We interrupt our London 2014 Christmas cards series to do a little time travelling.
Ahhhhhhhhh! The arc - the reach - of the Daily Constitutional.
Think of the Dawn of Man sequence at the start of Kubrick's 2001 A Space Odyssey. The ape men discovering the monolith and its doing its Stonehenge-like number with the sun and voilà our ape man ancestor gets the idea of "tool" (which of course is a weapon, an animal's femur which he can use as a club) and which, transported with exhilaration at the possibilities it affords him, he flings it into the pre-historic east African sky; flings it four million years forward and, thanks to the magic of Kubrick's (and Arthur C. Clarke's) imagination - let alone a match cut - it becomes an orbiting spacecraft.
And I think you can say that's a leer on face of the taller bloke. And of course the clothes place them. Especially the male head-gear - the flat caps. But also the women's fur-lined collars. Though those coats are hardly haute couture. The lines aren't great, are they? The woman on the right hand side has her bag and her purse - the latter firmly, securely clutched under her arm and in the crook of her elbow. What about the other gal? Where are her "accessories?" And what's going to happen in one more second? Is the woman on the right going to raise that bunch of mistletoe another few inches, lean forward, and "hang it" over the head of her companion?
A London Walk costs £9 - £7 concession. To join a London Walk, simply meet your guide at the designated tube station at the appointed time. Details of all London Walks can be found at www.walks.com
