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The Next Pod
Originally uploaded by Loz Flowers.

Went on the London Eye today, it's been standing there for seven years and hasn't fallen over once so it should be safe. It did help an alien race try to take over the Earth, true, but which monuments haven't, when you come to think about it?

Anyway, was going with the family, and we pre-booked our tickets, or our 'flight' as they rather implausibly refer to it. I can't recommend pre-booking your tickets enough. It allows you to bypass two of the three long queues at the place.

The first long queue, if you don't pre-book your tickets, is the queue for tickets. The second long queue, is one outside where they keep you back from the Eye. The last long queue is the actual proper boarding queue to get on the Eye itself. Whilst I would agree that the Eye looks lovely, it was obvious that the people waiting to get on were the last consideration and the space deemed necessary vastly insufficient. As it was I got aggravated with the queuing we had to do as pre-paid customers. We had to congregate in an area at the back of the ticket hall (to be fair, normally we'd get a room but today it was out of bounds because of a wedding party), then someone leads us out the door, through all the people milling about in front of the Eye, then if we're lucky enough not to get scattered during this, we go up some stairs and queue for the right pod. We'd gone for the 'guided tour' experience, so we finally got on our pod, past the bag-checkers who didn't bother checking our bags. If any terrorists want, for some strange reason, to take out the Eye, it would seem that while the people that have queued hours on the day to buy tickets get frisked, those who got tickets in advance don't. Just a little tip for your Jihad there. You unspeakable arses.

So, the whole pre-boarding rigmarole was less than fun (and the middle of October surely counts as off-season doesn't it? I'd hate to be a tourist doing this on a hot summer day). But the journey itself was delightful. Obviously, by pre-booking a journey you risk turning up on the day and it's tornados on the Thames and gale-force rain and fog. There was a little mist around when we went up, but it wasn't enough to spoil our view, we could see from Battersea in the West to the Post Office Tower in the North, to Canary Wharf to the East to the... lack of any impressive tall landmarks to the South. Looking at the Eye from underneath, or a distance away, doesn't really prepare you for how high you actually get when you're in the thing. It's not the highest point in London, but it is probably one of the most easily accessible to the public structures, it dwarfs the Monument (which is a bugger to climb too) but if this Wikipedia list is accurate, all the taller places aren't publically accessible.

So yes, thumbs up from the clan Pycock to the London Eye, great views, and they take your photo so that, for ten English pounds, you can have a photo of you and your relatives or friends giving a big shit-eating grin out of the capsule window. Great stuff.

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We also visited Tate Britain for their Millais exhibition. I don't know when the last time I mentioned this was, but those of you who are my crazy Internet stalkers probably have in your fact files the information that my Mum is disabled. She can walk, but the distance varies depending on how well she's feeling and the wheelchair goes on most journeys she makes now, whether it's in to town for some shopping, or on holiday. You don't appreciate how difficult it is to get round somewhere until you're pushing a wheelchair, sure, you might have one of those infant-humans that are so popular at the moment, but they'll grow up and start using their own legs, failing that you can drown them in the bath one evening when you should be washing their hair. If Mum decides to ride, that cuts a lot of places off to us.

It does have benefits though. When we go to Tate Britain Mum's ticket has to be paid for, Dad gets in for free as her helper. And this is more common than I realised, on our holiday on the Isle of Wight a month back I found English Heritage and the National Trust give free admission to mobility impaired people's carers and/or helpers. Dad's dropped his membership of those two organisations, Mum has her members card and he gets in free pushing her. People often still move out of the way for wheelchairs, though I find pushing Mum quite fast and shouting "Get out of the way unless you want a wheelchair of your own!" works quite well also.

Pushing Mum is also quite a good way to get good views at a Tate exhibition in a hurry. Due to the limitations of the venue the first room especially is always packed, things thin out as you move a couple of rooms into whatever you're looking at. But when you're pushing a wheelchair that does encourage people to move around you, so you get bona views of the pics (except for the prick who, after we positioned ourselves to his right, decided to step to his right to look at a painting, coming within centimetres of elbowing my Mum in the face). However, halfway through the exhibition Mum said she wasn't always able to see the pictures very well, the spotlights the gallery use to illuminate the portraits was bouncing off the glaze on some of them and into my Mum's eyes. I'm not sure what we can do there, they use the lights to show the pictures at their best, but I suspect that they didn't consider what the effect would be at someone looking from waist rather than head height. I'm looking for an address to write to, not to complain, but to bring it to their attention. When you're at a busy exhibition you don't have the option of stepping back and trying to look from a different angle, everyone else gets in the way then.