Disgorged onto the already busy Euston Road at the ungodly hour of seven a.m., rubbing my wrinkled eyes, wretchedly sleepless, looking, blinkingly, for King's Cross station, I was once again caught out by the intensity of London life.
The sleeper journey from Edinburgh had been, as I forecast, a disaster. Sleeping in a boxroom with only one miniature Bell's for company was hardly conducive to a sound night's kip, especially when the train seemed to judder continually to a halt en route. My shoulder ached abominably where I had damaged it two years and a bit previously, when a bulky bloke sat on it when I was playing soccer for Hestair Duplefive-a-side football. I was lying on my face at the time. Ligaments gone to Hell and back
I wanted breakfast pretty badly. British Rail's attempt at filling a gastronomic hole, vis. with two digestive biscuits and a plastic beaker of tea, fell so far short of the ideal that it was hardly worth the effort.
I took the tube to Holborn, then walked along Kingsway, Long Acre and Bow Street - orange on the Monopoly board - to Covent Garden. I saw a little coffee shop, Boswell's, that looked a cut above the Wimpeys' and MacDonalds' that thronged High Holborn.
I had some initial language difficulties with the attractive foreign girl behind the counter.
'You wan' brakefa'?'
'Pardon?'
'Brake-fa - you wan' brake-fa?'
'Oh, breakfast. Oh yes, I want that.'
A beaming smile from the sales assistantattractive foreign girl.
'Wha' you wan' for brake-fa?'
'Sausages, bacon, eggs and tomatoes, please.'
'Sorry. Ownly soss' or tomat' - no baco'.'
'Sausages, eggs and tomatoes, then.'
'You wan' toe?'
'Toe?'
She made a sign of a knife spreading butter.
'Oh, toast! Now I see - yes - have you any marmalade?'
'Mar-mi'?'
'No, not Marmite - marmalade. It's a sort of jam - made from oranges.'
'Oh, Mar-made. Yes, marm-ade.'
'Some marmalade, then, thank you.'
I sat down, exhausted.
A lady swept in and asked me if I had bought my newspaper near the coffee sshop.
''Fraid not,' I replied, "I bought it from a vendor in the Kingsway Road."
She parked herself at the next table. She had an imperious, theatrical voice, middle-class, rather hollow. She was in her late forties and dressed in a white trouser-suit, carelessly but expensively. Her spectacles must have cost at least five hundred pounds. I hoped she wouldn't notice the paper clip securing one leg of mine.
'It's such a bore,' she addressed me, although I looked around to make sure that she wasn't talking to someone else.
'I've just been clamped. Behind Drury Lane theatre. I gave some grubby little man ninety-four pounds to unclamp me. Do you know what? Bloody car's still there. Clamped. Isn't it just bloody?'
I had to think hard before replying. I had never been at my best with theatrical types. They all seemed to spew epigrams and aphorisms like confetti and expect Wildean bons mot in equal proportions in return, not perhaps the sarcastic one-liners of a truculent Geordie.
'You would think the Police could be more sympathetic,' I eventually remarked.
She paused to allow that gem of banality to sink in, saw that there was no witticism contained therein, shrugged her shoulders and ordered her breakfast. She required scrambled eggs.
It transpired that she was an assistant film producer for the BBC, and was filming a documentary in Covent Garden.
'They want six hundred pounds for just filming there - isn't it just bloody?' she asked me, querulously.
'It's bloody bloody,' I agreed.
She told me she lived in Cardiff and commuted to London.
'It's nice to escape back to one's own back yard after a hard day in town,' she said, loftily.
'I'm sure it must be,' I replied.
She remembered something that had been left undone in what had been a decidedly unilateral conversation.
'What are you doing here?' she asked.
'I'm eating my breakfast,' I responded.
'Not in here, silly, in London.'
'I'm here for a boring conference. Not as exciting as making a film.'
'Oh God, making films is frightful. I'd swap with you any day of the week. At least you're using your mind. Making films is just….'
'Bloody?' I enquired.
'Too right.'
Just then an American chap she knew wandered in. He wore a serious expression and sported a tee-shirt with the name "A-i-d-a" screen-printed onto it.
'Hello, dah-ling,' she called to him. He came over and stood resolutely in front of her table.
'I see you've been to the opera, then.' She waved a hand at his tee-shirt.
'Yep, last night. Had to dodge between some pillars, but Ah saw the Real McCoy,' he replied.
'I've been longing to go,' she said and then, as an afterthought, she turned to me.
'Have you seen it?' she asked me, quite threateningly, I thought.
'Er - it hasn't come to Edinburgh yet,' I said. "I fully intend to when it does."
I didn't tell her that I would sooner walk backwards across the M90 than to watch any of that rubbish.
