Wandle Trail – derrickjknight

Captive Audiences

On the soggiest section of the Wandle Trail during my usual walk to Colliers Wood for a visit to Norman, Oscar came lolloping towards me, lascivious tongue flopping, and muddy paws flailing. At the very last minute this playful young alsation veered off right, having responded to his owner’s sharp command. The man informed me that ‘he was only saying hello to’ me. ‘It’s only his paws I was worried about’, I replied. The bottoms of my Austin Reed fine woollen trousers were already besmirched enough. Maybe the saliva and no doubt wet nose wouldn’t have been too pleasant either.

A multitude of autumn leaves provided covering for picnic tables across the Wandle in Abbey Mills, whilst a single one.quivering in a spider’s web was about to disappoint its resident hungrily catapulting towards what it thought was juicy prey.

As I boarded the Jubilee Line at Green Park, there was only one available seat, although several people were standing. A very strange-looking man, who I had noticed through the carriage windows from the platform, sat opposite me. I soon realised why this vacancy existed. He wished to engage me in conversation about my book, and kept chuckling to himself, presumably amused by the inoffensive young woman next to me, at whom he gesticulated with regularity. Fortunately he disembarked at Swiss Cottage. This reminded me of one of my commuting journeys from Kings Cross to Newark. I was sharing one of the four-seater arrangements with a young man and an elderly woman who insisted on conversing with our fellow-passenger. At the top of her voice she really bent his ear. Other occupants of the carriage gradually moved further and further back and into the next compartment until we three were in sole possession. Eventually I rose and settled myself at the far end, leaving the very patient young man to his fate.

The vibrancy of Church Road market transcended the dullness of this day. When photographing these delights I was prevailed upon to convince some people that I was not ‘an Inspector’. The facades of shops in the street itself bear witness to the constantly metamorphosing multicultural nature of this lively area of North West London. I am sure if I were to walk along here in a year or two there would be different nationalities represented. Already the wonderful West Indian takeaway food shop of comparatively recent years has disappeared

Norman served up a roast pork dinner with blackberry and apple pie. He admitted that his hand had slipped when lacing the custard. My half of the Mondelli 2009 chianti would have been sufficient without the brandy.

Oiling The Lion

A pair of socks hanging in a tree on this bright, crisp, morning along the Wandle Trail en route to Colliers Wood reminded me of my rugby boots. On 25th June I mentioned my ingenious scrumping in Cottenham Park sometime in the 1950s. Remembering throwing sticks into conker trees when younger, I had decided to chuck my boots into an apple tree intending to knock off some fruit. Unfortunately it didn’t occur to me to untie the laces that bound them together. Soon they were suspended like the socks. More ingenuity was required to get them down. This involved the park keeper who was a bit put out. It made me late for the match. I couldn’t even invent a story which would present me in a better light. The news had been spread all round the changing rooms. Bill Edney, Geography master and rugby coach, was also a bit put out.

On another occasion, when playing for the Wimbledon College Old Boys, I lost a boot on the field. Rather than stop and put it on, choosing to wait for the next natural stoppage, I continued wearing one sole boot. I must be the only player ever to score a try with ‘one shoe off and one shoe on’. (My second name is John). I was probably lent wings to avoid anyone stamping on my stockinged foot.

A lace once came in very handy. When Alan Warren broke my finger (posted 23rd July), I obtained a spare, lace, not finger, from the referee and strapped the damaged digit to its neighbour in order to carry on playing.

It will now be apparent that nothing short of instant death would have got me off the field before the final whistle. When I damaged a shoulder which has given me constant pain for more than fifty years, I couldn’t raise my left arm, but I could rest it across the shoulders of my partner in the second row of the scrum. How daft can you get?

Sam knew. When I was about sixty and hadn’t taken the field for fifteen years, he played for a Newark side against a pub team. Reckoning I must be as fit as most members of the probably inebriated opposition, I sneaked my aged kit along when I went to watch. Just in case. Sam was not one to carry on regardless when injured, so I was puzzled at his continuing the game with a twisted ankle. Afterwards, I asked him why. ‘Because you would have come on’, he replied. And I didn’t think he knew I had come prepared.

During Sam’s stag weekend in the Margaret River area of South West Australia the young men arranged a game of touch rugby. In this form of the game there is no tackling. You just touch your opponent who must then release the ball. This was at the end of a day sampling the wineries. Naturally I joined in. After all, touch rugby is safe enough. Sam’s friend, Deutch, 6′ 5” and about 18 stone, forgot the rules and tackled me hard. Once I got to my feet I took the first opportunity to retaliate. I couldn’t get my arms around his hips. It was then that Mick O’Neil, about to become Sam’s father-in-law, sensibly called a halt to the proceedings, because, he said ‘someone will get hurt’. I think he meant me.

As usual, this morning, I continued my journey to Norman’s by tube. On the Jubilee line between Green Park and Baker Street, a young woman with extremely shapely limbs revealed by the briefest of running shorts; a ring through one nostril; a diamond stud in the other; and acne on her face cheeks spent her time oiling a lion’s head tattoo which was all that covered her right thigh. Perhaps she was applying hair care to the animal’s plentiful mane. Since she was seated directly opposite me, I was somewhat distracted from my book.

Church Road market, in the glory of the sunshine, was a colourful as ever.

Despite having a bad cold, Norman was able to serve up a succulent roast partridge meal followed by apfel strudel. Sadly he was unable to drink all of his half of the 2009 Dao, so I had to imbibe more than mine.

Banknotes And Phonecards

Today was a Mordred (posted 12th. July) day.

I took my usual route to SW1 for coffee with Carol. A flattened frog, having attempted to cross the sodden footpath in Morden Hall Park, hadn’t made it. As I slalomed around the pools, a cyclist who had crept up behind me deftly avoided me as I crossed her path.

The warning notice on the tramway which divides the National Trust property from the Wandle Trail must have been inspired by the push-me-pull-you from the 1967 film, ‘Doctor Dolittle’, starring Rex Harrison and Anthony Newley.

An announcer at Victoria politely requested travellers to ‘stand on the right and walk down on the left of the escalator’. This seemed to me to be an impossibility.

In speaking with Carol, I mentioned a collector I had once disappointed. When Louisa was very young she had become interested in foreign banknotes. I took great delight in scouring Newark market stalls for samples with which to enhance her collection. In her teens she moved on to other things and returned them to me. Learning of my friend’s interest I offered them to him. And was unable to find them. When moving back to London in 2006, I unearthed them and sent them to him. He was very pleased.

Phonecards required me to be a bit more adventurous. In the 1980s, when Louisa began collecting them, I was working in London, which is, of course, full of phoneboxes. These cards contained a reader which recorded the time left available on them. When exhausted, they would often be abandoned in the boxes. Rich pickings for someone prepared to tramp the streets and, if necessary, cross the road to forage. They would come in sets. I remember one celebrating a Pierce Brosnan James Bond film, the name of which escapes me. I would happily try to fill in the gaps for my daughter, proudly presenting them on my return to Lindum house in the evenings. It was a red-letter day when I found one of the first cards ever issued. Since this was some time after its publication, I imagined it had been deposited by a tourist on his or her return to England. I once mentioned this obsession to a friend of mine. Now, these boxes also contained cards of another nature. Often bearing obviously lying glamour photographs, sexual service advertisements were frequently pasted on the walls. My friend got quite the wrong end of the stick and pulled my leg unmercifully. Cursory glances into today’s telephone boxes on my return to Victoria demonstrated that these wares are still being marketed through this medium. Most are now torn off, leaving stubborn fragments attached to the glass. They look rather like a price label attached to a present, or a charity shop paperback, which you cannot completely remove. Whilst carrying out my research I rather hoped that no-one watching would also get the wrong end of the stick.

That early phonecard, issued by BT (which in those days did truly stand for British Telecom) has now been superceded by a myriad of companies issuing cards without a reader; and the mobile phone has severely limited the call for public phone boxes. Louisa eventually also donated that collection to me. I don’t know where it is now.

For this evening’s meal I created a totally new version of chickem jalfrezi. It never is quite the same as previous efforts, but this time it was an almost total invention because I’ve lost the recipe. I’ve made it enough times for that to be no real problem, it just makes for variety. With it, we drank Kingfisher and Cobra 2012.

Unrequited Love?

Today’s tramp was terribly tiresome. Having often noticed, on my usual Colliers Wood walk that the Wandle trail allegedly continues on to Wandsworth, I decided to take that path as the first stage of my journey to Waterloo to meet Tony. Crossing Colliers Wood High Street, the signs led me on a meandering route, the first mile or so through uninteresting side streets populated by rather ugly modernish housing. Eventually the road crossed the Wandle and I could pick up the trail. This was a dismal and windswept winding wander on a dull and windy day. I have no idea of the distance travelled, because, with very few exceptions, each milestone gave the same number of miles.

The tangled undergrowth everywhere bore evidence that summer is almost over. Weeds were brown and parched. Buddleia was similarly dry, colourless, and scorched. Blackberries were almost completely ripe. Nettles and brambles were rampant, and convulvulus choked everything in its grasp. An occasional fluttering butterfly and one hardy honeysuckle bravely brightened the withered Wandsworth stretch of the river. Paths were often overgrown. Birds, if there were any, were silent. All that could be heard was the wind whistling through the trees, except when that was drowned out by the roar and clanking of industrial machinery. An Irishman and his dog, making their way painfully along the narrow path, stepped aside, risking being stung, because, the man said: ‘you are quicker than me’. As I passed, and thanked him, I pointed to the ancient Labrador and commented: ‘you are being held up’. ‘Yes, me legs are holding me up’, he replied.

After a while I found myself in Earlsfield, where I encountered the first long straight road. Magdalen Road, SW18, is an uphill stretch bounded for most of its left hand length by Wandsworth Cemetery. Even the cyclist who brushed past me on the pavement was using his lowest gear. Consequently his legs were going like the clappers, but his speed was slow. A notice outside the cemetery seemed to bear a zombie warning. This put me in mind of Stanley Spencer’s memorable painting, ‘Resurrection in Cookham Churchyard’.

An effort had been made to brighten up the heavy, sombre, facade of Wandsworth Prison. It didn’t really work for me. From Wandsworth Common I made my way to Clapham Junction where I boarded a train, reflecting that I could have done so at Earlsfield.

As I sat on a bench in Waterloo Station, eating a pasty whilst waiting for Tony, a pigeon at my feet adopted the posture of a hopeful dog. It had a great deal of trouble swallowing the one piece of crust I did drop. Rather like a dog with a long stick held crossways in its jaws, the bird tried twisting its neck and rapidly opening and shutting its beak. This didn’t work. When It tried using a claw it almost toppled over. In an effort to avoid a young woman’s feet it flew off. I didn’t notice the crumb drop. It may be stuggling still. The young purple-haired man sitting next to me sucked his thumb continually as he studied his mobile phone. And he’d already eaten a Macdonald’s. At long last he found someone to talk to. He explained that he had just had to spend a week in the same bedroom as a girl without being able to touch her. He didn’t mention whether that was 24/7 or just the nights. His listener could not possibly have any idea of how hard that was. Perhaps that’s why he needed a dummy. Once he’d finished speaking, the thumb went back in the mouth, until he was joined by two other equally colourful young gentlemen. Hugs all round ensued. I am now beginning to realise where sitcom scriptwriters source their material.

The Paralympic Games traffic was really hotting up. Brightly clad marshals were adept at identifying those who needed direction, and providing the necessary service. Transport police were in strong but largely discreet evidence. Except for the two, carrying automatice rifles, who were cheerily chatting to customers on the concourse. Mostly elderly ladies who didn’t seem to be terrorists in disguise.

Tony and I, as usual spent an hour or so in the Archduke bar underneath the railway arches.

Our evening meal tonight was an array of salad, after which we had stewed plums, courtesy of Geoff of the Tardis, with Dream Topping. Jackie wishes the world to know that the Dream Topping was bought in error. It should have been custard, which also bears the name Birds, and comes in a red and yellow packet. I finished of the Vina Araya, while Jackie had a Hoegaarden

Coping With Violence

Today was Mordred (see 12th. July) day No. 50, so I bought an Independent in Londis, on my way to my normal Colliers Wood route. I was having coffee with Carol in SW1 and lunch with Norman in Harlesden. Alongside the Wandle, brambles, nettles, bindweed, willowherb, and other foliage were ‘as high as an elephant’s eye’, to quote a wonderful Rodgers and Hammerstein song from Oklahoma! (1955), but the footpaths were clear. A blackbird with a damaged wing skipped awkwardly across one. Families were flocking to Deen City Farm (see 16th. May). Someone had wheeled a giant shuttlecock into the river. In fact it was ‘a beautiful morning’ when I set out.

After coffee I returned to Victoria to take the tube to Neasden, changing at Green Park. I had forgotten how jam-packed these stations can be during the tourist season.

On the Jubilee Line from Green Park I sat opposite two silent, expressionless, young men wearing dark glasses. This took me back 25 years. By the 1980s, violence on public servants was becoming quite a problem. I had myself been attacked by a disgruntled client wielding a coffee table. I was prevailed upon to re-enact the scene in an ITV programme on such violence. Deciding my staff needed training in the management of these situations, I approached the police for help. They were unable to provide any. There was nothing for it but to create my own course. With the help of my friend Brian Littlechild, one of the Social Workers at the time, a suitable event was planned and carried out. This was just for the Area team. My enduring memory of that day is the glee and accuracy with which the secretarial staff role-played their Social Work colleagues. It was hilarious, somewhat chastening, and informative. In the early years of my freelance consultancy practice, this course was very much in demand. Initially Brian continued to partner me, using days of his annual leave. Eventually we separated and went our individual ways, still remaining very good friends. Years later, when I sought a similar course for the staff of Stepping Stone Community (posted 10th. August), Brian recommended a trainer. The staff found the course stimulating and useful. They were particularly pleased with the handouts, which they showed me. Most of the material was what Brian and I had produced.

What we focussed on was scene setting, defusing of situations, and knowing when to get away, rather than self-defence. It was our belief that most Social Workers were not belligerant enough to carry through specialist holds or other fighting techniques, and therefore more likely to get into trouble attempting to apply them. There was, however, so much pressure for this element to be included that I approached Eden Braithwaite, a martial arts expert who I knew, to offer a sequence on the subject. He wouldn’t do it, for exactly the same reasons that I had refused to countenance it. ‘Then you are precisely the person that I need’, I replied. ‘You will have the authority to make them hear what they will not from me’. He agreed. The participants did accept what he said, some, I am sure, with a certain amount of relief.

During the morning of the day on which Eden was to present his piece, Brian and I, as usual, during our session on potentially threatening behaviour, had spoken about dark glasses. If you cannot see someone’s eyes, you cannot determine their mood. If you need to conceal your eyes, you are preventing the other person from knowing what to expect from you. The unknown is frightening and will elicit a fight or flight response. Strangely enough, we had some difficulty getting this concept across. This was quite a large group containing both men and women, perhaps twenty in all. When Brian and I returned after lunch, all the men were lined up together. They were all silent, with arms folded. All presented fixed features. We had no idea what they were thinking. One of them had been shopping and provided them all with dark glasses. Far from being threatening we found this, as we were meant to, laughter-provoking. This post-lunch session was much less somnolent than usual, and the group were nicely warmed up for Eden.

On leaving Carol’s flat just before mid-day, the pavements showed me I had escaped a shower. Emerging from Neasden station, I was not so fortunate. I walked straight into one. Seated on a wall around a ’70s Council block of flats whilst sheltering under some trees, I reflected on the difference between suburban Neasden and the opulence of Victoria Street which I had recently left to board the tube.

Norman fed me on melt-in-the-mouth lamb shank; cherry pie and custard; and a superb 2001 Gran Reserva Navarra.

On the way back I finished reading ‘The Land God Gave to Cain’ by Hammond Innes. This was a gripping mystery adventure which reminded me why Innes had been a favourite of mine in my teens.

‘Leave It!’

Yesterday morning I finished W. Somerset Maugham’s novel ‘Catalina’. Maugham is an excellent story-teller and this literally miraculous tale involving the machinations of a scheming prioress made very good light reading, perhaps especially because the characterisation lacked complexity. There was a cameo appearance by Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.

This morning I walked through Morden Hall Park, along the Wandle Trail, and across Colliers Wood High Street to the Wandle Bank Water Meadow which I explored before retracing my steps. On the outward journey there was a familiar after the storm sense all around. Slugs and snails were in evidence. This had me reflecting that thrushes are a seriously endangered species. I am told that slug pellets have killed off these birds because their source of food is poisoned. In Newark we enjoyed an acre of pellet-free garden. So did the thrushes. We had no slugs or snails, except those whose shells we could hear the thrushes bashing on the stone paths. I saw no snails on the way back, perhaps because the sun had given up its unequal struggle with the clouds lowering overhead, or maybe because thrushes are alive and well in Morden.

Brambles and nettles were burgeoning and often difficult to avoid along the Wandle Trail, especially when slaloming around the puddles on the footpath. Along the Merton Abbey Mills stretch I had plenty of cause to be grateful for the work of Payback (see post of 24th. May). I noticed a few fallen trees, at least two of which now made primitive bridges across the river. Fishermen were stationed at intervals, particularly where the water was fast-flowing, as at Abbey Mills.

The Water Meadow had of course not been mown since the sweet smell which had alerted me to its presence as described in my post of 23rd. May. The Wandle itself runs alongside the small park which contains a serpentine stream, perhaps a tributary, currently choked with fallen cow parsley. As I was passing a group of dog walkers exchanging the usual tales of their pets, whilst the said pets were play-fighting, one of the animals which looked just like a wolf detatched itself from the others and, wet-nosing my hand attempted to frolic with me. ‘Leave it’ said it’s seemingly Korean woman owner. ‘Leave it!’. With what I hoped was a humorous expression, pointing at myself, I said: ‘I like the it in leave it.’ I’m not completely sure she got the joke.

In the late afternoon we collected Becky from hospital and drove her home. She is very well. As you approach the estate on which she lives there are frequent ‘sleeping policemen’, being humps in the road designed to force speed reduction. Jackie seemed to be leading a convoy of extremely patient cars who had to follow her driving very slowly out of consideration for Becky’s comfort. I don’t know about Becky but I certainly appreciated riding over the bumps more gently than usual.

After a takeaway curry from Deshi Spice in Mitcham Road and a bit of tidying up we left Becky and Flo to their own devices. Becky’s repast was tinned tomato soup.

Payback

Last night I finished reading Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’. This is a book which Judith Munns ‘loves’ and which Rachel Eales studied for GCSE. In 1960, when I gained my English Literature A Level, five years before the trial of ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’, nothing so explicit would have graced the curriculum. In her new introduction to this year’s Folio Society edition the author pays tribute to Orwell’s ‘1984’, to Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’, and to Bradbury’s ‘Farenheit 451’. All are futuristic novels based on social control and spywork.

The difference with Atwood’s book is that it focusses on the lives of women. I found it thought provoking, flowing and brilliantly written. As a man I can’t say I loved it. This is because I found the treatment of the handmaids as sexual objects purely for procreation rather than any legitimate enjoyment most uncomfortable. Maybe one has to be a woman to ‘love’ such a book. Was your spelling of ‘Tail’ deliberate, Judith, or not? Either way, I can fully understand it.

When the book came out the USSR was in the last throes of the communist grip. There will always be people in such a regime who will break the rules. Human nature and the desire for freedom of expression, however severely repressed, will come through. There is a fireman in Bradbury’s book who preserves the literature he is meant to burn, and the Handmaid’s Commander collects forbidden reading material; belongs to a sex club (exclusively for the bosses and important trade connections); and plays Scrabble. At great risk to them both the Commander involves the Handmaid in all this.

Margaret Atwood could not have known that by the early 21st. century it would be possible to form Scrabble friendships through the medium of the internet with people all over the world. Yet it is through the game of Scrabble that the Commander chooses to initiate the emotionally intimate relationship he craves with the handmaid he is meant mechanically to ‘fuck’ in his wife’s presence with neither pleasure nor verbal communication.

The humbling thing about Worldwide Scrabble on Facebook is that it is played in English. People I am currently playing whose first language is not English are from The Phillipines, Singapore, Japan, Greece, and Nigeria. And they are all capable of beating me.

On this warm and sunny morning of a day which soon became so hot and humid as to be oppressive I set off earlier than usual to walk to Colliers Wood with the intention of exploring the park on the High Street discovered yesterday.

In Sainsbury’s I joined a queue at the checkout behind a woman with what looked to be a whole week’s shop. As I only had a bottle of wine I was taking to my friend Norman for lunch I began to feel I’d probably joined the wrong queue. So quick and efficient, however, was the person on the till that I complimented her on her efficiency. She was a youngish woman with a slight African accent and tribal marks incised in her cheeks. She had a very modest yet humorous response. Only then did I realise that she was sporting a badge proclaiming her as ‘top scanner of the week’. She joked that she didn’t know how it had got there.

The visit to Wandle Park will have to wait. This is because I got diverted in conversation with the ganger of a team working on the Wandle Trail. I have reported earlier the marked difference between the amounts of litter on this trail and in Morden Hall Park. This morning there was a whole gang working at clearing the litter, tidying the undergrowth and, where necessary, weeding and clearing the river. Their leader, Mr. Everoy Naine, born in Jamaica in 1968, who came to this country when he was seven, was passionate and eloquent about what he and his crew were doing. He is employed by the London Probation Trust to manage a crew of volunteer offenders attached to the project called Payback. Everoy was keen on the actual task they were carrying out, proud of his workers, and wholly committed to giving his charges an opportunity. One young man was involved and interested in our conversation and I told him I had done my first (approved school) after care work in 1966. This impressed them both and it was then that Everoy said he had been born two years after this. His young charge gave me his name and would have been happy for me to have used it, but we agreed that his privacy should be respected.

On the tube to and from Neasden I began reading Colin Dexter’s ‘The Remorseful Day’.

Rabbits On The Roof

Listening to the squirrels scampering on our roof this morning reminded me of those in the loft of Lindum House in Newark who sounded as if they were wearing hob-nailed boots. It is amazing how much noise they make. This also gives me an excuse to tell a Soho story.

During the middle years of the 1970s we lived in Horse and Dolphin Yard in Soho. Between Gerrard Street and Shaftsbury Avenue, this was a little-known mews where we had a flat in a Westminster City Council property. Michael, in his early teens decided to keep and breed rabbits. Now, there isn’t much room in Chinatown, so there was nothing for it but a rooftop farm. Michael, always inventive, built a runway across the roofs in the Yard, using ladders to circumvent the different heights of the various roofs he had to pass before reaching his chosen site. This was the flat roof of a music publisher’s offices. The staff there, incredibly, had no problem with what was happening. In those days produce for the myriad of chinese restaurants in Gerrard Street came in wooden boxes which were discarded and left for the binmen. These boxes made good firewood, but Michael had other uses for them. He used them to build rabbit hutches and to make a safety barrier for his pets around the perimeter of the roof.

An elderly woman in an upper floor of a block of flats overlooking the area got so much pleasure from watching the rabbits frolicking in the sunlight that she took to leaving vegetable scraps on our doorstep to supplement their diet.

One of the ladders reaching from our roof to the next one spanned a skylight which was so begrimed as to be invisible. That is why, when one of Michael’s friends decided to jump instead of using the ladder which Michael had carefully placed to avoid such an eventuality, he went clean through it. I was summoned, peered through the window, and saw Simon in the clutches of a gentleman who had no intention of letting him go. I rushed round into Gerrard Street, managed to work out in which building the boy was being held, searched through the warren of rooms until I came to the right one, and persuaded the man to release him.

I kid you not. Every word of this is true.

Later in the morning, getting back in good time for a supervision session at midday, I made a long tour of Morden Hall Park. In one of the areas where the heady scent of cow parsley is all pervading I stopped and chatted to a National Trust volunteer, armed with a grabber and a black bag, ‘litter-picking’. He told me that there is a team of ‘litter-pickers each allocated a different area of the park. We were standing in The North Meadow. This explains why there is a marked difference litter-wise once one crosses the tramline into the local authority managed area of The Wandle Trail. He suggested I needed a little dog for my daily walks. I said I was quite satisfied with the Jack Russells belonging to my son and daughter. Further on I met one of his colleagues.

The aroma in the rose garden was of horse shit.

This evening we had a wonderful steak pie by The Real Pie Shop of Crawley, bought at The Greens Farm Shop in Ockley. As one of the vegetables I made my first ever braised red cabbage. As Delia’s recipes are sometimes rather bland for me I may have been a bit heavy handed with the spices. This might explain why Jackie said it tasted more like apple pie than red cabbage.

The Deen City Farm

This morning having been the one for bin collection, the foxes had created their usual mayhem on the lawn. I do wish our neighbours would double-wrap or rinse their waste food products. Before I could get to the rubbish someone had again cleared it up. Was it our helpful stranger and her toddler assistant? Or perhaps helpful fairies?

I spent some little time revising a couple of clues for next week’s Independent cryptic crossword, and so went out later than usual for my walk. I met Jackie coming to pick up the car for a visit to a client. Again an encounter with her determined the direction of my walk. She was going to the Phipp’s Bridge Estate in Mitcham. I therefore travelled with her there and she dropped me on that side of Morden Hall Park so I could walk from there. I took the path onto the Wandle trail and soon realised that I was close to the Deen City Farm which is situated alongside the trail. I had often noticed the farm on my trips to Colliers Wood. Today I decided to visit it. It is a charitable community project and a godsend to the residents of Mitcham’s estates and beyond.

Passing the magnificent chickens and flamboyant turkeys, the visitor encounters preening waterfowl and sprawling rabbits, all huge specimens. There are sheep, goats, llamas, cattle and horses. Indeed, the farm also has a riding school. The community garden is well stocked with flowers and a number of vegetables.

Those children there today were all pre-school and mostly accompanied by their mothers who had walked the same path from Phipp’s Bridge. There is an ample car park for those who come from further afield.

There are a number of these community projects in our cities, ensuring that children who otherwise would have no experience of country life have the opportunity to gain such pleasure. Some of my own grandchildren, who do eat well from natural produce and do visit the countryside, were once amazed to see me shelling peas. They had never had any but frozen ones. Not that there is anything wrong with Bird’s Eye, which are often fresher than those that have been in the shops or on the market stalls for a while.

Louisa and Errol, near their home in Nottingham, have the White Posts Farm, to which Jessica and I took her and Sam when they were little; and Malachi had his third birthday party in the city farm in Hackney.

I made a beef curry this evening. This went down well, especially accompanied by Cobra beer.

Contrasts

Coffee this morning with a friend in SW1, followed by lunch with another in NW10. I began with a walk to Colliers Wood, mostly through Morden Hall (National Trust) Park and Merton’s Wandle Trail. The boundary between the two is a modern tramline. The Wandle is one of London’s lost rivers; the trail being a stretch of wooded land alongside the water.

Most of the people in the congested High Street running through South London past Colliers Wood and on through Clapham must be oblivious of this pleasant walk. I suffered such oblivion when, as a teenager in the 1950s I regularly walked from Raynes Park to Tooting to visit an art-house cinema. I had the 1/9d for admission, but not the extra few pence for bus fares. Kevin Lydon, a schoolmate, thought this was pretentious. When I think of how many unintelligible subtitled black and white films I sat through I’m sure he was probably right.

From Colliers Wood I travelled on the tube to Victoria and on to my friend’s flat in Rochester Row. After coffee it was off to Harlesden for lunch.

Turning right out of Neasden tube station the contrast between the High Street there and Victoria Street, SW1 was marked. The wind gusting up the hill on a less rain sodden day would have carried blinding and irritating dust from the commercial recycling depot at the bottom of the hill. The pavements were so uneven as to be bearing pools of water which it was difficult to avoid. The older, smaller, St. Mary’s Church with its graveyard seemed a world apart from Westminster Cathedral; and The Burren in Roundwood Road, a friendly Irish pub, humble in comparison with the grand Victorian pubs, such as the Windsor Castle in Francis Street, which are to be found in Victoria.

Victoria’s buildings are mostly enormous; commercial ones usually modern and with walls of glass, residential ones usually older stylish and elegant blocks of flats. It’s all rather grand and overbearing. The only large modern building in this part of NW10 is the Magistrate’s Court. There are blocks of less opulent looking flats, but most dwellings are terraces of small family homes, the older, larger ones often converted into two flats.

Victoria Street is well populated by modern shops, including a large department store, and City Hall itself. Church Road, the local shopping centre for my friend Norman, is full of small shops which have seen better days and which are constantly changing hands. Many of these latter shops are run by immigrants, the latest of whom are from Somalia. The Road has a strong sense of community and the shops are stacked with produce attractive to those who live there.

As a schoolboy I had to walk because I didn’t have the busfare. As a pensioner I only walk when I want to. Thanks to the Freedom Pass I am able to travel free and freely using any form of transport in the 6 London Transport zones. This includes overland railways. It is a marvellous facility which really lives up to its name.