Lincoln's Inn Walk

Tonight - at last, back with London Literary Walks! for the Lincoln's Inn Walk. I feel a bit guilty, having missed his last two for the Camden Fringe - blame Up in the Cheap Seats! Now, I cancelled a meal with Let's Do This for this walk - ironically, I see that Mary took my place on it.. ah, this Meetup inter-group competitiveness!

This is getting vexing - every single evening, I leave my boss hard at it to go and enjoy myself, and I feel guilty about that too. I know it's his choice, but still. Anyway, with a reasonably late start to the walk, and meetings that didn't go on for too long, I left in decent time. Annoyingly, I just missed my bus - but hey, the other one would do better than waiting for 11 whole minutes. So I got that instead, and had a short walk when I got off.

"Inside the pub", he said. Hmm. It was The Shakespeare's Head - which is pretty huge, like any Wetherspoon's. So that wasn't terribly helpful. Well, he turned out to be right at the back. Pretty much. I duly commented as much on the Meetup page, figuring it might be of help to the others who had yet to arrive. We had a decent crowd for this one - of the six who accompanied him, three of us were regulars, with two first-timers having signed up. And someone else appeared at the last minute, who hadn't responded at all! Well gee. Welcome, one and all!

We didn't have to go far to find something interesting:

More photos here. Tonight's walk was the usual fascinating mix, with Sir Thomas More..

(and did you know he was lauded by the Soviet Union for his Communist principles, as espoused in Utopia?!) Aleister Crowley made an appearance - or, at least, somewhere he used to live. We learned the correct pronunciation of Chiang Kai-Shek, from the Chinese lady present (yes, he lived around here too). We also got a fair bit about Charles II - primarily, it seemed, because we were passing pubs that had some association with him. Such as the one named after a chap that hid him, at one fateful point of the Civil War:

After that, the walk dealt primarily with money..

and, conspicuously, the Law. Well, but you'd expect that for Lincoln's Inn. We learned about how newly qualified lawyers have to spend a year in chambers, and we passed the pro bono centre. Some quite imposing buildings:

..and some expensive wigs:

Finally, the Peacock Theatre held some surprises, as the venue where women first appeared legally on stage, also notable for its innovative moveable scenery and use of perspective. And so on - for most of us - to The Old Bank of England, which is housed in an old bank. Funny that. Passing the discarded remains of a reception - shocking waste of food and drink - we comfied ourselves in a corner and discussed, well, writing and stuff. Another excellent outing, in good company. Our guide, however, still resolutely refused to pin down any dates for next month.. we wait in suspense.

Tomorrow, I'm with Walking in London again, for The Summer Ghost Walk, which I cancelled earlier in the month. Handily, I got a loyalty discount for this, which knocked nearly half the price off! Then I'm back to Ireland for the weekend.

And next week starts with two trips with North London Friends. On Monday, we're off to Hampstead Theatre for The Humans. Front row, cool!

And on Tuesday, we're seeing The Aristocrats - by Brian Friel - at Donmar Warehouse. Now, initially, I didn't book anything for this night, what with another late-night work meeting planned. Forgot about that when I was booking this, next time I looked - but sod it, the last late-night work meeting didn't even happen, and I'm sick of them just blithely assuming we'll work after hours.