It is 8.44 miles from my front door to The Water Poet near Liverpool Street. I don’t have a pedometer but Uber faithfully records the mileage and notes that I was picked up at 6.13 pm after a lunch that began at 12.30.
I had a little rant about some modern architecture in July 2015 which I expect you’ve forgotten by now; I almost have, as Queen Elizabeth I said about something different. I refreshed my memory by re-reading Athens, 1931.
Attitudes to recycling have changed beyond recognition in my lifetime. When I was a child we never picked up used cartridge cases – they had cardboard cases and nobody bothered about the metal caps.
This is where I lived in August 1976. I had a job but nowhere to live. Fortunately a university friend was away on holiday and I borrowed his flat for my first month in London. I was reminded of this when I walked down Dartmouth Park Hill this week; a Brideshead Revisited moment.
Are you a regular? The sort that when you go to the bar the bartender says “the usual”? There isn’t really a usual post here anymore than Rachid, the cocktail barman at my club, can anticipate my order. However, there are a few bits and pieces to update you on.
In the ’80s I discovered from a friend that a few artists living along the river in Chiswick opened their studios one weekend a year. I got to know Mary Fedden and Anthea Craigmyle this way and bought some of their work.