Grrrr20

It's great to live in London. I wanted to go to London Zoo yesterday in the sunny warm spring weather. Everything about my journey went like clockwork. I got there in 75 minutes - a record. It was a great day in many ways, though there were 1400 schoolchildren there, and it is only a relatively small site. Then there was the large Scandinavian couple trying to sneak grapes to the meerkats (which eat insects, snakes, scorpions, NOT fruit). I told them to stop, but they acted as if I was stupid and at fault. I later managed to sic security on them :)

The journey home started off promisingly. I realised my bus would take me to the Angel Islington (now sadly just a tube station, the eponymous pub being long gone) which was good, because the station I usually go from had the down escalator out of service, and that meant walking down 96 steps of a spiral staircase. No way.

I had three stops to go on the Northern Line before changing at Bank station on to the Docklands Light Railway directly home. One stop away, they informed us that the police had asked them not to stop at Bank. The name's a clue here. It's at the heart of the City of London, the capital's old financial centre, and home of the Bank of England. Outside, thousands of protesters were gathered on the eve of the G20conference. So I stayed on for an extra stop, to London Bridge. Here I had to make a choice. Take an overland train home, or get on the tube and then change to the DLR at Canary Wharf, the NEW financial centre. Usually at times like this tickets are usable on any transport system, but no announcement had reached my ears, so I stayed on the underground.

Amazingly, all the priority seats were taken up by unfortunate young people who were clearly blind, as they were unable to see the creaking oldies who were "less able to stand" than them. My legs and feet are still complaining loudly, as struggling to remain balanced on odd-length legs uses muscles that usually lie dormant.

Was it worth it? You tell me when you see the best of the animal shots I took.

Oh, and by the way, the Today Programme on BBC Radio 4 (the radio programme which is official used by submariners to gauge whether the world had ended when they surface - no Today, no Britain) today broadcast a report that London Zoo's dominant female gorilla, Zaire, was being brought doughnuts by squirrel monkeys that they had sneaked past electric fences to steal for her. She loves food. But it's the colobus monkeys who have access to her island, so I couldn't quite work it out. The volunteer on duty soon clarified matters for me by asking, "What date is it today?"

How can such an organ, pillar of the establishment, pull such a fast one?

An extra P.S. - America, we have your President, AND WE ARE NOT GOING TO GIVE HIM BACK!