Mick's Monopoly challenge

           This is my Monopoly Swan Song, Opus Magnus, what you will. I have to admit I’ve been dragging it out, like the last cigarette before facing the firing squad.      Mayfair is an area bounded by four Monopoly properties - Oxford Street, Regent Street, Piccadilly and Park Lane. It also contains the whole of Bond Street and Vine Street. So, appropriately, my final offerings from the Monopoly board cherry-pick the bits I missed.      There’s a lot to see in one visit, so I’ve divided my findings into two parts, west and east. There are maps at the end.      Much of Mayfair is still owned by the Grosvenor family, their name derived from the French Gros Veneur (fat hunter). The average price for a house in Mayfair is around £9.5 million. 38 Hertford Street (2)     In the 1950s the musician’s unions created ‘needle time’ which limited BBC radio to just 30 hours of recorded music per we...

Soho: Hazlitt's Hotel, Poppies lunch and Ronnie Scott/Beatle trivia added. Coventry Street: There is somewhere interesting to eat after all. Trafalgar Square: Fourth plinth update Oxford Street:  The Darcey Bussell statue and HMV store have gone. Plus I've added a nice place for a steak.

          An oddity of the many versions of the Monopoly board is that, irrespective of which city is featured, the policeman is always American cop Edgar Mallory as pictured in the original Atlantic City version.       But I digress. I’ve contrived to use this square as an excuse to visit the area of the South Bank between Clink Street and Tower Bridge. The reasoning will soon become apparent. Clink Prison Museum, Clink Street Winchester Palace, Clink Street The Golden Hinde, Cathedral Street      This is actually a full-scale reconstruction of The Golden Hinde, the galleon on which Sir Francis Drake became the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe. When Drake first set off from Plymouth in 1577 the ship was called The Pelican. He renamed her mid-voyage and returned home in 1580.      Launched in 1973, this floating museum has itself sailed more than 225,000 kilometres. She has done a circumn...