During your life, if you're very lucky, you may get to visit some iconic but nigh impossible places to visit.
Sometimes that's because they've been opened up to the public as a one-off, but I don't mean those. I mean visits you only made because of someone you knew, a company you worked for or an organisation you belonged to, and that magic ticket meant gaining access to somewhere others can only dream of.
I've tried to come up with a list of places I've only seen because a friend, family member, school teacher or work commitment took me there, and which I now look back on and go "wow, I actually did that". They may not be in chronological order. Also I reserve the right not to divulge full details of precisely how I managed to wheedle my way inside, indeed in one or two cases that would be unwise.
Mail Rail
We're having a meet-up in London on Monday evening, they said. We've organised a trip to see the Post Office Railway, would you like to come? I did very much want to come, obviously, and my Dad was only too willing to take me. We started the trip to London with a lift ride to the 18th floor of a now-demolished office block, then went to Dayvilles for one of 32 flavors of ice cream, then went to meet everyone else outside the sorting office on Rathbone Place. It all felt like a perfectly normal thing to be doing at the time. First they showed us the sorting area with the bags and the little labelled cubbyholes, then they showed us the big space with the vans, but the best bit was when they took us down in the lift to see the railway. I remember a long brightly lit platform space with tracks but no platform, and miniature driverless trains emerging from the tunnels at regular intervals laden with letters and parcels, and uniformed postmen stepping up to keep the whole process moving. We stood to one side to watch the whole thing play out, and then we got stuck in the lift on the way out. And yes these days you can go to the Postal Museum and see the trains and even ride on one, which is excellent, but somehow I actually visited when the whole thing was properly operational and wow I actually did that.
Maida Vale Studios
Some of the biggest names in music have recorded at the BBC's Maida Vale Studios, and so have I. My choir was invited to take part in auditions for an annual competition called Let The People Sing, an amateur choral knockout, for which we had to get a coach down to W9. We arrived in the early evening and were ushered through the doors into one of the fabled studios, which I remember being unexpectedly large. I don't remember what we sang, only that our choirmaster would have made us rehearse it much too often, but I do remember being allowed to go to the canteen for subsidised refreshments halfway through. I still have the BBC paper cup I smuggled out, having ignored the instruction Please Deposit This Cup In The Receptacle Provided, and I keep special things in it. Now I look back and wonder who else had recorded in that same studio, and whether any bands were doing a John Peel session at the time I was there, and which corridor the Radiophonic Workshop was down. But most of all, now the BBC is closing the place down, I just think wow I actually did that.
Bekonscot Model Village
The first time I went to Bekonscot I was very small, not much more than rooftop height, and bowled over by the tiny buildings, the evocative tableaux and the miniature railway. I watched the trains repeatedly weaving their way around the site, occasionally disappearing under the full-sized signal box beside Maryloo station and then coming out the other side. Imagine my delight on a later visit when I was permitted access to that signal box so got to peer through the glass in the opposite direction. From here I could keep an eye on the electronic board that showed where all the trains were, admire the lever frames (lifted from Purley and Ruislip) and even see where the trains went during the gap when they were invisible from outside. Best of all I got to pull some of the levers and make the trains go where I wanted, just for a bit, and without crashing or derailing any. Six year-old me would never have believed it was possible, but wow I actually did that.
BBC Television Centre
I've been inside TV Centre in White City several times, almost always in ways you could have done too. I've been inside the Top of the Pops studio on a paid-for BBC Tour, I've sat in the audience and laughed at a TV sitcom and I've stood in the Blue Peter Garden as part of an Open House visit. But on one occasion, because I knew somebody who worked there, I got a guest pass and slipped in past security to see the proper working side of the facility. I got to peer into the newsroom and passed John Simpson in the corridor outside, even though I didn't recognise him at the time. I looked down from the viewing gallery on preparations for the Strictly Come Dancing final. I ventured into the gents on the sixth floor where the top brass had their offices and availed myself of the facilities. And at the end of the visit I went to the BBC Club where employees relaxed and I had two bottle of Becks plus burger and chips and watched the corporation at play. I failed to spot any well known faces imbibing nearby but it was still a remarkable insight into the heart of a much-loved institution, and wow I actually did that.
Then there was
that time I went behind the scenes in an ice cream laboratory,
and that time I went to a gallery opening with the Home Secretary,
and that time I went backstage in the Royal Albert Hall,
and that time I had an English lesson on a film set,
and that time a global company director came for tea,
and that time Radio 2 broadcast from my living room,
and that time I had a beer on the private members' terrace,
and the time I went to that meeting where they actually decide that thing,
and that time I went to the 18th floor of a now-demolished tower block,
but they're not quite the same thing.
But wow, the other things, wow, I actually did that.
