A LONDON PARTICULAR

There was a knock at the sleeper compartment door. “Breakfast”, a chirpy voice came from without. Bleary-eyed and stupid, I opened the door. “”Where are we?” I asked, with some petulance. Her look told me she had no idea. I said: “We’re late. When will we arrive in London?” “Half-past seven,” she replied, desperately. I looked at my watch. It read ten-past. We weren’t even at Watford Junction yet. In fact, for all she knew, looking at the sheep and cattle dotted all over the place, we might as well be just south of Penrith. We scraped into Euston 75 minutes later, well behind the game. I visited the toilet on my way from the train. The door was one of those daft curved gizmos driven by hydraulics. It didn’t seem to be working. In temper, I yanked at the door handle. The contraption slid easily open. On the other side, a woman was doing her hair in the mirror. She gazed at me steadfastly. I apologised profusely. She went on her way and I belted from the train before the Transport Police arrived. I walked to Pall Mall. I noticed something peculiar about Trafalgar Square – no pigeons. The reason soon became apparent. A little square man with the pugnacious look of Bob Hoskins was brandishing a ferocious-looking Gyr Falcon on a leather glove. Every now and then it flew off on a length of rope, came back to his glove, and received a bit of a mouse’s anatomy as a reward. I chaired my meeting. We had the privilege of an expert speaker. I had wanted to hear him sally forth on a range of issues about which he was an acknowledged expert, but the rest of the Group seemed to take a delight in sallying forth themselves about the same range of issues, talking mainly gibberish, so, in the end, the expert gave up and left the building. I walked to London Kings Cross after I had closed the meeting. I had part of my lunch in a doggy-bag for later. I had bought a first-class ticket. The return ticket from Edinburgh had cost me £270. It would have been cheaper to have chartered a helicopter. I had hoped for some peace and quiet. The young man who sat across the table from me ensured my nerves were scoured as if with a Brillo pad by the end of the journey. He plugged in his laptop, plugged a mobile phone wire into the back of it and proceeded to make thirty-six consecutive telephone calls. I know – I counted them all. He started every call with the phrase ‘Hello, Mate.’ I wondered what he said when he walked into the Co-operative store to buy a powdered milk substitute – “Hello, Mate, Can I have a Coffee-mate, mate?” I plugged one of this tiny pod things into my ear and turned it on. The Pet Shop Boys were singing “A storm is coming soon/To blow us all away/Like dust on the moon.” I wished that a storm would come and blow him and his dratted telephone away, and the moon would be just about far enough. As we sped through Berwick-upon-Tweed, the Welsh lady announcer, National Express’s answer to Gladys Pugh, so enthusiastic she almost thumped a tail, thanked me warmly for travelling National Express. “I suppose,” I remarked back to the tannoy “It beats flying.”