mostly david ephgrave

Today I turned tourist by taking an audio tour of Parliament (and a visual one too as I was there), taking in both the House of Commons and House of Lords, followed by afternoon tea on the terrace by the Thames. I visited the Palace of Westminster once before when my wife and I climbed Big Ben (from the inside), though we only viewed the two Houses from the gallery back then as government was in session. That trip was fascinating enough (I even announced at the time, “I’ve had enough fascination”) though the emphasis was more on the clock tower, so it was great to be able explore the rest in more detail. As is often the case with visiting a place you’ve seen on television, everything's far smaller than you’d expect (if I'm not being too presumptuous) with the exception of Westminster Hall. I was struck when I stood at the Opposition’s despatch box* by how unthreatening the Commons felt from the point of view of someone speaking to the room , though it's probably...

On Friday I climbed up the Elizabeth Tower at the Palace of Westminster, more commonly known as Big Ben. (In case you don't know what it looks like.) I went up the inside, not the outside, by the way; I’m no Peter Duncan. While I once took part in a circus-skills workshop led by him at the Gordon Craig Theatre as a child, we didn’t cover how to cling to a massive clock face. If we had, I’d have shimmied up Stevenage Clock Tower like a shot. I was surprised by how small it was on the inside, like a TARDIS in reverse. It confused me how something that dominates the skyline and public consciousness could be so compact. I’m not saying you can fit it in your pocket, but its relatively slight scale was marked; particularly when you walk around the inside of the faces. The tour is planned impeccably. It’s done tightly, to a stopwatch. We’d left Portcullis House reception at 9:10am and by 9:15, we were a third of the way up. We were in the ...