As I stood on Newark station, awaiting my connection for London, an express train came through. I was searching there for the right word to describe the few brief seconds it took to pass by, because ‘thundered’, ‘roared’, ‘flashed’, all the usual clichés, seemed inappropriate. This train just appeared and disappeared into the distance. A warning klaxon, then hundreds of awesome tons, with no rattles and a minimum of clatter, went by with a whoosh-whoosh-whoosh as each carriage expelled the trapped air in front of it. I thought how beautiful engineering could be.
I laughed at myself a little, knowing I would be writing about it, because I was reminded of essays I would write at school about ‘My Holiday’ of ‘My Trip to the Zoo’. In these I would invariably describe the sleepless anticipation of the night before; list the exciting things I had seen and done; and wind up with the declaration that I had arrived home ‘tired but happy’.
On this occasion the sights of the capital were incidental to this country mouse visiting his town mouse son. The sights of the capital were secondary to the pleasures of talking and drinking.
The first drink was in an O’Neills’s bar near King’s Cross, all Guinness and lager and London prices. So off to Soho by bus – it pays to have a good guide in this place – to check out three pubs of a traditional kind, where real ale is available at reasonable prices, that is, below £2 a pint.
For future reference I shall name them (all Sam Smith’s):
'The Duke of Argyle' in Great Windmill St
'The Glasshouse Stores' in Brewer St
'The White Horse' in Archer St
Then through Trafalgar Square to acknowledge the great Horatio. Am I right in thinking he’s looking towards France? Certainly he has his back to the truncated pregnant woman on the spare plinth. And there are no pigeons. Has Uncle Ken finally succeeded in his mission to eliminate them, aided by his battalions of hawks? Today pigeons, tomorrow the militarist-capitalist-imperialist power structure.
The train towards Crystal Palace took us past The Den, a lowly place compared with the Emirates Stadium which I had noticed as I approached King’s Cross. We had passed a small demonstration earlier, policed by a couple of bored constables, demanding that we refuse to play football against Israel. Judging by the abject performance later, our players had taken the message to heart.
The evening was spent in another pub where I was struck by the way my beer was pulled. I take an interest in these things. The perfect pint of real ale is drawn in this way. The bottom of the glass is held to the end of the spout and the handle given one long uninterrupted pull back, followed by a shorter one, and then there should be a pause, usefully occupied by the exchange of cash. Then a final pull should produce a pint with a creamy head and the beautiful sight of the beer clearing from the bottom. After a couple of minutes, you will have a fine, translucent amber-gold drink.
We tried out a Wetherspoon’s on Sunday, where I noted that my Pedigree was pulled in the manner prescribed by the video the company uses to train its staff. Excellent. I had another couple, just to make sure.
Occasionally we broke off from investigating these momentous matters to chat aimlessly about political philosophy, the conflict between individual freedom and social cohesion, the limits of free will, and other such inconsequential matters. I recall getting rather bogged down in an analogy about ants. I’m told that the film Antz addresses these issues.
No conversation with my son avoids the cinema for very long. The sins of critics, the inhumanity of Kubrick and Hitchcock, the undervaluation of John Wayne. I got to see The Sweet Smell of Success for the first time in ages and enough of Mulholland Drive to give me an appetite for much more.
Monday morning and we were back to Trafalgar Square to spend a short time in The National Gallery. I just wanted to catch up on the major paintings – artistic tourism – but was particularly impressed by the two Rubens hung side by side. These were Samson and Delilah and The Massacre of the Innocents. It was handy to be able to eavesdrop on a guide comparing and contrasting the two works. I was tempted to buy postcards of them, but there was no way they could do justice to such huge and detailed masterpieces. So I treated myself to these three, paintings by artists I did not know and which for some reason caught my eye:
The Virgin in Prayer by Sassoferrato (1609-1685). See also: http://sonofmavis.blogspot.com/2007/06/to-stumble-across-something-beautiful.html
I laughed at myself a little, knowing I would be writing about it, because I was reminded of essays I would write at school about ‘My Holiday’ of ‘My Trip to the Zoo’. In these I would invariably describe the sleepless anticipation of the night before; list the exciting things I had seen and done; and wind up with the declaration that I had arrived home ‘tired but happy’.
On this occasion the sights of the capital were incidental to this country mouse visiting his town mouse son. The sights of the capital were secondary to the pleasures of talking and drinking.
The first drink was in an O’Neills’s bar near King’s Cross, all Guinness and lager and London prices. So off to Soho by bus – it pays to have a good guide in this place – to check out three pubs of a traditional kind, where real ale is available at reasonable prices, that is, below £2 a pint.
For future reference I shall name them (all Sam Smith’s):
'The Duke of Argyle' in Great Windmill St
'The Glasshouse Stores' in Brewer St
'The White Horse' in Archer St
Then through Trafalgar Square to acknowledge the great Horatio. Am I right in thinking he’s looking towards France? Certainly he has his back to the truncated pregnant woman on the spare plinth. And there are no pigeons. Has Uncle Ken finally succeeded in his mission to eliminate them, aided by his battalions of hawks? Today pigeons, tomorrow the militarist-capitalist-imperialist power structure.
The train towards Crystal Palace took us past The Den, a lowly place compared with the Emirates Stadium which I had noticed as I approached King’s Cross. We had passed a small demonstration earlier, policed by a couple of bored constables, demanding that we refuse to play football against Israel. Judging by the abject performance later, our players had taken the message to heart.
The evening was spent in another pub where I was struck by the way my beer was pulled. I take an interest in these things. The perfect pint of real ale is drawn in this way. The bottom of the glass is held to the end of the spout and the handle given one long uninterrupted pull back, followed by a shorter one, and then there should be a pause, usefully occupied by the exchange of cash. Then a final pull should produce a pint with a creamy head and the beautiful sight of the beer clearing from the bottom. After a couple of minutes, you will have a fine, translucent amber-gold drink.
We tried out a Wetherspoon’s on Sunday, where I noted that my Pedigree was pulled in the manner prescribed by the video the company uses to train its staff. Excellent. I had another couple, just to make sure.
Occasionally we broke off from investigating these momentous matters to chat aimlessly about political philosophy, the conflict between individual freedom and social cohesion, the limits of free will, and other such inconsequential matters. I recall getting rather bogged down in an analogy about ants. I’m told that the film Antz addresses these issues.
No conversation with my son avoids the cinema for very long. The sins of critics, the inhumanity of Kubrick and Hitchcock, the undervaluation of John Wayne. I got to see The Sweet Smell of Success for the first time in ages and enough of Mulholland Drive to give me an appetite for much more.
Monday morning and we were back to Trafalgar Square to spend a short time in The National Gallery. I just wanted to catch up on the major paintings – artistic tourism – but was particularly impressed by the two Rubens hung side by side. These were Samson and Delilah and The Massacre of the Innocents. It was handy to be able to eavesdrop on a guide comparing and contrasting the two works. I was tempted to buy postcards of them, but there was no way they could do justice to such huge and detailed masterpieces. So I treated myself to these three, paintings by artists I did not know and which for some reason caught my eye:
The Virgin in Prayer by Sassoferrato (1609-1685). See also: http://sonofmavis.blogspot.com/2007/06/to-stumble-across-something-beautiful.html
St Francis in Meditation by Zurbaran (1598-1664)
Self-portrait by Rosa (1615-1673).
There was an hour and a half to kill and so I had a couple of drinks. First at King’s Cross in its crowded, expensive bar. And then I made the weekend come full circle by going back to the O’Neill’s pub.
As I got up to leave I gestured to a man standing nearby that my seat was now free. He thanked me and then asked if we were in London. I assured him that we were, but that further topographical advice was beyond my competence.
‘I’ve just got out of prison,’ he said, by way of explanation.
‘Well,’ I said, resisting the temptation to say, ‘What for?’ and wished him good luck. He shook my hand. And then, as we do somewhat illogically in Lincolnshire, I left with the words, ‘Be seeing you.’
I’m always surprised how quickly you get from London to Newark, but arrived there to find my train was cancelled and I had to rush across Newark to catch an alternative, which stopped at every village possible and didn’t have any toilets.
So it was that I arrived home tired, but sweaty, pissed off and broke.
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