In Putney recently I passed The Pines, the former home of that flame-haired pagan sensualist Algernon Charles Swinburne. The strange little chap was rescued from alcoholic isolation by Theodore Watts-Dunton, and sequestrated there in relatively sober senescence with his moustachioed care worker. I visited a pub in Wimbledon recently which he apparently visited on one of his long rambles from his new home. The house now is obscured by foliage, the blue plaque's lustre dimmed. I looked up at the windows - was that the bald cranium of the aged Swinburne I saw fleetingly at one of the upstairs windows? No.
Waddling down by Mother Thames, I am shocked into increased embarrassment at my portly figure by the hordes of floppy-haired, muscle-bejewelled canoeists striding around with 12 foot canoes carelessly tucked like crayons under their massive Oxbridge armpits. I walk sweatily and shame-belliedly away. Unnecessarily warm for October.
Overhead in The Fitzroy Tavern at the weekend: "I've seen the Shawshank Redemption three times and I still can't remember the end".
Wednesday 14 October 2009
Friday 9 October 2009
Greetings
My first venture into the realm of the blogosphere so be gentle with me. My aim is to record the cultural and alcoholic wanderings through Old London Town of a debt-crippled, lager-sodden, swollen-bellied, manic depressive ginger dilettante, who occasionally imagines himself as a character in a Patrick Hamilton novel. Tired and fatuous musings on literature, politics, football, etc, will abound with nauseating regularity.
To the Barbican for my first classical music concert - the LSO performing Beethoven's Violin Concerto and Sibelius's magnificent 5th Symphony. Emerging from Moorgate underground, pummelled and battered by flailing commuters, I seek solace in a local hostelry, John Keats at the Moorgate. Ah, little Johnny Keats! I raise a glass to the consumptive cockney scribbler. The place is full of braying City types, their laughter characterised by volume, ferocity and a total lack of mirth. Cheap lager for London though. Through the concrete canopy to the concert hall. Before the concert begins, the dread pressure from the bladder begins as the lager cries for release - and I'm in the middle of a row! Visions of tripping and stumbling over middle class legs as I interrupt the adagio with my torrential flight to the gents. Must drink wine before concerts in future.
Arabella Steinbacher is the soloist and very good she is too, although if she had been wretched I would have been none the wiser. The Sibelius is exraordinary, the brass section achieving epic volume. What would the sozzled, rumpled Finn maestro have made of Strawberry Switchblade using the fanfare from his work? Ovations follow. A quickie in the Balham Tup before collapsing in front of walnut-faced Glaswegian Lothario Andrew Neil on The Politics Show.
To the Barbican for my first classical music concert - the LSO performing Beethoven's Violin Concerto and Sibelius's magnificent 5th Symphony. Emerging from Moorgate underground, pummelled and battered by flailing commuters, I seek solace in a local hostelry, John Keats at the Moorgate. Ah, little Johnny Keats! I raise a glass to the consumptive cockney scribbler. The place is full of braying City types, their laughter characterised by volume, ferocity and a total lack of mirth. Cheap lager for London though. Through the concrete canopy to the concert hall. Before the concert begins, the dread pressure from the bladder begins as the lager cries for release - and I'm in the middle of a row! Visions of tripping and stumbling over middle class legs as I interrupt the adagio with my torrential flight to the gents. Must drink wine before concerts in future.
Arabella Steinbacher is the soloist and very good she is too, although if she had been wretched I would have been none the wiser. The Sibelius is exraordinary, the brass section achieving epic volume. What would the sozzled, rumpled Finn maestro have made of Strawberry Switchblade using the fanfare from his work? Ovations follow. A quickie in the Balham Tup before collapsing in front of walnut-faced Glaswegian Lothario Andrew Neil on The Politics Show.
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