London love affair rekindled

This was the city I instantly felt at home in, the city I loved and where I fell in love. London. Little old London town which 7.5 million call home. It is one of the greenest cities in the world, thanks to the royal parks, and one of the most expensive.

It is also one of the most diverse. In Piccadilly Circus, two Buddhist monks in saffron robes pass an orange-haired punk intent only on watching the world go by as backpackers thumb through a London AZ trying to get their bearings.

Across bridges and from tube stations a lemming-like tide of commuters disgorges into the metropolis while, ever present, is the quiet roar of a city going about its business. You can't be ambivalent about London - it demands you love it or hate it. For however short a time you are there, it is all-embracing.

Sure, it's a bit grubby and no sane person would say they enjoy the crush hour, but it's also an exhilarating place to be.

I love it that you can be a part of so many worlds in one city - a great eclectic mingling of cultures.

I lived here for more than a decade, initially doing what most New Zealanders do at the start of their OE. You knew someone who knew someone so you kipped in a sleeping bag in the lounge.

A few days later I was over that. So the friend and I who had made the great odyssey together decided to find a flat, in Tufnell Park, north London, as it turned out. Hovel, would be a better name.

It was truly amazing how the ancient landlady made it up those three floors. She, too, was amazed. "I don't know how this place is still standing," she'd say every fortnight as she hung on tightly to the banister while collecting the rent.

This though was but a glitch and I spent most of my time in the East End, living in Whitechapel, where Cockneys and Indians ran the local food and flower markets. On one side of the road the muezzin called the faithful to prayer and on the other was the synagogue.

Coming back the biggest change is in the new faces on the street. This part of London has always been the gateway for immigrants and now it's the East Europeans who are the obvious newcomers.

What hasn't changed is that it's a filthy old day - the temperature has plunged to 9C - but you soon learn not to be a hostage to the fickleness of the weather.

Taking a bus back through the city, I get off at Trafalgar Square. That walk seems to encapsulate so much. The history, the tourists, those cursed pigeons ... and then I'm in St James Park, where once Henry VIII hunted.

Fortunately, the chilly day has spared me the sight of those who strip to their knickers and expose their lily-white bodies to the sun lounging in the deck chairs. No wonder the Queen prefers Windsor.

Today, there are only a few wily but mercenary squirrels looking cute for tourists who squeal in delight at their begging routines, while the pelicans glide by waiting for the park keeper to dole out their kilos of fish.

I'm heading to Westminster, only a few minutes' walk away, to catch one of the longest-running but most unpredictable shows in town. The queue for those wanting to watch the shenanigans in the House of Commons means it will take about 40 minutes to get inside.

While waiting, it is a bit disquieting to see police carrying machine guns but I am told later that this is now quite normal. Opposite Parliament is a lone protester, who has held his vigil for the past five years.

He is the last of his kind. So incensed was Teflon Tony's Government at democracy in action that it has changed the rules and people will no longer be able to protest there.

I've gone off the idea of watching MPs and instead cross the muddy old Thames at Westminster Bridge for a walk along the South Bank. It is here that London's skyline has changed dramatically.

For a start there's the world's biggest observation wheel, the Eye. From the glass pods fixed outside the rim of the big wheel you get the best views of London: Christopher Wren's masterpiece, St Pauls, Spooksville (MI5 and MI6) and on a good day you can see all the way to Paris (it is surprisingly easy to convince some Americans the radio mast at Crystal Palace is the Eiffel Tower).

Down river is the Millennium Bridge, London's first new bridge across the Thames for more than 100 years. On opening day six years ago, 80,000 pedestrians crossed and as they did it began to sway. Giant shock absorbers have fixed the problem but to Londoners it will forever be the wobbly bridge.

For some time it also had hay bales hanging from it. When it was under construction some wit stumbled on an archaic law which stipulated that while a bridge was being built hay must be put out for the horses. So bales of hay were duly tied under the bridge - much to the bafflement of tourists.

Either side of the bridge are two new attractions - the Globe Theatre
and the Tate Modern - that have brought a dramatic transformation to the South Bank. The Globe, a reconstruction of Shakespeare's playhouse, has been bringing the works of the Bard and educating people about his life for nearly a decade.

The Tate Modern is an art gallery unlike any I have seen before. In the six years it has been open it has been a phenomenal success with millions visiting it each year.

This converted power station forms a grand backdrop for the modern art it houses. The magnificent Turbine Hall, which is the size of a seven-storey building, is where installations go on show.

It is free to visit the permanent collections and the quirky way of displaying them - in categories such as Cubism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism - means Picasso and Andy Warhol end up in the same room.

It is fun, vibrant, completely unstuffy and, to cap it off, has a restaurant on the top floor with fabulous views across the river.

The next day I am part of a group being shown around the markets of the East End. I got off to a bad start by waking just seconds before the phone rings to say everyone is waiting downstairs for me.

Jetlagged I may be, but when we descend into the tube and I see Cliff Richard's face beaming back at me from a poster I feel I've entered some ghastly time warp. (On my return to New Zealand I read that London councils are planning to stop yobbos loitering around car parks by playing Cliff's songs - a scarily brilliant idea.)

Our guide is Anne Mark, who gave up her city job years ago to put her five languages to better use as a blue badge guide. Anne also used to live in the East End so knows this area well.

On our way to Spitalfields market, she points out the Georgian house where author Jeanette Winterson, who always wanted to live above a shop, is living her dream. Winterson, who has a passion for good food bordering on the obsessive (she reportedly once took her own cooked sausages in her Prada handbag to a movie premiere), now has her own deli downstairs.

Should she tire of providing her own delicacies there's a ready supply of organic food at Spitalfields market, which has expanded greatly since my time to include clothes, plants, comics, records and scores of little shops around its perimeter.

The jetlag is telling me to shop. So on the basis of a stallholder holding up a fabulous yellow and mauve striped top (against him) I spend 15 quid. It turns out to be the single biggest fashion disaster of my life.

Thankfully, we're on a pretty tight schedule and before I can inflict more damage to my wallet we head towards Brick Lane. The lane gets its name from the dirt track where once carts carried bricks from the kilns in Spitalfields.

It has a bustling market, too. The shops and stalls are a bit of a mish-mash - expensive vintage clothing stores (as one bloke said: "This is where the rich come to buy their second-hand clothing"), vegetable stalls, ceramics and a thriving black market, if the lads on the street selling DVDs and baccy are anything to go by.

More importantly, this is where Anne's local knowledge comes in handy. She takes us to a bagel shop where in the steamy backroom the bakers turn out tray after tray of the best bagels I have ever tasted.

From here we're heading to one of my favourite places, Columbia Rd Flower Market. The surrounding terrace houses have been tarted up but this is still the place where you can buy a silk scarf, a hat, eat more bagels and think about gardening. "Three for a fiver," that lovely refrain that sees you leave the market with armfuls of lilies and roses.

It has changed but it is the same. And although I've swapped this great city for a smaller city, big skies and empty beaches, there will always be a part of me that is a Londoner.

Around the Globe

It was the love of the Bard that drew Glenis Carlton back to Britain after 30 years in New Zealand.

After bringing up three children in Rotorua, the girl who started reading Shakespeare at 11 wanted to pursue her interests in theatre, music and language, and London seemed like the best place.

For the past seven years she has been a guide at the Globe, the reconstruction of Shakespeare's round playhouse at Bankside, and she still bubbles with enthusiasm for it.

"The Globe is a special theatre. This is Shakespeare's space, this is the context in which his plays were meant to be performed, not in the dark or behind the footlights."

When this Globe opened in 1997, she went with a friend to see Henry V. "That evening was a magical experience. It was not just the beauty of the stage, nor the Wooden O [the building] against the night sky as dusk fell, but also the Globe enclosing within its wooden arms excited spectators in harmony and expectation."

The first Globe on the South Bank was built more than 300 years ago, its oak beams hauled across a frozen Thames in the winter of 1599 when the ruling Puritans decided that the sex and politics of theatres should be banished to the seedier side of the river, where bars and brothels prospered.

It was a big success. When the flag flew above the Globe to signal a show was to begin, up to 3000 would cram in for each performance. In front of the stage up to 800 reeking groundlings, surrounded by their animals, paid a penny to stand and watch the performance.

They were a rowdy lot, these Penny Stinkarses - so called because of their habit of chewing garlic, scoffing oysters and drinking beer - but to the assembled gentlemen and lords who sat loftily above they were as much a part of the bawdy entertainment as the players.

That era lasted until 1613, when a stage canon set fire to the thatched roof. The theatre was razed. From the ashes, a second Globe was built, only to be closed by the Puritans in 1642 and demolished two years later.

An American is largely responsible for the building of the third Globe. On a visit to London in 1949 the only thing actor Sam Wanamaker could find to mark the historic theatre was a plaque. He spent nearly a quarter of a century pursuing his dream to recreate the Globe. And although he died three and half years before it opened, Wanamaker knew his vision would be fulfilled.

The trust founded by Wanamaker has tried to be true to what it imagined Shakespeare's Globe would have looked like - constructed from oak and mainly hand built. Traditional instruments have been reproduced and the actors wear Elizabethan-style clothing.

It can take only half the number of the original - 800 of them groundlings who still interact with the players, though perhaps not so degenerately. Today, the groundlings are a sweeter-smelling bunch. But at £5, it's the best ticket in the house, says Carlton, if you can stand for three hours "with only one interval". And you can still bring in food and drink.

Carlton says the best part of her job is to be able to share her passion for the Globe and Shakespeare's plays with people from all over the world, particularly with French and Italian students, "with whom I can use my languages.

"I also look forward to meeting New Zealanders and showing them the New Zealand hangings."

These intricate, beautifully embroidered hangings made by 500 volunteers, a gift from New Zealand, are displayed in the exhibition centre which also houses a fascinating array of Elizabethan costumes.

Checklist

Getting there
Air New Zealand flies daily via Los Angeles with fares from $2118 including taxes, government and airport costs. From October, Air New Zealand launches its second daily service via Hong Kong with special fares, from $1958, available until Sunday. For more information check website on the link below.

Things to do
The London Eye costs £13 for adults, £6.50 for children, fast track is £25 an adult.

Tate Modern is free, although you do pay to see special exhibitions. The gallery is on the south bank of the Thames at Bankside next to the Globe Theatre.

Shakespeare's Globe tour and exhibition is £9 for adults, £7 for seniors and £6 for children aged 5-15.

Columbia Rd Flower Market runs only on Sundays. Nearest tube is Liverpool St.

Blue Badge Guides cost £158 for a day tour, £105 for half day. Check out the Association of Professional Tourist Guides' website.

A cheaper alternative is London Walks which has a variety of walks that cost £6 for two hours.

Further information
Check website link below or freephone 0800 700 741.

* Barbara Harris was a guest of Tourism New Zealand and Air New Zealand.