you won’t pay more than the maximum daily fare for each service. Or something like that. At least, I hope so.

Buses work the same way, which is really, really cool, compared to buses in Bologna, at least. Only you don’t have to tap/touch off/out when you alight, for some reason. The fair is fixed, they tell me, no matter how far you travel in a certain time period.

A word of warning… While you don’t have to tap/touch off/out the super-figo red London double-decker buses, you must make sure you do so at the end of your subway/train journey (not all stations have barriers to tap/touch off/out of), or you’ll pay the daily cap, which might be a lot.

Complessivamente though, I’d highly recommend visitors to London gird up their loins and figure out the public transport system, which is clean, efficient, and used by mostly normal and well-off looking people. Just make sure your smartphone battery is fully charged before you set off…

So, in Cornwall I went for a short walk down one of those impossibly narrow country lanes, which are all bends and have hedges as high as a truck on either side. At a certain point, where there was a steep valley falling away on one side, I looked across to the green fields on the other side and saw what looked rather like a very hairy brown giraffe. It was quite a surprise.

Besides the colour, its neck was thicker and not as long as a giraffe’s, but sitting there, at the top of a small field on a Cornish hillside, it looked for all the world as if it was lording it over an African savanna(h).

There was a llama farm in the area, apparently. “The llama (/ˈlɑːmə/; Spanish pronunciation: [ˈʎama] or [ˈʝama]) (Lama glama) is a domesticated South American camelid, widely used as a meat and pack animal by Andean cultures since the pre-Columbian era”, or so Wikipedia informs me. Well there! I thought no more of it.

Sunday night I arrived back in London, to crash on my eldest daughter’s couch for a few nights. Monday, she and her partner were both off work, so she planned a day out for us. Front seats on the top deck of a double-decker bus (fantastic view, do try it) as far as Vauxhall, where we descended the staircase, exited the bus, and crossed several busy main roads to Vauxhall Park,

Lambeth Council’s website describes this small blob of green as ‘serving a diverse and vibrant community’, by which I think they mean drug dealers, drunks, and – did you guess – llamas! Along with the goats, sheep and other inmates of Vauxhall City Farm.

Such a shame Bug wasn’t with me (he doesn’t have a passport), as he would have been very excited to see such large animals up close. Where we live in Bologna, there are just cats, dogs and pigeons.

It’s great, I observed to daughter and partner, to see animals up close like this, even for adults. Makes a change from skyscrapers and charity shops, anyway. Llamas, my daughter’s partner observed, have quite good legs. And indeed, seen from the rear, they really do. Like a pinup girl from the ‘forties. Shapely, in a pleasing way, though very furry.

Next stop was the new American Embassy, which I was told had a moat, and other impressive, though discreet, security features. I saw no ducks on this water feature (sorry, Bug), though there were lillies.

I was neverous about taking photographs, for fear of being whisked off to a CIA black site, but did get a snap of two nearby towers, which featured one of those transparent swimming pools high up in the sky. I could just make out someone swimming in it, from the top of one building to the top of another, then back again.

More trudging through what was becoming a rather hot, sunny morning to reach the nearby and recently redeveloped Battersea power station, a vast building which was made world-famous when it featured on the cover of Pink Floyd’s Animals LP (their tenth, Wikipedia says.)

It’s huge, it’s tastefully converted with original features retained, and it appears to be home from home to hordes of wealthy Asian women, the sort who spend their time and money in the expensive shops and chic juice bars, rather than leaning on the fence at the llama enclosure.

Exiting the power station to the north, there are deck chairs on the grass, where people were soaking up the sun (normal people), and a river walk with picnic tables, where office workers with no jackets and ties were eating their lunches in the sunshine. A fresh breeze blew off the impressive River Thames.

Not much further on was our own lunch destination – selected by my daughter, who once won an all-expenses-paid university summer school in Malaysia – Roti King.

Roti is a sort of fried bread, to be eaten with spicy sauce. The vegans had dhal, I chose the mutton, and very good they both were. If you like ‘curry’, well then you’d like this. Better still, at under ten pounds for two roti plus a bowl of dhal, it’s competitively priced.

We kept the check/bill to not much more than thirty pounds for the three of us by drinking tap water rather than expensive beers, so walked away clear-headed and very happy with Sofia’s choice.

Crossing the Thames on foot via Battersea Bridge, we tapped/touched in/on to another bus to reach the Victoria and Albert Museum, in South Kensington. Despite living in London for a number of years as a youth, I’d never visited, probably because its focus is art and design, rather than more boy-friendly stuff like war, science, mummies, or dinosaurs.

I admit to limited enthusiasm, especially after a good lunch followed by a long walk in the sun, but once I started paying attention to the exhibits my interest increased. The British sculpture gallery was more fun than it sounds, and the fashion room (clothes, shoes, etc.) was thought-provoking. In the Britain room I tried on a metal gauntlet, and we designed our family crests. The toilets are clean and free, which was welcome.

Done with culture and walking, we took to public transport again, so more tapping and touching, to head back south of the river to Peckham Rye train station. The unsual name derives from an archaic term for a river or stream, the kids told me.

Exiting the station (remembering to tap out / touch off), home was still fifteen minutes walk, so we got halfway before taking a well-earned break at the Montpelier pub (which did take my cash).

Relaxing outside in the sun with our pints, too tired to do much for the rest of the day, the kids decided on a vegan fish and chips takeaway for our evening meal. I ordered a steak and kidney pie, which was cheaper than cod, but a mistake.

And that was the day. This morning (Tuesday), it’s cloudy and colder, which I expect is much more normal for London. I brought a rain coat with me from Italy but haven’t needed it so far. Perhaps today will be the day.

Alla prossima settimana!

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