‘Which way?’
I didn’t look at the map; it didn’t seem necessary. Instead, I pointed in a vague south-westerly direction where there was no road, only a wall of houses.
‘That way.’
Dad nodded, accepting my sophisticated style of navigation, and we set off.
We were in London, in a part of the sprawling metropolis that I didn’t know at all well. Having arrived by train into Liverpool Street, we had set our sights on the Guildhall as our first port of call and were now braving the perils of the big city.
Attempting to leave the railway station had been the most hazardous part of the expedition. There were people everywhere, walking in every possible direction, and a brief consultation of Google Maps revealed only empty space, coloured an uninspiring off-white.
We took the nearest exit, up a wide flight of stairs and through a huge, glass-fronted archway into the outside world. It wasn’t raining.
The square onto which we had emerged clearly belonged to a small group of bronze children with old-fashioned suitcases. At their feet were the names of the cities they had left, fearing for their lives; cities in Central Europe: Berlin. Prague. Vienna.
Vienna.
We paused to pay our respects to the children of the Kindertransport, before crossing the road and walking underneath an art sculpture that reminded Dad of molecular geometry but meant less to me, and we continued our intrepid exploration of Central London.
Our journey took us sunwise around Finsbury Circus, traversing the length of several polar bears (the Arctic mammal is on average approximately two and a half metres in length and Dad’s new favourite form of measurement) until we reached a busy London thoroughfare. At this point, I was no longer sure which way was south-west and allowed myself a brief glance at the map. My sense of direction reestablished, we circumnavigated a building site, turned into a narrow side street and, at the other end of the mock Tudor alleyway, stumbled upon the Guildhall.
Undeterred by the gargoyles flanking the archway and the absence of other members of the public, we peered through the door. A security guard spotted us immediately and approached, no trace of a smile on his stony face. He wasn’t unfriendly, though, as he made clear that visitors weren’t welcome at this particular entrance and directed us round the building to the Guildhall Yard and art gallery.
It was impressive, the square that was flanked on all sides by an eclectic array of architecture. Having greeted the elusive playwright William Shakespeare and the folk tale character Dick Whittington, both keeping watch over the incongruously named Yard, we went inside.
However, we were not here to admire a fifteenth century municipal building or, indeed, to doff our non-existent caps to the bust of a sixteenth century poet. Our visit to the Guildhall of London had a very specific purpose. We were here to see Gogmagog.
‘Sorry?’ said the young woman behind the counter of the museum shop when we informed her of our quest.
We lingered briefly among the kaleidoscope prints of the temporary exhibition, cast a critical eye over a tremendous oil painting of a naval battle and descended to the rather underwhelming relics of a Roman amphitheatre. Yet nowhere was Gogmagog to be found.
The statue we were seeking remained hidden from public viewing, but we came across a painting: a somewhat miniature depiction of the legendary giant of Cornwall, who perished at the hands of the Trojan warrior Corineus when the eponymous hero of that rugged coastal county threw the large fellow off a cliff.
Dad was satisfied. ‘Where next?’ he said, and we set off again, heading west, to find other giants, who must, surely, feel at home in this sizeable city.
