An eye for an eye at the London Eye...

It was a simple enough plan. I had hired a car for official reasons and since there was a car, the idea was to take the wife and parents on a driving tour of Central London. What a day that turned out to be - and most of that was because of the car.

There's nothing much to report about the car itself, its a Ford Mondeo, what can I say! This post will be monopolised by one of the great enablers of the motor car - the road.

As mankind developed and discovered that the wheel can be used for purposes other than pottery and one wise genius decided to stick a couple of wheels under a tub with a horse up-front, Pandora's box was effectively opened. Modern London was to evolve a thousand years later, when geniuses of the same variety had discovered the joy of creating a contraption that puts one wheel behind another, a.k.a., a bicycle (more on that later).

London as a metropolis goes back to anywhere between 3500 years and 750 years depending on who you're talking to. It is understandable that so long ago, the preferred mode of transport were the human feet or the bicycle. Human feet and bikes as modes of transport have several advantages - they are healthy, environmentally friendly and most importantly, require no more width than 2 feet per "vehicle" so to speak, and is therefore, very space friendly.

Now here lies the problem. Roads, and therefore, houses and buildings were designed around these passages and when you could have a '20 lane' highway with a width of 40 feet, give or take a few feet, you have roads that are, well, narrow in the modern world.

The British in general, and Londoners in particular, seem to be very proud of their rich heritage and so, refuse to bring down old buildings just to widen roads. So all over London you will find roads that put an Amazon forest trail to shame. They are narrow, congested, have absolutely no parking facilities and most importantly, are extremely narrow. Oh, and did I mention the roads are narrow?

The well travelled among you will immediately shoot back with the fact London public transport is second to none and I should have opted for that. I accept your allegations and offer no explanations whatsoever for taking a car into that jungle.

So it was that we were pottering along from one tourist attraction to another. Baker Street came and went with nary a problem, then it was time to head towards London Bridge, I went round and round in search of parking and finally pulled into a mud compound with a big blue P over it and asked the attendant if London Bridge was walkable from that point. The answer he gave me was hardly surprising - he looked at me as if I was as I was completely batty and said, "Its a bit far from 'ere maite" and when a Londoner says something is a 'bit' far, it means is closer to the other end of the planet. London Bridge was vetoed and we proceeded to the next destination, Tower Bridge. This time I was proactive and parked close to the general direction of Tower Bridge and decided to leg it from there. So the troops were unloaded and we set of 'foot-foot' to Tower Bridge. After a brief 15 minute walk, we set sights on Tower Bridge and 5 minutes later we reached the foot of the bridge and it started pouring with rain.

The folks were abandoned under the shelter of a building and my wife and I settled into a quick jog to get back to the car, promptly lost our way and reached the car 20 minutes later. We swung by to pick up the folks only have the sun shining as though that is the only thing it is capable of doing! With each occupant of the car muttering under their breath about the weather, we proceeded towards London Eye, this time with the trusty lady from my SatNav leading the way.

On reaching London Eye, we needed to park somewhere, since I was under the impression that cars were not allowed on the Eye. This started the parking saga. Parking number 1 was closed for the day.

The SatNav lady, who strangely doesn't seem to get daunted with failures, guided me to another car park. This one was the highlight of the day. It supposedly was on the other side of the road with an approach road under the main road. So I took the exit onto the approach road and the moment it curved under the main road, things turned positively negative. The walls on both sides were covered in graffiti. By covered I mean not an inch of space was wasted. New Yorkers might say, no big deal. Agreed, the problem was that the underground artists were still there, spray painting the walls and making sure nobody defaces their masterpieces. There were roughly 10 people there (I am not too sure about the gender mix since they all had long hair, wore hoodies, were pierced and wore jeans around their thighs) and here I was with a gleaming new car - prime graffiti target. I swiftly passed them whispering a silent prayer that they don't corner me and turned the corner into the car park and virtually drove into a stone wall - the car park seemed to be non-existent, the SatNav lady had had her revenge.

Reversing out of this pickle was not an option, the road was curved for starters, then there were the 'artists' to consider and the width was no more than 6 feet. I had to do the impossible. I had to do a u-turn in that space while I was still hidden out of sight of the artists. It took me 10 minutes to do the toing and froing to turn, but I did it and we raced out of there.

P3 was full and we managed to strike gold at P4. I bunged the car into the first available space and much merry making was done at the London Eye, including a cruise down the Thames. We returned to the car after 3 hours and I was hit with a parking charge of 12 quid!

Needless to say, the journey back home was sombre, quick and quiet. The family suggested we take a trip to Westminster the next day since the car was there and I replied with a stare that would make Chuck Norris hide in fear.