Another Lost Opportunity

Resplendent leaves were turning on the trees in Hillcross Avenue as I set off for this morning’s walk.  Taking the footpath alongside the Merton and Sutton cemetery in Lower Morden Lane, I turned left at the end, trekked along Green Lane to Worcester Park High Street, carried on up this steep hill and continued along Cheam Common Road to North Cheam.  At the end of Hillcross Avenue I had congratulated the driver of a scaffolders’ lorry on the skill with which he had backed out into the road artfully avoiding a parked coach.  He was rather chuffed and, as I waited to cross by the roundabout at the end of Grand Drive, paused to enable me to do so.  Mat might have found this rather surprising.

I had once sped down Worcester Park High Street, unhelmeted, on the back of a motor bike belonging to a member of the St. Matthias church youth club.  This was a hairy exploit I have never again, even on the flat, with or without a hat, been tempted to repeat.  My classmates had introduced me to the club in the late 1950s, as a venue where we could play table tennis, drink coffee, and eye the girls.  I was very naive and shy in those days, and only reluctantly found myself one evening with a group of friends in the home of one of the girls, who we all fancied.  I do not remember the young lady’s name, but I  learned too late that she was quite keen.   It was Pete Sullivan who kindly informed me some time afterwards that she had cut my picture out of a group photograph someone had taken at the gathering, and stuck it on her bedroom wall.  My face, not the rest of the group.  Yet another teenage lost opportunity.  Ah, well.  C’est la vie.  I still have my copy of the photograph though.

At two different places in Cheam Common Road a very small child had discarded its shoes.  Had I not been getting a bit tired by then I might have backtracked to pick up the first and place it beside its partner.  The child may not have wanted its trainers, but I expect its Mum would.

Crossing London Road in North Cheam I enjoyed a hearty fry-up and knocked off The Sun’s puzzles in the Feedwell Cafe before walking back down the A27, into Morden Park, and so to home in Links Avenue.

This evening Jackie and I dined in Eastern Nights in Thornhill, imbibing respectively Bangla and Cobra.  We then joined Elizabeth in The Firs.