A couple of weeks ago, Saturday morning, eight o’clock, I was taking brief leave of Lincoln and retrenchment to spend a weekend with my son in London. (£21.55 return, thanks to online advance booking).
At the station I met a couple I know, two lonely souls brought together by a common love of Czech beer. They were on their way to Boston, set to sample the windmills and watering-holes of my native town.
We passed through Metheringham, where for some reason the signal box bears the name Blankney. Daubed on a hoarding were the words ‘The Meg Boys’, Meg being the name by which the village is generally known.
I wondered if an old colleague of mine was at work in the signal box. Some years ago, disenchanted with the library service for many of the same reasons as I, left to become a railway signalman.
At Peterborough I joined the main line and boarded one of the new sleek trains that slice smoothly through the countryside with hardly a rattle. It’s mainly fenland and since I last travelled through wind turbines have appeared. I for one find them strangely beautiful.
I arrived on time at King’s Cross. In fact, over the whole weekend, transport was superb. The trains were punctual and London buses – real Londoners don’t use the Tube, I was told – numerous, frequent and cheap. The congestion charge seems to have worked pretty well. My son flourished his Oyster card, I bought an all-day ticket for £3.50 and we went in search of cheap beer. Holborn first, I think – for I was soon lost, where we settled on a Wetherspoon’s pub called ‘The King’s Escape’, named in honour of the Pendrell family who aided the future Charles I in his flight after the battle of Worcester.
I would have preferred a more Parliamentary bar, but beer knows no politics.
After an hour or two in Soho and ‘The Duke of Argyll’ it was back to the bus and over the Thames, heading for Camberwell, London Borough of Southwark, constituency of my bête-noir Harriet Harman (Harriet Harperson as she is known by those like-minded).
There was Parliament and Big Ben, seen through the London Eye, and later the Metropolitan Tabernacle, also named Spurgeon’s Tabernacle after perhaps the greatest Baptist preacher of the Victorian Age, who after his sermons would smoke a cigar ‘to the glory of God’.
We were travelling on my first ‘bendy bus’. They are known to many Londoners as ‘free buses, because they have two exit doors, making it easy to hop on and off without paying. I saw how the authorities deal with this problem on Monday morning, when my bus pulled up on a roundabout. I saw at least 30 police officers checking tickets and scribbling down the details of offenders.
It seemed a bit over the top to me, but maybe that’s what Ian Blair was talking about when he claimed that crime in the capital was declining. By the way, farewell Sir Ian, and about time too.
My son and I talked movies and P G Wodehouse, marriage and movies, movies and money, my love life and movies, and then movies. Later I fell asleep watching one.
Up first next morning, I helped myself to the best coffee I’ve had in a long time and sat outside in the mist, smoking a cigarette to the glory of sir Walter Raleigh, watching the magpies, the wrens and the squirrels; and the jumbo jets overhead, low enough for me to distinguish the logo on their tail fins, high enough not to be annoying.
I worked on a poem that has been gestating in my mind. It’s about love, but then, aren’t they all? The theme is about the need for love to be nourished, lest it die – lest! – a kind of response to Shakespeare’s lines about love not altering when it alteration finds. And whether lust is not a more sensible alternative to the whole complicated business. That might make a good final rhyming couplet. Now, whatever can I find to rhyme with ‘lust’?
At the station I met a couple I know, two lonely souls brought together by a common love of Czech beer. They were on their way to Boston, set to sample the windmills and watering-holes of my native town.
We passed through Metheringham, where for some reason the signal box bears the name Blankney. Daubed on a hoarding were the words ‘The Meg Boys’, Meg being the name by which the village is generally known.
I wondered if an old colleague of mine was at work in the signal box. Some years ago, disenchanted with the library service for many of the same reasons as I, left to become a railway signalman.
At Peterborough I joined the main line and boarded one of the new sleek trains that slice smoothly through the countryside with hardly a rattle. It’s mainly fenland and since I last travelled through wind turbines have appeared. I for one find them strangely beautiful.
I arrived on time at King’s Cross. In fact, over the whole weekend, transport was superb. The trains were punctual and London buses – real Londoners don’t use the Tube, I was told – numerous, frequent and cheap. The congestion charge seems to have worked pretty well. My son flourished his Oyster card, I bought an all-day ticket for £3.50 and we went in search of cheap beer. Holborn first, I think – for I was soon lost, where we settled on a Wetherspoon’s pub called ‘The King’s Escape’, named in honour of the Pendrell family who aided the future Charles I in his flight after the battle of Worcester.
I would have preferred a more Parliamentary bar, but beer knows no politics.
After an hour or two in Soho and ‘The Duke of Argyll’ it was back to the bus and over the Thames, heading for Camberwell, London Borough of Southwark, constituency of my bête-noir Harriet Harman (Harriet Harperson as she is known by those like-minded).
There was Parliament and Big Ben, seen through the London Eye, and later the Metropolitan Tabernacle, also named Spurgeon’s Tabernacle after perhaps the greatest Baptist preacher of the Victorian Age, who after his sermons would smoke a cigar ‘to the glory of God’.
We were travelling on my first ‘bendy bus’. They are known to many Londoners as ‘free buses, because they have two exit doors, making it easy to hop on and off without paying. I saw how the authorities deal with this problem on Monday morning, when my bus pulled up on a roundabout. I saw at least 30 police officers checking tickets and scribbling down the details of offenders.
It seemed a bit over the top to me, but maybe that’s what Ian Blair was talking about when he claimed that crime in the capital was declining. By the way, farewell Sir Ian, and about time too.
My son and I talked movies and P G Wodehouse, marriage and movies, movies and money, my love life and movies, and then movies. Later I fell asleep watching one.
Up first next morning, I helped myself to the best coffee I’ve had in a long time and sat outside in the mist, smoking a cigarette to the glory of sir Walter Raleigh, watching the magpies, the wrens and the squirrels; and the jumbo jets overhead, low enough for me to distinguish the logo on their tail fins, high enough not to be annoying.
I worked on a poem that has been gestating in my mind. It’s about love, but then, aren’t they all? The theme is about the need for love to be nourished, lest it die – lest! – a kind of response to Shakespeare’s lines about love not altering when it alteration finds. And whether lust is not a more sensible alternative to the whole complicated business. That might make a good final rhyming couplet. Now, whatever can I find to rhyme with ‘lust’?
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