We sat on canvas chairs for a while, looking at the "stage" which was set for the panel game. Tcchnicians wheeled three large cameras in front of us and blocked our view. The upshot was that we saw the show twice -- at once. We kept being honoured with snippets of the show, live, and we saw at the same time the whole show on a flickering monitor set. Technicians stood around with that bored expression which comes from long practice and one told the compere, Franklin Engelmann, that he wasn't coming through very clearly. Engelmann croaked, "You should have a better camera," a remark which was immediately lopped by a stage whisper from the audience, "You should have a better face." The show itself wasn't too bad, though. I was tickled pink when David Keys, the BBC 1958 "Brain of Britain" was asked, "What is a ploy?" He got it wrong, too. The London part of my trip quickly drew to a close. On my last day, Wednesday, l3th August, 1958, I went up into the City of London and booked a room near Waterloo Station. I had to catch the Cunard boat train to Southampton at seven the following morning, and gee! if I'd have missed that....! After parking part of my luggage at the hotel, I tried to look up Swedish fan, Alvar Appeltofft, who was in town, but he was out. I took some colour shots of Piccadilly Circus at night and went dancing at the Cafe de Paris on Coventry Street, which just shows how the place has come down in the world. I got back to the hotel around one and even got a little sleep before being dragged out of bed at six by the night porter with whom I'd left instructions to call me. I had breakfast and crossed Waterloo Bridge Road into the Station. Two hours later I was in Southampton. I got off the train, bought a couple of sets of graphite backed stamps, moved into line for passport checking and told the kindly faced customs officer that I had nothing to declare. I began to walk up the gangplank but changed my mind and came back again. I left my two cases beside the feet of the officer who was marshal- ling people aboard, stepped over a boundary rope and walked along the quay so that I could take a couple of pictures of the ship. I then walked back and picked up my luggage again. And walked on board the Queen Mary. . . |