Day 7 - Rest in peace

A tad worn out from sightseeing, artifacts, high art, high architecture and warm pubs, a rest day is declared. After breakfast in the basement dining room I snooze intermittently from 9 to 11. Children chatter outside and thump up and down the stairs. I was like that as a young teenager. A couple of knocks alert me to the cleaner. I advise her I'm having a doze and she says she'll return tomorrow. 

Down Praed Street is an internet parlour. You step down a steel spiral staircase into the digital dungeon and tap away. I book an evening tour - a London Ghost Tour - and make my way to the meeting point outside the Langdon Pub at 7pm.

A squat grizzly man on a crutch accosts the clientele standing stiffly awaiting the guide. "You here for the ghost tour?" he asks a couple. He asks me the same and I avoid eye contact. "The guide is a ghost!" he points to a man in coat tails marking off the roll. "Where's he gone?" Indeed the guide has briefly vanished, probably to the toilet inside the pub. "Are you scared of ghosts?" he asks a little blonde girl. Her mother watches warily. He approaches the guide. "I've been on 35 of your tours, haven't I." The guide half looks at him. "I'm not coming tonight, but I'll make sure I'm on the next one." He hobbles around the corner and down an alleyway.

"Welcome everyone," the guide grandly proclaims, clasping his hands together. "Who believes in ghosts?" Almost everyone raises their hands. "And who doesn't believe in ghosts?" One or two people raise their hands half-heartedly. I didn't get a chance to raise my hand, not having an opinion one way or the other.

We patter after the guide to an old graveyard - so old that even the graveyard is buried. A major bank now occupies the site. I imagine the Greyfriars would find this rather unamusing. A woman is said to haunt this yard (why are so many ghosts women?) We would be allowed to enter but it is currently locked. The authorities don't want the Occupy London protesters at St Paul's Cathedral to camp here. Our next destination is St Bartholomew's Hospital. Of course there are going to be restless hospital spirits, especially if they didn't have death insurance. The lift that lowers the bodies of the deceased is said to occasionally operate of its own accord. As the guide relates this freak of physics he peers into the distance, as if spotting a foul shade that hasn't booked its place on the tour.

We tiptoe past the only public monument recognising Henry VIII, his fat thighs astride a round arch - his gatehouse. Close by is Smithfield. It was here, our guide tells us, that Mel Gibson was executed. He doesn't say why, but I assume it's for being a talented brat, as opposed to William Wallace, who was a brave gallant.

In the Priory Church of St Bartholomew we are all given a big scare, when, in the middle of describing the misfortunes of a rake - hung, drawn ... and quartered - our guide goes ... "BOO", stamping his feet for good effect. I bet that you too, reader, found that last sentence scary.

Our final resting place is the Barbican Tower and adjutting wall, built by the Romans around 259AD. During the blitz on London in World War Two the wall failed to live up to its reputation as a defensive structure and received a pummeling. If you stare long enough or take enough photos, a face will appear in the bricks. Having announced this, a thousand flashes go off. I could not tell whether the ghost of the Barbican Wall was smiling, frowning, or asking for directions back to Rome.