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!

I don't know how you can live in London

I have lived in many different parts of Britain and I keep in touch with friends who live all over the place. But when they ask me, "What is it like living in London?" I don't know where to start.

If they go to London, they go to Kings Cross or Paddington or Victoria, then on to Oxford Street, Piccadilly, Leicester Square, or the museums in South Ken. But most of London is not like that. Where I live, in a one way street in Walthamstow, I step out of my house and cross the road without looking, because I know that if a vehicle was coming, I would hear it. There is no congestion here. I was in Crouch End the other day, and Barnet the week before. Both are really small towns about the same size as Wooten Bassett, with a main street and a war memorial and a branch of the British Legion. Most of the people who live there don't go to central London any more frequently than theatregoers from Bradford.

I'll tell you what I did this morning. I left the house at five to nine, crossed over Blackhorse Lane, along to the green sign which said "Public Footpath." Three minutes. Another three minutes walking between the factories, incidentally with people still working in them (we could not possibly fund the "recovery" if lots of people were not still working, which they do in Walthamstow).

So, six minutes from home and I am in a green lane by the River Lee Flood Relief Channel. It carries the surface water from large parts of north London down to the Thames, often empty or in Summer with just a trickle of water down the middle, but today nearly full and flowing fast. Loads of blackberries on either side, not now because it is December, but when they were ripe, a gargantuan feast, and because hardly anyone walks along there, so the blacberries ripen and grow luscious and juicy and in summer I gorgeously breakfast on them. There are some very prestigious houses, with solar panels and balconies set high, with views across the reservoirs, so long established that they are lakes, teeming with wildfowl and fish. There are some smaller houses, more modest, with gardens near the path. There is a line in "The Lady's Not For Burning" by Christopher Fry about a "black and frosted rosebud preserved since last October, surviving in December." Well this morning I saw a rose bush with yellow roses in full and magnificent bloom, on the 7th December 2009. Global warming, or global warming? I ask you.

After a while the path leads you to a signpost; to the right 2 miles to Walthamstow Town Centre (who wants to go there?) or left 0 miles to Tottenham Marshes. Just a bit of open space where you see rabbits and sometimes birds of prey hovering, then skimming down to scoop up an unfortunate mouse. It used to be a lot more wild, but now the Council has laid a neat gravel path and some persons in vehicles have constructed a circular dirt track round the open ground where the birds of prey used to hunt. The birds probably don't care about the vehicles and still hunt anyway, at different times of the year. Anyway, last Thursday morning there were no vehicles, and no birds of prey. All was quiet as I walked across the marsh.

Over the bridge to cross the old River Lee, then up to the tow path by the River Lee Navigation, constructed in the eighteenth century when the old river became no longer navigable. Willow trees over the water and herons. I can't say the herons were fishing. They were catching no fish, but they were stately, still, looking into the water. If they saw a fish I had no doubt they would catch it. There used to be a pub on the Navigation called the Narrow Boat, now closed, near Tottenham Lock. You entered it from the towpath through the garden. So if you were coming out of the pub, back to the towpath, you would also come through the garden, which I did once, fairly full of cider, and out through the gateway I found myself confronted, one foot in front of me, by a heron. Do you know they are four and a half feet high? It stood before me and looked me in the eye, then turned disdainfully away and flapped its wings, total wingspan at least six feet, across to the other bank, where it settled, stood and stared at me again. Contempt. I had disturbed it. I totally understood.

My mobile phone rang. Should have switched it off. It was Dorothee from the film company. Yes that's how she spells it, with a double ee and yes, OAP though I am, I have a part as an extra in a film. "Norman, you've told me you will be able to be dressed in a dark suit, and I said we would provide the dog collar if we decide you need to be a vicar." "Yes, I certainly can't provide my own. I don't even have a dog any more, he died." "Well, we may not want you to be a vicar. Just in case, could you also manage a white shirt and a respectable tie?" "How about a regimental tie?" "Oh, that would be wonderful Norman."

I have no regimental tie, having never belonged to a regiment, but I have supported the Lifeboats for many years, and I was in a bar once, wearing the RNLI 175th Anniversary Tie, and a man said to me, "Ah ha, I see you were in the Tank Corps." "No," said I, "the RNLI."  "Oh my gosh, a lifeboatman." "No," said I, " a supporter and fundraiser, not a lifeboatman." I suppose if you are as old as me, some people are aware that you might possibly have been anything they can imagine. So that's the tie I will wear, in this film which is called "Bad Night for the Blues." I thought it was about music, but when I read the script I realised it was about trouble at a Conservative Club Christmas Party. So I either play the part of a Conservative regimental tie wearing gent, or a vicar. I will report later. I have been an extra in a film before. You usually spend a lot of time sitting around waiting to be called. I shall take a book to read. I once played a football fan with a striped scarf and one of those rattles they had in the sixties which made a lot of wooden noise. I think the film was called "Rattle of a Simple Man."

So, over the bridge and along the towpath by the willows. One cyclist passes me and a lone jogger in sagging black tights with little shorts above them. If you came this way in Summer, you might get mown down by hordes of cyclists, but not today. Today lots of swans, in families. Last year's cygnets are nearly as big as their parents now. You can only tell that they're cygnets by their colour, which is dull light brown but just beginning to be mottled and streaked with white. Humans start brown and become white, so evidently we have something in common, except swans go white in year two. Did you know swans live a long time? Aldous Huxley wrote a book called "After Many a Summer" and I think that's a quote from W Shakespeare - "after many a summer dies the swan."

Anyway, I walk on along the towpath in the sunshine. Lots of narrowboats and some houseboats, with buckets of coal, little windmill generators, bicycles and plants growing in window boxes on the roof. One had a box of soil growing cabbages. In summer you see them with lettuces and tomatoes. Some have little mock Tudor mullioned bay windows. Through the windows you can see the breakfast dishes piled up by the sink. Life is lived in these boats. Sometimes, because the River Lee Navigation is wide enough, you see huge barges converted into roomy houseboats. I saw one this morning, Gerontius from Wigan. I wonder how long it took them to get here from Wigan. A slightly smaller one Francis of Oak from Rochester, and Lincolnshire Poacher from Braunstone.

"The Lee Valley Canoe and Cycle Hire Centre" used to be a pub called The Waterside. We used to sit out on the riverside terrace, eating steak and salad and feeding the very well fed fish which congregated there among the swans and ducks, all competing for the scraps of food thrown in by the diners. Fishing was not allowed, but on the opposite bank we often saw anglers catching nothing.

Across Stonebridge Lock and on to the opposite bank and onward towards Tottenham Hale. As we get nearer to Ferry Lane at Tottenham, not one but two huge Thames Sailing Barges. The scale marked on the bow tells you they only draw two and a half feet in the water. One looks brand new but they are traditionally built, with tall masts and furled brown tarpaulin sails, no leisure cabins but proper working holds. They are moored alongside a timber yard so presumably still actively working, taking timber down to the Olympic site perhaps.

Up the cobbled slope at Tottenham Lock, ridged to stop the horses hooves from slipping in the days when they used horses to pull the barges down to Limehouse Basin and the Thames. So, along Ferry Lane past a very nice pub called the Ferry Boat (excellent food) and on to Blackhorse Lane and home. I looked at my watch. It was ten o'clock. I had been walking for over an hour and it was time for breakfast. Just another day for a pensioner who enjoys living in peaceful rural London.

Adventures of an Elderly Tube Traveller

Victoria line to Walthamstow. At Oxford Circus like sardines
but upright like the terracotta army cheek by jowl
and from the corner of my eye, sideways I saw your deep brown eyes
your flawless skin, your thoughtful gaze. I fantasized and thought
of Africa, or Trinidad or some exotic paradise, though probably
you came from Tottenham Hale.

At Warren Street, the train was jolted to a sudden halt
and you were hurled at me. At first your eyes,
the brown eyes I had seen before, were close to mine,
then I became aware that two small breasts were pressed
quite intimately on my elderly and venerable chest,
and I was holding you, secure and firmly,
to prevent you falling, and I knew you understood.
I carefully restored you to an upright situation,
and your eyes, an inch from mine smiled in conspiracy
and my eyes smiled in similarity I think.

But it was half a smile
for that was all we dared to make.
I looked into your soul, a millisecond only.
We were one. You felt it too, and then
we were two solitary travellers. We knew
That we would never meet again.
Our eyes smiled briefly, but of course
our faces did not share the smile.

And then a new young woman offers me her seat.
Thank you. That means she sees that I am old.
Of course I know the many years that I have travelled
but I did not know how much it showed.
I thank her and sit down,
now separated from my dusky love.

I look around the carriage and behold,
another lady smiles at me. She is
A little more mature, voluptuous even
one might say, but this is a warm
come hither smile, so I smile back
an open smile, no hesitancy this time,
a bit young for me
but what the heck?
Then she gets off
at Highbury and Islington.

I look back for the dusky one
the Underground had thrown at me.

I am alone. I did not see her go.

Buckingham Palace

Monday night I went to Buckingham Palace, well not exactly Buck House itself and not to meet Mrs Queen herself. It was a reception for Fellows of the Royal Society of Arts in the Queen's Gallery of Buckingham Palace to look at some pictures, drink some wine and eat some canapes, all very nice, but lots of shuffling around, which is hard on the knees of an old fogey. There were plenty of Chippendale chairs which looked very comfortable, but I assumed, I think correctly, that they were not there for the likes of me to sit upon. But there were benches in the middle of each room, such as you see in most art galleries and I finally found a space on one, bumping bottoms with a lady simultaneously sitting the other side of the bench at the same time, and how we laughed and apologised and so on, and all was well.

I found that by sitting still on the observation bench you were more likely to have your glass filled up by the circulating young persons, than if you continued shuffling around in front of the pictures. Similarly you got offered a regular supply of food titbits. I once went to a Buckingham Palace garden party (as a guest - it was my illustrious wife who was actually invited), and it was there that I learned that royal sandwiches are rectangular, with no crusts, about the size of three and a half postage stamps. Well, royal canapes are much more amazing, or maybe not - my knowledge of such things is quite limited. Anyway, as you know they are titbits of food on a small round biscuit which you can pick up, pop into your mouth, chew a bit and swallow in one go. But that is not the whole story. These were little miniscule meals. Never mind your prawn cocktail on a biscuit, anybody can do that, but I had several Sunday dinners on biscuits. A tiny curl of rare roast beef, a bit of leaf (Sprout? Who knows?) a dob of really tasty jelly-gravy. I expected this to be on a little round biscuit, and indeed it was, but the thinnest of thin biscuits, and between the biscuit and the beef, veg and gravy, it was mashed potato, faintly buttery, exquisite. I ate about a dozen of them. Sunday dinners for very little people, but it makes my mouth water, remembering them.

When I first arrived, I watched the guests arriving after me. The invitation had said "Lounge Suits" so I was in my bank manager and funeral suit, obviously accompanied by collar and tie. My wife calls it the power suit. Then to my horror I saw two young men arrive, indeed in suits, but without ties. They were admitted. How the world has changed. I cannot imagine going to Buck House with an open necked shirt, can you? Of course you can't.

Well it was very pleasant talking about Rembrandt to the lady on the other side of my bench, whose bum I had accidentally bumped, then I noticed a man in the passing throng who got my undivided attention.

He looked exactly like me. I see myself in the mirror every morning, so I  know what I look like, bald head, bit of grey hair round the baldness, grey beard tending towards white around the chin, like Sean Connery with glasses. In fact I have several times been mistaken for Sean Connery and on one occasion gave a child his autograph. So this man looked exactly like me.

Having had several glasses of wine, I ventured up to said gentleman and said "Excuse me. I hope you won't think me impertinent, but every morning when I look in the mirror I see you." He said he had spotted me earlier and thought the same thing. His wife said "You look more like his brother than his brother does."

So, there he was, my doppelganger. Apparently we were born within months of each other. I asked him "Have you ever been mistake for someone famous?" Guess what he said. Of course you guessed it, Sean Connery, though he had never gone so far as to give an autograph. We have agreed to meet again to find out what else we have in common. I hope we do not cause a rupture of the space/time continuum, or a black hole, or a variation of history, future or past. Oh, I forgot to say, we not only look alike facially, we are the same height and shape. I will find out, but I bet you we weigh the same.

I will report in a later blog.