Back in London after Deux Years in Yankland

 

After a cramped eight-hour flight on the red-eye from Atlanta, I touched down in London's Notting Hill. 

 

Headache. Backache. Creaking knees. And thoroughly mullered. But not everything was in a state of long haul decay. It was still mid-morning and the Farmers' Market at the back of Newcombe House was in full swing. After limping through the crowd of grey English mugs and posh accents, I bagged a couple of pheasants for the pot and spotted a Georgia delicacy on display; red velvet cake in Notting Hill Gate. "It's very popular with the American expats," the stall holder confessed. No sale. But did I want any Eccles cakes? Hard to come by in London town and made up fresh for the inscrutable townies of Notting Hill, Kensington and Holland Park.

 

Unfortunately, not. I was too jet lagged, narky, and gripped by nausea of the gut. It was time to go back to HQ with Fairy Gill (Mum) and unpack the old kit bag. Besides, no need for extra cake, Fairy Gill had baked a big, fat, Dundee number that would take some time to polish off.  

 

After a couple hours kip in my old bedroom, I was roused with an order from the Queen of the House: to go down and refill the scuttles from the coal cellar in the bowels of the flats. We've had a coal burner at HQ since we moved here in 1983. All of the other flats bricked up their fireplaces and sealed their chimneys way back in the 1970s and 1980s. Not us posh Scousers. 

 

Coal deliveries still come the old way, via a manhole on the street in front of the block. Kindling and logs come via (Wat) Tyler's down the Gate. Open fires in the capital have become a hot topic of late. Wood burners have become popular, with many hipster types opening up their chimneys and burning logs. It's led to house fires, increased carbon dioxide emissions in the capital and calls from London Mayor Sadiq Khan and Brexit clod Michael Gove to ban and/or confine their use. Environmental concerns in the political world aside, there's nowt like a roaring coal fire on a cold winter's night in London town. 

Back to the coal cellar in the bowels of the house. I had forgotten how low, dark, dank, and grotty, our coal cellar actually is. Squinting in the damp darkness, piercing the veil of cobwebs, banging my head on the rotten wooden frame of the doorway, I climbed the heap of slag to scour for big (smokeless) cakes of fuel; and then rowed the coals forward with a rusted shovel, so that my 82-year-old mother from Norris Green in Liverpool doesn't have to climb inside and do likewise. In gentrified Notting Hill, our coal cellar, and it's modest slag heap, is our little piece of the grim North in the posh South. It's not for the pussified or the metro-sexually inclined. Scraping the coal forward and into the buckets, I have fond teenage memories of exiting HQ in white Levi 501s only to be ordered, at the last mo, by Fairy Gill, with a request to go downstairs and refill the coal scuttles.   

After a hearty meal at a swanky diner on Notting Hill Gate, I woke up jet lagged on Christmas Eve at 3am, and zigzagged down the creaking wooden timbers of the hall to the sitting room to watch George Peppard in the Blue Max on Sky TV. 

Bleary eyed and weary of limb, I flicked on the Christmas tree lights, bunged another log on the fire and settled down to Ursula Andress, and her famed appendages, give a tour-de-force performance in this World War One tale of chivalry, glory and derring-do on the Western Front.  

 

However, like George Peppard in the Blue Max, I was a man on a mission.  I had to score some new Lonsdale bag gloves, eat a game pie from Lidgates and buy two pairs of Sergio Tacchini "Dallas" tracksuit bottoms (Ed. Note: mission status: incomplete). Later that evening, the wife was off to stay with Mum-in-law, and I was left to my own devices on Christmas Eve to cause merry mayhem in Kensal Rise with some old boys from the hood. 

 

After a late one shooting the seasonal shit, I staggered up the windy slope of Ladbroke Grove, and made it back, just in time, for Christmas Day service at St. Mathew's in Bayswater. But that old jet lag was creeping. And I have a tendency to conk out. I did so, true to form, after roast goose and plum pudding at Mum-in-law's. Thoroughly fed and watered, we returned home to Notting Hill and made for an early bed. But that old transatlantic time difference clicked in. Both of us were up at 3am raiding the fridge for English cheese, and watching the Dambusters (with a signer for the deaf and dumb) on Channel 5 until the croak of Boxing Day dawn. 

 

The following day I took a wander round Rotting Hill and Ladbroke Grove. Walking down Walmer Road, I stopped at a vigil tacked to the railings of Foreland House and looked up to the charred wreckage of Grenfell Tower, standing out like a rotten tooth on the grey and windy West London skyline. What a heartbreaking site. Word round the hood is that the block will be raised to the ground. And hundreds of residents are still internally displaced by the fire that claimed 71 lives. One old pal got offered a flat in Liverpool ("Who do I know up there?" he asked rhetorically). 

 

After taking in the tragic tower and tales of woe, I wandered across Ladbroke Grove up to Portobello; which has been gentrified almost entirely beyond recognition. The Colville Hotel on the corner of Talbot Road, a rowdy pub since 1867, is now a "Ginstitute". But some things remain frozen in time. Rough Trade record shop is still in biz. And so is All Saints Church further up Talbot Road. Like the Anglican cathedral back home in Liverpool, its sandstone Gothic tower glows pink in the late embers of the afternoon sun. 

 

Back at HQ it was time to unwrap the Godzilla lamp. Godzilla was a Christmas present from my younger brother in 1995. And he's been a constant companion, thus far, on my travels and adventures overseas. Because the electrical current is different in the USA to England and Thailand, the old Godzilla-lamp was unused and gathering mucho dust. An old coot in the local bar in Atlanta, Estoria 97, offered to rewire Godzilla to Yank specs, but, rather than mutilate the old toy lamp, I'd thought I'd bring him home to his old spot in Notting Hill instead.

Godzilla took up quite a bit of space in the Contessa's old suitcase, acquired from Shepherd's Bush market in 2002, but I'd already planned to use that space in the old suitcase to  bring back lots (and lots) of aged hardback books that I never seem to get round to reading.  

 

That night at HQ it was haggis, neeps and tatties for dinner. No need to pour whiskey on the haggis, assured Fairy Gill, my learned mater. What about some verse of Burns to bless the offal? Nay bother to that, I growled, and settled down to my plate. Haggis is banned in the USA and I'd not had it for some unknown quantity of years. Why is haggis banned in Yankland? Health reasons. Those silly colonials don't know what they are missing. 

 

 

 

But wait. That's not the end of my adventures in London...

 

Until next time... 

 

The Male Trailing Spouse.