Old Age, The Universe must have miscalculated.

There must have been a mistake. I cannot possibly be as old as apparently I am. I stride about, walk for miles, run for buses, cook lovely food, write blogs, do all the paperwork for two pubs, a supermarket in Sheffield, an Oscar winning animator and accounts for a company that will do the signposting at the Olympics. I have just completed a novel and I perform poetry in public to modest acclaim. I cannot be more than 38, in my prime. Though when did I have time to produce all these offspring and descendants?

Sometimes it is fantastic to be as old as I really am, like last Thursday in the pub talking to two other men who were evacuated at the age of 5 or 6 and transported to an alien agricultural world of horse drawn wagons and threshing machines and rabbit stew and no inside toilets. It can be fantastic to be 76.

I have (1) done a consultancy job and (2) attended a meeting in Peterborough. (1) was profitable. (2) was duty but accompanied by and followed by wine, so acceptable. I am now on a train at 10 o'clock at night, speeding through the landscape, passing the amber lights of small towns, factories, dark fields flashing by. Nobody in the whole world knows where I am, whether I'll die or live, not my lovely wife, my 3 children, my 6 grandchildren, my 57 cousins, my many friends. I am alone in the Universe.

As you pass the signposts of life, 30, 40, 50, 60, 65 (when you're supposed to retire) 70, 75 and still alive, and kicking, you realise you have a diminishing number of years left, you start to savour every minute of every situation. So I enjoy being on this train at night. Brilliant. My grandaughter's friend Tilly Cat would say kewl. She tells me that's how you spell it now.

We sit in metal boxes, planes, buses, trains, tubes, all of them inclined to crash, be destryed, fail to land properly. Why do we do it? Why do we risk the possibilty of fire and death just to be somewhere else as soon as possible? Well I don't so much these days. I walk and look quietly at rivers.

But tonight, off the train, on to tube, then bus, all dangerous boxes, but all whizzing me delightfully about. Walked past St Andrew's Church. Notice for Over 60's Club, every Thursday. What do they do? Coffee, bingo, pet stroking? I'd go mad if I had tp spend every Thursday with people my own age. Almost nobody I spend time with is older than me, with a couple of exceptions and I don't care how old they are. They are young at heart. A young man with a clipboard in Villiers Street off The Strand asked me would I like to donate to Help the Aged. Sorry I said, I am the aged, can you help?

Tomorrow I shall catch another tin box which might or might not crash on its way to Peterborough or back to attend the grand reunion of the family of the Kings School Peterborough which I attended more than fifty years ago, so probably everybody there will be younger than me, but that will not matter at all. But I may possibly sup some stuff and reminisce. The Brewery Tap, Peterborough. December 27th. 7.30. See you there.

I'll try and be back in my truckle bed in London by midnight.

Autumn Blog

            Well at 22.07 on a Monday towards the end of October I finished my latest novel "Holding Hands at Midnight." That was great because having finally set it in stone, the characters will now have to stop chattering to me or to each other in my head, all day long, no matter where I am or what I might be doing, prodding my brain as they have done for the past two years. It is finished and they have said all that I will allow them to say. They can now shut up.

            However I have listened to them too much and allowed them to ramble on, as people do in real life. Repetition. We all do it. I must have let them influence me into allowing them to recount the same anecdotes more than twice and once too many. I told my publisher that the novel has 177,500 words. He says that that equates to 680 to 690 pages in a normal paperback format. That creates physical problems with binding, never mind the sheer slog for anyone reading it. I had thought this one was shorter than the last which came out at 537 pages . So I have a severe editing project ahead of me. There is a limit to the amount you can cut. I suspect it will still be a lengthy read.
            Because I have some distractions at home, being part time househusband for many years, cooking, washing, shopping, gardening, window cleaning etc, all OK with me, though now my lovely wife has retired, I no longer (in theory) have to have her dinner on the table when she gets home, but I do most days otherwise she crowds me in my little kitchen (designed by her but mainly operated by me.) I know that sounds mean but it isn't meant to be and I'm not. I just enjoy looking after her.
            A couple of weeks ago I escaped. I rented a caravan for a week to try to finish the novel with no distractions. It was at Winchelsea Beach in Sussex, on the very bleak Pett Level between Hastings and Rye, last bus to anywhere 5.30 pm, so remote, and quiet in October, just what I needed. Anybody interested in trains? I went from St Pancras on a Hitachi Japanese bullet train to Ashford (39 minutes). It did St Pancras to Stratford International in 6 minutes. Then an ordinary little old fashioned stopping train to Rye, then a bus.
            Caravans are brilliant, little boxes fully furnished with everything you need to a high standard and although you are cheek by jowl with lots of other caravans you need never see them or interact with them, and anyway half of them are unoccupied in October. This particular caravan site is next to open fields so open to wildlife. First night I met a fox on my way back from the pub. The next morning I was woken by loud clucking of ducks. I looked out of my front door and there was a duck and a drake and six ducklings gathered round the bottom of my steps clearly expecting to be fed. I fed them. The seagulls took half the bread, driving the ducks to retreat. Of course being a hundred yards from the sea I was not surpised to find we were also plagued with seagulls, but what did surprise me was the rabbits, wild rabbits unafraid of humans. They waited just outside the circle of ducks and ducklings. They also were used to being fed. Later I saw a notice which said "On open ground on this site, beware rabbit holes."
            A caravan is a metal box which means it gets very cold at night in October, but it also has lots of windows and if the sun shines, it gets pretty hot in the daytime in October.
            I took my laptop and tapped away several hours a day with no distraction other than a cheese sandwich for lunch. And there was no internet, no way I could see whether anybody had emptied my bank account or booked two flights to Hungary using my wife's debit card, whch happened once when she left her handbag unzipped in a shop. I just got on with it. It was lovely.
            The internet is a mammoth distraction. I found mysef working at my novel at 9 am. At home it is often nearly 11 am before I have finished checking my emails, looking at my bank account, seeing what everyone is doing on Facebook. Having none of that compulsion I just got on with the writing. It was bliss.
            So it is finished, but of course it is not finished at all. I cannot allow it to be 600 pages long. That is ridiculous. Somehow I have to edit 50,000 words out of it. So I have printed it and am editing it, not on screen but on paper, crossing out unnecessary verbiage with a red pen. I got rid of 150 words on page one, so it may be possible to get it down to a reasonable size.
            I have now laid it aside for a week while we have our living room decorated. The decoration includes a certain amount of plastering and sanding down, so life is full of dust. I don't do breathing dust if possible, so I have spent some time walking the Thames Path - of which more another day.

Long Time No Blog

I said in May that I would have a rest from blogging until I had finished my new novel. I have now completed revision/edit/part re-write number five and it still needs more work, so lets have a rest and indulge in a bit of bloggery.

While I have been tapping my keyboard (years ago I would have said scribbling) in Walthamstow, in order to keep my heart muscles functioning, to keep my elderly body alive, I have continued with the walking every day when it isn't raining.

So, from my house fifteen minutes and across Chalk Bridge over the River Lee to Wild Marsh West. Then you have a choice between a well laid out fine gravel footpath, or a grassy swathe that heads off through the scrubland. It has been mowed, presumably by the Council, and I think it is probably designed for horses to gallop along. Any way I decided to walk along it rather than the path, and to be in East London and so near to home, walking on grass by trees and water, is so much better than pounding pavements, which I have been doing for the past five years. Even sandy footpaths are not as soul resting as grass.

Being an ignorant city dweller, I have no idea what all these wild flowers and plants are called. I wish I had some knowledgeable person to walk with me and say "That is bird's foot trefoil" or "Betty's slipper" or whatever.

Everywhere there are blue flowers, purple flowers, yellow flowers and of course, here and there, a crumpled beer can. A reminder of where we are. The East End of London. Anyway, this grassy track is better than the towpath because there are none of Boris's hooligan cyclists on it.

Wondering who left beer cans in this delightfully peaceful place, I came across a group of anglers sitting on the river bank fishing. And what else were they doing? They were drinking cans of beer, at eight o'clock in the morning. Angling is a serious sport, needing lubrication, much like darts no doubt. But it reminded me of May Morning many years ago, sitting in a punt below Magdalen Bridge in Oxford, waiting for the dawn, waiting for the choir of Magdalen College to sing whatever beautiful song it is they sing at dawn on May 1st, and drinking champagne at six o'clock in the morning, so judge not that ye be not judged, as the Good Book says.

In the punt with me was the poet Adrian Mitchell of dear and happy memory and two girls whose names I have long forgotten. They also would probably have been poets, because in that year 1953 I wanted to be a poet and only mixed with people who wanted to be poets.

The grassy path leads to Stonebridge Lock, where the narrowboats and houseboats have permanent moorings, with little gardens on the bank, white picket fences and furniture with umbrellas, lawns, footballs and of course red gas cylinders and occasionally greenhouses. There is a new narrowboat I haven't seen before called "Ten Bob Note" with at least half of its roof solar panels, very enterprising.

Just as I don't know the names of the flowers, I'm afraid I don't know whether it was a coot or a moorhen, diving down below the surface, leaving an expanding ring on the water, coming up several minutes later, sometimes on the far side of the river, then diving again, and again, until finally it came up with a fish in its beak. So there are fish in the River Lee. Perhaps anglers don't just go there for the beer.

This walk with wisps of mist rising from the river is so remote from the rest of my life, yet so close that in twenty minutes I will be unable to cross the road because of the volume of traffic.

I seem to have a more interesting life since I retired. Later that day I walked along Royal Hospital Road in Chelsea to the Army Museum to be interviewed by an author, Julie Summers, who is writing a book about experiences of evacuation in the 1940's. When it is published, chapter 9 will be called Norman Andrews.

Next week I shall be at the meeting of the Waltham Forest Poetry Stanza, reading my poems and listening to other people's poetry, and sampling the excellent range of ciders always available at Ye Olde Rose and Crowne in Hoe Street. As Doc Johnson said, who needs to be bored in London?

Piebald horses graze the Thames Water land around the reservoirs. They look like gipsy horses to me but no sign of travellers. Anyway they have a new foal today and I watched it stagger to its feet. It can only just have been born, still wobbling a bit on its splayed spindly legs.

Corny it may be, but here birds sing undisturbed by technology or agriculture. You might be in the middle of nowhere. On the horizon of course you can see the erections of industrial East London, but it doesn't matter.

Sorry no blogs for while.

I have lots of ideas for future blogs, some I have made notes, some are recorded on the little voice recorder I carry about with me on my daily walks. But I have to concentrate on the novel I am desperately trying to finish, so no blogs for a while. I probably won't even write any poems. I'm tied to my wordprocessor, working my way through my fifth revision. So see you all later in the year.

Oh, here's a snippet. Great Northern Hotel, Peterborough. Me: "What kind of red wine have you got?" Barman looks at the refrigerated display cabinet, opens it, picks out a bottle.

"I think you'll find all the wines in there are white. The reds are out on the shelf over there." He looks bemused, goes along the shelf, and comes back with three bottles for me to choose. One is a Taylor's Late Vintage Port. The second is a Harvey's Amontillado Sherry. But the third is a bottle of South African Pinotage.

I said "I'll have a glass of that one please." Should I have told him about Port and Sherry? I think not.

See you all later in the year, unless I feel a sudden urge to untie myself from my desk. The novel is called "Holding Hands at Midnight." It is a very complicated four-way love story. Watch this space.

Long time no blog, so here's a poem to be going on with

This poem is in memory of Joe Palmer, a splendid man, one time landlord of the Crown Inn Elton, where I had my wedding reception, who died holding a glass of scotch at the bar of the Flying Services Club, Peterborough, many years ago. I hasten to add that although the manner of Joe's death (which he would have said was a very good way to go) was the inspiration for the poem, Joe himself was nothing like the character in the poem. He was a character who haunted the bar of the Bull Hotel when I was a trainee manager there. Finally, the poem was born from my overhearing two ladies on the bus discussing a funeral. One said to the other "He was one of three brothers you know." "Was he really?" said the other. Such trivia are often all that is needed to inflict yet another poem on the world.


ONE OF THREE BROTHERS



One of three brothers, she said, as if
that made a difference to the fact that he was dead.
One of an ancient unity, a faded photograph, now brown
with history, the silence of a distant past.
No sound comes out of photographs.

I knew him as a hobbling gnome, his head
shook and his gnarled hands found it difficult
to hold the beer glass which was central
to his life. He used the pub that I used,
waved his stick at me, at any human being
who acknowledged him, and grinned
his toothy gratitude to all who bought him beer.

An old man waits for death with shaking hands.
He hobbles through the wilderness of age,
his close-knit childhood, like a wave of strength
has rolled him to this hoary beach alone.
He is the last sad trickle of his family stream.
He waits the next great wave to bear him home.

One of three brothers? Well I never thought
there could be duplicates of him, the evil
letcher, sizer up and down of lovely girls.
He never harmed them and they laughed at him.
Their laughter made his gnarled heart leap
and showed the gaps between his nicoteeth.
He quivered with excitement and desire.

The girls all flirted with him, listened to his tales
of life that ended when their mothers had been young.
They kissed his cheeks and held his hands.
He cursed them for tormenting him.

Then one day Henry raised his glass, about to say
“Cheers,” but died before the word came out.
The girls he had just verbally abused cried, “Oh.”
The man who bought his last pint, unconsumed,
said nothing. Henry made no sound, as he
fell backwards on the beer soaked ground,
but as he fell his hand reached out and placed his pint
upon the bar. It sat there steadily, brim full,
and no hand reached for it.

Somewhere across the Universe,
perhaps two brothers welcomed him,
and handing him a foaming pint
said “Cheers!”

Oxford Literary Festival

Last month I spent four days in Oxford, staying in rooms at my old college, became a student again, a slightly surreal experience. My rooms were in the same quad, the same staircase, though not the same rooms I had in 1953. The bathroom looked much the same as it did when I shared it all those years ago with the Earl of Longford. I think in those days he was called Lord Pakenham. As I booked in to the porters lodge I found myself standing next to Robert Winston, sorry Lord Winston. Then on my way to my rooms I passed one of the Dimblebys. You meet all these illustrious people all the time in Oxford.

Staying in college is better than staying in a hotel. You get two large rooms, a bedroom and a study sitting room, with a desk to work at, with internet access. There is no television, but I didn't really want that at a literary festival, dd I? In fact to some extent I'd gone there to escape TV. My front window looks out at the quad, but my rear window is above an enclosed garden with daffodils in full bloom. It costs £55 per night and includes breakfast in the Great Hall of Christ Church, which was used as Hogwarts Hall in the Harry Potter films.

Sunday morning was Joanna Trollope, charming, witty and incisive as one would expect. Interesting to me as a writer was the discovery that she writes all her novels longhand. She says that she sees her subject matter as a series of pictures in her mind, so the act of writing is like scribbling as fast as you can a description of a film while you are watching it. I bought her latest book which she very kindly signed for me, not just her name, but a three line message, but then she does write in longhand.

Sunday afternoon in complete contrast it was Dr Brooke Magnanti, otherwise known as Belle de Jour, author of "The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl" portrayed by Billie Piper in the recent television series. As I was queueing up to get in I found the person infront of me was Annika Rice. I recognised her from behind of course, but later confirmed from the front view and her voice, that my assumption was correct. I can report that close up Anneka is as lovely as ever. But back to Dr Magnanti. Surprisingly, most of the questions from the audience were about writing rather than prostitution. She was asked about her experience of sudden fame. She said she was not often recognised because there is nothing very distinctive about her appearance. She sits on a tube train in London wondering which of her fellow passengers looks most likely to be a hooker. She says in any carriage there are likely to be two or three, but she is not one of them. She is in fact a research scientist, very smartly dressed. I have to say I found her very sexy indeed. I am sure she was a success in her other chosen profession. If I ever found myself in a brothel being offered the choice of a line-up of attractive ladies, it is more than likely I would choose Dr Brooke Magnanti rather than Billie Piper.

I am actually writing this blog as I walk along the river bank. Being Oxford, no one is surprised to see an elderly gent walking by the river, among the snowdrops and spring daffodils, speaking earnestly into a hand held voice recorder, probably a professor composing his next lecture. On the other hand the recorder does look a bit like a mobile phone. I did not much like Oxford when I went there as a student, being the only boy in Christ Church who came from a state school. But these days it has become one of my favourite places. I go to Oxford at every opportunity and it feels like coming home.

Being Sunday I decided to have Sunday lunch and being a poor pensioner, the most economical place to have it, available until 10 pm, was Wetherspoons. The Oxford Wetherspoons is called The Four Candles after Ronnie Barker. Fantastic value, roast beef, lamb, pork or chicken with all the what nots for £6.59 including a pint of this that or the other, or a glass of wine. And it was superb. The beef was not as rare as I would have liked it, but slow cooked and so tender you could separate it with a fork. And the wine is good quality and good value. If ever I find myself in a strange town I look for a Wetherspoons. Their breakfasts are excellent. Is this an advert? Unfortunately not, or I would be getting paid for it.

University towns have a greater concentration of young people than most places. There seem to be many more pretty girls than I am used to. When I was young in the forties and fifties, girls generally wore skirts and dresses. You could see their legs from the knees down and imagine the rest. Then came a long period when they wore what we used to call slacks, then came trousers and jeans. Now suddenly they're not exactly showing their legs again, but encasing them in black woolly tights with skirts so short their legs go right up to the bum. I was overtaken by an exceptionally tall young girl in Broad Street and as she passed me, her delicious little buttocks, fashionably encased in their black tights, were bobbing up and down right in front of my eyes, enough to put an old age pensioner off literary festivals for ever.

On my way back to college, in St Aldates was a large black slip-on shoe, not a very fashionable design, but it looked brand new, lying on the pavement by a bus stop. How can anyone lose one shoe? And did he get on to a bus still wearing the other one? Alas we shall never know.

When you are old and within reasonable sight of death, and if you do not believe in an afterlife, it is very salutory to be reminded that even though we do not survive as individuals, the human race does survive, and some of the thoughts and ideas of those who have died live on in the minds and hearts of those who follow. Walking across the quad in the moonlight I thought of my tutors Robert Burchfield, editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, and Professor J.I.M Stewart who wrote detective stories as Michael Innes, both now departed this life, and earlier that day along cobbled streets between ancient walls, I was conscious of all the others who have taken similar steps over the same stones, over hundreds of years. I once lived in the village of Eyam in Derbyshire. Walking home from the pub I knew I was walking the same village street as the people of Eyam who in 1666, locked themselves away from the world, letting no-one enter or leave their village for more than a year, to prevent the spread of the plague to the rest of Derbyshire. Nearly half of them died, but their deaths are all recorded on little plaques on the walls of the cottages they lived and died in, still in use today.

But this is supposed to be about the literary festival. Of course I went to other talks and seminars and readings and chatted to some authors and poets, but there is time in between to walk by the river, be a tourist, go to the pub and chat to interesting people. Not in the pub, I met Julie Summers author of "Stranger in the House" about the experiences of women whose husbands returned home after an absence of four or five years in the Second World War. She is writing a new book about the experiences of children who were evacuated in the 1940's. I am going to meet her sometime soon to talk about my experience.

In the White Horse in Broad Street, excited people bark and chirp. I listen and realise they are American men trying to speak Spanish, to chat up two Spanish girls. They seem not to have noticed that the girls speak excellent American. One of the Spanish girls who clearly knows the law, asks the waiter if she could please use the candle on their table to light a cigarette? Looking a bit doubtful he says yes. He looks alarmed when she lights her cigarette from the candle still right in the middle of the pub. He need not have worried. She knew the law all right. She inhaled deeply so that her cheeks bulged with the smoke, then rushed for the door so that no smoke was exhaled inside the pub. She didn't notice she had blown the candle out, but she knew the law.

The law banning smoking in pubs was passionately opposed by millions of smokers, though welcomed by some other millions of non smoking pub users. But from the day it became law, it was adhered to and complied with almost universally. Nobody smokes in pubs. They stand outside and suffer even if it is raining. Shortly after it was introduced, I was in my local pub when a very old man walked in smoking a cigarette. He went up to the bar still happily puffing away and ordered a pint. The hubbub in the pub had become an aghast silence. The barmaid was horrified. "Put it out! You'll lose me my job." The whole bar remained silent with shock that someone had smoked. There are not many controvercial laws which achieve that level of immediate acceptance. Look at the ban on driving a car while using a mobile phone. You see people flouting that law every day.

Oh yes, I did go to lots of other things at the Festival. I was there for four days. But you don't really want to know about all that. Heavy stuff and very literary.

An old poem

I've just arrived home after almost a week away at the Oxford Literary Festival, and I'm writing a blog about it. While you're waiting for that, here's a poem I wrote 59 years ago when the world was a different place.

For those who have never heard of it, IPECAC is Oil of Ipecacuanha BPC, which mothers in Victorian times and well into the 20th century, rubbed on to children's chests rather as in later years we had Vick Vapour Rub.

1951 – IPECAC

We came home from harvest, dangerously
wobbling on the high wagon down the village
astride the sheaves, the horses broad and brown
and home to tea.

I remember a small room
and in the small room a poem unborn
and a black kettle hissing on a black hob
and doors with latches like shed latches
the walls boards like the walls of sheds
Aladdin lamp on the table melting butter
and banging moths, while we
mused, sleepy, in our bright cocoon.

And that was home.
The Bible and a tin with cotton reels
washed up with flotsam round the vase of twigs
which one-day will explode their leaves from sticky buds
the wireless, and the eucalyptus in the bottle with the bulb
and let us not forget the cruse of oil
or the eardrops, or the accumulator for the wireless
our window on the world
or the bicycle lamps, the ipecac and the bicycle clips
for the bicyclists, the taste of hot dripping on hot toast
and the dog in the lamplight curled and warm.
And in the light, and by the firelight, steadfast, knitting,
knitting, Mother, not my mother, but she was my mother.

She made me her son, and I resented it.
She pulled me to her heart though I resisted it.
She rubbed my chest with ipecac.

She made my memories
as strange as old mythology.

Bees in Bonnets or a Grumpy Old Man's blog.

In the past, an ordinary person had no way of communicating with the rest of the world, unless he or she was famous or infamous, or had some reason for attracting public attention. But now, thanks to the internet, I can write this blog. Nobody need read it, but anybody in any nation anywhere in the planet can read it, if they wish.

Most blogs seem to be about matters of public interest, or what bloggers think is publicly interesting. My blogs have tended to be random thoughts and accounts of my everyday life, or reminiscences of my past life. The truth is I seem to have run out of that sort of stuff to blog about. So I feel it is time I commented on what is happening to society and the great wide world. So, here goes.

I have to walk a few miles every day of my life. It exercises the heart muscles and thereby keeps me alive. On my walk this morning along the footpath to Tottenham Marsh and the River Lea, I noticed something new. The path is bounded on both sides by continuous banks of blackberry bushes. When they are ripe, since very few people use the footpaths of East London, you can gather baskets of luscious blackberries, but not of course in February.

Anyway, the council has recently occupied some of its workers to dig out 28 clearings in the blackberry hedge, to plant 28 trees along the length of the footpath. I am sure these trees will look nice enough when they mature. But do the citizens of Walthamstow need them? Are there not other things we need more? Why on earth did they not leave the lovely blackberries to ripen and flourish, unhampered by trees?

A small diversion. This morning there were about 20 twitchers gathered on the banks of the reservoir, all armed with their massive cameras and telephoto lenses mounted on tripods. I thought 20 was a lot, since most mornings I have the walk to myself, but as I walked on, more and more of them appeared, droves and droves of them walking along the bank with tripods over their shoulders. Obviously there has been a report of some rare bird, rare enough to bring the twitchers from all over Britain, hundreds of them. How did they gain access to the reservoir? I am not allowed to walk there. Property of Thames Water. Keep out!

But back to my theme. Why are we spending public money on planting trees when there are perfectly good blackberry hedges to keep us happy? Apart from the cost of the trees, it must have taken several men considerable time and effort. Planting those 28 trees cost money we can ill afford when we are warned that the council will be forced to cut financial support from services to the sick, the disabled, the young and the elderly. I am elderly. What support have I lost to a tree I wonder?

All the political parties are warning us they may have to cut funding to social services, health and education. These are all vague, ill defined areas of national expenditure, with never any detail. But as I walk about the borough day by day, I see the detail. I see constant evidence that money is being spent unnecessarily. For example I saw a gang of men with a mini excavator and a lorry. They were digging up sturdy granite kerbstones which had probably been there for a hundred years and would easily last another fifty, and replacing them with precast concrete ones which might survive for ten years, or less. They did not need replacing. And in the middle of the road there were potholes left by the freeze, which were not being repaired.

And why were they not being repaired? Because we are nearing the end of the financial year. Money in this year's budget which has not been spent by March 31st will not be carried over. The new budget from April 1st cancels out all the plans from the previous year. Someone noticed that the budget for tree planting and kerbstone replacement had not been spent. Quick, let's spend it before March 31st. There is no money left for road repairs, or home helps, or schools, but there is for kerbstones.

Apparently there is money left for No Entry signs and those blue arrows that tell you traffic is One Way only. There is a block of five streets leading off Blackhorse Lane, which are all one way streets in one direction or the other. Every single one of them now has two brand new No Entry or One Way signs placed one foot in front of the signs that were there already. They stand there one in front of the other, or you could say each one obscuring its predecessor. Presumably the old ones are left standing because although there is money in the budget for new signs, they made no provision for removing the old ones. Surely they could make a District Nurse or a Health Visitor redundant and get the old signs removed? Some of the old signs were a bit bent. There was no budget for straightening them, though there was, apparently, for replacing them with brand new ones.

Social Services are denied resources. Every social worker has an impossible case load. Children are neglected and abused and sometimes killed. Meanwhile, further up Blackhorse Lane, they are digging up more granite kerbstones. But this time they are not replacing them. Some they are putting back a bit further into the road than they had been previously, widening the footpath, narrowing the road. Others are being put back in exactly the same place, but a few centimetres higher than they were before. There is still money in the budget for footpath widening and kerbstone re-aligning.

The above is probably the most miserable blog I have written so far. I try to avoid making my blogs about pubs, in case you think I go to the pub every day of my life. Heaven forbid! But I feel my readers may need cheering up.

So there I was having a quiet drink in a pub called The Bear, in Blue Boar Street in Oxford. They have at least fifty thousand snipped off ends of ties in glass cases. Regimental ties, old school ties, all with little faded handwritten notes pinned to them. One near where I was sitting said "Enugu Sports Club Nigeria, Snooker section 1954." There are so many that some of the glass cases have had to be fixed to the ceiling, no space left on the walls. That day, not a single man in the pub was wearing a tie. The collection is from forty years ago and before, when even students wore ties. So did bus drivers and train drivers.

A young man walked in wearing a suit and tie, American. I knew he was American because it was a bow tie, and because of the way he said "Hi!" to a girl sitting at the table only two feet away from me. Evidently she was waiting for him. She had several carrier bags around her. One looked large enough to contain a pillow. "Hello Honey," said the girl, evidently also American. She opened the large carrier bag and out came an enormous balloon which expanded when released and displayed the message HAPPY 24th BIRTHDAY. She handed him the string. He looked embarrassed and said "Hmm.. I don't think I can take this up to the bar without it causing comment."

"Darling, don't worry about that," said she. "You cannot buy your own drink on your birthday. Let me get it. You just sit there and hold your balloon. What would you like?"

"Some kind of English ale." He hadn't been here for long then. So off she went and came back with what looked like a pint of Guinness. There had evidently been some transatlantic misunderstanding at the bar about what constituted English ale. I was in a pub in York once when an American tourist asked for a pint of York Ale. That was OK though. They gave him a pint of Tetleys. I know they make tea as well as beer, but Guinness, English?

Anyway, you could tell by the way he curled his lip slightly, glancing furtively at the pint glass full of opaque black liquid, then at the enormous embarrassing balloon, that the guy was not enjoying his birthday. She sipped her Coca Cola happily then said, "Oh I nearly forgot!" She rummaged in another of her carrier bags and brought out two tiny pointed paper hats, with elastic. She leaned across the table and put one on his head and one on hers. He watched in horror as she adjusted the elastic under her chin. Reluctantly he did the same. And there they sat in this very quiet and sedate English pub with everybody staring at them fascinated, him looking at his Guinness in disbelief. Was this what Falstaff drank?

I was only two feet away from them. Any minute she might speak to me, ask me something about quaint old England. I drank up and left. I did not stay to see whether he managed to drink his pint of Guinness, nor to wait for what she might produce from the remaining five carrier bags around her feet.

Christmas 2009

We decided to escape Christmas this year. That means not cooking Christmas dinner and not feeding family and friends. We have done that for several years. However, I do admit that other family members and friends have occasionally laid it on for us as well. Last year my Son bought an enormous and exorbitantly expensive lump of beef, which I enjoyed much more than turkey. But we have done lots of Christmases at home. We are on the last lap of our lives and sometimes hanker to be together, just the two of us, cosy, friendly, cuddly and alone. Younger readers, you probably don't realise quite how touchy feely we wrinklies can be, right up to the last gasping breath. If you are ever old and still part of a couple, grab hold and keep cuddling. It will extend your life.

This year we rented a tiny cottage in South Somerset. We took food for breakfasts and snacks and two pieces of fillet steak for Christmas Day. We couldn't be bothered with turkey and all the trimmings, and we expected the village pub would feed us all the other days. This turned out to be a miscalculation. The pub did not do food on Boxing Day either, nor did the pub in the next village, and we had no car to go further afield. So on Boxing Day we had a boiled egg each with baked potato and grated cheese and tomato, followed by an orange. I think I lost some weight, not a bad result.

Our local pub the Bell Inn at Broadway was straight out of Thomas Hardy, wonderful to me, stone flagged floor, blazing log fire, traditional Taunton cider on draught, £2.10p a pint, how strong I did not enquire, but delicious and yes, probably strong. Two gamekeepers talked to us, offered us pheasants for Christmas Day. In retrospect if only we had said yes please! Food at the pub was ordinary, OK, satisfactory. Friends from nearby came over and we all had a jolly meal. Probably microwaved or boil in bag, but tasty nevertheless. Our friends were staying B & B at the pub and went to bed early. We went home. Wife straight to telly, so me back to pub. Landlord now in armchair watching Terminator Two. Barman also watching Treminator Two. Nobody else in pub. I had come out to escape telly, especially reminiscing type telly, best romantic moments, or best standup comics of 2009 etc. Pint of traditional cider. Drank it on my own. Then had to go back home to escape Terminator 2.

Next day, Christmas Eve, walking in crisp sunshine, no snow in Somerset at this time, we discovered the Five Dials at Horton, next village. Lovely clean refurbished country pub, interesting menu. Wheehe! Home cooked real food! Guess what? All tables 100% booked this evening, so no chance of a meal. Excellent local farmhouse Vintage Cider, better than at the Bell and only £2 per pint. Vintage in cider terms usually means two years old, but that's good enough for me. But there would be no food that evening, and they were not doing food Christmas day, nor Boxing Day. Our two friends went home that afternoon.

But it was Christmas Eve, and being in the mood, me anyway, we decided to walk back to the Five Dials early afternoon. On the way we passed the Horton village Post Office where my wife decided to buy a newspaper to read in the pub while I was drinking the cider. Please note it was I who persuaded her to go back to the pub, but it was she who lured me into the Post Office. All would have been well if we had stuck to the pub.

Horton Post Office was the most delightful den of iniquity I have entered in many a long year. I quickly passed by the table full of mince pies labelled "Please help yourself." How could we, we were strangers? But I had read the small print which said "and then have a Christmas drink with us at the counter." Some blind instinct led me straight to the main counter while my wife searched for a copy of The Times or The Guardian. Anything else she does not consider to be a proper newspaper.

It was two o'clock in the afternoon and the staff were affectionately pissed. "Would you like sherry, or white wine?" asked a lady with one eye slightly closed. I wondered whether she had some sort of visual disability then realised that like everybody else, she was mellowly inebriated. I learned years ago as a publican to stop serving anyone who had earlier had two eyes wide open, then came up to the bar with one eye partly or wholly closed. It meant they had become pissed. Anyway, be that as it may, not being in any way responsible for Horton Post Office, "Have you got any red wine?" I asked, with both my eyes open. "Yes Darling, we have 3 litres of red, which we have not yet opened because so far no-one has asked for red, but now you have arrived at last, we will open it for you. In fact I may possibly join you in a glass, or rather a plastic tumbler." With amazing dexterity, since she was so clearly inebriated, she opened a wine box of South African Shiraz, half filled a plastic tumbler which I thought was for me, but she put it on the counter at her side, and before I could protest and say something like, "a little less than that for me please," I found myself in possession of a full half a pint of South African shiraz. And lovely it was and while I was drinking it and my wife was reading The Times and looking at me indulgently (as wives do) I learned the history of the villages of Horton and Broadway, and the family history of the postmistress, which was a bit sad, and also the histories of several other local people. I may possibly have told the lovely lady a few indiscrete anecdotes about my own past, as you do when nearing the bottom of a half pint tumbler of shiraz. Did I have a little top up? I may have. I shall definitely now petition the Government to STOP the closure of rural Post Offices. They are VITAL for the survival of the rural population. Talk about pubs taking over Post Offices. No need for that in Horton, Somerset. The Post Office could take over the pub! Or they might have done before the rebirth of the Five Dials.

As originally intended, we walked to the pub, the Five Dials at Horton, where I had more of the lovely Somerset farmhouse cider, and we were offered plates of four assorted cheeses and biscuits, or if you preferred, garlic bread. And these were not little bits of cheese with sticks, but a proper plateful, with plenty of proper bread. South Somerset seemed very OK to me.

On the way home, we walked past a house with a notice at the gate. "Simon Towler, Master Thatcher - member of the Somerset Master Thatchers Association." I looked at his house, a master thatcher's work of art. "His house must be worth a million pounds," I said to my wise wife. "That is his advertising board," she said. "It's outside the house because he's just renewed the thatch. They let him leave it by the gate. That doesn't mean the house is his." She was right of course, Master Thatcher's name was on a board leaning against the bank by the front gate. Apparently Mrs Thatcher's son was not as wealthy as I thought.

So, no food at Horton on Christmas Eve, left us no alternative but down to the Bell at Broadway. We had a meal, just the two of us, in front or a wonderful roaring log fire. We were the only two customers in the pub, apart from the landlord who produced our meals, and the barman. When we had finished eating, the two of them were glued to the television; so guess what, we walked to the Five Dials at Horton. It had about a hundred customers. All the tables in the dining area were occupied as they had said they would be and all the other customers were still being offered cheese and garlic bread as they had at lunchtime, and there were several labrador dogs, some of which spoke to us. It was a very happy and friendly place. They had told us in the drinking Post Office that afternoon that the Five Dials had been closed for a year and a half, and then this young couple had bought it and refurbished it, and it had been open for six weeks. Paul and Sarah, who were making a success of it, had been redundant bankers. I wish them well. They decided not to stay on and wait for the extravagant bonuses the banks would pay this year after we had bailed them out. Perhaps they had no choice and were made redundant, as lots were. To be fair, I don't think they were from the upper echelons of banking. Most people who work in banks earn quite modest salaries. I suspect that Paul and Sarah escaped with moderate success, enough to refurbish the Five Dials. And now they were running it well. They deserve to succeed. I don't suppose they will ever read this though. But I might just go back to see them. I never did get to sample their cooked food, just the cheese and garic bread.

More about London pubs

One reason I am interested in pubs is because in the remote past I was a publican. Leaving aside the bit where I foolishly opted out of Oxford University and became a trainee hotel manager, and leaving out the period when I became Assistant Manager of the Sefton Hotel, Babbacombe, Devon (one of my 58 different jobs), in 1956 I was Bar Manager and cellarman at Shepherds Tavern, Shepherds Market. Mayfair, London W.1. It used to be a pub for the posh people who lived in the area, and the performers on Radio Luxembourg. If you are old enough to remember when pop music came from Radio Luxembourg, Your Station of the Stars, and Hilversum (Dames an Heeren, Jonges an Mechas, heer is Hilversum Ein), spelling probably wrong but that's how it sounded, Dutch, before pirate radio and long before Radio One, those Luxembourg broadcasts did not come from Luxembourg City, but were pre-recorded in studios at 38 Hertford Street, round the corner from Shepherds. Radio Luxembourg invented the Top Twenty in 1948. So regular customers in my bar were people like Alan Dell, Alan Freeman, Jimmy Young, Kenny Everett, Jimmy Savile, and sometimes Jimmy Edwards (handlebar moustache). I have no idea what he had to do with Radio Luxembourg, but perhaps he lived round the corner, as did Stirling Moss. Jimmy Edwards drank only halves, but lots of them.

In my time off, I used to do the odd shift behind the bar at the Grenadier, Old Barrack Yard, off Knightsbridge, helping out my mate Tom (forgotten his second name, but they still have a photo of him in the bar.) I think it was he who invented the particular version of the Bloody Mary for which the Grenadier is now famous. One Sunday afternoon after closing time (pubs used to close in the afternoon) we decided to find out what was buried under a mound in the cellar floor. The Grenadier was once the unofficial officers' mess for the Duke of Wellington's Regiment, and in 1957 the back end of the cellar had an earth floor. In a corner, the earth floor had a small but distinct  mound. That Sunday afternoon Tom, me and Phil a barman from the Dorchester decided to excavate it.

About six inches down, we found an earthenware flagon, carefully corked, with the cork covered in oilcloth tied tight with string and sealed with wax. We chipped off the wax, removed the cloth, looked at the cork. Not a cork as in bottle, but about three and a half inches in diameter. We decided a corkscrew would break it up, so a very sharp knife was fetched from the kitchen and we eased it away from the neck of the jar and lifted it out in one piece. Unmistakably alcoholic fumes enveloped us. We all breathed deeply, amazed.

"Better get glasses," said Tom sensibly, and went off to get some. Came back with Paris Goblets - that's a small wineglass to the uninitiated. We poured an amber liquid from the stone jar into our three glasses. It was like thin golden syrup, but it smelled so divine we had to taste it. It was syrupy indeed, but nutty, alcoholic and delicious. We had a glass each and decanted the rest into bottles and corked them.

The stone jar was embossed with the name of a Chelsea wine merchant. We looked them up in the telephone directory and found they no longer existed. Tom took the empty jar to his friend who ran Gordons Wine Bar in Villiers Stree by Charing Cross. His friend was an expert on the history of booze and also London. He recognised the Chelsea merchant and told us they were importers and distributors of Madeira wine, who went bust in 1847. This suggested that our jar was at least 100 years old. Apparently it was not surprising that the contents were still alcoholic. At that time Madeira was fortified with large amounts of brandy and would last at least 100 years. Had it been in a bottle it would have been worth a fortune. But it was a bit viscous, so we added  a bit of brandy to thin it down, and drank it gradually and with great joy over the following twelve months, or perhaps less.

The reason my thoughts strayed to pubs in Mayfair and Knightsbridge (not areas I visit much, now I live near the Lea Valley and Waltham and Epping Forests, far away from central London), was that I had to attend the Annual General Meeting of the London Branch of the Old Petriburgians Assocation at the Wilton Arms in Kinnerton Street. The only real purpose of the meeting was to decide where we were going to have our next dinner, usually same place as last year, and the year before. We try to make the AGM as short as possible, re-electing everybody nem con, so that we can concentrate on the lamb hotpot they always do at the Wilton Arms, and of course the wine. All very enjoyable, but the other members are city types and none of them lives in London, so they have to get home. So off they go and there I am on my own.

The Grenadier is just around the corner. I poke my head around the door. It is packed with loud Americans and there is no chance of getting to the bar without employing a fixed bayonet, so I decide to carry on to Hertford Street and Shepherds. It has gone down in the world. Gone is the notice which used to say "No dogs except Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, by order of His Majesty King Charles 11, 1671." I do not think the present building could have been there in that year, but in my day it did have a genuine sedan chair as a telephone booth. It also had a notice saying "Unaccompanied ladies will not be served." So the good ladies who stood guard in Hertford Street could not get a drink until they had solicited a gentleman who was not in too much of a hurry. But now Shepherds has two television screens and a wooden boarded floor. The floorboards are probably old, but do they not know that Shepherds was the first pub in London to have a fitted carpet, wall to wall?

Michael Aspel used to come in for half of Guinness. I bet he doesn't drink there now. Long before him I remember the Marquess of Milford Haven (Mrs Queen's cousin) coming in and asking for a box of matches. Of course we sold matches in those days, two pence a box. He handed over a five pound note. They were white in those days. Most people earned less than five pounds in a week. Brenda, our cockney barmaid of considerable but indeterminable age was not nonplussed. She had worked in Mayfair for thirty years, so she had seen a white fiver before, even if I had not. She held it up to the light, decided it was OK, put it in the till, leaving the till drawer open. She gave his Lordship the box of matches then took from the safe a five pound bag of copper coins, opened it, removed two pence from it which she put into the till. She handed the bag of coins to his Lordship and before he had time to protest, which he was about to do, Brenda said firmly, "Legal tender Milord." "Indeed it is," said the Marquess, "and thank you so much." As he went out of the door, several of the customers clapped their hands. Brenda did not acknowledge their applause.

I sat on a stool at the end of the bar looking dignified. Some young men came in and one of them came up to me and said, "Nice pub you have here sir."
"Its not actually my pub," I said, "but it was 52 years ago."
"Impossible," he said, "you don't look old enough." Well of course I don't and I don't feel that old, but I take no credit for that. It just happens to some people and not others.

So I sat on my stool in Shepherds and remembered. Moira Shearer used to come in with her husband Ludovik Kennedy. They sometimes had a drink in the bar, but more often went straight upstairs to the very discreet retaurant on the first floor. One of my regulars in the bar was Prince Hassan of Afghanistan, a sweet little man who invited me to a party in a flat in Bryanston Street, at the back of the Cumberland Hotel. That was an eye-opener. I had been there for at least an hour before I realised that everybody, even the ones in dresses and skirts, was male, and that everybody but me was gay, even the very senior Naval and Army officers, in uniform. Interestingly the RAF was not represented. It needed considerable diplomacy to exit past the very butch and muscular doormen, who I had assumed were there to keep undesirables out, though they seemed to want to keep me in. The Prince came into Shepherds the following evening and apologised. "I'd never seen you with a girl," he said, "so I assumed you were one of us." Well he'd only ever seen me when I was working. I wonder if he's still alive. He'd be in his seventies now, probably the King.

You can get a 38 bus in Piccadilly to Clapton Pond, where you change to a 48 to Walthamstow Central. I prefer buses to tubes when I have time to spare. You see more. Of course Victoria Line from Green Park would have halved the journey time. Either way for us OAP's it's free with a Freedom Pass. Wonderful!