A Christmas Carol guided tour
It was someone's birthday last week, so we went into London. Apart from getting beered up, we went on a [i}A Christmas Carol[/I] guided tour. It was sort of interesting. The tour was from Fenchurch Station through some alleys to the Bank of England. I know Dickens was a London based writer, but somehow, while I was reading this book, I did not identify Scrooge with any particular place. The guide showed us the churches that might have been alluded to in the story (some were very gothic), where Scrooge may have worked, the tavern he went to, and the sort of street he may have lived in. I was surprised what you could find by following those alleys. The bleakest part of the tour is where Scrooge might have been buried. The guide said that the only places that were not built on by 1843 were the sites of former churches that had burnt down during the Great Fire of London, and were subsequently used as burial grounds. This particular plot was enclosed on three sides by other buildings. It was dingy. By Dickens' time burial grounds were so overcrowded, it would not be long before your corpse and coffin would be hacked through to make room for someone else. A very gloomy, anoymous end. The other thing that surprised me is that the events of the book took part in the City of London, i.e. the Square Mile, the elite, financial area of London where most of the high-powered bankers, hedge fund managers, financial futures, insurance and derivatives executives work. My brother used to work about a quarter of a mile away when he was an accountant at one of those firms. I know Scrooge was an accountant of some sort, but I did not imagine him living and working there. I imagined him as some low level money grubber who might just as well have been based in Birmingham or Bristol or any British city.
