Don’t know about you, but I am still feeling a bit windswept after Doris Day. It took me five hours to get home yesterday. Quite the adventure to be honest. Sensing things were going to be problematical I snuck off uncharacteristically early. On finding that no trains were leaving Liverpool Street I went up to Kings Cross where there was even more of a bun-fight going on. So I went back to Liverpool Street. Still nothing doing. At that point the sainted Mrs S offered to drive down to Epping at the end of the Central Line to collect me. A mere 2 hour round trip for her given a fair wind. I got the tube into deepest darkest Essex only to hear that Sophie was stuck in gridlocked traffic just short of the M11. She had been stationary for 40 minutes and there appeared to be little prospect of getting anywhere anytime soon. What a to do. What to do indeed?
Wandering about the outskirts of Epping I stumbled upon three strangers and an opportunistic taxi driver who were heading north to a little place called Stansted Mountfitchet. This was broadly speaking in the right direction so once I established there was a pub in the village, I asked if I could join them and we set off. An hour later we arrived by which time we were bezzas. One of them, a lady, invited me home with her, but Sophie was now at least making some progress across country so I politely declined, went into the pub, ordered a pint of Greene King IPA and a packet of ox-flavoured crisps and settled down to watch the Spurs/Ghent match. I was halfway down my second pint and Spurs were one-nil up when Sophie arrived, my disappointment at having to leave heightened by the fact that the bar man was also setting the place up for Quiz Night. Could have been such a good evening!
It was best I left when I did I suppose. Spurs went on to lose the tie and by the time we got home it was very late, the euphoria of my journey was wearing off and I was tired. Furthermore Doris had played havoc with my hair – not good for the self esteem –, my dodgy knee ached after all the roaming I had done and I was feeling additionally sensitive one of my teeth having crumbled the day before. A visit to the dentist and some deep drilling was another highlight yesterday and I am on the way to one more crown in my mouth and one less grand in my pocket. I don’t mind telling you a slight sense of melancholy was closing in on me as I went to bed.
It was in this somewhat introspective, reflective mood that found myself reaching for the comfort of an old diary. I opened it at 14th November 1982. Anyone heard of the band Teardrop Explodes? It appears I missed the opportunity of seeing them and adding to the sum total of just two concerts ( the Jam and the Corries ) I had been to at that point in my life.
In my defence the band had never really hit the heights of, say, the Corries, and were approaching the end of their existence when they came to play at the De Montfort Hall in Leicester that year, but my diary reads that although my room mate and his girlfriend had bought me a ticket and nagged me to come with them I declined and stayed in my room watching the Horse of the Year Show on TV instead. Re-reading one’s diary can be a salutary experience. Mine is a frequent reminder that I was not your normal teenager. I didn’t even ride for goodness sake.
Talking of teeth and abnormal teenagers, things have been ratcheting up somewhat in South America. After the picture of the dove he had knocked out of the sky with a well aimed stone last week, yesterday morning an uncommonly detailed email arrived from Bob talking about his latest adventures and with photos of a piranha he’d caught and some caymanny/crocodile looking thing, both with razor teeth bared and which were in a lake he’d been swimming in a little earlier.
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