Its a lockout – clefs sans portières

The Master’s annual speech to the college staff yesterday wherein the Master (that is his real job title) tells us that Oh good there are to be no staff cuts. But a 38% increase in student numbers.

So we hang around and eat the peanuts and olives and sip the “free” cheap white wine they always have at academic dos (there was red too but it wasn’t that nice) and (would you believe it?) talked about football.

5pm is dangerously early for such behaviour. It leads to the smoking of cigarettes and the visiting of college bars. Which is good as far as it goes but inevitably leads to the pub.

And last night that lead to arriving home after 1am to find that the door was locked against me. My key doesn’t work. Try again. Push door, pull door. House is empty (or so I thought) but I tried banging on door to attract attention – and did get some from next door but two. Go and sit on someone else’s wall. Try key again. Think about breaking in. Utter imprecatory prayers. It starts to rain. Sit on wall and smoke last fag. Try again. Yale key broke in lock leaving the shaft in there and me with twisted broken bit.

So I smashed the window in the door with a wheely bin. And could reach in and operate the little nub on the lock that allows the handle to turn to open it, and also to unhitch the chain that someone has set against me.

We live in downstairs flat. Someone has moved in upstairs without telling us. I didn’t know anyone was there. I didn’t even know they existed until after I got in and heard movement upstairs. I went up to talk to them. They look like small gay Brazilians. (Which knowing my luck with this shitty flat probably means they are in fact well-connected Corsican terrorists firmly committed to vendetta) I think I frightened them. Upsetting. They said that they had been told that the building was empty.

And now I can’t leave the house because I need to be here to let Abigail in when she comes back from visiting friends and I want to explain to here what happened and no we haven’t been burgled. And because she was feeling fragile yesterday because she was late to university because she found a run-over cat in the street and called the cats rescue people and waited till they came. And I am missing a day from work. Maybe two.

And I want – without much faith that it will happen – whoever is letting out the upstair flat to fix the door and pay for it themselves. Not the people living there, they are probably the victims of this. And I want them to put in a new lock and give me copies of the new keys. I want them to pay for it because it is their fault. Though my feelings are strengthened by remembering the something like six thousand pounds I had to pay a couple of years ago to get the shared drains fixed with no contribution from them at all even though they probably caused the damage and certainly needed the repairs.

And I want them to clear up the mess from upstairs that they took out into the front and dumped in a pile against the side of the house – including broken furniture and a whole old carpet. And in my real fantasies I’d like them to pay for the severe damage to our ceiling caused by water from above on many, many occasions. But the truth is I don’t even know who they are and if I did am I going to sue them?

Overheard in a gents toilet at a University:

Two ancient history students chatting

“What’s next week?”

“Bloody Irish archaeology!”

“What’s wrong with it? It sounds good?”

“Too much domestic stuff. I only signed on for this course because I want to do the warfare. I want to get to the barbarians. Franks and Goths and stuff. None of all this nonsense about trade! That’s so boring!”

“Military defences of the Empire soon.”

“Plenty of blood and guts in that!”

Pepper Soup in Peckham

To Peckham, to party in a church hall after an ordination

The newly ordained person is Nigerian, and most of the congregation at St Mary’s church seem to be African, so the food was basically West African. As it would be in our church, and I’d guess most CofE churches in inner South London. And as we often find a reason to eat at church I’ve come to associate Sunday lunch with jollof rice as much as with roast potatoes.

Someone once said that the only places in US society where it was normal to see black women in authority over white men were the Army and McDonald’s. I doubt if that is true of the British army, or many British takeaways. But it might be the case in the Church of England in South London pretty soon. Half the people our diocese ordains are women – our church is on its second woman vicar already and and four or five women from the congregation have gone to be ordained in the last ten years or so, but no men – and an increasing proportion of them are Africans.

No moi-moi this time but various kinds of fried chicken and pots with different sorts of meat and sme beany things abd potatoes and bread and of course lots of spicy jollof rice.

And pepper soup. Pepper soup is always an adventure. You never know quite how hot its going to be. Sometimes it is hot, sometimes it is hot, sometimes it is hot, and sometimes it is hot. this one was sort of hot. I don’t know how pepper soup is made but if I had to guess from how it tastes I’d say that you start with a whole dead cow, cut it up, bones, guts and all, into chunks about two or three centimetres across and simmer it with bitter leaves and garlic in a large vat of water for a day or two, every now and again throwing in a kilo or so of ground pepper. Today my dollop had a few chunks of tripe and some steak-like bits in it. Previously I’ve had bits of liver or kidney and what looked like an entire vertebra. Its an aperitif or a flavouring rather than a meal and, apparently, a favourite snack with beer. Sort of like Nigerian equivalent of pork scratchings or jellied eels. I like it. And it makes the jollof taste mild.

Great stuff!

Memo to self: if you start the day with a badly upset stomach, pepper soup and red wine do not make the best breakfast. I had to rush back home on the 136 praying that it wouldn’t get stuck in a jam. Would it be good idea to go to the pub for some jellied eels now? Probably not. Maybe I should just crash out and sleep off the huge heap of rice and beans I with the pepper soup had for lunch.

This bus terminates here

The other day a policeman in uniform came up to me at the bus stop at Waterloo station and asked if I could answer some questions for a “survey”.

A few questions about where my journey was from and too that day – nothing that would identify me – then something like “what is your experience of bus travel today?” Weird question. Not sure how to answer. And do I have any complaints about the service?
Well, the buses are too hot. And often overcrowded. But you expect that… Any complaints about the other passengers? Are any of them rowdy? Abusive? Violent? No, not really. Mostly just trying to get to work

I don’t really know but it looks pretty much as if he was trying to get up to his quota of complaints for the month, and was asking me questions from a form intended to report specific incidents.

He also asked me which bus I used. And would only take one answer. (another clue that it was a fake report for a fake incident)

But that got me thinking as like most people who use London buses, I use all sorts of routes.

I reckon this is about true:

• More than once a week: 21 24 29 188 321 436
• Maybe about once a week but probably more than once a month: 47 59 68 91 136 168
• More occasionally than that but not one-offs, still part of my regular pattern of travel: 1 7 9 12 15 17 43 53 54 73 89 108 122 171 172 176 177 185 199 225 284 343 381 484 P4 P12 P13

Which is more regular routes than I would have guessed I think.

And why is the oldest bus route in the world the number 12?

And talking about the 188, how come when the driver is black (maybe 4/5 of the time) the bus takes you to the north side of Russell Square? Which is where most passengers, including me, are going. But when its a white guy in the driving seat he stops on the south side and plays the little “This Bus Terminates Here” message until everyone gets off? And then we all walk across the square – and the bus gets to the north side before us.

The Tower of the Lidless Eye rises anew!

Well over twenty years ago, I walked back from town towards Nunhead through the North-Peckham Walworth triangle with my old mate Dave Turtle. I mean that piece of land surrounded on the west by Walworth Road and Camberwell Green, on the South by Peckham High Street and Queen’s Road, and on the north-east by New Cross Road, Old Kent Road, and New Kent Road.

We walked across the bit of post-industrial desolation that was then just becoming Burgess Park – its quite pretty now but then it was basically a disused canal towpath connecting the abandoned church to the traveller’s site by way of an old school building full of squatters and a car-breaking yard, and looked out at the ramparts of North Peckham to the south and the flats round Albany Street and the Heygate and Amersham Estates to the North.

The first time he saw it, Dave named the place “Barad Dur”.

Here are those ramparts close-to:

Just a silly joke. OR SO WE THOUGHT!!!!!!

Then, I first saw IT a few months ago, rising over the collapsing brutalist mass that surrounds the Elephant and Castle. What was it? It is in this picture taken from North Peckham – follow the link to the larger picture and look at the tower you can see in the distance on the left:

Is that what it looks like?

I had to find out.

For many hot and dreary weeks I quested through the railway cuttings, arches and twittens of South East London to get a better view of this monstrosity.

Finally, from behind a parapet in a dingy and little-used part of Waterloo station, I got a good view:

Follow the link and open the larger the picture, IF YOU DARE. Look at the top of the new building. Is this not clearly the Tower of the Eye, Sauron’s fastness in Barad-Dur, being rebuilt in South London?

Take a closer look:

CAN THERE BE ANY DOUBT?????

At the Elephant, after dark, I was able to approach unseen (I hope) almost to the base of the Evil Tower:

The picture is, I know, vague and distorted. I hardly dare approach the orc-works so close in daylight. (As if the evil within cared for the sun or the moon! Aaaaaah! I am already weary!)

Look at the horrible gaping windows with a ghastly pale gangrenous death-light of putrescense oozing from them:

This morning, in the rain, through distorted old plastic windows of the tunnel in the sky over Waterloo Road, I finally got a good picture. It looks almost beautiful, in its dull, damp, stony way:

BUT WHAT HAPPENS NEXT???!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!

Overheard walking down the street.

Two rather chubby cute teenage or early-twenties black girls.

A: I’m going to Sweden next week.

B: Will you bring me back a Viking?

A: Bring one back? Have you seen J? He’s so blonde and cute! The perfect Swede.

B: What, D’s boyfriend? But he’s, like, Gollum!

A: No. She’s given up going out with Gollums.

B: But I thought he was like, her boyfriend boyfriend, like they lived together. Her husband or something.

The whole with a rather odd intonation that is maybe getting more common in London (not that I have any real measured basis for thinking that). Seems mostly restricted to under thirties, to be slightly more common among black than white, and much more common for women and girls than for men and boys.

I think what’d going on is that unstressed final syllables are being given a fuller value, rather than being reduced to a schwa. So to someone who wasn’t brought up to it, like me, it sounds as if the final syllables of some words are being stressed (though probably they aren’t really). So “Sweden” sounded to me as if she was saying “sweeDAN”. And girls calling to each other in the street seem to be saying things like “AngeliCAH!” “DominiCAH!”

As far as I remember I never heard “boyfriend boyfriend” before.