London wanderings, and our own personal greyhound

Starting with our own personal greyhound. Rather than awake the horrible memories of all of October, I'll just write a quick précis of how our placid and faithful greyhound's life suddenly nearly ended. On a usual walk nearby, a large Staffordshire/boxer? type mutt slipped from one of the nearby houses, streaked over, and proceeded to maul our dog, not letting go despite me and two other people (including the owner) punching and kicking it. (Someone told me later 'you have to go for the eyes' . . .) Eventually, our dog broke loose and streaked home where, luckily, Mark was in. The rest of the sorry tale was of much blood everywhere, a very weird drive to the vets where I was totally in shock, and following, three weeks of vet care - mostly in the vet hospital quite a drive away.

When Bali returned it was our turn to dress the wounds, which became a many times daily scary chore, and awful for dog and us. The bill is huge and we now wait for the owner's insurance cogs and wheels to grind impossibly slowly towards a payment. It gives one a small insight into what it must be like in countries where the health insurance system is mostly broken . . . 

                               Dog before attack, and she's beginning to look like herself again

So poor Mark was left with the last bit of dog-care while I slipped off to the UK on a pre-planned trip to see family, friends and, my home city of London. Amongst the many joys of the trip: spending tome with lovely folks, eating 'foreign food' - fish and chips; walking in the Peak District, observing the calm sea at Bournemouth one stunningly still and sunny day, exploring charity shops, and probably the most poignant moment of all - commissioning and receiving a poem about our dog from a 'poet for hire' on the Southbank. I'd noted the guy in woolly hat sitting at a small folding table on which was perched an old typewriter. The handwritten notice hanging from the table read 'poet for hire - pay what you like.'

I had approached jingling the change in my pocket and wondered if three quid was too ridiculous - seems like most of the UK runs on card only and I'd only got change to hand out coins to the increasingly large amount of street dwellers. The guy had gestured to the sign - 'As it says, pay whatever you like . . . what would you like a poem about?' I thought about the golden leaves of the surrounding silver birch trees, the way the grey-brown Thames just rolls on despite world chaos, or the fact that 80% of London appeared to be composed of heading-towards-landfill shops. 'Hm . . . dogs.'

'Any particular dog?'

'Our dog.' I described briefly the recent happenings and how our world had shrunk to mainly peering at a two inch square of possibly necrotic tissue and trying to deal with it as the vets had instructed. 

'I like greyhounds' he had said, and after a brief moment of fingers poised above the old keys, he typed at speed, stopping to reflect a couple of times, and then pulling the paper, with that satisfying scrriit sound that only comes with using vintage typewriters, from the machine and handing it to me. 

When I looked up from the paper the Thames view was hazy from my tears. What incredible skill to be able to sum up the soul of a dog, and so much, our dog. We chatted about London, and how we had preferred it in its grimy days, as he put it. Later I went back after finding some more cash as three quid did seem paltry for such a life-affirming piece of art.

The poet(s) WORD TRADE are available for hire. I have included a link here.

https://wordtrade.co.uk/pay-what-you-like

The poem

                                        A few snapshots from my London wanderings this time.

15 century greyhound at the National Gallery

                My one purchase: tea and mug from favourite shop - Martyns of Muswell Hill.

One of five people I saw reading a book during all my eight or so train journeys - and he had a dog

View from Monument tower - first visit and well worth the climb.

Euston road fire station, a wonderment of 30s (?) architecture

London wanderings (shortish)

Curtailed by time constraints and clothes-soaking-in-seconds rain.

First wanderings: quick stopover in my base - the St Athan's hotel, Bloomsbury; sadly no evening meanderings as I'd arrived at two in the morning, not seven in the previous evening (see last post), so just a mornings walk. Anyway, as ever, London even within a square mile or so, was visually and audibly fascinating, and perhaps it's not always a bad thing to have time and distance perimeters.
Left the hotel and walked around the Bloomsbury squares partly thinking about a wonderful little 1960s documentary narrated by Kenneth Williams of his childhood in the area (will see if I can post it), re-found Woburn Place with its charming little parade of non-knackered shop fronts, then got on a random bus and ended up in the madness of Trafalgar Square; up Charing Cross road (stopping in all second hand bookshops) turned left and into Soho, where, opposite Ronnie Scotts, I found the ancient Italian café of my most earnest desires (oo, ek).
Thought all these had well and truly been sat on by Starbucks, Costa's, Nero's et al but there it was in all its Formica and neon splendour. I asked if I should order at the counter and the slick-haired man smiled: "You like men or women?"
"Err, Men?"
"Okay, I take your order then."
I drank excellent hot chocolate (sadly no can do coffee, but did appreciate the scent of it), ate a weird little maggot-like cake that tasted of brandy butter, and listened in to the conversation all around - which was impossible as it was mostly flamboyant-sounding Italian.

                         

                 

Back out into Soho square and beguiled by a shop-display pile of old TVs all broadcasting the same flickering 70s? film, went in to see what the shop actually sold - hand-made designer and vintage glasses. The two elaborately dressed assistants or owners were helping two traffic wardens with a possible choice of frames, a conversation I think had been going on for some time. After the dark-suited two had left purchase-less the woman turned to me with a unruffled expression.
"I think they just come in to keep out of the cold."

                        

I continued on, crossing over the river of consumerism (Oxford Street) and wandering around the streets leading back to Tottenham Court Road - Goodge Street hardly recognisable from when I lived there back in the late 80s. Took my crap old iPhone 5 into one of the small electrical shops as its charge was disappearing after an hour.
"Hello, do you deal with antique phones?"
Looks at it with mild distaste. "Maybe - what's the problem?"
Explained, after which he suggested a new battery for 35 quid, to which I said, "Oo, not sure," to which he said, "OK, 20 for cash." Ten minutes later after some technical stuff involving a hairdryer, my crap phone was once again working. Useful info BTW: never let your phone charge for more than 100% and certainly not overnight - "kills the battery dead quick," he said wagging a finger at me.
And so, it started to rain. Back to the hotel, grabbed case and off to the tube/Waterloo.




Thought my spelling was bad . . .

           

                         Grey day in Trafalgar Square.


Shop windows around Bloomsbury and Soho



The Pitted Olive - good café near Tavistock Place

            

                 Waterstone's shop window display - 'Why we Sleep' . . .

                        

One of the beautiful shop fronts of Woburn place (Champagne dress-trying event underway in the shop)

                

Two beautiful people in their vintage clothing shop

Second even shorter London trip from Dorset to see a literary agent.

Set off after meeting to do a planned walk to Archway but the steady drizzle morphed into a monsoon; cafés and buses and tube visits/voyages instead . . . which had their own pluses.

                                                

                                                               Wet weather solace




Aliens on the Central Line



Pushchair Spiderman



Take five



Bus condensation art

Living with someone else

And not just with my husband/lad. I assume as with most writers, my current main character inhabits my head quite a lot of the time, including during sleep.
I woke this morning to realise that, Hamish - second-hand bookshop owner and failed poet - needs to actually live somewhere else other than Bound's Green, London, due to certain distances between his various haunts. So, most of the London mapping I had done on my last city wanderings were in fact inaccurate and he should actually be living in Camden. Of course I can travel around the city on Google Earth but it's not the same; I need (and want) to walk the roads he would walk, take the buses and visit the shops he would go in, at least the ones that are still there (book set in 1985).



Time-warp barber shop in Muswell Hill, which Hamish could go in as his lover (taxidermist) lives above her premises on Duke's Avenue (currently a chemist's shop but as taxidermy shops are rare even in London I've had to relax my rules a little)