OK, we might as well start with the million lira question
and get it over and done with. So in my best Les Dennis voice (ahem) “When is
an Embassy really a High Commission?”
And if you answered with, “Is that it BGC? Is that the best
you’ve got? It’s when it’s a Commonwealth Country of course” then award
yourself 100 points, jump in the air and shout hooray and treat yourself to a
pint of frothing malted barley.
But even if you’ve managed to score top marks so far, the
next question that follows on is surely, what on earth has any old High
Commission got to do with a (yet another BGC) blog which should be about pubs,
beer and some of the odd interesting things that you see around London.
Well if there was one thing wrong with the previous Oranges and Lemons tour, and believe me there was plenty wrong with it, it was that all
the tour locations were centred around the East End and although that did get
us to visit this area in close detail it was sometime a bit of a challenge to
get out and about in other areas of this great capital city of ours and not
repeat some of the well-trodden routes we’d already been down..
So for the next tour subject we needed something that would
take us into different corners of the city but also something with a number of
items to tick off as we wend our merry way along, and if that certain list of
items could be something I’ve always had a childhood fascination with, then
hey, it’s going to be win – win (win) all around.
I don’t know whether it was the bright colours or the fact I
could remember a Republic of Nicaragua from a Kingdom of Cambodia but I’ve
always loved flags but unless you live near to the United Nations or the NATO Headquarters then perhaps the one way you can complete your i-spy book of flags
is to tick them off as they are hanging outside the various High Commissions
which are dotted around London.
And if you’re wondering why I’m only covering the
Commonwealth countries then that’s simply down to numbers, with a grand total
of 53 Commonwealth countries, 48 of these have a representative building in the
capital. But that doesn’t mean that this tour will have 48 different episodes because although the High Commissions are located in various areas of the city that
do seem to be located in “packs” as well as some countries actually sharing the
same building. Meaning we’ll have the opportunity to tick them off in groups of
3 or 4.
In terms of order we’ll be using the good old alphabet and
as everyone knows (especially Nicole) the first Commonwealth country beginning
with A is………Antigua and Barbuda (of course).
Dunce’s Cap for anyone who said Australia!
