I finally slept in really late again, which I actually felt guilty about, but this time it was until 11:47, and luckily not past noon. I don’t think I have slept in so late, since the very first day I was here. When I did awaken, I was alone in the household, and felt the pleasure of such a thing, because it is always gratifying to find the house to myself, it allows me to move at my own pace. I can take a shower when I want to, eat when I want to and so forth. Well, after doing all of these things, I made some calls and such like that. I also dropped by the post office, to get some much needed stamps. Basically I did nothing too noteworthy, just worked or whatever about the house for a while, until it was about 16:30 pm, at which time I left. Now where I went, was great fun, and very educational as well. Before I went to the final grand destination, I actually went to school, to meet up there with a group of people who were going on our beloved night tour. The tour, as you may or may not have guessed was a walking tour of the literal haunts of Jack the Ripper! Yes, that’s right, we met at Faraday House, near the Holborn tube stop to go on a tour for this most infamous of all serial killers of history. When we left the school, we went to the Holborn station stop and took the Central line to Liverpool Street station. This was not a particularly bright idea as we left at rush hour, and as there were far over 20 of us, keeping together was a big of a problem. We did get there, and thence we had to take the Circle line to Tower Gate station to begin the tour across from the Tower of London.
We finally made it, and our guide was a really neat guy, I think he used to be a detective for either the Metropolitan or City of London force, but he was definitely in it at one point. He was a nice man who was extremely entertaining and told all of the stories quite well. We walked about and saw the murder scenes were all of the victims had died (save his last) we also saw the relevant sites, including where the Ripper had dropped off the piece of pinafore from his fourth victim and wrote “the Juwes are the men that won’t be blamed for nothing” but that the police captain stupidly had erased before they could photograph it. Anyway, we saw the boundary between the City of London, and the East End, which played so crucial a role in the inability to carry out a full investigation the way it should have been done. We also saw the Ten Bells, which is a very important pub in the story, still working and everything, I really wanted to go in, but never made it. To end the night, we stopped appropriately enough at a parking garage by a warehouse of some sort, where the apartment block of the last victim was found on her bed mutilated beyond recognition. This was all quite gruesome and fascinating to think about and drove the idea of all the Jack the Ripper sort of images one gets home. Our guide was fantastic, he actually advised on the film “From Hell” with Johnny Depp, whom apparently he talked to in much depth for it, and they shared a pint at the Ten Bells at one point. He also talked to me quite a lot when we were walking and told me some about his life, and I told him I was a linguist which fascinated him it seemed.
At the end of the night he offered to sell us his book upon the subject called “The Complete Jack the Ripper” which I bought for £10.00 which was the last of my cash, save what I had in coins. I think it may have been a bit steep, but the good thing is, he signed my book personally. The only problem was, that he asked my name and I distinctly told him “Jason” which I guess he either forgot, or misheard because when I got home I looked at the autograph and discovered to my slight annoyance and bemusement that it was signed not to Jason, but rather to Joseph. Oh well, it is still good, and the good thing too, is that he dated it. We finally left this lovely walk, and I headed home, where I basically messed about the rest of the night, and I don’t recall too well what I did, save to say that I looked up the book and some facts and such on the case (even though our guide was most thorough about all details), I found the book on Amazon for a bit cheaper than I had purchased it for, but something delighted me in seeing it too. One of the items under ‘collectible’ said it was signed by the author, whom I had just met that night, and was selling for about £30.00 over what I had paid for it, so I figured it was a sound investment based on this for me to get it tonight. For one thing, the book was signed by the author, and how often do you get to do that, where you hang out with the author and get to know some about him and such, and then get the book he wrote and have him sign it too? The other and more pressing point to me was, it was a great memento of that night for me. I try to get some sort of memento for every place I go here, I just usually do it in the form of a brochure or ticket stub, if you don’t include pictures as well. So this was a nice one and furthermore it was bought and signed at the site of where it took place. Well, that was basically it for Thursday... are you not entertained?!