In 1999, I had some time to kill on a business trip to London. On the advice of someone I trusted, I took a tour down the Thames River to Greenwich and the Royal Observatory where Greenwich Mean Time begins and ends. The river tour had been the second best I'd ever heard. A river guide, adept at both British irreverence and history gave what is still the second best tour narrative I have ever heard. He showed us where the tall Blackbeard the pirate, sentenced to death was tied to a pier piling. A full moon created low tides and it took three tides before old pirate's head finally got covered by enough river to drown him. We also learned about Sir Thomas Cuckold, who caught his wife cheating on him; so he tied her to a chair and tossed her into the river. He pleaded not guilty by reason of infidelity. After he was found not guilty, wives started to toss wives into the river with some abandonment until the "anti-cuckolding laws were passed."
The best guide's narrative I ever heard immediately followed my river tour at the Royal Observatory, where the guide told the incredible saga of a clockmaker named Harrison who built the first longitudinal clock. Because he was not a member of the royal elite, great efforts were made to screw him out of the 20,000 pound prize (worth millions in today's money).
I was eager to take my wife Paula on this same journey, one so memorable that it is still vivid in my mind six years later. I gave Paula very little description because I wanted her to be surprised. The tour was still highly enjoyable, but the surprise was mine. On the river trip, the narrator was piped in, with Hollywood special effects of murmuring crowds and mood music. Blackbeard and Cuckold had been cleansed out of the story. At the observatory, there was no narrative at all. There were just signs that made no mention of how an impoverished Harrison had to fight for decades, as I recall, before receiving his money.
As I said, it was still a good trip. But it was not the same. It's sort of like blogging. As good as blogging gets, it doesn't often beat face-to-face human interaction. While it lets us build global friendships, there is still nothing like actually meeting people and seeing their smiles or shaking their hands.
