What a fun weekend! Saturday began with a visit to the Television Centre studios at White City to tour the studios used for the morning ITV line-up. I remember the original TV-am version of Good Morning Britain, but it was fun to be in the same studio where Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid bicker over breakfast. We saw Lorraine’s comfy chair and sat on the This Morning sofa. The afternoon was spent with the Team London volunteers at Piccadilly Circus, where we dodged anti-Boris protesters and a few rain showers. It took some time to help the ladies looking for a bus to Hammersmith when all the buses were on diversion – but we got them there.
This morning was bright for my final volunteering shift of the summer at Parliament Square. We directed people to The Changing of the Guard in time to see the horses and planned a 48-hour tour of London for a lady who is visiting 15 European countries this month. After I had taken several photos for tourists who wanted their picture in a British phone box, shift leader Kelly decided to take our team photo in a similar pose.
After the shift, I joined the queue for the free pop-up “Heinz Muzum” celebrating 150 years of Heinz & learned that Fortnum & Mason took the first shipment to the UK in 1886 and that the famous 60s advertising slogan “Beanz Meanz Heinz” was supposedly dreamt up in a pub in Mornington Crescent. I walked away with a tin of beans.
Finally, to the BFI on the Southbank, where a brilliant exhibition of sets, props and puppets from the new Netflix series “The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance” is on display. The world is based on Thra, the world Jim Henson created for the original 1982 movie. I highly recommend it if you’re around, and there are still some free tickets. The series is on Netflix (disclaimer: I fell asleep partway through the first episode).