Rain in the city.
Vast hard sheets of water. Flooding into the edges of the roadways. Catching the lights and flooding the pavements. Hard rain. Sudden rain. You wouldn’t have brought an umbrella this morning. You would have wished you had done. Out in it? Soaked. In moments. Wet to the bones. Wet wet wet.
I was in a bus. Problem is, buses don’t take you home. They take you nearer than tubes for less, but… After twenty minutes of waiting at the drop off I finally caved in and flagged a passing black cab. I didn’t want to get soaked and that was the only other option. It’s still pouring now. I’ve been home over half an hour and I’ve had some food, plus I’m not gonna get pneumonia. Eleven quid though, for a black cab from Victoria to my flat, which is less than a mile. This is why you have to be rich or stupid. How do they operate when it’s not raining? That was a necessity hail, pure and simple.
We’ve been plotting the Hampstead Walk this year. That mostly involves following our leader who has an encyclopedic knowledge of the area. We were going to start in The Flask in Hampstead, in a Diagon Alley substitute street that I think did feature in some of the potter movies. The management never got back to us though and ultimately it was too much faff trying to get contact. Added to which there’s a brilliant Flask pub in Highgate, just the other side of The Heath. With two flasks, there’s way too much risk of audience members showing up at the wrong pub. I did it. Chris did it. This evening the photographer did it too, so we had to try and rethink the route on the fly. The Hampstead Flask is right by the station, which is in its favour. But added to the potential confusion from competing flask pubs, we can’t raise the management. It really helps to be able to warn them we are coming. We cap at 30, and it’s probable we will hit good numbers. We are probably going to shift the base. Then we can have comms.
But yeah that’s been the day, plus a really unpleasant interaction with the garage that has taken in Bergman, who are honestly going to try and take me for every fucking penny they can…
AlBarclay 