London Place 16: Oxford and Cambridge

The town where I went to university, St Andrews, would, amongst its many claims to fame, assert that it had the most pubs per square foot of anywhere in Britain. Whatever the dubious truth of that, those pubs did not, at least in my day, match the beauty of the town.

Some of them were fine. I spent many happy hours etc ... but the best of them were perfunctorily cosy, the worst of them were rammed hellholes. Most of the pubs in St Andrews were either trying to attract students in to drink so much that they puked, or repel students so that locals could drink so much the puked.

Considering it is a town surrounded by sea, none of them had a sea view. I also don't remember there being any great pub gardens (tbf, I was there all year round apart from the summer but I just don't think they were there).

Apart from some twee golf theming in a few, most of them could have been anywhere, not in one of Britain's most distinctly beautiful towns. Looking back, there are only one or two I hold in any affection, and they were nothing other than well-run, not overly busy, Irish chain pubs which had a decent quiz machine.

Whereas the pubs of home, the pubs of summer, they were a fine bunch.

If I was to explain where I grew up in one pat phrase, I'd describe it as Fuller's country. Even as a child, when I wasn't interested in the product, the brand and its buildings were everywhere - Ealing, Chiswick, Barnes etc every other pub is a Fuller's pub. The brewery is in Chiswick. You can't miss it.

There was also the Mortlake brewery (not Fuller's, went through a few hands before closing in 2015) which we could sometimes smell from school. And if it wasn't Fuller's, especially heading further south, it was Young's (based in Wandsworth).

From my teens to my early 20s, it was nearly always the pubs clustered round both sides of the Thames in Hammersmith and Barnes. North of the river, The Black Lion, The Ship, The Dove, The Rutland, The Blue Anchor, The Old City Arms (there were also reasons to meet up in Hammersmith Broadway's less picturesque Hop Poles and William Morris, but let's ignore them for now). South of the River, The White Hart, The Bull's Head, The Sun Inn, The Red Lion, The Old Rangoon/Garden House/Brown's (now a nursery, I see), The Bridge (plus there were a couple of others I never went to).

They were good pubs. They had river views, gardens, good beer, people I knew. They'd been around for years and they knew they'd always have as many of West London's well to do young and old as they needed passing through.

I had good times in all of them. Usually not epic glorious nights filled with romance and intrigue, just pleasant enough evenings. The nights young men have. Occasionally some drama, but not much.

Then there's the Oxford and Cambridge. I passed by the Oxford and Cambridge, on my way somewhere else, around 5000 times (literally). And only ever felt the urge to go in once (it would have been a bit odd if I'd wanted to go in when I was an 8 year old boy on his way to school, but still ...). The day I went in was the last day of school. There were a lot of "last days of school" of course - last day before exams, last day of exams, exams result day - all of which involved celebratory trips to local pubs, but I'm pretty sure this was the official last day of school, and Wieland and I, for some reason, took ourselves to the Oxford and Cambridge at midday for one pint and a roll-up. We were the only people in there.

The Oxford and Cambridge was the saddest thing with its "hey, we're a boat race pub" name, with its vast separated desolation. It shut in 2006 for good, but in the 20 years before that, whenever I passed it, it never looked open. Where all those other pubs had, in their way, an ideal situation which made being a good pub hard to fuck up, the Oxford and Cambridge was so near but so far away, on Hammersmith Bridge Road, no more than a very short walk from the river, but on the corner which went up to the slip road to the Great West Road flyover. It was bleak, always bleak.

Perhaps it survived for decades because it served kids. Perhaps that's why Wieland and I went there that day. I don't recall. But the other places served kids too. And why would anyone ever go to the Oxford and Cambridge if they knew that the Rutland and Blue Anchor, with their outside rows of benches overlooking the sun setting idyllically on the Thames, were only a couple of hundred metres away?

Businesses, especially eating and drinking places, that don't work intrigue and sadden me. Usually you know immediately they've opened, wonder how long they'll struggle on, wonder if the owners know they're on to a loser. I remember going past a pub in some unprepossessing part of London, and the pub was called "Inn the Middle of Nowhere" and I thought, ha, ha, that's funny, and the pub was boarded up. And I thought haha that's funny, but in a different way.

Or sometimes there's a business that does work, that deserves to work, and then something changes, something out of their control, and you know they'll never work again. That happened for a really nice coffee shop in the town where I live now. I used to take the baby there when she was tiny and I was trying to get her to sleep. It was thriving, it was classy, it was packed. Then somewhere cheaper opened next door, a Wimpy-like chain place which does coffees and milk shakes and burgers and has big seating outside. Sometimes places can survive a healthy rival (eg the Blue Anchor and Rutland have been bang next door to each other for decades and it's never done either of them any harm), but the geography of the street just means the coffee shop, where once it was part of things, is cut off, sparse, miserable, and is just now in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Just like the Oxford and Cambridge.

London Place 15: Chatkhara

I lived in a 1st floor flat on Balham Hill, just down from Clapham South tube station, for four years precisely. I really liked it there. The flat itself was an oddity, with some long corridors and diagonals,  rooms narrowing to a point, holes in walls, peculiar substances stuffed in cracks. But it just about worked. I had the bigger room at the back (having had the smaller room in the previous flat). We lived above a chemist's. The pharmacist was our landlord, a fair but intimidating man called Mr Amin.

There was (nearly) everything you needed round there. Burger King to the left, pub across the street, newsagent two doors down, supermarket 3 minutes away opposite the tube station (I'll get back to the tube station).

I used to go to an internet cafe (remember them) when our broadband was being set up or struggling, there was an old-school everything-in-one-place hardware store, a beloved cafe called Fuel, and, of course, curry places. There was what claimed to be Britain's Number 1 Pakistani restaurant, which was pretty good but joyless, there was a supercheap kebab place which also did tupperwares of rice and korma/tikka/jalfrezi which I'd get on the way back from running quizzes.

I started my current job at pretty much exactly the time we moved in (early 2006) so that was the life I lived there. Work in the day, in the flat, which took a bit of getting used to, then out 2 or 3 nights every week to run a quiz somewhere, usually in London, but in those years a fair few out of town - Nottingham, Leamington Spa, Edinburgh, Holland, Eastbourne, all over the place. 

I once got back at 3am from running a quiz in Bristol to find the flat had been broken into, through my bedroom window at the back. Mikey returned from a pub shift at almost exactly the same time. One or both of us must have disturbed them (presumably looking for drugs from the chemist below). Almost nothing had been taken, just a bag and a hoodie of mine. The police came the next day and asked if the thieves had ransacked my room. I said no, not really. They said I might want to tidy my room a bit more.

I ran Clapham Common itself so many times. That's a place I really know the geography of, every root and puddle. Time gaps between each landmark. Variety was not for me, I just liked to go round and round the same perimeter. For a few months, I was getting somewhere fast, faster each week, thinking, still in my 20s, only one clot in, no broken legs, thinking I still had real pace in me.

My fastest laps of the common, I'd just had a weekend off, drinking and smoking at a music festival. Thought I'd ease myself back into running on the Monday, found my legs were fresh and fast. Still, couldn't really believe the speed. Thought I'd check the next day. 15 seconds faster again. 

Never managed that time again. Couldn't even figure how I'd done it, section for section, minute for minute.

Because of that thought that I might have real speed in me, I put too much emphasis on getting thin when I was training for marathons. Didn't eat most of the day then would have a curry in the evening.

The two places I loved - one was called Holy Cow, which was just delivery, claimed to be healthier than the average, and so I used to eat accordingly. And Chatkhara, one opposite Clapham South, one just by Tooting Bec (where I'd live for the two years after Clapham). Loved that place. A restaurant, but no frills, decked out like a cafe. Always full of Asian guys chatting at the tables, while the takeaway side was often drunken city workers dropping in for their astutely-priced "tikka roll" on the way home.

The food was in trays under the counter, no glam, no illusions, they made the naan in front of you. Best naans I've ever had. Best jalfrezi. I'd always go, take a look at what was on offer, order and wait, rather than eat in or look for delivery. I just loved watching the naan get made.

I'd sit and wait, watching the crowds leaving the tube station on the corner, often being cajoled, entertained or berated by Terry, the local homeless fixture. It's one of those grand, elegant tube station facades, Clapham South, unchanged since it was opened in 1926. Being that nudge further south, Clapham South was less hazardous and packed than Clapham Common and North stations, which were pretty unbearable to commute from. There's a lot going on round all the sides of the common, a lot of history, layers of culture, obviously the reputation for a certain kind of oblivious young graduate. To me, that little section at the south corner was the part that was most comfortable in its own skin.

I liked it round there. City living of a sort. Fun and games, football matches and broken limbs. 2006 to 2010. Things were changing then, though, insidiously. City boys and smashed bottles. I don't even know what I mean.

London Place 14: Waterman's

Waterman's is an arts centre by the Thames in Brentford, on the High Street before you get to Kew Bridge.

This is the past world that lines my brain, my imagination. 

Waterman's opened in the mid-80s, I remember it opening, but I'm not sure it ever seemed shiny, new and chic. It was just there.

We popped in quite often, though I'm not always sure for what. Maybe children's theatre or a modern art exhibition or maybe just a cup of tea after going to Kew Gardens. I'm not sure it always filled me with joy to go there. It seemed quite a grown-up place.

My mother used to go to Almodovar films there, which is quite a cool thing for a mother to be doing.

I only remember going to the cinema (which was just a small screen downstairs) myself three times, though there may be more I've forgotten.

Firstly, The Little Mermaid, in 1989, the year it came out. This is significant to me because it's the last Disney animation I saw at the cinema (until Frozen 2 a couple of years ago) and indeed marks a landmark moment where cartoons, and by association "childish things", were over for me.

I definitely liked The Little Mermaid but by the time Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin came out, I was past it. I think I did end up seeing The Lion King on TV in the late 90s, but didn't love it, and really, between 1989 and 2016, I watched very few cartoons of any sort - more fool me, you'd say.

So that trip to see The Little Mermaid as a 10-year-old feels significant.

Secondly, Dead Poet's Society. Although it came out in 1989, I'm pretty certain it wasn't until 1991 that I went to see it at Waterman's. Come to think of it, I reckon it was the 90/91 Christmas holiday, a period when I'd been in a degree of disgrace over a shockingly bad school report, so this was one of the few times I was let out on a leash.

We had an English teacher who'd taught us for the last couple of years who had delusions of Williamsisms, and there'd been lots of chat about Dead Poet's Society in class, so I guess I was catching up. The damage that that English class did to many of us, with an angry man coming up against the limits of his personal charisma and gradually unloading it on a set of boys he thought ought to be responding to his brilliance with their own brilliance, well, that's a whole 'nother story.

Anyway, we stood on no tables for him, let me say that.

I loved Dead Poet's Society nevertheless. Was manipulated to sobs of anguish. As I left the cinema, barely composed, I was confronted by a boy from two years' below, a boy who was large, camp, excessively mature, had probably been having a rough time in the immaturely homophobic environments of an early 90s English prep school. "It was a lovely film, wasn't it, David?" he smiled as I tried to avoid him. "Mmmhmm" I grunted as I scuttled off, recognising even at that moment how much more grown-up than me this kid was, that he had one over on me but unquestionably wouldn't use it.

Lastly, The Big Lebowski, in the summer of 1998. I'm not quite sure why I took myself down to Waterman's on my own that afternoon. It was a solid half hour's walk, through Little Ealing, down South Ealing Road, under the M4 past the GSK builiding and Griffin Park, past the Pepperpot, past that grotty pub on the corner.

That was the way to drive to lots of places, to Chiswick, Richmond, Sheen, Barnes, to my grandmother's in Walton-on-the-Hill where we went very regularly up until she died in 1994. That Ealing/Brentford/Isleworth bit is (or was) a real mix of fancy and grotty. The flyover, the tube and train lines, the tower blocks and giant office blocks and their neon signs, the factories and hospitals set against the Grand Union Canal, the Thames, the many parks founded on grand old homes. That's the world where I know the back routes, the nettles, the cracks in the pavements, the duck ponds and dog mess.

I'd not even seen a Coen Brothers film before. I was interested in the Coens without having seen what they'd done. I loved reading about them in Time Out. I must have liked the sound of The Big Lebowski from a review. And honestly, that month, back from university in Scotland in early June, I had nothing, absolutely nothing to do except watch the World Cup matches which usually started up late afternoon.

Maybe even I (back then quite a king of boredom) was bored, or my mum demanded I get out of the house a bit. 

Anyway, there it was, The Big Lebowski. My favourite film, as I've said for the last 20 years or so. Funnily enough, I probably hadn't watched it for about 10 years, saying that. but I caught some of it recently, and, yeah, it's still perfect, however much of a cliche it is now, and probably marks me out as a certain kind of man. So that was probably a) my first Coen Brothers b) the first time I went to the cinema on my own c) the first time I found out what happened when you find a stranger in the Alps.

Well, there it is, Waterman's, probably quite a happening place, in its own way. I also remember one day, probably about 8, on the towpath beneath it,  on a torrential day, standing directly and deliberately under an overflowing drainpipe, so I guess I was quite a happening boy too.

London Place 13: Buckingham Palace

There's a house, a big house, Victoria way, with balconies and gates. I've only been in its vicinity three or four times. One of those times was the 21st of April 1986, the 60th birthday of the resident.

There was a phonecall to my home just before the summer term started. I'd been chosen. A couple of boys from each year had been chosen to attend the Queen's 60th birthday celebration. So, you see, I was a pretty big deal back then.

Things I remember of the day: Radio 1 came to the school on the morning to interview us before we set off. They asked us what we'd say to the queen if we met her. I think I said "Happy Birthday Mum ... (people laughed) ... Ma'am" and I think that was actually on radio, so I think the first and only time I've been on BBC Radio 1 was letting slip that the queen was my mother.

Next thing: we had our own routemaster to travel from Ealing to central London. It felt like a treat, just a not particularly enjoyable treat.

I've looked the day up on the internet, and have found out, in case people look at the 80s as a particularly different time from now, that there was a heavy security around the event because of a terrorist threat. From Libya, specifically, on that occasion.

That rings true. I remember it was a miserable, pissing day and we spent most of it in a holding pattern on Horseguards Parade. Not having cake with the queen.

But, to be fair, when all were called forward for the extravaganza of reverential love, we were quite near the front.

There were songs. I always remember the songs, the creepy songs. There was a specially written one and the lyrics went something like "Happy birthday ma'am, we bring you / this singing wish in spring. Shower and shine with all our love, good in everything" and then everyone ritually puked.

And also we had to sing 'Congratulations" and there were printed lyric sheets but I was told off by an older boy because I wasn't singing, and the reason I wasn't singing was that the lyrics said "I want the world to know that I'm in love with you" and I wasn't in love with her, and I was emotionally mature enough to realise that you should never tell a reigning monarch that you love them and not mean it.

I didn't get to meet the queen. But the  headmaster of our catholic school run by monks, Father D___, did have a good, cheery chat with the soon-to-be-happily-married Duke of York. That guy's in prison now, he was a darkness, Father D___. He wasn't like other monks (not that several of them were any better). He was slick, he was sharp. My mother (actual mother) called him a schmoozer. There he was, schmoozing, I was so proud. Still got the clipping from the Ealing Gazette. Still remember the songs, the creepy songs "I belong to the family of God, I belong to the family of friends, I belong to everyone, it's great to know, to know, that I belong".

I don't think that day made me a republican. Most of my life I've been a merely theoretical republican anyway, aware of all the stable North European constitutional monarchies and knowing there could be worse, however ridiculous the whole thing is once you even think about it for two seconds, however much the whole existence of the thing blows your mind when you think about it for more than two seconds.

I understand the quasi-familial affection folk hold for the queen, anyway. I really do understand that.

I'm probably more of an actual republican now, I suppose, than theoretical, more ready to stick my neck out and be on the right side of the reordering should it come. Let the schmoozers be the losers.

London Place 12: Number 1 Cafe

There was a place, just off Cambridge Circus, on the corner of Tower Street and Earlham Street. Now it's an EasyCoffee, whatever that is. I think it was simply called Number 1 Cafe, just a narrow little triangular takeaway, really. Counters on two sides as you walked in, a high bench with 3 or 4 seats facing out to your right, usually taken.

It was run by 4 or 5 North African guys, I think they were brothers and cousins; they basically did baguettes, salads and baked potatoes with fillings. That was it, I think.

I worked at Blackwell's Charing Cross from September 2001 to July 2002 (I'd work another year at Blackwell's London Business School 2003-04). My interview was on September 11th. The planes had hit the towers just before I'd left home, I took the Piccadilly line in, everyone was staring at TVs through shop windows. I had my interview with the manager, both of us probably only half-there. He told me I had the job, I went home. When I got home, I saw the replay of the towers falling. I remember my first thought "is that a controlled explosion?" ... I went out for a drink in the Dove by the river that night, we looked up suspiciously at every plane passing.

My first day was the 17th. The shifts were 9 (or 9.30) to 6, 11 to 7.30, 12 to 8.30, with two 15 minutes mini-breaks and a solid lunch hour. I loved those lunch hours. I liked the job itself, a lot of standing around talking to co-workers about books, films and music, something which is never not to be treasured. It could be reasonably hard work, but it was generally a pressure-free life. There were pluses and minuses to the timings of each shift. With the later ones, you got a sleep in, avoided rush hour, and the shop was very quiet between 7 and 8.30 each evening, so it was barely working anyway, so I usually preferred that shift, for all that there wouldn't be much evening left once it was over.

But, yes, the lunch hours. Walking around Soho, going to the music shops, being part of London life. My first lunch hour, I saw a queue outside Number 1 Cafe, thought it a good sign, and joined the queue. I probably got my lunch from there 70% of my lunchbreaks, despite there being many other options. It was cheap and delicious - the baguettes and potatoes were always perfectly crispy/soft. The range of fillings was simple but great, and their system was a universal lesson in efficiency. You were never waiting for more than a couple of minutes. It was genuinely one of the most impressive things I've seen, as each member of the line-up knew who was his customer, as they replaced what was empty, as they handed each other fillings without delay, without looking.

They were open all day and the food stayed as fresh whether your lunch break began at 12, 1, 2, 4 or 5. 

I can find no record of the place online, none whatsoever. I guess they were bought out or moved on. Perhaps they were only there for a couple of years, who knows.

Sometimes I'd bag one of the stools, sometimes I'd eat my lunch walking around, sometimes I'd take it back to the staff room at the bookshop. I never enjoyed the chat in the staff room as much as that on the shop floor, for some reason. But I didn't mind sitting near the door as goods-in was just outside and they were always playing good music. I got to realise goods-in was the best gig in the shop. Hard work, but convivial and at your own pace and with your own soundtrack.

As I said, I worked at Blackwell's again a couple of years later, at the newly opened branch attached to London Business School, near Regent's Park. It was much less convivial. It wasn't much of a bookshop at all, really, more a delivery outlet for textbooks. I was only working part-time, 20 hours a week if i recall, but I had to work very hard.

I helped set the shop up with a couple of old pros, which was nice enough, but they then left, and then there was, perhaps, the odd mis-hire, and quick turnover. I was often there on my own, running the shop, and I was also the only person who knew how to process books coming in and going out, as well as do deliveries to the nearby business school, so within that 20 hours, I was by and large doing all the work that was crucial to the shop running.

I was still on minimum wage and, though I knew I'd only be there for a year, I remember thinking I was probably more siginificant to the running of the shop than my wage indicated. I think I even asked for a bit more, was turned down, and left not long after. I don't think the shop lasted there for all that long, to be honest. It was as far from fun, literary bookshop working as you could get, and I never found a great sandwich shop round there.

The most fun I had was out the back, in the goods bay, overhearing a flash young estate agent having constant arguments with his girlfriend. Aah, happy days.

London Place 11: HMS Belfast

I saw a lot of London running quizzes, particularly between 2006 and 2012. I've probably run 500ish in total, and the majority were in those first few years, and the majority of those were in London, and the majority of those were in central London.

I'm not sure why I've chosen HMS Belfast. I suppose it's quite a striking place to run a quiz, or you'd have thought so. I remember thinking, "ah, a quiz on HMS Belfast, that'll be cool".

In reality, it was just another, slightly dated, function room, and I recall it was not a great quiz. I remember that clearly, even though it was probably about 13 years ago, becase I think it was the last of four in quick succession, including one overseas, and the rest had all gone very well, and this was just going to be the icing on the cake. Who wouldn't love a DMcG quiz? 

Well, this lot didn't. I can't remember who they were, but where recent quizzes had been met with communal enjoyment close to fervour, laughs and groans all in the right places, this one was, so it seemed to me, a damp old squib. I also remember I'd been asked to prepare a playlist and play music afterwards, so I did that with some care, but, no, they had no time for that either. They all cleared out into another function room, unimpressed by whatever solidly mainstream stuff I was playing.

It was an odd life, for a while. Travel to venue late afternoon, either with PA system or to find it couriered to venue, set up, which could either take 5 minutes or an hour, depending on what the venue had. I nearly always left loads of time just in case, so sometimes there was a lot of sitting around, building up nervous energy or being drained of it.

Venues could be pubs, clubs, function rooms, restaurants, theatres, school halls, church halls, boats, sports grounds, offices, conference rooms. Sometimes they were "plug and play", sometimes they were "2 miles of cable, hands and knees with endless duck tape, hook up three TVs with VGA splitters, wireless auxiliary speakers, two peaveys, hope you cover the space"; usually somewhere in between.

It strikes me, retrospectively, in that context, how specifically techno-savvy I needed to be. Like, I'm so far from actually techno-savvy both before and after that era, but if I knew the variables, I could problem-solve and rig things pretty damn well for a while. It also strikes me, and again this is so far from what I'm like most of the time, how front-footed and forceful I was. I had to go into all sorts of venues and say "here i am, this is what I need you to do, this is what I need to do, this is how i need it to be" and I couldn't really take no for an answer.

And I was let into a lot of places.  Past security, though gates, lanyards, safety videos, sliding doors, function rooms, investment banks, law firms, lecterns, millions of pounds, and there's me, saying "nah, this won't work, i need to use my back-up peavey"

Some of those offices have the best views, the best views of London you can imagine - over the river from on high, over the parks, watching the sun set - I tried to enjoy it, though never relaxed til I was halfway home.

I didn't used to think I was nervous, now I realise I was always nervous. All day and all the way there. Usually, when you're running a quiz, it becomes fun pretty quickly, but if it doesn't, your throat gets dry and stays dry.

Sometimes you see every face and feel them doubting your ability to entertain them, sometimes it's just a big joyous mass of laughter and noise. I could overprepare or underprepare, be overconfident or underconfident, too bantery or without bantery. Usually, I will say, usually the quiz was a good quiz, and the thing was ultimately, at bare minimum, pretty good, but not even that, always.

It's not obvious who'll be the perfect hosts and who'll be the arseholes. Once, in a dark room in a dark club, music pumping in from the other rooms, can't hear myself, bunch of traders, don't feel like any of them can hear me or are listening, start the quiz thinking it's a waking nightmare, they all bring their answers up on time, lots of great scores and clever answers, loads of "great quiz, loved it". Other times,  parents in fancy schools could  be so rude to my helpers You really could never tell in advance.

I remember a Christmas quiz at an investment bank (I won't say which one) and all the teams performed comedy songs, and they were all so deeply inappropriate, i only remember one chorus to the tune of 'Do They Know It's Christmas Time?" them singing "greed is good, let them know it's bonus time" (post-crash) and thinking "jeez, if i took a sneaky video of this" ... but, the funny thing is, I remember that as a nice bunch of people, genuinely.

So that's how I know "the city" really, as a regular paid clown and usurper for a few years. Drank a lot of diet coke and ate a lot of goujons. Loved the journey home quite often, not just cos it was over, but you really sometimes saw the city in a certain light, Addison Lees through parliament square after midnight, the Shard rising out of the Tower of London, the surprising emptiness of certain areas at certain times when they're heaving at other times.

London Place 10: Victoria Park

Victoria Park was the home ground of my football team, Atholl 1965. We played in the somewhat misnamed West End Amateur League - amateur we certainly were, but Victoria Park is not the West End.

We chose Vic Park, basically, because it had the best pitches, at the best rates, of the available options. They were flat, large and kept well during the winter. But, jesus, it was a long way there and back.

For the first season, I was still living at my mum's in Ealing, and that was some trek. Either tube it all the way via Highbury and Islington or even walk through Acton then get there all the way round on the North London line. Either way, it was 2 hours there, 2 hours back.

Not that much better when I lived in Clapham really, especially if the trains from H&I to Hackney Wick were delayed (pre-Olympic upgrade), as they frequently were. Still, at least that line was free.

The problem was not getting there, of course. It was getting back. Even at the best of times, my body has a pretty weird drainage system, but nowhere was this more significant than when playing 90 minutes football 2 hours from home. Basically, I'd get ill every week. I'd play the game, gradually drain and acquire a headache, then usually be sick. It was to be expected, accepted. 

Not if the game was nearer. We played away games all over - Regent's Park, Hackney Marshes, Wandsworth Common, Wormwood Scrubs, Barn Elms, Wandsworth Park, South Park, Kensington Gardens, Tufnell Park, Queens Park, Poplar, Essex, and if the journey back was quicker, I'd probably be ok for the evening.

It's not that I didn't try everything to stave it off, or that it was fitness-dependent. I tried every combination of water and isotonic drinks, fruit and salty snacks, not drinking/drinking the night before, it didn't make much difference. It was, I think, the fact of the travelling back, the long period of time before my body could relax.

And yet, that never tempted me to not play football, and not for Atholl. I might still be playing now if my body had let me. It seems strange to me that it was only seven years, from the very first game, in Fairlop, Essex, in late summer 2001, to my last game, in Kensington Gardens, in November 2008. That's for Atholl 1965, the London offshoot of our uni team, Atholl (named after our hall of residence) for whom I played four seasons.

Football is such an enormous part of the hierarchy of being a young man - obscenely so. For the natural advantage I had of being quite good, I certainly didn't make the most of it. I love playing football, but I never got the hang of doing it right. Playing for Atholl in London was my best shot.

They were guys I liked but not, as such, mates, so I felt obligated but knew I couldn't take the piss. Although I regret not doing fitness work on the side, I tried my best, when I turned up on Saturday, to do a job, to cover my shortfalls by knowing where to be. There's something oddly thrilling about knowing where to be - standing on the goal line for opposition corners, marking the thrower on throw ins, edge of box for our corners etc the ritual and shared responsibility.

We'd play all sorts - Essex wide boys, violent nasty kids, city boys, teams of exiled Northerners, Turkish students, Angolans, Brazilians, and a lot who were, just like us, mish-mashes of uni friends and their friends, randoms, whoever you could get.

We were a nice, diverse team who tried hard and got on well. We had some very good players. Occasionally we threatened to be really good. I remember a season we started the league with 3 wins, played a team from the league above in a cup competition and beat them 7-1 and it was beautiful. I scored the first goal, nothing special but a bit of pace, a bit of strength, a bit of "i can really do this". Then the next week, we played out in Essex in a preliminary round of the actual FA Cup and played ok but went 2-0 down and then I had an identical chance to the previous week, did everything the same, shot and grazed the outside of the post, and we lost 3-0, and we were never quite so good again all season.

So it was with my own form. I'd have runs of a few weeks where I could really play, it's hard to describe. Fitness is one thing, confidence another, but sometimes the ball just came off my foot right, and i'd want to take free kicks, corners, and I'd do something good with them. And then that feeling would go, and it would be more of a lottery again.

We had better players, but I could contribute. I could do the difficult bits of football better than the easy bits. Left-foot volleys. I've got a collection of left-foot volleys in my memory bank anyone would be proud of. Beat a man. Just like that. And your team mates will say "go at them, take them on" but as soon as you've done that a couple of times and it's not quite worked, you can sense the frustrations.

People called me McHoggy when i played football, said I was selfish, but I swear, looking back now, my regret is that I wasn't more selfish, i wish i hadn't listened to any of it, that I could have just taken my one footballing USP and used it to its utmost. Ha! Maybe not. 

Anyway, I tried, with Atholl, to not be too selfish, to work hard and do the job. I was no good at tackling, heading, shooting, but I'd try. I'd try to be knackered by the end. Some weeks, it was out of my hands. The game just didn't come to me. Too windy, too muddy, too small a pitch. Those days were a bummer but I wouldn't beat myself up, especially if we won. I'd only blame myself it it actually had fallen my way ... if i had plenty of ball early on and did nothing with it.

aah well, but Victoria Park, I still have fond memories. Out of the train station, past a scrapyard, over the A12, into the park, nets up, nice, flat, big pitches. So many great games we played there. Haven't been back for years. Can't imagine how fancy it all is now.

Song 93: The Only Living Boy in New York

It's quite a stealth song, this. I first heard it 25 years or so ago, when I bought Bridge Over Troubled Water on tape. I think it was, apart from the title track, which I'd known for a few years, my favourite on the album, but not in a major, significant way.

But it's gradually crept up to being one of my all-time favourite songs. I was reminded of that in a documentary I watched recently about the making of BOTW called 'The Harmony Game' (made in 2011) where Garfunkel refused to be drawn on the lyrics and described their friendship in sacred terms.

For it is certainly about their friendship, this song. About the alliance severing. People describe it as a kiss-off, but it's also, whatever its intentions, one of the most affectionate songs I've ever heard. If you were going to be told that your band was splitting up, there'd be no better way than this.

It also feels like it's about more. About New York/Hollywood, about the 60s/70s, about youth/growing up.

It starts humbly, then every section is a highlight, a little essay in the making -

Tom, get your plane ride on time - Fly-y-y. - Da-n-da-da-n-da-n-da-da - The only living boy in New York - the layered, echoed harmonies - Half of the time we're gone but we don't know where - I know you've been eager to fly now, Hey let your honesty shine, shine, shine, Da-n-da-da-n-da-da-n-da-da Like it shines on me The only living boy in New York ...

... do you know what you mean, it's got so many little bits which are something a bit special in their own right.

It' s a funny old story, anyway, the Tom and Jerry story. These two kids who could never be cool. Doesn't seem like Garfunkel ever gave a shit, he just maybe thought that since he was the one with the spectacular voice he might sing lead on more than the odd track. And, well, when he did, it's one of the biggest songs of all time.

Simon seems like he wanted to be cool but was at his worst when trying to be. But, you know, pretty great other than that, after all, pretty great songs.

People are always saying "oh, they hate each other" but, from what I read, I really do not think that's it. Who knows. Friends for almost 70 years, one way or the other. That's no joke. And this song is the lasting testament to that friendship.

London Place 9: Charing Cross Hospital

I was taken to Charing Cross Hospital when I broke my right leg playing football in Kensington Gardens in November 2008. It could just as well have been St Mary's but the paramedics reckoned the traffic would be better to Charing Cross.

I was still wearing my football kit, my shirt emblazoned with our sponsor QuizQuizQuiz. I had lots of nitrous oxide, to the extent I hardly noticed them setting the bone back in line, just some vague distant idea of pain.

It was on a Saturday. The operation was on the Monday. It went fine. I'd made the hospital aware of the clot I'd had in my (unbroken) left leg in 2007 and the fact I'd been diagnosed with Protein C deficiency but was not currently on anti-coagulants, so I was given clexane alongside other pain medication.

I left the hospital on, I think, Friday. It was only when I got home that I realised I hadn't been prescribed enough clexane. Tbh, at this remove, I'm not 100% sure what that means. It feels like I should have been able to get hold of more if needed, but, to be fair, I'd just broken my leg so was not capable of being on top of my affairs. Either way, I was without anti-coagulant for a few days at a crucial point, that I'm sure of.

I had a follow-up appointment about a month later at Charing Cross. Some hospital appointments are pretty exact timewise but sometime's it's a clinic and you basically have to accept sitting around for a couple of hours before being, seemingly randomly, called.

I saw the consultant, who was brisk but pleasant. I told him I was pretty certain I had a clot in my right leg. He said no, you've been on anti-coagulants. and I can't see any sign of it. But I knew there was one there. I knew what they felt like now. So I persuaded him to send me up to be checked.

He told me where to hobble on my crutches. It was quite late in the day now - someone told me to sit and wait. I waited and waited. Nothing.

Wait, this is a nice story, I promise. A man walked past on his way home. He caught sight of me, hesitated, stopped. "Are you waiting to be seen?" "Yeah". He kind of rolled his eyes. "Sorry ... wait one second. Ok. let's do it. let's go through here"

I explained I'd had a clot before in my other leg, I said the first time they'd looked for one, they'd not found it and I'd been definitively told "it's not a clot" only for the pain to increase over the next couple of weeks as the clot went further and further up my leg.

"Yeah", he said, "often people don't really check below the knee, because it's deemed that it's only when they're above the knee that they're dangerous. Don't worry, I'll have a really good check".

I should say at this point my mindset was that I'd dealt with the broken leg with relative equanimity, but I saw the possibility of another clot as a crushing blow - it would mean, at that point, I'd never be able to play football again, would be on unstable rat poison medication for the rest of my life, would have to permanently watch my eating and drinking, and, most importantly, meant I was living with and susceptible to, a life-threating condition, despite being only 30.

Anyway, he found one, just below the knee. Not a massive one, but a definite clot. Then he sat and explained to me everything to do wih how blood clots work and a rational view of what my lifestyle could be going forward.

It's a cliche, but, those occasions when someone does more than their job's worth are the times that stay with you. I don't even know if he was a doctor, a sonographer, whatever. He seemed like he knew everything. I can't remember his name.

Anyway, I'm sure I felt pretty bummed out as I hopped out of the hospital onto Fulham Palace Road. I remember standing on the corner outside the hospital before catching the bus home, calling my mum, telling her it was a clot, hearing her heart sink, and, absolutely in that moment, my brain going "actually, this is completely fine" and it was.

I can't say I've always been completely phlegmatic in moments like that. It's funny how sometimes we are, sometimes we aren't. But that time I was. 

London Place 8: Lucky Voice

I hear your lucky voice, I have no fuckin' choice, heaven help me!

Lucky Voice, of course, the heart of swinging London in those distant, innocent days.

We first went to Karaoke Box on Frith Street, which seemed gloriously dark and seedy, while Lucky Voice, on Poland Street, which opened a couple of years later, was garishly bright and, in its own way, equally seedy.

If I'm being honest, karaoke evenings were the most fun. More even than gigs, than weddings, than films, than parties, whatever. Not always, but on average.

Sometimes you'd go with a group of karaoke-hardened close friends, all bulletproof and unembarrassable in that settings, but just as often it'd be friends of friends, or acquaintances, or shyer friends who'd never done karaoke before, and so there was behaviour to be managed, your own and other people's.

I really tried my best on those occasions, ill-equipped as I am for the minutiae of socialisation. Tried not to be too enthusiastic or weird too early, tried to make sure everyone had a turn at choosing but also to make clear that it was fine if someone didn't want to sing, tried not to hog the mic or be too loud, and I'd manage for a while but then, inevitably, in the second hour, I'd be sacking off poorly chosen songs after a minute with a cursory "Shit, onto the next one" and have wrecked my voice by doing both Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballe's parts in 'Barcelona'.

How did a standard evening go? We'd eat in Nando's or Bodean's in Soho. Both seemed new and unjaded at the time. Whether to eat beforehand or after was a key decision, both with risks. Before was probably the marginally safer bet, but eating afterward could be more ... exultant. I date the start of the UK's craft/US beer fixation from the precise moment I first had a bottle of Sam Adams at Bodeans. I didn't know they even made beer in America! We must tell the world!

What made for good karaoke? The really good ones? A bit of showing off, but not too much. Falling back in love with pop music out of necessity, because there's only so many indie classics on their list. Finding, unexpectedly, something one of those indie classics which you wouldn't have thought you'd find at karaoke. Realising that the minor late 80s hit 'Beds are Burning' by the Australian band Midnight Oil is the perfect karaoke sing/shoutalong. Beer, a lot of beer, beer at a faster bottle per minute rate than you'd allow yourself anywhere else. For the vocal cords.

What, really, though? I think I'd pin it down to variety, and everyone joining in with that variety. So you might get a 20 minute stretch with, I don't know, Dancing on My Own, The Mercy Seat, Send in the Clowns, Smells Like Teen Spirit, Push It, and everyone's all in, and it's simultaneously absurd and life-enhancing.

Lucky Voice with its neon, its fancy dress, its echo, its buttons to order drinks. Time it was and what a time it was.

London Place 7: Sudbury Court CC

I spent my summer evenings playing cricket in West London, which was a pretty fine way to spend the evenings of one's childhood.

I played my first game for Ealing Under 11s when I was 8, I think. It was against Turnham Green at their idyllic Chiswick House ground, and for my first innings I batted with the late Umer Rashid, who'd played his first game the week before. I edged one, scampered, and thought I had my first run ever, but Umer was run out at the striker's end. We lost the game.

For the next few years, I played many more games, all over that part of West London, with most games starting at 6pm on a weeknight, played over 20 overs per side. They were mainly competitive league games.

Mostly we played Brentham, Old Actonians, Wembley, Hanwell, Sudbury Court, Southall, sometimes Turnham Green, Wycombe House, Eastcote, Isleworth, Kew. Perhaps there were others, I don't recall.

Ealing CC is one of the best cricket clubs in Britain, and the home ground is a marvellous cricket venue. We had nets there on a Friday night, but the youth teams rarely got to play home games at the main pitch, but at Fox Reservoir, just up the road. a more perfunctory space surrounded by woods to lose the ball in.

Still, I remember all those venues, light fading, parents watching on or umpiring, with fondness.

I choose Sudbury Court, though it was not necessarily the most memorable, for three particular incidents.

Firstly, I once took 6 for 6 against Sudbury Court in my four overs, my best ever figures. Andy, a friend from school, was wicketkeeper and took four stumpings. I don't think I bowled especially well that day, it just went that way. It was in the Ealing Gazette and everything.

Secondly, (though I'm not actually 100% sure where these incidents sit chronologically) there was a time I was given the chance to open the batting, after some good hitting down the order, breaking a hegemony that had lasted for half a decade, didn't quite get going for my first few balls, and was told by the umprire/coach/parent of the boy who usually opened (a very nice man, don't get me wrong) to "hit out or get out" which was pretty dispiriting.

Sometimes, in my head and out loud, I've slightly bemoaned that I was never quite the favoured one in my junior cricketing life, which is true, and there were other players no better than me who got breaks I didn't get, but what is also more importantly true is that I was lucky to play an enormous amount of cricket, my favourite thing in the world at the time, with mostly nice kids and nice coaches, that, because I bowled well and sometimes batted well, I more often than not had the chance to influence the game. I treasure all (nearly all) of it, the batting, the bowling, the fielding, the travelling, the places, the sitting around.

And, thirdly, I treasure the fights. The on-pitch fucking fights! Woohoo! In my last year playing for Ealing, the Under 17 team was struggling for numbers, so we were merged with Brentham, who'd been our arch rivals for many years, but it was friendly enough within the team. But once, one of my newer team-mates got in a proper on-pitch dust up at Sudbury Court with an opponent, and if I'm remembering correctly, his granddad ran on to the pitch brandishing a stump.

The people's game. 

I didn't play much for Ealing after that (I don't think there's a direct correlation). Most of my cricket by then was at school, where we had longer games, and I was more integral, and from there I chose the school's Old Boys team for my senior cricket, which I think was a mistake, all things considered, not least because I usually had to travel a couple of hours each way for the games in Surrey, whereas Ealing's in Ealing. And now I don't play cricket at all so I get my success, bitternesses and random acts of violence by other means.

... oh, and sorry, i said there wouldn't be poems, but i wrote this a year or two, and i think in its silliness it sums it up quite well:

Youth cricket in West London in the 1990s

At 7.32pm,

the second innings starts -

a play and miss, hard, nervous wrists,

a welcome late leg glance.

For now, the late May sun’s still holding

creeping murk at bay,

but treetop ghosts cast doubt upon

the twenty overs left to play.

 

Perhaps it was the glare,

perhaps the dirty torn sightscreen

that meant a straight one found a gate

there really shouldn’t have been.

The opener’s dad is sighing

to his sagging cigarette;

a wasted summer evening

too idyllic to regret.

 

The number three, the captain,

who’s a cocky Surrey Colt

winces at a crack like it’s

the San Andreas Fault.

He takes a little time to find his

timing, judge the pace,

then guides a cut just back of square

like WG Grace.

 

The runs come fast, there’s little

that the fielding side can do

until the captain strikes a lofted

drive so straight and true

it sails over the sightscreen,

is lost amongst the weeds.

The coach leaps up to grab

the opportunity he needs.

 

He joins the search, and mutters

to his team, under his breath,

“Just slow them down, boys;

it will be like Hades at the death”.

Each second of delay lengthens

the shadows on the ground -

eventually, the miscreant ball

(at least, a ball) is found.

 

The tactics work, the captain hoiks

a good length ball to long on.

The catch is held, the match is changed,

the coach has got it spot on.

The chase slows down, the wickets fall,

the rate climbs ever higher.

In light like this, the little seamer

morphs into Makhaya.

 

By now, the darkness closing,

it’s past 8.45.

Batters know the chance has passed

to keep the match alive.

They’re only playing for pride now

through squinting, searching eyes,

showing more bravado than

is requisite or wise.

 

Finally, the stumps are drawn

and tired handshakes shared,

pads removed & scoresheets checked,

coaches’ notes compared.

Chauffeurs, groundsmen, cheerleaders

all gather to decide

that umpires could have been less harsh

when calling leg-side wides.

 

Spikes removed and kits in boots,

they’ll save the shower for home.

A cavalcade of Ford Escorts

depart the wooded pleasuredome.

The traces of the play remain,

each patterned sight and sound -

the rematch is in three weeks

at the opposition’s ground.

London Place 6: O2 Academy Islington

Not entirely sure why, of all the music venues I could choose, I'm writing about one I never actually went into, but there we are. I have a memory.

Standing outside.

My memory is that it was a summer's night, 10ish but still a bit light. I used to hang out around Upper Street quite a bit. Most likely I'd eaten at a Nando's, been to a pub, gone to the next door cinema within the pleasant enough N1 Centre; if it was the mid-2000s probably watched a film starring, say, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, say, or Ethan Hawke, say, or both.

On my way home via Angel Station, the door of the O2 Academy Islington, a slightly unpromising door that never really attracted me in, that suggested more a strip club or a Quaser centre than a place for rock'n'roll, was open. It was a warm summer night. Live music was wafting out. I checked the board to see who was playing the O2 Academy that night. It was Arthur Lee playing 'Forever Changes'.

So I stood outside for as long as I could without feeling self-conscious, listening to the faint but recognisable sound of Arthur Lee and his band playing a couple of songs from 'Forever Changes' (I can't quite remember which), and I thought about how incongruous this all was, that one of the legendary lost enigmas of rock'n'roll, someone who's Captain Beefheart or Frank Zappa or Sly Stone or Syd Barrett, was entertaining the troops in a little corporate spot on a weeknight in a little shopping centre in North London.

I never paid to see Arthur Lee. I was tempted but perhaps thought it would be disspiriting and shoddy. But, a year or two ago, I caught, on TV, his slot at Glastonbury, probably that same summer, and it was excellent. His style, his voice, his playing, all stil there.

I guess the story of Arthur Lee is condensed to "shone bright for a short while, had serious drug and legal issues, went to prison a fair bit, disappeared a fair bit, died youngish, in 2006."

Yet, another part of the story is that, in the 2000s he was a revived working musician, touring his wonderful music to solid (though not vast) crowds.

'Forever Changes' is such a singular, cosmic piece of work (though 'Da Capo''s great too), so different from what else was around at the time, so influential on so much music I've loved, that certainly heightened the eeriness I felt that here I was, standing in the free air, on my own, wandering home, and that was the actual music I was hearing.

Those 2000s were something of a (last) golden age for live music, for the kind of stuff that was freely, cheaply, available. The great generation were still at it - you could catch Martha Reeves at some club, Sly Stone at Lovebox, and you could go see any small, medium-sized or massive act you wanted. I think literally the only time I ever failed to get tickets for something I really, really wanted to see was Springsteen at the Emirates.

And here's a thing I've thought about gentrification, for want of a better word. For a while, it all seems like a fair cop, a good deal. Yes, all these snazzy, soulless 02 venues of different sizes springing up, but all the old pubs, clubs, theatres are still open too. There's music everywhere. Borderline, Forum, Water Rats, Koko, ULU, Barfly, Garage, Bull and Gate, Scala, countless more, not to mention the perennials for someone like me, a fan of pretty successful indie bands, Shepherds Bush Empire and Brixton Academy. Be ready for the day tickets come out, pay face value, bit of a booking fee, all good, night after night.

Then gradually the booking fees get bigger, the tickets get more expensive, it's harder to get them face value, the small venues shut, and there's only the O2 someething or other and everything's more than £50, and there are only a couple of gigs a year you really, really fancy anyway.

Look, I got older, I moved out, but there is truth in what I've described. 

There's a song by Jamie T (who I wasn't a fan of at the time) called 'Sign of the Times' where he sings "Where did all the venues go? Lost them all to businessmen" and that's about right.

I don't know if this has got anything to do with faintly hearing Arthur Lee playing his songs in Islington one summer night. Perhaps I had all these thoughts in that couple of minutes. Then again, perhaps it didn't happen like that at all.

London Place 5: Rotherhithe Youth Hostel

 Suddenly I find myself down by the dockside, thinking about the old days ...

I spent two separate weeks at Rotherhithe Youth Hostel, one in 1995, the other in 2002. Of course, when you look back from this distance, 1995 and 2002 seem like roughly the same period, but they weren't at all. A huge amount changed between. For me, the people I was with, for East London. I remember walking from the youth hostel to Canada Water's spanking new, vast (opened 1999) tube station one morning in 2002, and it was like "holy shit, the future happened here".

I didn't know East London well growing up, but we went to Greenwich quite a lot and to Docklands, as it was building up, a few times. But most of my view of East London was, to be honest, watching the London Marathon every year.

Still, even from a distance, the amount it has transformed in the last 35 years is quite extraordinary, and a little bit terrifying.

1995 was still transitional. It was still pretty rough round there, as far as I could see, but the youth hostel itself was extremely fancy for a youth hostel in the 90s. Key cards, adapted rooms, sliding doors, lifts everywhere.

Why were we there? It was our base, both times, for doing the groundwork for editions of 'Access in London', the guidebook to London for wheelchair users. Both times, we'd spent the week before running the playscheme in Portsmouth. 1995 was my first year. I remember generally being in a terrible teenage existential mood most of the week, muttering darkly about fakes and facades. HAaaaaaaahaahaa. We're so hilarious when we're young.

The first day of surveying was my 17th birthday and I trailed, on a bloody hot day of melting tarmac, traffic jams and swarming wasps, around various sites in the Lea Valley and it was not a very fun birthday, tbh. The next day, perhaps someone had got wind that I had not a very fun birthday, tbh, so I got to go to White Hart Lane and we went to the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University where we were told the biscuits we were eating were made with the special ingredient love and it was very funny at the time, promise.

But my strongest memory of that week was that I flooded a bathroom because, weirdly, I didn't really know how to use the shower. Like, I didn't think about shutting the door. That always stuck with me as a significant moment of cluelessness.

I was less clueless in 2002, and much less teenage, and I think we had a fun week. The area had changed a lot - pubs and bars and tube stations. I remember we watched the finale to Season 3 of Big Brother on the Friday night in a pub ... those were weird times.

One day, two or three of us were charged with surveying as many pubs in Stratford as we could get through. Stratford was not then what it would become.

But my main memory is we came back from that day to write up our surveys, sat in the bar in the hostel and drank a couple of pints while we did the work, which was time-consuming but not exactly tricky, and I remember thinking "gosh, drinking and working is easy actually if you're head's in the right place, don't ever do it again". And I haven't, which is pretty good going. Of course, back then, drinking and working was more common and less frowned on anyway, but I think telling myself not to drink and work that day in Rotherhithe was one of the best favours I did myself.

London Place 4: Taormina

There's a restaurant in Bayswater called the Taormina. It's on Craven Terrace, a quiet street just north of Hyde Park, near Paddington. It's an Italian restaurant which opened in 1960. My father started going there with his friends when he first came to live in that big old London in the 1960s.

He first took us there in, I think, 1985. Until then our restaurant of choice on our Sunday father expeditions had been Chiswick McDonalds (Big Mac, Medium Fries, Strawberry Milkshake, same then as now).

The first time he took us to the Taormina I was a bit scared of the big Italian menu of fancy mysterious foods and would only order chips. They were good chips, and by the end, I was stealing the food off my sisters' plates, and we'd be coming to the Taormina again.

We went to the Taormina, a lot, for a long time. I was last there in, I reckon, 2013. I took Juliette there. Or maybe I was last there on one of the occasions a few family members went there to commemorate my dad's birthday.

Each time, I'd have had whitebait for starter, pollo sorpresa (fancy chicken kiev), and then who knows, something wild and varied for my pudding cos I'm not a a creature of ritual, no way.

I didn't have whitebait and pollo sorpresa every single one of the 50+ times I went to the Taormina. Not every time. But most times.

I'd start with a load of white bread and butter, make the same jokes to my vegetarian sisters about the whitebait eyes looking at them, and then gorge on the huge piece of breadcrumbed chicken, rice, chips, vegetables. Breathing heavily.

One time, early on, when I was still endearing enough, I guess, I'd have made that common child's joke of being full in one section of my stomach, but the section for pudding still had space in it. It must have made people laugh. My dad told the story well, embellished it. Told it for years, in my presence, to many different people. Consequently, having heard it so many times, if I seek to recall what his voice sounded like, pickled, affectionate, in his element, it's to that story I return.

It would be him, driving us in from Ealing in his Citroen Pallas, and the four of us, or sometimes three, or sometimes two, or often there'd be friends of his too, pub guys, rugby guys, old friends and locals, full of bonhomie. Sometimes extended family too, cousins, aunts, uncles, Jane, his partner,

We were all there on his 70th birthday in November 2009, which was his last birthday, not entirely inevitably at that point, but as he spoke emotionally about reaching 70 which was a year more than his own father had managed, it didn't seem unlikely.

It was a great restaurant. The decor never changed. A spinning wheel in the window. Friendly. The same waiters for years and years. The price hardly changed for years and years either. I cannot remember one time being disappointed, hurried, made to wait too long.

Table near the street ... old familiar place ... meet you anytime you want ...

London Place 3: Shooter's Hill

In late October 1996, I walked, with three other people, from Southwark Cathedral to Canterbury Cathedral, over three days. A pilgrim's way.

We did it to raise money for our forthcoming months as volunteers in African countries. These jollies being organised by some tinpot Christian outfit, this seemed a fitting way to raise some cash. Some other guy had the idea, and I fell in with it. I wasn't much of a fundraiser - got a few quid off my family they'd probably have given me anyway, the whole thing was a bit of a waste of time for me, but was pretty fun.

I was working, that autumn and winter, (also to raise money) room service in a big London hotel - shifts were 3pm-11.30pm, 6pm-2.30pm and the dreaded 11pm-7.30am. I appreciate I'm not the best equipped to judge what a tiring job is, since for the last 15 years I've mainly been sitting at home thinking of stuff, but it was a tiring, unrewarding job. I once slept a straight 16 hours after a night shift.

So it seemed a strange thing to do with the first three consecutive days off I'd had in a couple of months to be walking 70 grey miles through some of the more tarmaced areas of the garden of England.

The start was inauspicious. Pre-mobiles (at least for me), the agreed meeting place was "the steps" at London Bridge station. There's more than one set of steps of course. Yet still I could have been livelier. I stood near some steps around the Tooley Street side, I remember I was (I think for the first time) lost in Astral Weeks on my walkman, and I impatiently yet carelessly lost the time, whilst my travelling companions, with more justifiable impatience, waited for me by the big steps inside the station.

An hour passed until finally someone showed some gumption and found the other. A good hour's walking time.

So we set off through a part of London I was very unfamiliar with - Bermondsey, Old Kent Road etc. 

Deep in my memory, at that time, was some car journey when I was little, leaving London by an unfamilar route where, suddenly and without warning, the city disappeared and there was just sloped green. I had come to think it was just a dream.

Then we're walking and we get, suddenly and gloriously, to Blackheath and I know "This was it! This was the dream ..." so that was a cool moment. We stopped for a coffee and cake near Blackheath which at the time seemed the height of decadence, and carried on along Shooter's Hill.

A large guy, oldish, whiskery facial hair, big waterproofy wear, walks towards the four of us scowling, stands in our way, trys to block us, maybe swears a bit.

We deftly evaded and scuttled on, and that was it. But ever since, whenever I've been near Shooter's Hill or seen it on a map, I think of that scary guy's face, that guy being Shooter, and that being his hill, and it's a bit of a demon.

I've been to Blackheath a lot since then. I like it - there are many pleasing large green spaces in the inner-outer London, but something about the curve of the land at Blackheath (not to mention its place in the story of the Peasants' Revolt) really works for me.

We carried on walking. It was tiring, but in a much better way than the room service job was tiring.  The first night we stayed in Gravesend, the second night in Sittingbourne.

The guy who put is up in Gravesend was a trendy vicar called Chris. I remember he had a great CD collection, and I put on Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, and the vicar said he reckoned it was one of the best albums of all time. After we listened to it for a while, one of my fellow pilgrims said "it's good but I don't think it's one of the best albums ever" and I thought, really, 18 year old Christian who's just told me their favourite song is Breakfast at Tiffany's by Deep Blue Something but miraculously happens to have heard every album ever released, really, is it not? Tell that to Rolling Stone magazine in 25 years time, why don't you? That's what I thought.

I also remember that night, watching Match of the Day, and it was a few days after a guy called Matthew Harding, who had been trying to take over Chelsea from Ken Bates, had died on his way home from a match in a helicopter crash, and they showed the Chelsea fans' moment's silence for him, and even though Chelsea FC is, was then, and will always be the club I loathe most in the world, and even though I didn't know anything about Matthew Harding, I was extremely moved to tears, and it just showed the eery power of large scale mourning doing funny things to our brain, which is something the country could have heeded 11 months later, I guess.

London Place 2: Gunnersbury Park

Gunnersbury Park was the showiest of the local parks.

Blessed as we were to be within walking, cycling, or short driving distance of several marvellous green spaces, Gunnersbury had something Lammas, Walpole, Pitshanger, Boston Manor, Blondin etc lacked - a boating lake.

Not just a boating lake, but a putting green, a pitch and putt, tennis courts, a kiosk, a line of muddy mounds for biking and, if membory servies, other fancy stuff like follies, mansions and what have you.

But it was the boating lake that elevated it in my eyes.

There were pedalos - I think for one or two people - and rowing boats. I never graduated beyond the pedalo. 

In fact, I have a ridiculous memory from over a decade later, when I was running a playscheme, and took some children out in a rowing boat on a different boating lake, and when we were called back to shore, knowing that we needed to get back quickly, opted to take over from the kids, installed myself in the rowing seat, before suddenly realising I did not actually know, technically, how to scull, and the skill did not suddenly come to me. I pretended to pull a muscle in my arm and shamefacedly vacated the hot seat.

But back to Gunnersbury. I spent many happy afternoons there. It was a mid-range treat. Clearly a step up from my nearest, Lammas Park but a step below e.g. London Zoo.

I had a friend, when I was little, who lived on Popes Lane, and his garden had a gate to gain direct access to the park, which seemed an unfathomable luxury.

Weirdly, my strongest memory of the boating lake, though, is a rather sad one.

I was probably about 9, and had just returned to the shore from a happy 20 minutes pedalling aimlessly. I just remember a couple of children about my age squabbling, and their mother, who looked tired and on edge, desperately pleading with words that were something like "this was supposed to be a treat, please don't spoil it" and I think that was one of the earliest visceral experience of pathos I had, just knowing, seeing in that second that some lives had a sadness to them that was hard to escape. Aah well ...

London Place 1: Albert Embankment

I thought I'd start with a nice, short, easy and recent one.

I asked "When and where was London beautiful?" and I had an immediate answer.

I was lucky enough to be offered a ticket, at short notice, to Day 4 of the England-India test at The Oval last month. 

I've by and large determined not to travel on the tube at the moment, so I got there by catching the slow train from Ashford to Waterloo East then walking down to Oval. No slower, really, than getting the fast train anyway. The one down side is there are no power sockets on the trains.

It was a lovely, sunny, attritional day's test cricket, evenly matched, just a joy to be there after all that's gone on. England would go on to collapse the next day, but I left the ground on Sunday with the sense that all 3 (or 4) results were still possible.

Because my phone's old and there'd been no charging opportunities, it had died at about 4.30.

I followed the crowd out, meaning I went a slightly different way to how I'd arrived, getting to Vauxhall, then crossing a park to find myself suddenly, almost unexpectedly, at Albert Embankment.

And here was London like I hadn't seen it in years. The Thames glowing on a late summer evening. The full cliche - Houses of Parliament, the works. I briefly felt very emotional. 

I reached for my phone to take a picture, of course, but no dice, no battery. So the picture lives in my memory, where pictures used to live.

I walked along, back to Waterloo. On the way, I passed this Covid Memorial Wall thing, which I'd like to say was also a moving and profound experience, but, for me, with all due respect, just seemd a bit odd. 

It's massive for starters, so mainly empty, which I suppose is a good thing, but somehow makes it look a bit glib, and there are scrawls all the way along, and some of it is anti-vax stuff, and it's just not really, I think, the effect they were going for, well-intentioned though it no doubt was.

So, yeah, here's to that picturebook London ... dirty old river, must you keep rolling etc

London Places

I had an idea a couple of years ago to map London in terms of places which were significant to me. It didn't develop far, and the half-baked idea fell by the wayside.

Now, it's come back with a vengeance, as I realise it's crept up to almost 10 years since I moved out of the city.

I'd been thinking about London a lot already, in particular about the West London where I grew up. I've written quite a few poems trying to capture something of the time and place. You don't need to read them for now!

Much-maligned, West London. Whenever you see that childish twitter chat about what the best and worst parts of London are, the only thing ever agreed on is that west is worst.

I understand why. It's not the cool bit. People who don't know it (and plenty of those that do) see it as an uncomfortable combination of self-satisfied affluence and ugly nowheresville, only defined by big roads and railways.

People are always passing through West London on the way to somewhere hipper or prettier.

But it's what dwells inside me. I was lucky, growing up, not to be stuck in one place but always seeing different parts. Overground tube and bus to school from Ealing to Barnes every morning, picked up by our father on a Sunday to go into Edgware Road via the Westway. cricket on summer evenings in Hanwell, Wembley, Southall, Acton etc, regular trips to my grandmother in Surrey, driving through Brentford, Kew, Richmond, Kingston, by the time I was a grown-up I could map that part of the vast city pretty well.

As a young adult, I lived in south London, mainly socialised in north, while now it's the east that's my main way in. Also, for work, for a decade, running 100s of quizzes at different sites, mainly in the centre.

Of course, there are parts, particularly in the north-east of London, I don't know much about, but generally, I've got a pretty good feel for it, and memoriies to drawn on from all over.

So, what I'll do is name a specific place, then write about a specific memory of it. It could be quite self-indulgent, but all of this is really, so what's the difference. I'm thinking 20 places, but there may be more or less depending on how it goes ... 

... there may be more of the west, but i'll try to have a reasonable geographical range ...

B87: Long time coming

Greg Gilbert, the lead singer of Delays, has died of cancer aged 44. By all accounts, a hugely talented artist and writer, his illness had been known for several years.

There is a particular resounding poignancy because of the ethereal sense of mortality in Delays' two most well-known songs, the almost breakthrough singles 'Long Time Coming' and 'Nearer than Heaven'.

I loved those songs. I still love them. I remember first hearing them - on xfm, most likely - in those solid mid-2000s days of indie manrock supremacy, and they just sounded different, better than everything else. I a) thought that maybe they were lost classics I'd never heard before b) was pretty amazed they were by the same band, and that band was just a British indie band taking their bow.

At that point, I thought Delays were going to be massive, which didn't quite happen, who knows why? I owned their first two albums and enjoyed them but I recall vaguely a mid-afternoon festival slot on a windy day where their delicate sound was blown away a bit, and I don't think I stayed a big fan.

I've kept on listening to 'Long Time Coming' a lot though. It is, for the era, so incongruously sad and beautiful https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqRnGdD_WV4&ab_channel=RoughTradeRecords

I'd never seen the video before. That's not a good video for that song, is it? Perhaps that's why it stalled at Number 16 in the hit parade.

Anyway, following Greg and his brother Aaron on twitter, and knowing his time was coming to and end, I've been listening to the albums again these last few weeks. They are really strong, particularly the second one, 'You See Colours'.

It's a fine legacy, deserves to be better known.