January 2, 2000 – The Millennium Starts Here!

“The Millennium starts here!” That’s what a plaque says outside the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. Greenwich is the official home of world time and the perfect place for a Millennial experience. But first, I am off to the Millennium Dome.

I take the Jubilee line from Bond Street to North Greenwich. It is a shiny new tube line with lots of metal and modernized systems. The platforms are enclosed with glass walls with sliding doors that align with the coach doors. So, no one can get onto the train until it pulls up and the glass doors open. This is, I understand, to keep people from throwing themselves onto the tracks.

As I exit the tube station, I get my first glimpse of the Millennium Dome. It is massive. It is very crowded by the time I arrive for my 11:00 AM entry time. Inside there is a big top, like at a circus, with huge display areas ringing it. Participants can see the latest and greatest gadgets and modern technology in a dozen exhibits of what 21^st century life has to offer from the Body, to Play, Work, Money, Faith, Talk, Mind, Rest, Work, Learning, Journey, and Timekeepers of the Millennium.

A giant, gold, reclining figure holds the display about the human body. A long queue to enter at the figure’s elbow has already formed. The Timekeepers display also has a prohibitively long line. I wander around, go in the gift shop, and head to the Black Adder film.

Outside in the Skyscape, the Dome’s entertainment venue, a brand-new Black Adder comedic film, made just for the Millennium Dome, is being featured. The entire original cast is re-assembled for Back and Forth, a tale about Black Adder’s time machine. It ends with Black Adder changing history and making himself King, and Baldrick, his Prime Minister. Brian would love it.

I go back into the Dome in time for the Big Top performance—a modern Romeo and Juliet story of Earth People and Sky People played by acrobats and dancers. I don’t really like it and leave after the first half.

Instead, I head for Greenwich Village and the Royal Observatory. It is a long walk up a steep hill to the Observatory.

The Observatory has its roots as far back as the 17^th century when King Charles II appointed the first Royal Astronomer. By the mid-nineteenth century, Britain needed a way to keep time across their global dominions. In the late 1800s it adopted Greenwich Mean Time; the U.S. followed suit and GMT became the standard for world time.

In the courtyard of the Old Royal Observatory, there is a brass bar embedded in the ground that marks the Prime Meridian; the starting point for the International Date Line and its 24 time zones. I stand with one foot in the Eastern Hemisphere and one foot in the Western Hemisphere and ask someone to take my picture.

A huge brick-red ball at the top of the Christopher Wren-designed Octagonal Room of the Observatory ascends like the New Year’s ball in Times Square and drops exactly at 13:00 every day for ships in the Thames to set their clocks by. A huge laser shines out of the Observatory at night with its beam marking the Prime Meridian, Longitude 0.

The Cutty Sark ship is docked at Greenwich. The big, sleek, masted, clipper ship was constructed in 1869 and spent its days in the tea and wool trade. She was one of the fastest ships of her time.

The name Cutty Sark is taken from Robert Burns’ poem, Tam O’Shanter. It is the nickname of the witch that chases Tam and his horse, Meg. Indeed, the ship’s figurehead is a white figure of a woman with long hair holding a grey horse’s tail.

I have dinner and take in another movie—Sleepy Hollow with Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci. It is quite gory, but Johnny Depp is great. Of course, he is.

There is a Ben and Jerry’s just outside the theater and I get a cup. I ask for Chubby Hubby, my favorite. The guy scooping ice cream looks like he’s never heard of it. How about Coffee Heath Bar Crunch. He looks even more bewildered and says they only have the flavors that are in the case. I select Butter Toffee Crunch, which turns out to be Heath Bar Crunch. They have Cherry Garcia and Cookie Dough, and also something called Caramel Chew Chew. Oddly, there is no Cool Britannia.

• In today’s news: The Millennium Dome celebrations went off on New Year’s Eve despite a bomb threat. The Queen made the decision to proceed, reports the Daily Telegraph, following other recent bomb threats that have turned out to be false.

• The Daily Telegraph showed a picture of a rather glum-looking Queen linking arms with Tony Blair for the singing of Auld Lang Syne. It said she forgot to cross her arms in front of her and that she struggled with the words…and with her dignity.

• The River of Fire was overhyped said the Millennium celebration organizers. It went off just as planned with the simultaneous discharge of a fan of fireworks at the stroke of midnight. Reports of 60-meter high flames shooting down the river were exaggerated (it was actually 6 meters but traveling at the speed of sound nonetheless). People are disappointed or thought that the River of Fire was a dud because they were misled about what to expect.

Much later, BT reported on London’s Millennium celebrations:

• Despite huge concerns regarding the digital and computing practice of abbreviating a four-digit year to two digits (thus potentially making the year 2000 indistinguishable from 1900), widespread disruption of computer systems by the ‘Y2K bug’ failed to materialise.
• Not all the celebrations went smoothly. Hundreds of the 10,000 invited guests to the Millennium Dome were kept waiting to be allowed in, due to an administrative error.
• The Millennium Wheel – officially known as the London Eye – was unveiled but was not able to take passengers due to one of its pods failing a safety check. It finally began carrying customers a month later.
• Two million people attended the celebrations along the banks of the Thames in London, but many were left stranded for hours in their attempts to get home as four of the main tube stations were closed due to overcrowding concerns.
• Westminster City Council workers collected more than 150 tons of rubbish after the New Year’s Eve celebrations. About 15% of the rubbish was made up of champagne bottles.
• The Millennium Experience at the Dome opened to the public on January 1 and ran to December 31. Despite being declared a critical success, it failed to attract anything like its target of 12 million visitors and went on to incur huge losses.