Campervan Therapy

The Elizabeth line’s Canary Wharf is our destination, with its sci-fi obelisks, very 2001. Soon we’re walking in the cross-rail roof garden where glass and steel meet giant palms, fatsia japonica, spices, cocoa, banana and coffee bean trees. The roof garden sits on the Meridian between the west and east hemispheres and features plants from both.

There’s something magical about these secret City gardens hidden among urban developments. This one also houses a vegetable plot from the local allotment association and a machine that’s meant to spit out micro stories at the touch of a button.

The DLR railway looks like a toy train as it runs across the dock, dwarfed by the towering buildings.  

The London Docklands Museum in the old warehouses is free to enter. It’s easy to lose yourself for hours studying the history of the docks, the working lives of the dockers, the impact of slavery on the City of London, the growth of the British Empire and what generations of immigrants have brought to this city, especially the Windrush generation.

There are reproductions of Victorian streets and shops the sailors would have frequented. One sad story revolves around Prince Lee Bou, from the Pacific Island of Palau. His people rebuilt a London captain’s ship after it was damaged in a storm.

As a reward the captain promised to educate Lee Bou in London. Unfortunately, Lee Bou died after six months of small pox as his people had no immunity at all to such western diseases. Seán knew the story as a boy as Lee Bou was buried round the corner from their family pub, The Ship, in Rotherhithe.

Popping out of the Elizabeth Line in Tottenham Court Road we’re on the hunt for the Poetry Pharmacy in the Lush Shop on Oxford Street. The Poetry Pharmacy sells prescription bottles of poems for any ailment of the soul. We’re doing it because I love the Poetry Pharmacy Forever Anthology edited by William Sieghart, described as ‘New prescriptions to soothe, revive and inspire.’

Seán raises one eyebrow at all of this and hightails it out of the pharmacy, and to be fair, the strong scent of Lush toiletries is overpowering. Nevertheless, I’m in poetry heaven and settle on a collection on the theme of Love. But I can’t resist the little pill bottles as presents for family: one prescription for exhaustion, for the parents of young children; one for sleeplessness for a friend; and one for hope – again, a necessary prescription for the parents of young children in the unstable world of the 21^st Century.

Then it’s on to Mayfair through the backstreets behind Elizabeth Line’s Bond Street station to Mercato Metropolitano. This wonderful old church offers two floors of worldwide food stalls, a rooftop terrace and wine cellar. It’s a mecca to artisanal food and aims to be environmentally friendly.

Christ looks down from the huge stained-glass window, his hands out in a blessing on the bustling throng of feasters and chefs.

The church is a glorious hymn to the foods of the world.